Kingdom (40 page)

By the time the Humvee rumbled away from the curb, it had started to rain but Dylan was already moving, past a series of guards—Kevlar Knights rocking military-grade automatic weapons—through revolving glass doors and a battery of metal detectors, and into the main lobby of Morrison Biotech’s Tiber City headquarters. Security didn’t even blink. Neither did Dylan—as soon as he realized the Humvee had stopped in front of the Morrison Biotech building, things seemed a little clearer.

“Use the private elevator down the hall to your left,” someone barked at him. “Penthouse level. You’re expected.”

Aside from the guards, the lobby was empty and Dylan hurried toward the elevator, weaving his way around enormous wrought iron statues—huge abstract beasts that loomed above the lobby like the skeleton of some prehistoric monster. There were televisions mounted on the wall next to the elevators, all tuned to continuing Jack Heffernan retrospectives and remembrances—the same footage that had looped over and over since the assassination: the horrified bystanders, the state funeral, the patsy fingered for the shooting being led in and out of courtrooms wearing shackles and a bulletproof vest on top of an orange prison jumpsuit, every last detail presented in gorgeous hyper-definition video. Allegedly the country was still in mourning and even as a smorgasbord of “religious leaders” mugged for the cameras, touting a “time of healing,” the news ticker running under the video testified to the contrary: a gunman holed up in an elementary school outside of Albuquerque, a celebrity overdose in the Hollywood hills—life rolled on.

Dylan stepped onto the elevator and the doors snapped shut behind him, soundless, and then he was moving up and the walls of the building fell away: The elevator continued its ascent behind one-way, rain-streaked glass, rising 10, 20, 30 stories above the Tiber City streets.

As the elevator moved up through the darkness, the city followed him, a monster of steel and neon, pushing through the sizzling rain. Plumes of smoke and smog and gas drifted up from the city’s maze of streets and alleyways, desperate offerings to an indifferent deity. As the elevator continued to rise, the city seemed to glow radioactive, the lights from the individual
multinationals melting together, glowing with a menace that might, at any second, break loose and spill out across the entire city, country, world. Maybe that was why the entire city seemed to climb vertical—it was a desperate attempt to escape the terrestrial, like a starving rat, determined to gnaw its way into the celestial.

“Penthouse level,” a vaguely female voice informed Dylan as the elevator glided to a stop. The doors slid open, revealing an office that might have been any other executive suite in Tiber City—if every other executive suite came with walls adorned with Zero Movement data feeds, a fireplace surrounded by black leather chrome-base coconut chairs, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of Tiber City. Michael Morrison was standing in front of the glass, dressed immaculately in a dark Armani suit, white shirt, and a deep crimson tie, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out into the Tiber City night.

“Welcome, Mr. Fitzgerald.” Morrison said as he turned away from the window, smiling. “Nice suit.”

“You motherfucker,” Dylan growled, as he moved toward Morrison, each step deliberate, cautious. He scanned the room for a potential weapon but there was only a desk with a computer, the flickering of the Zero art, and the glow of the city outside the window. “Why did you bring me here?”

Raising a bandaged right hand, Morrison made a sweeping gesture toward the fireplace at the back of the office. Dylan spun around, his stomach dropping when he saw the strands of dark hair spilling over the back of one of the chairs facing the lifeless hearth.

Dylan shot across the room, calling Meghan’s name but she didn’t respond. Kneeling beside the chair, he took her pulse—it was strong. He stroked her cheek with his fingers, whispering to her, trying to wake her—he couldn’t.

Standing up, he turned back toward Morrison, his fists clenched, his face twisted with rage.

“Meghan’s fine,” Morrison said, although his tone was even, his smile was cold and the hint of menace was unmistakable. “She is simply my means of ensuring your undivided attention. So I wouldn’t worry about her right now. Instead, I’d worry about myself. I’d worry that because crazy old man’s been whispering in my ear, or because I read some scribblings my dead daddy left behind, I was going to do something stupid.

Dylan felt the surprise register across his face.

“Oh yes,” Morrison continued, “I know all about Campbell and the things he told you. I know more than you could possibly imagine. In fact, I know a great deal of things, particularly about your daddy, that you might not know.”

“Like how it felt to watch him die,” Dylan said, his anger growing, radiating from his belly to his limbs in white-hot bursts.

“Do you want to know the truth about your father,” Morrison asked.

Dylan held Morrison’s gaze for a moment and then nodded.

“Then shut the fuck up and listen,” Morrison snarled. The sound of rain pelting the outside of the tower filled the room and Morrison lit a cigarette.

“Toward the end of the Cold War,” Morrison began, “the U.S. government decided a new generation of leaders was needed to lead our lost nation back to greatness. God’s design was no longer good enough; there were too many mistakes, too many limitations. Project Exodus was launched in response to these limitations. This was before Morrison Biotech even existed; it was just Campbell and myself and a handful of other researchers. Only Campbell and I knew the truth. And even then, Campbell lacked the vision, the drive, to grasp what Exodus was truly capable of—the birth of a new man, one who would stand outside the limitations of God and the natural world. That man was your father.”

Dylan was shaking his head; he wanted Morrison to stop, but he needed him to continue.

“I created your father in the Exodus laboratories miles under the Chihuahuan desert,” Morrison continued, his words slithering out across the room, swirling around Dylan. “The only womb he ever knew was made of silicon and microprocessors. He represented the first great success of Exodus: An 18-year-old man, born fully developed with a set of implanted memories. The first man ever made by man.”

Outside the rain began to fall harder and the wind picked up, rattling the windows and for a moment it felt like the entire tower was swaying and the power flickered once, twice, but held.

“There was only a single human gene Project Exodus failed to identify,” Morrison said. “A gene that seemed to have no function; to serve no purpose. So we went ahead and created your father without this gene, which we dubbed ‘the Omega Gene.’ At first, it appeared Omega was indeed superfluous. I believe your father’s…suicide proved just how wrong we were.

“So we tried again, this time with Jack Heffernan. Only in Heffernan’s case, we actually replicated the Omega gene and included it in his genetic code. Yet, even with this artificial Omega gene, Heffernan still suffered the same meltdowns as your father.

“It wasn’t until recently that I learned the truth behind the Omega gene—that it is the gene responsible for connecting man with his Creator, with God. You see Mr. Fitzgerald, the Omega gene is the human soul.”

Dylan flashed back to the strange hospital, to the sensation of nodes being attached to his forehead, to the whirl of machines, and the stories an old man whispered into his ear: of the desert, of his father, of the human soul. Another explosion boomed somewhere outside the tower and the lights flickered in response, the grid overloaded and unlikely to hold.

“But deducing the identity of the Omega gene did nothing to advance the goals of Exodus,” Morrison continued. “No, there was still one final question I needed to answer: Does Dylan Fitzgerald have a soul? The Omega gene manifests itself in a certain type of activity in the human brain. Your father’s brain never experienced this type of activity; neither did Heffernan’s. In fact, none of the prototypes we created before your father did. But the tests we ran on you revealed you not only have a soul, but that your soul is particularly sensitive to whatever external, possibly divine, stimuli engages with the Omega gene. Yet, curiously enough, there are times when your Omega activity drops to abnormally low levels as well. If you could find a way to harness that activity, to control and direct it…you could be the one to accomplish everything your father could not.”

From every side of the office, Zero art flashed and swirled, shapes appearing on the digital canvas then vanishing back into the void, only to be replaced, seconds later, by another explosion of information given shape by a someone somewhere across the globe, maybe across the street, and as Morrison spoke and the screens roiled Dylan waited for the perfect moment to strike out and destroy the man who destroyed his father.

“Come with me,” Morrison said and Dylan followed him out onto the balcony, waiting for his opportunity. Tiber City spread out before them, beautiful and terrible.

“This is yours for the taking,” Morrison was telling Dylan, his voice low and seductive. “Not just Tiber City, but all the cities of the world. Power. Women. Treasure. Men will call you lord and master and crawl on their bellies
before you. From every end of the earth, they will proclaim your glory and herald the dawn of a new age for mankind.”

Dylan said nothing, he only nodded: If he squinted, the lights on the horizon bled together until there was no distinction between anything, just the profane uniformity of 21st-century America. A dark fantasy flashed across his mind: He saw himself in the desert, standing atop the tallest mountain, and all around him people were gathered, crying out exaltations and lamentations, flesh pressed together, arms and hands outstretched; he was ruler and he was lord but Meghan was nowhere to be seen and artifice and fear were the only currencies in this strange land. He would never know the Connection again; he would exist forever on the surface of things, separate from God and his fellow man, utterly alone. But he would be king.

Morrison was right—it was his kingdom for the taking, just as it was his father’s. But like his father, Dylan just didn’t want it.

“Listen to them,” Morrison whispered, “they call your name…”

“It’s not real,” Dylan growled, cutting Morrison off. The vision vanished.

“But it can be,” Morrison was assuring him. “Everything you want, you can have. There are no limits…”

“Did you kill my father?” Dylan asked.

His tone was low but steady and a look of surprise flashed across Morrison’s tan, tight face but then it passed and Morrison seemed to be considering the question. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the wind was blasting so hard the rain was blowing sideways, pelting the two men facing each other on a balcony dozens of stories above Tiber City.

“Did you kill my father?” Dylan repeated, raising his voice and taking a step toward Morrison.

“What does that even matter,” Morrison snarled, raising his voice over the sound of the rain, “when I am offering to make you into a god?”

“Did. You. Kill. My. Father,” Dylan demanded, again, his voice little more than a whisper, barely audible over the rain and the thunder. Lighting cracked over the city, a hard, jagged strike capable of splitting the earth in half.

“Yes, yes,” Morrison was shouting, his tie gone, torn off and flung over the balcony. “I killed your old man. Just like I killed your cunt of a mother. And just like I’ll slit my whore of a daughter’s throat if you don’t join me.”

Morrison paused and then, lowering his voice, added:

“Of course, I’ll wait to do that one until after your son is born. After all, if you won’t join Exodus, perhaps your child will.”

Dylan’s mouth opened but no sound came out, his eyes wide in disbelief. Morrison began to laugh—a mean, bemused chuckle.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Morrison was asking as Dylan’s world slowed, blurred, wobbled. “I thought she had told you. I guess she wanted it to be a surprise…Well, surprise.”

Morrison was laughing as the world snapped back into focus and then Dylan was charging through the rain, swinging at Morrison. He connected with a wild right haymaker, flesh and bone slamming into flesh and bone and Morrison reeled backward, landing against the glass partition with an audible thud. But the glass didn’t break and although his lower lip was busted wide-open, blood teeming onto his oxford button-down shirt, he was still on his feet.

Morrison wiped his lip with the back of his hand and spit blood onto the tile before starting back across the balcony toward Dylan, his eyes radiating hatred. He could feel the Treatment surging through his blood, accelerating his nervous system, the pain inflicted by Dylan’s blows already receding.

“You stupid, stupid boy,” Morrison was shouting as he moved toward Dylan. “I’ll raise your son as my own. Everything I’ve offered to you, he will inherit.”

Morrison lunged at Dylan, and Dylan twisted to the right, toward the railing, and although he moved fast he didn’t move fast enough: Morrison’s fist smashed into his ribs with an audible crack and then Morrison was on him, the old man’s arms like pistons, pounding Dylan’s body with an inhuman fury.

Lightening flashed overhead and there was an explosion in the distance, the sound of a massive transformer blowing, followed seconds later by the frantic moan of sirens. All across Tiber City, the lights began to falter, fade, and Morrison paused, allowing Dylan an opportunity to roll away, across the balcony, but there was nowhere to go and Dylan could only brace himself as Morrison came at him again, grinning like a madman, as he unleashed a fury of jabs.