The Conformity (5 page)

The Conformity soldier bellows and moans with its thousands of mouths. It knows we're here, hiding in this hole like some frightened woodland creature.

Suddenly the view between the doors is of naked, straining, ichor-streaked bodies, each mouth screaming
JOIN US SERVE US WORSHIP US.

Jack leaps to the opening, hands held out in front of him. The shock wave that erupts from him drives forward with the strength of his anger. By the time it hits the wall of flesh filling the bunker's door, it's moving at a thousand miles per hour. It rips through flesh, liquefying it, blasting everything—the abandoned Jeeps, shattered remnants of trees, the bodies of the subsumed,
everything—
out and away from the bunker and down the mountainside.

The soldier bellows and moans as the blast doors clang shut.

BOOM. BOOM.

We pant in the fluorescent-lit space of the bunker motor pool. Ember goes to Jack, touches him lightly on his arm. Hugs him. But even in his embrace, she looks at me. Curious, maybe. I got my devil wings.

It's silent for a long while except for the booms of the soldier assaulting the door.

Once, when I was just a snot-nosed kid, a car plowed into the school bus I was on. Not too much damage, but a lot of kids banged heads or smacked their faces on the front seats. Afterward, waiting for the other school bus to come pick us up, we stood on the side of the road, all our lunchboxes in grubby little hands, backpacks on our backs, and stared at each other with hushed shock.

That's what this is like.

“Casualties?” Priest asks Davies, who, it seems, is now in command of the remains of the Army. I'd heard rumors about desertion—the US government has moved to NORAD, martial law declared—but now, looking at the ten or fifteen bedraggled soldiers remaining, I can see how far the military situation has eroded.

“Billings, McKee, Jeffries, Donaldson—we lost contact with them when the second Conformity soldier attacked the tower.”

Priest nods, grave. “And teams? Losses?”

“Other than bloody noses and spanking bad headaches—courtesy of Li'l Devil—no. All accounted for,” Blackwell says, glancing at me.

“And the Irregulars are all here,” Tap says.

Priest bows his head, thinking.

BOOM. BOOM.
The blows from the soldier shake the earth. Hard to countenance the fact that it's battering the door with human bodies. The reverberations travel up my legs from the floor. I can feel them in my teeth, my molars.

“Come, let's get the majority of you on a lower level,” Priest says.

“It can huff and puff, but it won't get through those doors,” Davies says, voice like gravel crunching under car wheels. He's a salty one—unshaven, craggy, missing only an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.

Priest stares at him, head inclined—for a moment I'm reminded of Quincrux—and then he nods. “Still, let us get some of them below. Captain Davies, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Solomon, would you please devise a roster of watch for this level? Equal portions of extranatural and military, if you'd be so kind.”

All three of them make sounds in the affirmative and trot off to put their heads together.

“A word, Shreve,” Priest says, placing a pale, soft hand on my shoulder as I moved toward the elevator. “Just a moment.”

When Jack joins us, Priest opens his mouth to protest until I say, “No, he's with me. We go together or not at all.”

Maybe it's the fact that I'm making rules now. Maybe it's the dismay at our situation. Maybe his shattered leg—courtesy of Jack almost two years ago now—pains him. Maybe it's the weight of centuries pressing down on him. Armstead Lucius Priest sighs.

“Very well,” he says, and he sits down on the bench next to the elevator door, crossing his hands on the head of his cane, to wait for the rest of the soldiers and extranaturals to descend into the bowels of the earth.

eight

The elevator car shudders and shimmies in the descent. Priest seems preoccupied with something I cannot discern, though I could probably suss it out if I dared dive into his brainmeats. I don't. I will not risk it. I fought the Witch. I struggled with Quincrux. I do not know Priest's strength, and I do not want to.

As we rock in the elevator carriage, faint
boom
s can be heard as the Conformity soldier throws itself at the mountainside.

“Mr. Cannon …” Priest frowns. Maybe he's accessing Quincrux's memory banks, maybe he's just unsure what to say. “Shreve. I am most pleased with your development. Indeed, with everyone's development. It is only in times of adversity that one discovers what one is capable of.”

I really hate it when one uses the word
one
when one should just say
YOU
.

“One does what one can.”

“You mock me.”

“Only a little.”

He smiles, and damn me if it doesn't look a little sad. It's an honest smile, at least, which is more than Quincrux ever gave me.

“Our lives are strange, are they not?”

“How do you mean?”

“We know many people who have occupied different bodies.”

As he says it, I can't help but think of Moms. She's always been many people occupying just one body. I can't seem to hate her anymore.

“Yeah. Many into one. Like the Conformity.”

“Yes. You and I, we contain multitudes.”

“Legion.”

“Yes. I am curious, though. How did you manage it?”

“Manage what?”

“Your ability to fly. Have you been hiding that ability?”

“No.”

Priest rocks with the movement of the elevator. We're descending far, far into the earth. The air is cool and somewhat wet. If the lights went out, I would scream.

Weariness descends on me. Suddenly my legs feel weak and my head spins.

Oh, man,
Jack sends.
That's one helluva hangover.

There's a bench at the back of the elevator. I sit there, waiting until my head stops spinning.

“You do not look so well, Shreve,” Priest says, concern in his voice.

“It's the letdown. Bernard hit us with a shot of rhythm, and now—”

“Ah. The aftereffects have begun to set in.” He shakes his head. “Extranatural abilities are wondrous—a higher rung in human development—but the ascent comes at a cost. As in all things.”

I can only nod and cradle my head in my hands. Jack doesn't seem to be faring much better.

“Pardon my curiosity. But in all my long years—and I mean sheaves of years—I have never known any extranatural to develop
new
powers so late in life.” He shakes his head. “It's one of the great fallacies of the old to believe that they have experienced it all. I am not immune. This revelation of your undiscovered talent came as a shock to me. And I do not relish shocks.”

I look at Jack, and he's got this wary look on his face, like we're speaking gibberish to each other—which I guess we are. But I wanted him here, so I wink, and I can see him settle.

Is this guy for real?
Jack sends.

Yeah. He is.

I don't like him. He's too much like Quincrux,
Jack concludes.

He is, but he isn't. I don't know. Maybe it's because some of Booth is in there too.

Well, if shit goes pervy, I'm blasting him,
Jack sends, matter-of-fact. And he will, I have no doubt. The force he released at the Conformity soldier was monumental, like the raw energies of the universe. The anger behind it was equally wild.

Sssh. I don't know if he can overhear us.

Screw that,
Jack says.

During my exchange with Jack, Priest remains staring at me, hands crossed over his cane.

“So you want to know how I did it,” I say to him.

He inclines his head slightly.

I gnaw my lip.

“I'm a thief.” In my mind, when I thought of my response, it sounded cool, tough. But now that my mouth has made the words, it sounds terribly vulnerable stated so baldly. And I hate it about myself. I take and I take and I give nothing back.

“All you can think about is yourself, Shree,” Moms said, so long ago. And she was right.

Priest purses his lips and lowers his head, thinking.

Jack and I are exchanging glances when he raises his head and says, “I think the reality of it is more complicated. Let me ask you a question.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Can you take my humor?”

“Humor?”

“A poor example. Can you take my personality?”

“No. But I can take your memories.”

That troubles him; his face clouds. “This is, unfortunately, true. I cannot express to you how sorry I am that you ever were in a situation where that seemed your only option.”

Damn it if a tear doesn't bead his eye. I don't know what to say to the man.

“You can take memories, but can you take my personality? Can you take my humor? Can you take my beliefs? My love of music? My abhorrence of poverty? And I don't mean remove it, I mean,
can you take it into yourself?
Graft it to who you are?”

“No.”

“Then you are not a thief. And I am beginning to think you are the opposite of a thief.”

“What's the opposite of a thief?” Jesus. This guy. He could give Jerry a run for his money, answering questions with questions.

“I don't know.”

“It is one who gives.”

“So, I'm a gift giver? Like Santa Claus?”

He smiles again, slowly. His lips tug downward, but his eyes crinkle. It's a sad smile.

I
hate
sad smiles. Quincrux never sad-smiled.

“No. It means you
are a gift
.” He closes his eyes suddenly and half sings, half chants,
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.”

The elevator shudders to a stop, and the doors open.

Fuck me.

It's a lab, cluttered with the detritus of research and analysis, filled with large, white electrical machines of unknown use, at least to my eye (and I have the memories of quite a few medical practitioners rattling around in the noggin). There's an electron microscope. A bank of industrial refrigerators and freezers. There's a centrifuge. I have to assume the thing stenciled with the words
DELIVER TO GENOMICS
is some sort of DNA sequencer. There's something that looks like a clear vat of oil with wires and tubes swimming in its viscous depths. And racks upon endless racks of servers.

Priest limps through the laboratory, looking about with a dissatisfied air.

Boom. Boom.
A flask rattles on a nearby worktable.

He gestures at the room. “I show you this because it is my greatest failure.”

Jack looks puzzled. “How so?”

“Hiram. He was my student—indeed, my protégé—and I must atone for what he did. I bear the weight of his sins.”

“He was a prick, that's for sure,” I say. Then I think a little more. “A monster, really—a murderer, an abuser, a manipulator. But I don't understand how that was your fault.”

He limps over to a stool and sits down. He looks tired. At this point, his psyche has settled in Quincrux's flesh like a tapeworm in a dog's heart. Now he's heir to all the excess and damage that Quincrux's meatsuit possesses. The shattered leg. The addiction to tobacco. Whatever other strange and demented predilections the man might have had. I've worn enough flesh to know, it's hard coming to grips with the physical wear and tear of another body. To take up residence has to be tiring.

“Pride. When I first came to know Hiram and understood his talents and desires, I thought I could control him, change him for good. And I did, I think, for many years. But when I—” A strange, dark expression settles over his features. For a moment the years fall away and he seems boyish, lost. Lonely. “When I was scattered among them, the people I rode, Hiram reverted to his old ways. His true nature.”