Those That Wake 02: What We Become (23 page)

Six months ago, Rose was working the night shift at the diner alone. The owner couldn’t afford both girls at the same time any longer. She stood behind the grimy counter, looking out the window at the flickering dark, and started when someone spoke.

“You got something I want.” The voice came from a stocky figure bundled in a thick jacket, a hood hiding his face in shadow. He had walked in and come very close while Rose was transfixed on the dim world on the other side of the glass. His voice was a sharp whisper, and his breath was hot and sour.

She backed up instinctively, though the counter remained between them.

“You got something I want,” the shrouded figure repeated. “You understand what I’m telling you?”

Rose had no response, no words at all. Her body grew weak underneath his ravenous gaze.

“Leave,” said another voice from behind the figure. The face in the shadowed hood turned to get a look at who was addressing him.

The person standing there was broad and tall in cargo pants and a hooded sweatshirt. Under a crown of short dark hair, the lean face was that of a boy, but for the incongruous wash of scars and scrapes plastered across it. Honestly, the face looked like someone had held it too close to a sandblaster, some of the cuts still red with blood, some of the welts a throbbing pink. Rose saw the hands hanging loose at the sides, the knuckles crisscrossed with old damage and red and raw with new damage. This boy had just come from a fight, was ready to step into the next without so much tension as to make his voice rise or his fists clench.

The stocky figure did not even turn back to Rose, but slid from between the counter and the boy and left. In that one word—“leave”—one single syllable, a possibility opened up to Rose that was as astonishing and unfamiliar as a great crystal tower bursting forth from the concrete of the sidewalk before her.

She brought the boy food, as much as he wanted, stood at the far end of the counter, unable to take her eyes off him, unable to come any closer. Two hours later, he hadn’t left. She needed to close but couldn’t imagine turning him away.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” she asked as steadily as she could from behind her mask of hair.

He looked at her with dark eyes that did not belong in a boy’s face. Impossibly, the eyes held no judgment, no contempt, just comfort.

He shook his head.

That same boy sat next to her now, in the back of a limousine, watched over by Roarke’s rigid gray eyes and Castillo’s wandering, bestial gaze. Mal was not a savior anymore, but an unconscious body.

“Do you see this?” Castillo said to his partner, prodding him on the shoulder, pointing at Mal. Roarke’s eyes turned minutely. He was a man of small, precise movements. It took him a moment to study the body. The windows in here had been darkened so that Rose couldn’t see where they were going, but it left the inside muted and dim.

“His breathing is strong,” Roarke said. “He should make it back. I’m surprised he’s still alive at all.”

“Yeah, but look.” Castillo leaned in closer. “It’s not just his breathing. I don’t think I see any wounds.”

“What are you talking about?” Roarke leaned forward, too. “There’s blood all over him.”

“Blood, yeah, but do you see any
wounds?
”

Roarke slid closer to Mal. He moved his hard hands over Mal’s body, touching the various stains of blood, probing gently but thoroughly. Rather than becoming alarmed as he failed to find what he was looking for, his expression became emptier. His hands moved up to Mal’s face, parted his lips, moved his fingers inside.

A moment later, without warning, he yanked his hand out as though Mal had been playing possum and tried to bite his finger off.

“What?” Castillo demanded of his partner. “What is it?”

“His tooth,” Roarke said. “I knocked a tooth out of him when we found him on the street.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s there,” Roarke’s empty expression had become positively ghostly.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s there, in his mouth. It grew back.”

Rather than coming in for a look himself, Castillo slid farther back on his seat. Roarke, however, turned those gray eyes on Rose.

Rose folded in on herself, like a plant wilting under intense heat.

“What is this?” Roarke asked her, indicating Mal’s inexplicable condition with a stabbing hand.

Her head gave the smallest of shakes, her eyes locked on the floor so that she couldn’t see if Roarke was still looking at her.

What this was, was that Remak had been successful. Mal was going to live. The joy over this was muted, not only by their current situation, but also by the implication of Remak’s success. It meant that Remak himself was gone forever, sacrificed to give Mal his life back. With Remak gone and Mal unconscious, Rose was on her own, without strength or hope or even the ability to look back into someone’s eyes.

The car rolled to a stop. Castillo hustled Rose roughly out of the car as Roarke managed Mal’s body. They moved through what appeared to be a service entrance and then through a small but scrupulously tidy hallway that led into a larger, carpeted hallway lit with a peaceful amber light that made it feel as though the world were covered in warm honey. They moved Rose up to a large, wooden double door.

“Uh, this is where I get off,” Castillo said with a sense of relief. Roarke paused in front of the door and gave Castillo a long, almost mournful look.

“Right,” he said, and took Rose by her arm with the hand that was not keeping Mal’s large frame perched on his shoulder. The hand clasped her bicep like an iron manacle. Castillo went down the hallway and through the door that led back to the car. Roarke took another moment, straightening his back and shifting something in his head, and then pushed through the doors.

The space beyond looked like the back room in some private club, its walls deep oaken brown, glass cabinets filled with liquor in crystal decanters. There was a long table made of ancient wood, and above it was a line of paintings of solemn old men glaring down. The chairs were rich brown and red velvet, as was the chaise near the center of the room onto which Roarke lowered Mal’s form.

The room was bathed in a dim, red glow, and the temperature and thick humidity instantly made Rose’s clothes cling to her body.

In this light, Rose squinted at the one inconsistent detail here. Against the far wall, almost lost to the low red illumination, was a wheelchair.

At first, Rose wasn’t even certain that there was something in the wheelchair, so slight was the figure. But, suddenly, the wheelchair moved. The nearly inaudible whine of electronic controls attested to the presence of
something
in the seat.

It approached and, releasing Rose, Roarke stepped forward to meet it. Rose skittered back, pressing herself against the large chaise longue that Mal rested upon. Roarke’s body was obscuring her view of the figure in the wheelchair. The large man spoke in short, clipped whispers, his back rigid.

A moment later, Roarke turned toward the exit and marched, like a soldier, out of the room. Near the door, he turned briefly and spared Rose a final look, before the door closed with a resounding echo.

Rose did not want to turn back, see what was waiting there. She could already feel it examining her. Rose always spurned the attention of others, always felt inert and hollow when eyes fell on her. But this, this was as though she stood spotlighted before a stadium of thousands, the weight of the attention here crushing the breath from her chest.

“Where,” said a voice that was the sound of dry air gently escaping a tomb, “is Jon Remak?”

“He’s dead.” She was happy to say it. Not because she wished Remak dead, but because she had the true answer, did not have to resist or try to trick this thing.

“That’s why . . .”—the voice paused to take in air—“the boy lives.”

“Yes.” Rose nodded, her eyes riveted to the floor. “Yes, Remak healed him.”

“Because Remak was not . . . human anymore. Because he had become . . . the power of pure mind . . . pure will.”

The blessed relief of it: the thing didn’t just believe the story; it already seemed to know it. All Rose had to do was nod.

“Because he had entered . . .”

It hung there until Rose had no choice but to finish it.

“Remak called it the neuropleth. How—how do you know all this?”

“I’ve lived . . . a long time. I’ve spent all of it . . . coming to know how human minds work. You understand more than an insect . . . because you are so far above it . . . you see more of its world . . . have a greater sense of the cause and effect that determine its life.”

The room was silent then, and Rose would have been tempted to look up, had she not felt its terrible eyes still on her.

“I understand more than you,” it explained, “because I am so far above you. My grasp of cause and effect . . . is over yours . . . as yours is over an insect’s.”

“Who are you?” The question vomited from her mouth in a wash of fear.

“Man created the narrative of religion . . . to give his life form and meaning. But in this era . . . that narrative has been replaced. Humanity has created a story of old men in hidden rooms . . . who play the world like a game. If this theology of conspiracy has replaced religion . . . and I am at the center of this new belief system . . . then who am I?”

Rose’s eyes fluttered, the fear running up against the urge to see the face of the man who made such a claim. In the end, the fear won, as it always did.

“Then we’re nothing to you,” Rose said. “What do you want from us?”

“Remak entered the neuropleth . . . and was changed. But it is possible . . . to have access to the neuropleth without being changed . . . as he was. I want that access. I want to touch . . . every mind in the world.”

“But you have so much power now . . .” Rose flailed helplessly at even the idea of such power. “What more do you need?”

“The future, girl. The future. Guiding people from the shadows . . . leaves too much power in the hands . . . of others. There is too much room . . . for mistakes . . . for waste. My will is far beyond . . . what Remak’s was. I will be able to do things in the neuropleth . . . that he never could. I will be able to use the energy of the brains there . . . to power this body, make it strong again . . . stronger than anything. Strong forever. And I will be able to control those brains . . . make puppets of their bodies without losing my own, as Remak did. Then there will be one power . . . guiding an utterly consolidated workforce. All I want . . . is absolute control . . . for the rest of time.”

Again the room fell silent as the thing accumulated the strength to go on.

“Remak has been in that boy,” it said after a time, “and so . . . he is my last connection to the neuropleth. I will have what I want . . . if I have to peel his brain open . . . and take it.”

Rose’s arms clenched around her body. Remak had said that Mal would have a door to the neuropleth in his head, too. What would the Old Man do to Mal’s brain in order to have it for himself? Rose couldn’t stop this thing from getting what he wanted.

But to save Mal, she could give it to him herself.

“Wait,” she said, struggling to find her voice. “Wait. I can . . . I can give you the neuropleth. I can.”

There was no response, and after a moment she hurried on, snatching whatever chance she could.

“Remak took me into the neuropleth and left a doorway to it in my brain, too. I can give it to you.”

“How?” asked the voice from the tomb.

“Physical contact,” she said, repeating Remak’s own explanation. “That’s how he put it in me.”

“Look at me.”

“What?” Rose said. She had heard the voice, but this was what you said to the inconceivable.

“Look at me and . . . say it again.”

Slowly, fighting a powerful force, Rose’s eyes came up, struggled upon the Old Man.

It was small, shrunken, its dry head sitting atop a deflated torso, its arms and legs skeletal extensions. The dim red glow marked every irregularity in the face, engraving a thousand ancient fissures in shadow. Its eyes were lost in the darkness of the crevices, but Rose could feel them searing through the flesh of her face.

“Tell me . . . again.”

“I can give you the neuropleth,” she said, almost unable to make the words audible. “Right now.”

“Yes.” The voice had acquired a note of something it had surely not experienced for many years: awe. “Yes.”

In coming to her feet, Rose braced her hand against the chaise behind her, and her flesh brushed against Mal’s face. The sensation of it brought the world more sharply into perspective.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait. If I do it, you have to let Mal and me go. You have to let us go.”

The head creaked and swiveled minutely to take in a slightly different view of Rose.

“Negotiation,” it said. “That is something I am . . . intimately familiar with. It is either that . . . or fight, after all. You could fight . . . you know. I am old and weak. You could . . . kill me easily. My man is outside the door. He wouldn’t even know.”

Rose stared at him, unsure whether this negotiation was going her way.

“But you . . . are a victim. Fighting is . . . a fiction to you . . . a story told to wonder at. Far easier . . . to trade on your victimhood . . . to get what you want . . . by making yourself more of a victim.”

She shivered listening to him.

“Very good. I shall accommodate you. I promise that I . . . will not stop you or the boy from leaving. Now . . . do it.”

Rose stood, unsure how to approach. Unsure if she was
able
to approach.

“Do it,”
the thing hissed.

She stepped closer, reaching out a tentative hand. It neared the hand resting on the arm of the wheelchair, and as it did, the gaunt fingers rose, fluttered through the air, and brushed her skin. A shiver ran up her arm, down her spine. Even in the sweating humidity of the place, the fingers were bone cold. It felt as though rot were crawling beneath Rose’s flesh.

“Kiss me,” the Old Man said.

She gaped at him, her face slack with disgust.

“That will be . . . our physical contact. I am the oppressor and . . . you are the victim. Without it, there is no contract. Kiss me.”