When We Wake (13 page)

I’m not actually a very good Catholic. I was baptized, of course, and I went to Mass regularly for a while. But Mum and Owen and I stopped doing that after Nonna and Poppa died, except for Christmas, Easter, weddings, baptisms, and funerals—although one thing about a big Italian family is that you have a lot of those.

I was also never much for the church’s position on women’s rights or equal marriage (the Fourth Vatican Council fixed most of that, but back in my time it was pretty horrendous). But I definitely have faith. I believe in an eventual life after death, because the alternative is just too awful. And I’ve felt something, from time to time, a warm presence that felt to me like Divine Grace.

I’d been confirmed in the church, too; my full name is actually Tegan Marie Mary Oglietti.

Yeah, Marie Mary. I know, but I was thirteen and going
through a stage of really loving the Virgin, and I wanted her name as my confirmation name, even if it meant I had it twice. I still think she’s pretty awesome; she got this big job and she did it very well, even though you’ve got to think her parents and her fiancé were a bit side-eyed about the “virgin pregnancy” deal.

The second I stepped into the church foyer, my right hand reached automatically for the holy water in the little niche beside the door, and I dabbed it on myself: forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder.

Bethari had opted to stay in the car, joined by a grumpy Gregor, but Zaneisha had insisted on accompanying me in.

“Should I do this?” she asked, gesturing at the holy water.

Well, goodness gracious me. Something I knew that this future woman didn’t.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to smother my smugness. It’s not like I would have been any more at ease in a mosque. “You don’t have to do any of the things I do.”

She nodded infinitesimally, eyes tracking every exit and entrance. Being a bodyguard had to be exhausting.

I avoided the center of the nave and the woman replacing the flowers beside the lectern there; I wasn’t interested in Jesus on his crucifix behind the main altar. They had a side altar for Mary, though, and I went down to say hi, past the Stations of the Cross depicted on the wall, my steps echoing through the silent space. She was wearing blue and white, and for once she wasn’t
holding baby Jesus; she was just being herself, inscrutable and watchful.

I went to my knees. “Hello,” I said to the perfect stone face. “How are you?”

Mary didn’t reply.

“I was thinking about what that Father guy said,” I told her. “I don’t think them bringing me back was a miracle. I mean, I’d rather be alive than not, you bet. And I think it was people who did it, not God. But I don’t think it’s God’s exclusive territory, either. If it was, they wouldn’t be
able
to do it. And I don’t feel evil or soulless. I feel like me.” I gulped. “Only sadder. And lonelier. It’s hard.”

Zaneisha would probably have been a lot more comfortable if I’d talked to the Blessed Virgin in my head, which was one of the reasons I was doing it out loud.

I mean, I mostly liked Zaneisha. I just resented that I couldn’t go anywhere without her.

“Marie’s good. And I like Bethari a lot, and her friend Joph seems okay. But none of them get it, you know? They don’t really understand what it’s like to be from somewhere so different. I bet Abdi does, but I screwed up, and he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Mary didn’t seem to think she needed to comment. I felt the tears stinging at my eyelashes and tightened my jaw. “I just wanted to say hi,” I said, but that was a lie. What I wanted was to feel God, to be certain that I wasn’t some sort of fake person walking around with a borrowed face and voice, thinking I was a real girl.

I was 99.9 percent sure I had a soul. But 0.1 percent can keep you up at night.

After a while I decided that no matter how hard I prayed, there would be no choir of angels or tongues of flame to declare my soulfulness. Still, I stayed on my knees and watched that unmoving face.

“Ms. Oglietti?” Zaneisha asked eventually, and then, though her voice didn’t change, “Tegan?”

“I’m okay,” I said. The kneeler was padded in memory fabric, and it snapped back to fullness as I got up. There was no dimple in the cloth to show I’d ever been there. “Let’s go.”

We were almost to the big carved doors when Zaneisha said, “Stop,” her voice so absolutely commanding that I did what she said without asking why.

My instincts don’t usually work that way.

“There’s an Inheritor of the Earth outside,” she said. “Gregor’s taking care of it.”

Fear whooshed into my head like a train into a station, but stronger and louder was the whistling sound of my rage. “I want to talk to him,” I said.

“No,” Zaneisha said flatly. She had her sonic pistol in her hand. “Let me do my job.”

Since her job was keeping me alive, maybe even to the point of taking a bullet for me, it was hard to argue with that.

“He’s coming in,” she said after a moment. “Can’t stop him. He’s citing freedom of worship.”

“I—”

“No.” She hustled me backward until we were behind one of the columns holding up the vaulted roof. “Stay,” she said, pressing herself against me from the other side so I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to. All that muscle against my back was reassuring. I wriggled my face out a little bit so that I could see. The memory fabric of Zaneisha’s dress had gone hard around us, ready to redistribute any kinetic force.

Like a bullet.

Gregor came in at a fast walk, stepping sideways. His pistol wasn’t out, but his hand was hovering right by it, and his eyes were fixed on the door. He edged toward us without ever seeming to look in our direction, taking a position where he could watch both us and the door.

The entrance of the Inheritor was something of an anticlimax. He was an elderly man with olive skin, long reddish hair, and a beard that was fading to white. He wore loose, undyed linen trousers and a long top made out of some kind of light cotton. He walked slowly into the foyer without touching the holy water. He was favoring his left side, and I wondered if he was hurt. But his eyes were sharp as he peered around the nave.

I recognized him by the way he stood; he had been the man holding back while the reporters swarmed toward me. Not a journalist after all, but an Inheritor.

“He followed us here,” I said. My fear was getting stronger, blood thrumming in my ears.

“I know,” Zaneisha said. “And we didn’t see him, which means he might be a professional, which means stay put.”

“That’s far enough, sir,” Gregor said, his deep voice burring. “Any farther and I’ll consider it a threat to my charge’s safety and act accordingly.”

The man ignored him, staring at me instead. “I don’t want to hurt you, child.”

“Then leave,” I suggested. Zaneisha pressed me a little harder against the stone. I’m sure that if she could have spared a hand, she would have shoved my face back behind the column.

The man wasn’t moving. “Don’t you see what’s happening here?” he asked me. “You yearn for a place of holiness. You wish this false consciousness to reconnect with God. You want to rejoin your soul.”

“My soul is right here,” I said over Zaneisha’s warning hiss.

“You should understand that you must shape yourself according to God’s plans. To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to live, and a time to die. Your time came. What persists is an affront to God, and you must put it to rest.”

“You want me to kill myself.”

“You’re already dead,” he said, infinitely gentle. “Child, ask yourself why these godless men of science brought you back. Have you not wondered?”

“It was a godless woman of science, thank you very much,
and they’re doing it to save the soldiers,” I said, but my heart stuttered. I had wondered, in the nights that dragged on forever, when not even Paul McCartney’s most soothing melodies were able to drive the questions from my head. The argument that I was a good candidate sounded all right until you considered all the many people in the century in between who must have gotten themselves frozen the right way, with the right injuries.

Many of whom would know how to handle themselves in this time a lot better than I did. Many of whom were actually the soldiers they were trying to save.

He shook his head sadly. “They mean to use you, child, to further their ungodly ways. God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it. God gave us this world. But the greed of your masters exceeds his bounty. Ask. Ask them about the Ark Pro—”

There was a sound so loud it was no sound at all, and his chest exploded into chunks of red.

The stone walls were ringing.

Gregor, his weapon out, was carefully approaching the downed man. There was no need for caution. That limp body wasn’t going anywhere. He hadn’t used the sonic pistol; he’d gone straight for the gun on his other hip. Lethal force.

“You killed him,” I said.

“He was reaching for a weapon,” Gregor said.

“He didn’t have a weapon!”

Gregor turned to Zaneisha. “You’d better get the ween out of here. She’s about to go hysterical.”

I was
not.
“You killed him,” I repeated. “You shot him. How could you do that? He was just an old man; he said he wasn’t going to hurt me, and you killed him.” My voice climbed until I almost shrieked the last words. I hugged the stone column, leaning on it for strength, as my vision began to gray out at the edges.

“That was an order, Sergeant,” Gregor said, and Zaneisha pushed me away from the column and toward the door. We had to skirt the corpse as we went, and I saw the pool of blood inch out from under him. There were thicker pieces in the pool.

“Did I look like that?” I asked. “Was I all limp and bloody? Were there bits of me everywhere? Oh my god, Zaneisha, this is a church; he shot him in
church
. Did I look like that?”

“Don’t look,” Zaneisha ordered. “Shhh, Tegan, you’re safe. It’s fine.”

“I know I’m safe—that isn’t the point. I was safe in there. What was he talking about? What weapon? Did you see a weapon?”

She shot me a troubled look, so fast I nearly missed it, before her face smoothed out again. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and pushed me into the backseat.

Bethari looked up from her computer to smile at my return, but her eyes widened as she saw me. “What—?”

“Gregor killed him.”

“Killed who? Are you okay?”

“The Inheritor! I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“One of those religious nuts? Did he attack you? Oh, Tegan! Are you okay?”

“He was talking; he was just talking.”

“What did he say?”

“Seat belt,” Zaneisha snapped from the driver’s seat.

Bethari had to help me get it on.

“He shot him in church,” I said. I hiccuped twice and burst into uncontrollable tears.

But underneath that genuine grief and horror, I was thinking.
Ask them about the Ark Pro—.
Ark Pro what? Ark Professional? Ark Protectorate? Ark Project? Ark Procedure?

Don’t worry about it
, Zaneisha had said.

Too late. I was worried.

Wriggling closer to Bethari, I whispered, “Something’s wrong. I need your help.”

If I haven’t screwed up her future forever, Bethari is going to be the best journalist in the world. She didn’t flinch. She just curved around me and turned her mouth close to my ear, out of Zaneisha’s sight.

“What do you need?” she breathed.

“A computer,” I whispered back. I wanted to do some hunting around the tubes, and I wasn’t stupid enough to do it on my army-issued computer. I loved Koko, but I didn’t trust her not to spy on me.

Bethari pulled me tighter into her arms, and I felt her hand shift in the tight space between us, concealed from view. A moment later I felt the cool, flat square of a tightly bound
computer slip behind the scarf around my waist. Using my sobs as cover, Bethari twisted it securely inside.

“One condition,” she said quietly, ostentatiously patting my hair for Zaneisha’s benefit. “You have to tell me everything.”