77 Shadow Street

A deep rumbling rolled through the building, and he felt subtle vibrations in the floor. Something like this had happened earlier, a few times, but he had been too absorbed in his online investigation to pay much attention.

What had not happened earlier was the shimmering sheets of blue light that crackled across the ceiling. Every small metal object on the desk—pens, paper clips, scissors—became airborne, shot to the ceiling, quivered there in the sparkling blueness, and rained to the floor when the strange luminosity sputtered out.

In this unstable cosmos, characterized by unending calamities, anything could happen at any time. That was not just Fielding’s philosophy but also part of the truth he had discovered. And now it seemed that something outrageous was about to be demonstrated.

One

Fear is the engine that drives the human animal. Humanity sees the world as a place of uncountable threats, and so the world becomes what humanity imagines it to be. They not only live in fear but use fear to control one another. Fearmongering is their true religion.

In my perfect kingdom, there is no fear. No human beings live here to compete with one another, to build empires, to start wars. Here, there is no permanent loss and no lasting death. Here, what is killed is reborn. I feed on everything imperfect that comes before me, which is not exploitation but purification, and I feed as well on myself, devouring myself in order to live anew.

The enemy of the Ruling Elite fears everything, though he doesn’t realize that the object of his greatest fear is himself. He fears living more than dying. He fears his money almost as much as he fears not having it. If he were to discover proof that his conspiracy theories are true, that the world is exactly as he imagines it, he would not have the courage to act upon that evidence. He thinks himself a potential hero, but he does not have the stuff of heroes. He is to the boy as a mouse is to a lion. Fittingly, such a man may play an important role in the history of the One.

24

Here and There

Vernon Klick

Displeased by Bailey Hawks’s intrusion into his domain, Vernon slumped in his chair and called up the video record from the cameras outside the north stairs on the ground floor and in the basement. Watching the plasma screen, he fast-forwarded through the few minutes in question, but no one came out of the stairwell on either level except Mr. Big War Hero himself, Bailey Hawks, just a minute earlier.

Vernon said, “If she really went down past you when you were on the second-floor landing—”

“I was, she did,” Hawks said impatiently, like you weren’t supposed to doubt anything he said because he won a bunch of medals for croaking maybe five hundred unarmed old Muslim dames and setting their grandchildren on fire.

“What did this woman look like?” Vernon asked.

“She was a girl. Seven or eight years old.”

Vernon raised his eyebrows. “You were following some little girl around the building?”

“I wasn’t following her. She was dressed strangely. Like in a costume. She went down past me on the stairs.”

“Well, the cameras say she didn’t. Unless she’s still in the stairwell, dead or not, or something.”

Hawks tried to look baffled, but Vernon was pretty sure he saw guilt in those shifty money-manager eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Vernon said. “Just that we’ve already got ourselves a twenty-three-second mystery from last night, maybe a heist, a Pink Panther kind of thing, but most likely worse. And now this girl’s gone missing.”

“She said her name was Sophia Pendleton and her father was the master of the house.”

“That’s some story,” Vernon said, needling Hawks with the hope of getting a reaction that would make good copy in his tell-all book.

A rumbling rose from the earth under the building, swiftly built, then slowly waned.

“The damn fools,” Vernon said. “Nobody gets a permit to blast this late in the day.”

“It’s not blasting. The shock waves last far too long for that.”

Vernon wanted to ask if this was something Hawks learned when he was a big war hero blowing up hospitals and nursery schools, or if maybe he was just born knowing everything. To maintain his cover, to ensure that his book wouldn’t attract lawsuits and restraining orders before it was published, Vernon kept his mouth shut.

“Something’s happening here. Something’s wrong,” Hawks said, and hurried out of the security room.

“He waltzes in here like he owns the place,” Vernon said aloud to himself, “disrupts the security schedule, wants me to help him stalk some pretty little girl, for God’s sake, and then breezes out with not so much as a thank-you. Moneygrubbing, gun-sucking, self-important, arrogant, phony, clueless, pervert bastard.”

He returned his attention to the north hall on the third floor. Still no sign of Logan Spangler. Of course maybe the old fart left the idiot senator’s apartment while Vernon was distracted by Hawks.

“Self-righteous, warmongering, devious, greedy sicko,” Vernon fumed. “Twisted, ignorant, syphilitic, swindling, conceited, stupid, baby-killing, racist son of a pig!”

Silas Kinsley