Prophets

Behind him, he heard the voice of Flynn/Tetsami. “They nuked us. The bastards nuked us.”

“How . . .” Nickolai raised his artificial hand before him. A nuclear blast should have fried the electronics. And his eyes—an EMP should have destroyed them and probably a good part of his brain, too, as closely as they were wired to it.

Kugara echoed him, “How are we still alive?”

“The Protean,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “It has an Emerson field that’s far beyond anything else . . .”

Kugara put a hand on his arm, the real one, and asked, “Are you all right?”

He watched the slow-motion holocaust outside the hemisphere surrounding them. He shook his head and said, “No.”

“Are you injured?”

“No. Leave me alone.” He stared out and wondered if it would be possible to walk through the barrier. Her hand stayed on his arm. “Please?”

Her hand dropped and he heard Flynn/Tetsami say, “Leave him be. It’s a bit much to absorb. As far as I can tell, we’re safe in here.”

He heard them walk away.

It took minutes for the hemisphere to fade. He stood at a razor-sharp barrier between the untouched earth and a sheet of black glass. The air was rank with the smell of fire. The air itself seemed to have burned, filled with a fine gray ash that limited visibility and made his nose itch.

Probably poison to breathe.

Not that he cared much. He had walked to the edge of hell, and now at least it looked the part. The only sound was a distant crackle that he suspected was the forest around them burning to the ground.

He coughed and wondered if the slow suicide of standing here was preferable to walking into the Protean den. He was certain that the structure would offer shelter from the radiation and the fallout. But at what price, he didn’t care to guess.

Damned or not, out here at least my soul is still my own.

Then he saw a humanoid shadow moving through the fog of smoke and ash. He coughed again, and tried to focus his eyes to better resolve the shadow, but suddenly his new eyes didn’t follow instructions. He blinked and shook his head, and saw the shadow approaching from another angle.

What?

His military training leapfrogged all the idle emotions he’d been having. The enemy had dropped paratroopers into the blast zone. He needed to take cover and warn Kugara and Flynn/Tetsami. They were the only ones armed. He turned toward the Protean crystal—

And only saw more gray ash and an approaching humanoid form. He turned around.

Surrounded.

He glanced back toward the first figure and realized something. There was only one shadow, fixed in his field of vision wherever he looked or turned his head. The approaching shadow moved with his gaze, left or right, up or down.

He heard a gentle clapping as the figure finally emerged completely from the gray haze around him. Mr. Antonio, his image anyway, stood in front of him, softly applauding him.

“You have done me proud, Mr. Rajasthan,” he said. “You have delivered Mr. Mosasa to a just and appropriate end.”

“How are you here?” Nickolai whispered, hoarsely.

Mr. Antonio tapped the side of Nickolai’s head, next to his right eye. “I never left you.”

“Why?”