'Why's it here?'
The Chairman smiled and held out his hand. 'Follow me and I will show you, my child. It wants us to cleanse the world and make it pure.'
Sullivan returned to the Power and knew that the Chairman lied. The Power wasn't good or evil. It wasn't God or Satan. It was a symbiotic parasite. It lived through them, and in return, they got magic. 'You don't get it,' he said. 'You actually believe what you're shovelin'.' Sullivan laughed in the face of the most powerful wizard in the world. 'It doesn't want anything, you idiot. You moron. You've killed millions… for this?'
Then pain beyond anything he'd ever experienced tore through his ribs. He crashed into the mud next to his dead brother. A circle of fire ignited on his chest. This link was different, wrong, somehow misdirected, not to the Power, but to something else entirely, beyond what he could see. The Grimnoir trying to save his life had just failed.
'I am afraid you have died,' the Chairman said sadly.
'Heart's stopped,' Jane said. She put her gentle hand on the big man's brow. Her white bathing suit was stained with blood. Lance had blood up to his elbows. He and Browning were doing something to the big man's chest.
'It ain't working!' Lance shouted. 'The healing ain't taking.'
Faye was lying on her back, too weak to move. 'I'm sorry… I thought he was-'
'Shut up, Imperium bitch!' the man with glasses shouted, pointing a gun at her face. 'We'll deal with you in a second.'
Her first instinct was to Travel, but something was burning on her forehead, and the magic inside her was all strange and fuzzy. Francis was looking down at her. 'I'm sorry…' she whispered. 'I was trying to help.'
'Hush,' he said. His eyes were sad.
She wished she could help. This was all her fault. It wasn't Madi at all, though the big man looked exactly like him. Faye closed her eyes. If only she had a useful Power, like Jane, she could do something, or if she were smart like Lance or Mr. Browning. Instead all she could do was Travel. She'd never thought of it as a stupid thing before, but it was.
She hadn't prayed since Grandpa had died. Please, God. Don't let this man die because of me. I'm so sorry. It was a mistake. I was only trying to save my friends. She concentrated as hard as she could, just like she was about to Travel and she needed to check to make sure the space was clear so she didn't get killed by a bug lodged in her brain or something. Her mind spun, went ahead, and she saw the dead man and all her friends from above, but it wasn't clear. Something was wrong. Something angry and red was stuck to the man's chest, a bad piece of magic.
Faye knew that she had to knock that bad magic out of the way so the good magic could work. She couldn't Travel with her whole body, but she could use her brain.
Sure, God. I figure I can do that. Thanks! Amen.
Sullivan was fading away, turning into smoke on the wind exactly how the Summoned died on Earth. The red link was tearing him apart. It came from behind the Power… from whatever mysterious place the Power had fled from.
'You should have come with me,' the Chairman said as he leaned on the side of the trench. The mud didn't get on his suit. 'Think of what we could have learned together-' He stopped, puzzled, as a brilliant light erupted through the mud at Sullivan's side. 'Remarkable.'
It was the purest link to the Power that he'd seen yet. While the Chairman's was bigger and broader, this one was just simple, and shot in a beam as straight as a Tesla cannon. It actually had an audible hum like a high voltage wire.
Excuse me, mister. Sorry about shooting you and stuff. Then the failed design on Sullivan's chest quit burning. The red link was severed. He gasped as his senses returned. I hope that helps.
The Chairman was nodding in appreciation at the display of raw strength. 'This has been a most interesting day. Unfortunately your body is already dead.'
Come back with me, mister, please. Everybody is gonna be real mad if I murder you too. Follow me home, please.
Sullivan scanned the Power. Time was short. There was his area of expertise, his triangle of gravitation. If he could follow that link, he could follow others. He reached out with his mind, searching the dreaming dead of the battlefield. The Menders he'd carried Matty back to had been… there. Finding that clump of lines, he followed it up to a second shape. Their odd triangle connected primarily to laws concerning biology and two other unknown sides, and the Healers landed near the middle. The two triangles superimposed into a sort of hexagram and he memorized the shape.
He found that purest line of Power and grabbed hold.
'See you 'round, Chairman,' Sullivan said.
'Farewell, Mr. Sullivan. I have enjoyed our most enlightening conversation. When we meet again, I will destroy you.'
'He's gone,' Jane pronounced.
Browning slowly sank to the ground. The old man was totally spent from the effort. 'We did our best…'
Lance stood up with a pained grunt. He was covered in blood. 'Wasn't good enough. How! How can those Imperium bastards do this and not us!'
Faye closed her eyes. She knew that she'd been able to touch the big man with her brain, but she didn't know if he'd been able to follow her home. She hoped he had, because being a ghost here was sure to be a lot nicer than in that scary place with the mud and bodies and barbed wire, and the big glowing jellyfish thing in the sky. She knew what jellyfish looked like because Grandpa had once shown her a picture of one because it was called the Portuguese man-of-war, and he'd thought that any animal named after the Portuguese had to be pretty neat. That scary place was probably hell, and that's where she was going because she had just murdered somebody, so she had probably better get used to that big jellyfish because she was going to spend the rest of eternity there.
Delilah was crying her eyes out. This had to be the man she'd said she'd been close to. That made Faye feel extra sad, because she didn't think Delilah had ever had very many people who loved her.
The man who'd shot her came over, grabbed her roughly by the arm, and jerked her violently to her feet. He stuck his pistol hard into her face. 'Start talking, Shadow Guard.' He was hurting her arm bad, but she knew she deserved it. Francis rose and grabbed the man with the goatee, but he just turned around and punched Francis right in the nose. Francis fell down, holding his face.
'It was an accident,' Faye pleaded.
'What were you thinking, John?' the man with glasses was shouting. 'Why'd you save her instead of him? Jane… How… How could you?'
'I did what I had to…' the blonde stammered, then looked down at the big man's body, puzzled. 'Wait.'
'No, you wait, damn it-' the bespectacled man stopped and took a few steps back. The big man sat up and looked around, confused. Delilah shrieked. 'Great, you turned him into a zombie!'
'Hang on…' the big man grunted, looking down at the bloody mess on his chest. He held out his hand. 'Knife.' Lance hesitated. 'Please.'
Lance hurried over and gave him the knife. The big man studied the mangled gashes for a second then cut a new line. He thought about it for a second, then made one more adjustment, grimacing in pain the entire time as he cut. He studied his work and nodded. 'There… that's better.' Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he hit the ground like a sack of wet grain.
Chapter 13
I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, by magical gift a Cog, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.
