The virus was going to kill him in minutes. An hour tops. That was all the time this kid had left. There was no cure, no magic bullet. There was something so enormously obscene about it that I could feel the anger rising like lava inside me. The Modern Man within me—the civilized aspect of my fractured persona—was numb with the shock of this. My inner Cop wanted answers. But it was the third aspect, the Warrior, who was grinding his teeth in a murderous rage. Even that part of me, the Killer, was offended by this because this was something that transcended civilization, transcended law and order: this was the primal and visceral response to protect the young of the tribe. And here was one who was in mortal peril, and no laws or strength of arms could do a single thing. All I could do was use the last minutes of this child’s life to further my mission.
God …
The kid led me through the outer layer of the FIRE facility—the staff quarters, supply rooms, mess hall, and other nonessential sections. The doors to each room stood ajar. No one was there. There were signs of conflict, though: coffee cups that had dropped and shattered on the floor, briefcases left standing in the middle of a hallway, discarded purses, and a number of cell phones that had been tossed to the floor and then smashed under heel. Mikey lingered by a broken BlackBerry that had a pink gel case. He looked at it for several seconds, chewing his lip and furrowing his brow.
Then he looked up at me. “Mom had a nosebleed,” he said. “She had to lie down.”
“I know, Mikey. I’m sure she’ll be okay,” I said, and the lie was like broken glass in my mouth. “Let’s go see your dad.”
Mikey suddenly smiled brightly. “Daddy’s taking us to work today!”
I started to speak, but then the moment passed and the dull, disconnected look returned. Mikey sneezed and continued along the hall.
At the end of the hallway was an air lock, the door of which was blocked by a wheeled desk chair. A sign read: CENTRAL LABORATORY COMPLEX.
“Daddy said to keep the doors open,” said Mikey as he squeezed past the chair and entered the air lock on the far side.
“Where is your dad, Mikey?”
“In the Hot Room. Though … it’s not hot. It’s pretty cold in there. Isn’t that funny, that they call it a hot room?” He sneezed. “C’mon … .”
Everything he said had a dreamy quality to it. Even when he looked at the blood on his hands from his sneeze his expression didn’t flicker. It was apparently unreal to him, and I guess that was a blessing. No tears, no screaming, no panic. Even though I was glad the kid wasn’t terrified and screaming, his calm was eerie.
I followed him through two more air locks. The front and back doors of those locks whose lock assemblies had been torn apart, the hydraulics bashed out of shape and ripped open.
“Did your dad do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mikey said defensively. A fit of sneezing hit him and the kid reeled against the wall and sneezed until blood fairly poured from between his fingers. I crossed to the closest office and found a box of tissues, tore out a fistful, and brought them back to the kid. He mumbled something and used the whole wad to clean his face.
“Mom had a bloody nose, too,” he said. Then he seemed to forget about the tissues and they fell from his small fingers.
Tears burned my eyes, but I sniffed them back. I couldn’t wipe them away while wearing the suit, and I couldn’t risk blurred vision. I bit down on my fury, grinding it between my teeth until my jaw ached.
I followed Mikey through the central labs.
“Daddy’s in there,” Mikey said, pointing a trembling finger at the far wall, into which was set a much heavier air lock. Huge, thick, solid, and probably impenetrable under any ordinary circumstances. It was the kind of air lock that would have kept even the most virulent pathogen locked in, but I knew that we were past that point. The proof stood beside me, tracing his name on a desktop in his own blood.
This one had not been disabled. But the kicker was what someone had painted on the wall in dark red paint.
The symbol of the Seven Kings.
I bent close to examine it. The HAMMER suit’s filters don’t allow smells to get in, which was fine with me, because as I looked at the dark graffiti I realized that it wasn’t paint. It was blood.
I spoke quietly into my helmet mike: “Cowboy to Deacon, are you seeing this?”
“Copy that,” said Church, then added, “I would welcome the opportunity to chat with the person who painted that.”
Casual words, but not casually meant.
“Roger that.”
I turned to Mikey. “Did your daddy put this here?”
He looked at it for a blank second and then shrugged.
We crossed the room to the door to the Hot Room. The air lock was flanked by double keycard terminals with computer keyboards. The idea was to make sure that no one could enter this kind of lab alone. They used the same thing in missile control rooms. No one can just waltz in and launch the nukes, and the odds of two complete whackos working on the same shift, in the same place, who both wanted to release the Big Bad Wolf were pretty damn slim. These systems allowed for one person to require compliance and agreement from another, and if something was hinky the other person’s lack of compliance kept the monster in its box. The terminals were too far apart for one person to operate them both simultaneously. The computer codes had to be entered in unison, as did the key swipes.
Dr. Grey probably used a colleague to gain entry earlier. Why not? Back then nobody knew he was nuts.
Now he sent a kid. His own damn son.
“I have a card thingee,” Mikey said. He bent and picked it up from the floor near the air lock. “Daddy told me to leave it here. There’s one for you, too. He said we had to type in those numbers and then use the cards. He said to do it together. Like a game. It’ll only work if we do it together.”
He pointed to the metal door, on which a security day code had been written in what looked like lipstick. Rose pink. A nice color.
“Okay, Mikey,” I said in a voice that I barely recognized as my own. “Let’s play the game.”
Interlude Twenty
The Seven Kings
Four Months Ago
Gault stood by the throne of the King of Plagues. Up close Gault could see that the chair was ornately carved with scenes from Gilles Le Muisit, Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, and Jean Pucelle’s
“Lovely,” he murmured.
“Take it for a test drive, Sebastian,” suggested the American, his tone of voice at odds with the grandeur of the moment.
Gault climbed into the seat. It was very comfortable, the leather seat built over padded springs.
Toys stepped up behind him and pushed the heavy chair closer to the table. “Looks good on you,” he whispered.
Gault nodded and his eyes were filled with fire. “King of Plagues,” he murmured.
Toys looked at Fear. “What now? Does Sebastian swear some kind of oath? Or is it more secret society–ish —you know, with a blood pact and all that?”
The others laughed.
“We thought about that in the beginning,” said the Frenchman. “We concocted a dozen rituals and, yes, blood oaths were considered. But in the end we decided on a much stronger ritual.”
Gault look up sharply. “What kind of ritual?”
“We gave our word,” said the American. “One to the other.”
