killer. He killed, and tried to stay alive in the process. Childhood had hardened him to viciousness, and from it he had learned to give and receive violence while gaining a tangible thrill from both activities. That was the power of pain. It punished and it rewarded. There was something reassuring in the assertion of his dominance. It was a pleasure killing people who would kill him and he received great gratification from the blows he absorbed in return. Pain was life.
The assassin used the pain he absorbed rather than shun it. Early on, he understood the importance of making himself one with reality. His survival depended on that. Life was pain. He never tried to convince himself that as he dealt out violence he dealt out knowledge. The power of pain was different. His was a business that was unforgiving to men who flinched. He had to be prepared to take a hit if he wanted to survive long enough to kill his target. A heavy caliber bullet snapping against a Kevlar vest and breaking the ribs beneath hurt, but if he was not prepared to accept the pain-he might miss his own shot, and his prey in turn would get the advantage and he would die. That was the essential equation of his life. Pain punished cowardice and rewarded conviction.
Distantly he could remember the face of his father-the high priest of pain-howling with fury as he administered this arcane knowledge with fists. But those earliest glimpses of the power were so entwined with ancient anger and emotion that they were dangerous, and so discarded. Regardless, the exquisite purity of the pain inherent in those harsh lessons was an integral part of the man he had become. It had survived his transition from the old life to the new-from the world before the Change, into the world that came after.
Before the Change he had made his money killing wayward husbands and wives, faithless gangsters and faithful policemen and politicians. The money was good in those bygone days, and kills more gratifying. There was satisfaction in a hunt that took skill and risk that finished with a corpse that stayed dead. The power of pain made sense then and he had luxuriated in its might. But the Change had altered that. With the rising of the dead had come a change in business, and a loss of control. Since he could no longer earn money killing as a punishment or for silence he found that he could not exploit his talent to the fullest and he sank slowly into a depression that his darkest violence could not break.
He tried to pull himself from it. His killing became more extravagant, more vicious and bloody with little spiritual impact. A target could be silenced, but the process would better suit a butcher than a professional gun. The Change seemed to be more powerful than pain. And for a time he tried to combat this growing impotence by taking greater chances with his work. Finally, he was forced to peer into the dim recesses of himself-to try to unlock the mystery of this power-this power that had seemingly deserted him.
It was through this contemplative approach that he had found the light-or it was the opposite of light-though even that was a misnomer for it was not darkness either. His brain simply lacked the sensory apparatus to explain or categorize what he found. He responded with ambiguous descriptions that fell far short of the truth. It was a black illumination-a full emptiness. It was everywhere and nowhere. Finally, it was invisible until seen from the darkest place in his soul-a place where there was no language. Then, even as he applied his first inept words to the paradox, he realized with some alarm that it had discovered him.
A force that transcended the power of pain-and yet harmonized with it-pounced upon him and altered what he was. Something changed inside his mind below the basement of him where nightmares lurked in a dark eternal undercurrent. It was obvious and anonymous, but something changed.
Its very intangible qualities made if difficult to know how or where the alterations took place, but sometimes the very lack of evidence proved they had occurred. Despite this alien influence, his essential character had remained unchanged, though it now had a direction. With the new power had come a knowledge that he could not understand but felt instinctively-a knowledge that the world now worked in paradoxes that resisted explanation. The truth was different from his belief. Life was pain. Pain was life. But only to the living-only to his race, the Second-born of the earth. And this realization had taken him to the place in which he now resided.
His old life-much like his old name-became outmoded, small and petty in comparison. He did not take pride in what he now did; he was too old for that. But he knew that his talents took him down a road that gave him greater rewards than mere money. His job description had changed with the seeing of the dark light. The power of pain held its greatest potency in its relationship to divinity. He simply had to seek a better prey-something worthy of the pain he could inflict.
The assassin climbed to his feet; sweat running in rivulets over his swollen muscles. He looked at his reflection in the mirror atop the dresser-took silent approval from his expressionless face and emotionless eyes. He grabbed a towel from the bed, slipped it around his taut waist. The sinews in his chest and shoulders flexed powerfully under a skin crosshatched with silver scars.
The walk into the City had done him good. Felon had arrived just after sundown. Over a century of coming and going had given him complete knowledge of all the City’s dark ways and entry points. And he exploited its weaknesses to the fullest avoiding the main gates by traveling through the Maze, a damp and echoing labyrinth of ancient sewers and waterways that ran at odd directions under the walls. They belonged to the mainland cities and towns on whose bones the City now grew and grew. A ready knowledge of them put him onto Zero, the City’s most anonymous level without dampening a shoe. Soon after he had hailed a cab that took him along the Third Skyway upward to Level Three before depositing him on the sidewalk in front of the towering Coastview Hotel.
The building’s design had its roots in a happier, sunnier world and looked ridiculously optimistic where its upper reaches poked through the Carapace and loomed against the permanent gray cloud cover. The hotel was two blocks west of the ocean, climbing some forty stories. He booked a room on its thirtieth floor-just high enough that his balcony hung over the black shape of the Carapace where it sloped toward the ocean from the City’s Level Six. The protective materials undulated below as it careened downward in a terrifying ellipse to the distant beaches. Its eaves and ductwork channeled runoff to massive hydroelectric plants dotting the shore. He could see the lights of cars on the Skyway interchanges flickering through its semi-transparent surfaces.
He had left instructions at the desk that he not be disturbed then rode the elevator skyward. After a hot shower and a shave-he dropped to the carpet to augment the day’s exertions with a near endless series of pushups. He was as sharp and lethal as a bayonet. The assassin snatched his cigarettes and lighter then walked out onto the balcony. A mist of rain sent a chill over his flesh.
Lights as red as hellfire glared in the neighboring buildings, and below him sirens howled like the damned. Felon’s lips twisted with spite as he lit a cigarette. How he hated these regular experiments in sameness-these boring constructs of humanity. Law made the streets straight but did not make them safe. Instead, they created dark corners full of the unknown. He hated it. The set of his full lips said as much where they tangled beneath high cheekbones round and hard as beef-joints. His eyes were black with flecks of silver-reflections of the blurred cityscape around him. Jet-black hair fell to his shoulders from a high brow and curled at the corded nape of his neck.
The city skyline stretched endlessly to north and south but was lost to his vision in light pollution and the upper Level Seven still under construction. The actual size of the monstrous metropolis was hidden behind massive sheets of concrete and steel. Through a tangled maze of supports and other load bearing structures he could see to the south, jagged spires covered with constellations of dim, winking lights. To the east, buried in the hoary grayness of the rough sea he knew an old and sunken city foundered, its walls shooting hundreds of feet above the waves. At night it was invisible like the past-the monoliths obscured by dark and cloud. But Felon knew they marched like ancient mysteries into the distance. It was a dead place of the long ago. He had not been there in years.
Some grim humor flickered behind his features, and drew his lips back in an apocalyptic snarl. At least he had a purpose. Unlike the teeming maggots in the skyscraper holes around him, he had a reason for being. And this purpose had brought him here. The City of Light was a festering sore, a gray running boil on the backside of human history. But Felon had found cause for mirth.
5 – Mr. Jay
Dawn was in her cubbyhole. Mr. Jay had picked an abandoned apartment building on Zero for their hideout. Most of the ancient structure had been filled with concrete and stone to form a pillar for the City’s upper levels but a few of its rooms were still accessible. Her cubbyhole was inside an old chimney. For her protection Mr. Jay had fashioned a door for it that she could lock from the inside. She remembered him gleefully showing her how the
