The slumlord stood before him now, not a single mark on him. Not a goddamn hair out of place. The polar opposite of Skyler’s litany of cuts and bruises.
Worse, Grillo had finally found a gun and held it in one unwavering hand aimed directly at Skyler’s forehead.
“I’ve no more patience,” the man said, his voice high and bristling with pure contempt and frustration. “Not for you, not for your damned friends, not even for those pathetic Jacobite twats. I simply want what is beyond that wall down there, Skyler, and you will open it for me. Do it now, or I’ll kill you and drag one of your friends in here to do it.”
Skyler opened his mouth, something clever on the tip of his tongue about false gods, when Grillo fired the pistol. The bullet made a thawp sound as it sailed through the fabric of Skyler’s shirt at the neckline, harmlessly and yet perfectly full of the promise that harm would come, and soon.
Nodding, bewildered and fighting pain from a half-dozen injuries, Skyler lumbered toward the last key.
Samantha kicked the hand away that gripped her boot. She thrust herself to a stand in one surge of strength that came from God-knows-where.
There was fighting around her. The other immune, the one Tania had been here with, lay on the ground, her hands flailing at Alex Warthen, who straddled her. His hands were wrapped around her neck, fingers white with the force of his choke hold. She’d be unconscious soon. Sam lurched toward them.
A guard suddenly rose from the floor in front of her, blocking the way.
Hightower.
The short man raised his toxin gun, his lips curling into a vulpine, shit-eating grin.
Sam kicked, her foot a blur. The gun went sailing straight up, leaving his hand empty as his stupid fucking smile slid right into a pathetic, shocked, utterly wonderful O-shape.
“Bitch—”
She high-stepped in, planted her left foot squarely on his chest even as her right came off the floor. Sam cartwheeled, kicked upward with all the strength she could muster and a whole lot more. Her boot met chin. Bone cracked, loud enough to echo off the walls of the vast room, loud enough to drown out all the commotion for one single, perfect instant.
Weck tried to scream through his ruined mouth. Spat teeth and blood instead, backed with a sloppy gurgling sound that rang like music in Sam’s ears. She didn’t even feel the floor as she hit it. She’d flipped completely over and, hands bound as they were, landed poorly, and did not care. Hightower collapsed to his knees next to her, choking on his own blood. She thought she might have driven his lower jawbone through the roof of his mouth and could not—would not—deny the satisfaction that brought her. Instead she rode that like a surfer on a wave.
She rolled to her back, brought up her knees, kicked up and forward. The momentum brought her off the ground and into a coiled stand.
A huge, hulking form barreled past her, leather jacket trailing behind. The sight of Prumble brought tears of raw joy to her eyes. She tried to shout his name, to sing it like a battle cry, but the tape on her mouth prevented it.
He said nothing as he passed, moving straight to the hunched form of Alex Warthen, who still gripped the now-limp woman’s neck with both hands. Prumble stepped in behind the man, grasped his face with two meaty hands, and twisted. Sam winced at the horrible sound that followed. It was a sound she’d heard before, a sound she’d caused on more than one occasion. The sudden grind of bones that were never meant to touch. The tearing of veins and muscle.
Prumble shoved the lifeless form of Alex Warthen aside.
A hand gripped Sam’s upper arm. She whirled, coiled to strike with an open palm, and stopped when she saw Vaughn next to her. He had blood on his face, and one eye half closed where he’d taken a punch or six. His fingers came to her face and gripped the tape. At her nod he tore it away.
“Thanks,” she blurted, working her jaw.
“Later,” he said, and pulled her aside.
Sam whirled with the motion and found three Jacobites still standing. Two carried guns, and were leveling them.
“Come on, pilot,” Grillo said. “One last task and it’ll be over.”
“What do you think is going to happen, Grillo? I mean really going to happen, when the last one is put in place.”
The slumlord hauled Skyler to his feet and nudged him toward the oval object, which lay on the floor a few meters off, having rolled like a cheese wheel when the room tilted.
“I have no idea,” Grillo said, sounding genuinely sincere. “What’s that old saying? The Lord works in mysterious ways?”
Skyler managed a thin laugh. “You don’t actually believe all that shit, right? I mean, you can’t tell me this isn’t all just an act.” Skyler bent down and lifted the oval object. The shimmering traces of yellow light on its surface matched those on the floor below it, albeit on a smaller scale.
“I believe there are powerful forces at work here,” Grillo said. “A plan that is beyond our comprehension.”
“So that’s a fucking no then?”
He prodded Skyler again with the gun, hard this time. The bowl-shaped receptacle for the oval object loomed only a few meters ahead now. “I suppose you think we’ll get answers.”
“They have a lot to answer for,” Skyler shot back over his shoulder. “The disease—”
Grillo threw his head back and cackled at that. “Oh, of course. You’re here to make them apologize, is that it?”
Skyler felt his own composure slipping. “They wiped out—”
“We were the fucking disease, you fool! An infection. An infestation! What they brought was the cure. Our salvation, if you want a word that turns those Jacobites into weak-kneed, drooling sheep.”
It was Skyler’s turn to laugh. “So you’re here to shake their hand. How’s that any smarter than me?”
“The point is, pilot, I don’t know what will happen. All I know is, for better or worse, I will be the one standing there when it happens. I’ll be the face of humanity.”
“Suppose it’s just confetti and balloons?”
Grillo said nothing.
“Suppose it’s a weapon that fires on Earth, destroying it utterly?”
“I’d say it’s a good thing we’re safely up here, then. I’ve enjoyed this conversation, Skyler, but it’s finished now. Put the object in place.”
This time he loomed close, one hand on Skyler’s shoulder, body wound like a spring. The gun remained firmly planted at the top of Skyler’s spine, pressing in as Skyler knelt and then sat on the rim of the depression in the floor.
He’s going to kill me, Skyler realized. The moment this thing clicks into place, my job will be done. The others won’t get here in time.
Yet he saw no way out. The sounds of combat still wafted in through the room’s only entrance. He had no idea which side prevailed, but odds were on those with guns and unbound hands.
He couldn’t turn and fight. Grillo had already demonstrated his speed. Skyler could maybe, maybe get a grip on that wrist above the hand that gripped his shoulder—
“Quickly,” Grillo hissed.
Skyler leaned over the pure black bowl and, straining his muscles, held the glowing oval object over the center. Again he felt that conflicting sensation of the object shedding its weight while simultaneously being sucked downward through some invisible attraction.
This time Skyler kept his hands on the relic, as if he were helping to lower the thing into place. The geometric lines laced along the object, the floor, the inverted dome, all began to flare up, coming to life in a synchronized swell of energy.
The receptacle began to bulge and take on a complementary form to the object approaching it. It seemed to reach out, hungry. A physical force, pressing against him, warming his skin.
Light, unbearably bright now, heat like standing beside a roaring bonfire. The gap between object and holder dwindled to less than a meter, then half that.
Something unexpected happened. A gift. Gravity in the room began to melt away.
Tania clawed her way to Vanessa’s side, terrified of what she’d find, or wouldn’t find, when she pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck.
She did it anyway, dropped her head, feeling nothing.
And then a faint twitch pushed against her fingers. A pulse. Weak, but there.
Fighting tears, numb from exhaustion, Tania turned to study the room. Sam grappled with a guard for control of his gun. The giant in the leather duster was facing off against two others.
A strange glow began to fill the room.
“Get to Skyler!”
The voice sounded distant. Tania sought the source and saw Skadz trying to pull himself out from under a fallen soldier. “Someone … get in there.”
Tania glanced up at the portal high on the curved wall just as brilliant yellow light began to pour through. She understood the urgency, then. The last key had been installed. Grillo had no more need of his captive.
As she tried to stand, a new sensation enveloped her. An easing of pain, of weight, of … everything. Gravity fading.
“Get in there!” Skadz roared, pointing.
Tania heard the scraping sound as her weight began to melt away. Stone on stone. The portal would close again, perhaps forever.
Movement caught her eye. Someone running in from the side. A girl.
Ana.
Tania could see her eyes clearly in the growing yellow light. And in them she saw the same calculation that Skyler could exhibit. In the span of a heartbeat Ana took in the scene, and without breaking stride she ran up the wall opposite the portal, her weight—everyone’s weight—dwindling to nothing with that last step.
And then she jumped.
She pushed off and raised her hands straight above her head like a diver off a cliff and flew. Flew across the blood-drenched lobby, sailed by the sudden flotilla of dead and dying bodies. Ana torpedoed herself straight across that space and through the portal a split second before the hole irised closed.
Skyler let go of the relic. He planted his feet on the dome’s edge, reached back with both hands, and clasped down on Grillo’s wrist. In the same instant he jerked his upper body sideways and forward. Felt the barrel of Grillo’s gun slide across the skin of his neck, felt the scorching line of pain across his skin as Grillo finally reacted and fired.
The man’s reflexes kicked in then. He swung the gun instead of firing it again, the handle cracking against Skyler’s cheek. Twice. A third time. It was all Skyler could do to hold on as their bodies twisted and floated free.
Something hit Grillo then. Someone sailing through the room with remarkable speed.
Ana, Skyler realized.
The impact was glancing. A shoulder to Grillo’s waist. He grunted but could do nothing about the sudden change in rotation.
Through sweat and blood and tears Skyler caught a glimpse of the glowing oval key swinging into view behind Grillo. He pushed against the man with every bit of strength he could muster. Hands and feet, shoving out in unison, breaking the man’s hold. Grillo shouted in surprise as his body flew backward, his head slamming into the cavity that had formed to accept the final key at that exact tipping point where the two objects overcame all other forces and clapped together with magnetic finality.
Grillo screamed. A scream cut short as the Builder relic slipped home. A scream that ended with a soft pop like a melon under a car tire. Skyler slammed his eyes shut, couldn’t look if he wanted to given the final burst of yellow light that erupted from the object.
Already moving away, the pulse of energy shoved him like a giant fist toward the far wall. Skyler wheeled uncontrollably and did the only thing he could think of by tucking himself into a ball. At least his arms might protect his head.
He heard shouting, nearby and from the far side of the room. The scorched line on the back of his neck that marked the bullet’s trail suddenly burned with unholy pain.
His body thudded against a solid surface—the opposite section of wall, he guessed—and bounced away. He opened his eyes, blinked away the lingering brilliance of the flare, and glanced around for Ana. She drifted near the side wall that glowed red, her hands trailing along the surface as she fought to slow herself.
Skyler cast a gaze in the other direction, hoping for some sign of the others, but the portal at that end of the room had vanished again. Ana must have jumped through at the last possible second.
A new sound began to fill the space. Like slabs of polished stone sliding against each other. Skyler looked straight up—it felt like “up” again—toward the source. The huge iris door there, its thousands of facets sparkling with a rainbow of reflected hues from the five lit walls within the room, was opening.
Pure white light streamed through. The beams pulsed and flickered like a living thing.
Skyler spiraled, bleeding, suddenly feeling the weight of all his wounds. He felt near death and chuckled. To die, just before the wizard finally pulls back the curtain. He stared into the beautiful pearlescent glow and grimaced, suddenly humbled and awed all at once. The light really was heavenly, in perfect contrast to the hellish sounds of fighting that had preceded it.
Then Ana was next to him. She’d pushed out to meet him, and her momentum added to his took them inexorably toward the light streaming in through the now fully open disk.
He could do nothing to stop them, and deep down he didn’t know if he would have had the possibility existed. Instead he simply held her, and gazed into her gold-flecked brown eyes as the light blotted out everything and consumed them.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Unknown
Unknown
Skyler woke up in someone else’s head.
His eyes opened to a white void that stretched to infinity.
His body was alone. He knew that without looking, not that he could. He felt … detached. Like a visitor. Physically he was alone, lying on his back on some invisible cushion of air and floating in an endless, abstract void. Mentally, though, something else was going on. Someone else was here with him, running the show.