Steal the Lightning Page 25

  I said, “I need you. You’re my eyes in this. Stand here. Tell me what you see.”

  “A future. A destiny . . .”

  But he was frowning, now.

  “A destiny?” I said.

  I was conscious of the bodyguard, Ghirelli, still too close.

  “A window,” Ballington said. It was as if he knew that it was really something else, but didn’t have a word for it.

  I still saw nothing.

  “Moving towards us—nearer. Nearer—”

  I hit the power.

  That did it.

  The wind was like a wall. It hit me full on, sent me reeling back. The table bucked, jumped, slid across the floor. I grabbed at the control box. Everyone was shouting. The wind roared in my ears, it howled—

  And then, as fast as it had come, it died.

  The air had changed.

  The air itself began to gleam. It shone like silver, like a thousand mirrors, turning on a thousand different axes, countless planes and angles folding into one another, sliding like machine parts, almost, joining together and then bursting into brand-new forms. I could see the room from every possible direction. I saw myself, crouched over the table, Ballington behind me. I saw the elevator lights above his head. Shwetz, a dark mass, off to the right. I saw all of this, but saw it from above, and from below, from left and right—a million images, rushing towards us, raining down—and never reaching us. Never here.

  I put my phone against my mouth, said, “Now. Send it down.”

  I reached for the controls, and seemed to see my hands reduplicated twenty times. I sent another jolt along the central line. The air before me shivered. A thousand fractured images all whirled across my vision. I heard the pinging of the elevator bell, the sound distorted, buzzing with harmonics.

  Everything went very slowly then. I turned. I saw it all with a peculiar clarity, exactly what I had to do. I was thinking faster and more calmly than I had in weeks. The elevator door slid back. Ballington must have been leaning on it. He tottered for a moment, catching his balance as I stepped from the table.

  And I threw myself at him.

  The man was stocky, heavyset. He was shorter than I was, and I caught him in the upper chest and neck. He fell into the open elevator and I fell on top of him. Bare wires glistened on the walls, shone on the floor, the ceiling. A flask was taped into the corner. I reached up, trying to hit the floor buttons. I couldn’t reach. Ballington moved under me. I pushed at his chest, his belly, trying to get a purchase. My hand slipped. I yelled into the phone. “Up! Call it up!”

  The door began to close, then stopped, slid open. Ghirelli was there. The whole plan could have died at that point, but Shwetz was quick. Quick, tough, and vengeful.

  Ghirelli never got to us.

  Chapter 66

  Ballington

  I wasn’t much for fighting, even back at school. Did it when I had to, but that’s all.

  Ballington reared beneath me, arching like a wrestler. He was a fit, well-muscled man, but the energy, the power running through his nerves—that came from somewhere else, and it would work his body to destruction if it wanted to. It would feel no pain, no loss. It could not be killed, only disabled. And this was what I’d taken on: here, in this tiny elevator carriage. Trapped with it.

  I smashed my fist into his face. He lunged forward, his teeth snapped down, and I just pulled my hand away in time. I pressed my forearm on his neck. I tried to get my weight on it, but he shifted under me, easily maneuvering me, keeping me off balance. His hand clawed at my upper arm. There was a smell of cooking meat.

  His hand sank in my flesh. I felt it burn. I felt it roast.

  Then Angel hit the power.

  The wires screamed.

  My calf cramped up. I yelled out. Ballington was hurt as well. He was under me, and caught the worst of it. He let go of my arm, taking the skin with him. Shreds of tissue smoldered on his fingertips.

  He rolled over. He got into a crouch, ready to stand. I pushed myself away from him. The elevator jerked. The door slid back. I couldn’t walk. I fell out, rolled. Then Angel grabbed me, dragged me free.

  “Again,” I told her. “Hit him.”

  I slapped the floor, trying to ease the torment in my arm, my leg. I pushed my toes down, stretched the muscle. “Again,” I said. “Again—”

  She didn’t look at me. She was good: she didn’t get distracted. Not for anything. She was back at the control box—and not working the fourteenth floor, as I’d let everybody think; working the elevator carriage.

  Ballington shrieked. He scrambled back into the corner. He’d seen the flask. He scuttled like a spider, shrinking from it. But he couldn’t leave. We’d got him. If we were lucky—

  “Again!” I said.

  She was ahead of me. She pumped it, and he roared, a horrible, inhuman sound, the sound a hurricane might make inside a human larynx.

  Somebody was beating on the stairwell door.

  The door was locked. I only hoped it held.

  Ballington shook. His limbs twisted. His head went back. It was as if the bones had melted in him. He flowed, he writhed. He pushed against the walls. He eased himself up, seeming to stretch out, long arms sliding from his suit sleeves, reaching for the power lead.

  Angel saw it, shot another blast through him.

  Then the lights blew out.

  In the gloom, we could see him, crouched there in the middle of the carriage, suddenly still.

  He whimpered.

  He cried—not that awful, elemental sound we’d heard a moment earlier. Now he was weak, and quavering.

  “Please—”

  She blasted him again.

  He huddled there. He moaned.

  My cramp had eased. I pulled myself onto my feet.

  She said, “I got him.”

  “Ease off,” I said.

  His breath came, rasping like a saw through timber.

  “I got him!”

  “You’ve done great. Don’t kill him, please. I want to finish this.”

  She hesitated for a moment. Then she stepped aside.

  I’d thought of saving lives. Being a nurse, a doctor or a paramedic. I’d never thought of this. I pulled back on the power. I saw the tension dropping out of him. He slumped down on the floor, and his long, strained breaths became a rapid panting. I remembered poor, frail Melody Duchess. This was different, but in my head, they seemed to overlap, as if whatever I did now might somehow undo what had happened to Melody, send the days and weeks into reverse, time rushing backwards, helping me unsee, unfeel.

  Helping me forget.

  I hoped that Ballington was every bit as tough as he’d made out. I let him catch his breath. Then I jabbed him with another charge.

  I had to make it rough, drive out the god, but keep the man alive.

  I eased back. Jabbed again.

  There was something happening to his face. His mouth stretched open. It stretched and stretched. For a time I thought that it was some distortion in the air, like looking through a piece of twisted glass. His face bulged. His skin rippled like water. Time stuttered, moved in spasms. I saw the image of my arm repeated, on and on, as in a time-lapse photograph, each instant locked into my vision, and I slid the controls back up, ran another charge around him . . . His head blew out like a balloon. His shoulders came up and his face sank to his torso. Limbs, weirdly flattened, slithered like snakes over the floor—

  The thing was using him, using the fabric of his body, twisting it, reshaping it. How much of that could anyone survive?

  I cut the power.

  “Jesus—”

  He was breathing hard. He looked human again, but his chest heaved and his throat tore at the air, as if he couldn’t get it fast enough.

  The man was choking. Dying.

  He raised one arm. It seemed to take a dreadful effort. Was he reaching to me? He lay on his back, and his hand stretched out, shaking, helpless—then dropped.

  Light ran through the cables,
dancing round him. Sparks of light. They seemed to pass straight through him, weaving through the substance of his body, in and out—

  I left the controls.

  There was a crash at the stairwell door. Someone was trying to break the lock off.

  Angel caught my arm.

  “Chris—”

  Ballington raised his hand again. A bloody tear ran down his cheek. The makeup on his face was smudged and melted, his features crumpled like an old rag.

  His lips moved. Begging me.

  I took a step towards him.

  “He’s not human, Chris.”

  “Part of him is.”

  He reached to me. I reached to him. Sparks snapped between our fingertips. The sight of them amazed me, fascinated me. I felt them in my hand, my arm—a tingling that was almost painful, yet the instant it had passed, I wanted it again. These leaps of light. These sudden surges of excitement . . . I was taking the power from the wires. It was running through him, into me. Through me, into the floor. Into the walls. Into the building itself.

  Away from us.

  He pushed himself up on one elbow. His mouth moved. His shirt was dark with sweat. He kept his arm out, level, hand reaching for mine.

  Angel was behind me.

  “Back off, Chris.”

  I tried. My legs weren’t moving.

  Ballington had pulled himself up. He was kneeling. There was nothing human in his face. The human part of him had been forced down, driven back and buried. I was looking at a mask, a film of skin below which something stirred, firing the nerves, tugging the sinews, pulling the face into a semblance of humanity. There was light in his eyes. A power, surfacing. His lips pulled back till he was beaming like a skull.

  To Angel, I said, “Don’t touch me.”

  She didn’t touch me. She said, “He’s not stopping.”

  “Any power you put through him he’ll send through me. It’s all switched round. My fault.” I couldn’t turn my head to look at her. “You should get out,” I said.

  “I’m shutting off the power here.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m shutting off the power. Over the room downstairs.”

  “Angie—”

  Ballington was on his feet. He couldn’t leave the elevator yet—we’d got a good perimeter—but he was close to it. The sparks went flashing and he seemed to haul himself along them like a rope.

  Then Angel cut the power.

  Not to the elevator. To the hallways and the suites behind her.

  The thing downstairs—she’d given it an exit route.

  And I was fine with that, except for one small issue: the fact she, and I, were standing in its way.

  Chapter 67

  The God Is Free

  She’d cut the power on fourteen. The roof of our containment field. But down below, on thirteen, I’d left the circuits running. All those little nudges that I’d shot into the big room, all those jolts to stir things up, and rouse the power there.

  How did a god feel that? Like an itch it couldn’t scratch? A toothache, nagging at it, driving it half-crazy with the pain?

  There was respite for a second. Like a fist unclenched. Ballington caught it, too—Ballington, or whatever else was in there, using his face, his hands, his eyes. He seemed to stretch himself, reach out, get ready—

  The god came from below.

  I felt it, even before it reached us, a bow wave, pushing up, ahead of it—a prickling in the skin, a swelling of sensation—emotions without clear, objective cause. I shook, I trembled. A sob broke from my chest. Ballington knew what was happening. He shoved against the confines of his cage, desperate to get away. His hands were up, testing the barrier. And then the god was there. It moved quickly, racing upwards. It was all force, all movement. It slipped through walls and floors, through furnishings, through all the cheap solidity we think of as the world. Rushing and yet always present. Constant, but already gone. It felt as if my insides would be sucked straight out of me. There was a roaring overhead, the flapping of a thousand wings. I looked up, and saw the ceiling panels jumping on their frames, clattering and booming. I saw the walls around me, I felt the floor below. But they were just illusions now. In my mind, I hung above the abyss, ready to fall.

  And in that moment, I found that I could move again. The link with Ballington was cut. He stood there for a moment, reaching out to me, then reeled back. His body smashed against the carriage wall, flying from this sudden, liberated force. The power lead came loose above his head. It danced there, and in seconds, I knew that he would see it, grab it, rip it from its link, and then we’d lose him. He’d be free.

  That woke me, finally. That fear. I ran to the control box, rammed the sliders all up full, before he’d had a chance to think. His mind was human still, and slow. I held the power in the wires. Held it, dropped it. Slammed it up again. Compassion didn’t touch me now.

  I heard him whine. A tiny, human sound.

  I hit him again.

  He threshed. He threw himself from one side of the elevator to the other.

  He tried to claw the wires from the wall, to tear the tape off, break the links.

  I hit him, and I hit him, and I hit him.

  The god of Second Eden filled the fourteenth floor. It filled each room and every space between, it rode through solid matter like a whale through water. It was everywhere—except the elevator carriage. The containment we’d put up was good. Ballington was trapped, and what trapped him kept him safe. The new god seethed before him. Dust and debris boiled into the air. He shrank into the corner, hands flapping, pushing at a force that couldn’t reach him—yet.

  I glanced at Angel. She had fallen back against the wall, fingers flexing for a handhold. But there was nothing there to grasp. McAvoy’s god was loose now, released upon the world. It poured past us. The air began to twist, a million tiny mirrors, every atom polished, gleaming, and I saw her panic-stricken face repeated time and time again. I reached towards her, and my own small, frightened form was there as well, and all the ghosts that had been loose across the city, I saw them, pieces of them, racing through the air, dissolving into nothingness, and vanishing.

  Then gone.

  I slumped down on the floor. I was breathing hard. But there was quiet, now. A soft, extraordinary quiet. Wallpaper hung, scoured from the walls in strips. Half the ceiling panels had been torn away, a checkerboard of empty squares.

  We were alive. Me, Angel.

  Ballington.

  I got up, stumbled to the elevator. Ballington was lying on his back, chest rising and falling rapidly. His mouth sagged, spit and makeup smeared across his face. I ignored him, went over to the flask, closed it, sealed it, peeled it from the wall.

  I checked the levels. Then I knelt, and looked at him.

  There were bruises coming on his face, under the paint. His eyes struggled to focus.

  I took his pulse. I put a hand upon his brow: cool now, wet with sweat.

  “Say thanks,” I said. “’Cause I just saved your useless fucking life.”

  Chapter 68

  Registry Personnel

  The god was gone from Second Eden.

  The god was gone, the power was gone.

  The lights didn’t work. The control box didn’t work. The whole retrieval system had gone dead.

  We dragged Ballington out of the elevator. I checked his pulse, his breathing. Again, I thought how much I’d longed to save a life. Wondered why it had to end up being his.

  We sat him in a chair and he was sick—the thin gruel of someone who’s not eaten for a long time. Then wrenching, dry heaves. He looked around, breathing hard. His hand came up, accusingly.

  He wanted somebody to blame.

  I said, “It’s finished. No more god. You’re done.”

  He mouthed at me with stained lips.

  “No,” he said.

  We opened up the door to the stairs.

  I had been worried about the reaction of Ballington’s party. I needn�
�t have. They were dazed, battered, just as we were.

  Eddie-boy ran to his father. It was not exactly affection I saw there, but it was more concern than I’d have honestly expected.

  “Dad-o?” He pushed his face up to the older man’s. “Dad-o?”

  “That’s who it is,” I said. “For the first time in a while.”

  Eddie and Ghirelli got him to his feet. He hung between them like a sack of flour.

  I started to collect the cables, then thought better of it. Cables could wait. Someone else could do the clearing up.

  I said to Angel, “Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked fourteen floors of half-lit stairwells. I had the flask in a bag over my shoulder. I was tired. All I had to do now was to deal with McAvoy. I had some notion I could give him to the cops, have him charged with—well, theft, for starters. After that, we’d see what we could find.

  The gaming floor was dark. Shafts of light cut through from tiny windows high up near the ceiling. The air smelled of smoke. The slot machines rose, shining in the gloom, perspectives lost, and I’d a momentary vision of them, rows on rows of temples in some ancient, vanished kingdom. A row of potted palms leaned over me. The carpet was as soggy as a jungle floor.

  I kept close to McAvoy. I was not letting him go, not after all of this.

  Though as it turned out, I wouldn’t have a lot of choice.

  There were two guys waiting at the entrance. Two guys and a car.

  I knew that they were Registry the moment I set eyes on them. The older wore a gray goatee. He took out ID. But it wasn’t for me, or for Angel.

  He held it out to McAvoy.

  “Preston,” he said, and smiled.

  “Hey.” I took the card and looked at it.

  “Paul Voss?” I said. The name meant nothing, but it was clear my interruption did. A flash of anger passed across his face. I said, “This is Preston McAvoy. Known to the world as Johnny Appleseed. This is the guy—”

  “You’d be Cop-land,” said Voss.

  “Copeland.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. Pushing me away.

  He smiled. “Relax,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”