"Sorry, Dee, it was. That's why I didn't recognize him earlier. Morningstar was hidden inside that body, like wearing a mask."
"How is that different from what you are?"
"This body was forged for my use alone. It's the one I always use." Touching his wrist, Michael engaged the holographic armor. I watched a hole open in his chest and sky poke through. Then his legs faded into the sidewalk. "Let's go."
"You seem more yourself," I said.
"It feels good to be moving, doing something. It's how I'm meant to be."
I nodded. The sky darkened to a greenish tint as we approached the edge of Harlem and traffic tunnels began to sprout above us like green-gray arms of a millipede. "What was the preacher, er, Morningstar doing here? Do you think he was following us?"
"Hard to say. It's possible that Morningstar just invested the preacher with a bit of his spirit and sent him on his way like a windup toy."
"Can he do that? I thought miracles were too costly."
"For me," Michael grunted fiercely. "Morningstar is yetzerharah; he is a dark angel, turned away. He has all his angelic powers, but no moral restrictions."
"It doesn't pay to be good, eh?"
Michael's frown smoothed out. "There are rewards ... but they're rarely earthly."
We entered the abandoned subway at the edge of Harlem. Since all of the traffic and pedestrian tubes had moved to the upper levels for safety and comfort, the old public transportation tunnels had fallen into disrepair. I walked down the concrete stairway toward a dark, gaping hole.
Our flashlights revealed a turnstile at the bottom of the stairs. Michael vaulted over the steel bars easily, while I crawled much less gracefully over them onto a large concrete platform. The remains of antique vending machines stood along the walls, their glass fronts smashed and the contents robbed. The curly steel holders inside the machines cast strange shadows on the wall as the beam from my light passed over them.
Across a chasm, I could see a faint light where another set of stairs led to the opposite side. I whistled lowly under my breath.
"Subway cars must have been huge," I said, pointing to the expanse between the two platforms.
Michael jumped down onto the rails. I peered over the edge nervously. My flashlight revealed a jumble of rails and dust, three feet down.
"Come on," Michael said, "I'll catch you."
Unable to bring myself to jump, I sat on the edge of the platform and lowered myself. I scraped my back and butt on the concrete as I slid to the ground. Michael steadied me as I tried to find footing on the rails. Slick with dampness, the cavity stretched ahead for miles. Ahead, in the distance, I could see the twinkle of Christmas bulbs dancing along the side of the wall where emergency lights must have hung.
I looked up, surprised that there was no rail at the top of the tunnel, like there was in the traffic tubes.
"How did they used to get electricity to the cars?" I wondered out loud.
"Something called a third rail, if I remember correctly," Michael said.
"Huh," I said, checking my compass and map. Finding the right direction, I headed along the underground passageway. Long ago, someone had started the process of removing the tracks. I stepped cautiously over the pile of rotting ties, moving deeper into the shaft.
Some Gorgon gang had marked this territory as theirs with a slash of color on the wall. I let my fingers trail along the rough surface, avoiding a makeshift camp in the center of the tunnel.
"It's hard to believe people live here." Pulling off his helmet, Michael appeared to grow out of a broken crate.
"I suppose it's better than the glass," I said: I switched off my armor; we were unlikely to run into anyone here. I shrugged out of the confining helmet. The air held a wild, almost swamplike odor. I took a deep breath of cool air and tried not to taste it.
Michael nodded, running fingers through his curls to shake them loose from his forehead. He fell into step beside me. "Why did you agree to meet Mouse alone?"
I stretched my neck until I could feel my muscles pull slightly. "I didn't want to bring any more trouble to the Malachim."
Michael nodded. "You think Mouse is dangerous."
"I'm just not sure."
"Go on," Michael said encouragingly. Our boots made a sucking sound as we walked.
"Daniel said when he ... killed the Pope, he felt disconnected, like a place on the LINK, but not. That sounds a lot like Mouse's hub."
"You were there. That's when you found Phanuel?"
In front of us, a small section of the tunnel's ceiling had collapsed. Tentacles of rebar coiled from the wall, and shafts of sunlight cut through the darkness like knives. I leaned into Michael for support as I clambered over the slippery debris.
"Yeah," I said, once we'd picked our way through the mess. "Phanuel was acting as Mouse's guardian. Even though I was in read-only mode, he blocked me. I was almost caught."
"I don't know very much about the LINK, but ... is that possible?"
I shook my head. "It shouldn't be. Unless Mouse found a way to trap consciousness remotely." A shiver ran up my spine at the thought, and I blew a snort out my nose to hide my discomfort. "Again, though, that should be impossible. Despite advances in biotechnology, we still know so little about the soul, consciousness, or how the brain works. No one even knows if the soul is something separate from the body ..." I looked at Michael apologetically. "Well, I suppose someone knows. Is it, Michael? Is our soul eternal?"
He stared at me with that same uncomfortable look that he gave me when I asked him if Daniel was in heaven. He shrugged almost imperceptibly, and said, "I have been here since the beginning. My soul is certainly long-lived if not eternal."
"You're an archangel, Michael. What about the human soul?"
"Millions of people of a thousand different religions think it is," Michael said, quietly.
"Is that your answer?"
The tunnel narrowed and split in two. From my guess, we'd reached Central Park. We headed down the left passageway. Here the tracks were in better condition. The ties were set at a distance uncomfortable for walking, and my stride alternately hit the gully between the boards or on top of them. When I shortened my step I hopped along at a slow, awkward pace. I lurched forward like that for a while, then gave up in favor of doing a balance-beam act on the rails near the wall. Even though it was long dead, I carefully avoided the third rail.
"If . . ." Michael said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "If it is possible to separate the soul from the body, does Mouse have the tech to do it?"
"Are you telling me it is?"
"I'm asking a hypothetical question."
I smiled. "Ah-ha." I slid off the rail, but recovered my step smoothly. "Well, even if he did find a way, Mouse would need a computer the size of ..." I trailed off.
"What?" Michael prompted.
"Mouse has a computer the size of the world; he's in every hard drive in existence. Plus," I told Michael what Dancer had said about the black boxes, pointing up at one. Thoughts formed as I spoke. "If Dancer is right, and those boxes do belong to Mouse, well, I think he might be siphoning off power from the main city grid. That, combined with the LINK'S power, could be the energy LINK-angels needed to perform their miracle."
"What do you mean? How is he part of the LINK?"
As we continued deeper into the channel, I explained the mouse.nest virus to Michael. "I'd always wondered," I added, "why Mouse's name was in English when he's from Cairo. Mouse, the computer mouse, is one of those words imported whole, to distinguish it from the native language's furry version."