Michael reaches the first of the cabins and kicks in the door. There is movement within, but Michael does not fire. Other men go to the other cabins and kick in their doors, as well. An eerie silence settles over this section of the camp, all the noise and furor suddenly gone elsewhere. The men who have come here with Michael lower their weapons and, one by one, step inside the cabins they have assaulted. Michael waits until they are inside, glances back to where the boy stands, and beckons him forward.
Together, they enter the cabin in front of them. Logan thinks he is ready for what he will find, but he is wrong. He stands in the doorway openmouthed, his throat so tight he does not think he can draw another breath. There are children in the cabin, dozens of them, packed close as they huddle together in the darkness, pressed up against the farthest wall. They are dirty and ragged.
They are disgusting to look at. Most wear almost nothing. Their bones protrude from their emaciated bodies like sticks bundled in sacks; they are held together by little more than ligaments and skin. They have the look of skeletons, of corpses, of ghosts. They are all ages, many younger than he is. They do not know what is happening. They stare at him in shock and terror. Many are crying.
They begin to beg for their lives.
"Look carefully, Logan," Michael tells him. "This is what we have been reduced to by our enemies. This is our future if we do not find a way to change it."
Logan looks at the children because he cannot help himself, but he wishes he had never seen them. He wishes Michael had not brought him here, that he had been left behind. He wishes he could sink into the floor and disappear. He knows he will never forget this moment. He knows it will haunt him forever.
"They are kept alive for various reasons," Michael says softly. "Some for work. Some for experiments. Some for things I cannot bear to speak about."
Logan understands. He draws a long, slow breath and exhales. He thinks he will be sick to his stomach, and he fights it down. He swallows and straightens.
Michael's hand closes on his shoulder and tightens. "We shall set most of them free and hope that some will survive." He pauses. "Most of them, but not all."
He moves to the farthest corner of the room, the corner that is darkest.
As he nears, a hissing, mewling sound rises from the shadows.
What happens next is indescribable.
LOGAN WOKE SWEATING and disoriented in the backseat of the Lightning, thrashing beneath the light blanket as if jolted by a charge from an electric prod. The dream of the slave camp, of what Michael had brought him to see, was right in front of him, painted on a canvas of darkness and air, blood red and razor sharp.
Madness, he screamed in the silence of his mind and was filled with sudden, ungovernable anger.
It happened then as it always happened, a sudden shift of emotions that took him from simmer straight to white–hot. The canvas of the dream expanded until it was all he could see. Memories of every atrocity he had witnessed since his boyhood surfaced like a swarm of angry bees from the dark place in his mind to which he had consigned them, and a quick, hard burn of rage tore through him.
He was suddenly unable to focus on anything but his horror of the slave camp he had passed by only hours before, unable to think with anything remotely resembling dispassion, unable to bring reason or common sense to bear. His rage was all–consuming. It swept through him in seconds, took control of him completely, and left him with a single thought.
Destroy it!
Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he crawled into the driver's seat, shut down the perimeter alarms, started the engine, and wheeled the AV about. Forgotten was his promise to himself that he would not let anything jeopardize his search for the gypsy morph. Abandoned was the quest that had brought him to this place and time. His rage washed all of it away, swept it aside as if it were unimportant and replaced it with an inexorable determination to go back to that camp and do what he knew was needed.
Because there was no one else to help those imprisoned in that camp.
Because he knew what was being done to them, and he could not abide it.
He took the highway back to the cutoff, back to where he could see the glow from the fires of the camp, and turned toward them, anger flooding through him like molten lava. He switched on the AV's weapons, setting them to the armed position. His rune–carved staff rested on the seat beside him, ready to employ.
He might have taken time to make better preparations, but his rage would not allow for it. It demanded that he hurry, that he act now. It demanded that he cast aside reason and let impulse rule.
He blew over the flats toward the now–visible camp like an avenging angel, his inner fire a match for flames that burned in the perimeter pits. He had reached the walls almost before the guards could comprehend what he was about, too close for them to bring their heavy weapons to bear. He attacked the towers with the long–barreled flechettes that elevated from their fender housings, shards of iron cutting apart the walls and occupants that warded them as if both were made of thin paper. He swung the AV around after taking down two, left it in idle, and sprang to the ground before the fencing and rolled razor wire, his staff in hand. They were shooting at him now with their automatic weapons, but he was already shielded by the magic of his staff, an impregnable force of nature. He strode forward, his staff sweeping along the fencing and wire in a line of fire that melted everything it touched. Inside, the prisoners were screaming and crying, thinking it was they who were under attack, they who were meant to die. He could not stop to tell them otherwise. He could only act, and act quickly.
He was through the fence in moments, a Knight of the Word in full–blown frenzy, as savage and unpredictable as the creatures he hunted. Feeders appeared as if by magic, swirling all around him, hundreds strong, hungry and expectant.
Cringing prisoners scattered before him in all directions, howling in fear.
Once–men came at him in waves, firing their weapons, trying to bring him down.
But ordinary weapons were no match for his staff, and he scattered them like leaves. He moved deliberately from fence to fence, from tower to tower, from one building to the next, sending everything up in flames.
He kept his eyes peeled for a demon, but none approached. He was lucky this night, but then luck was a part of what kept him alive.
The once–men were falling back, losing heart in the face of his wildness and seeming invulnerability. Their mad eyes and sharp faces lost their hard edge and turned frightened. Soon they were fleeing into the night, seeking shelter in the darkness. The camp's prisoners flooded through the shattered fences after them, hundreds of men, women, and children. Strange skeletal apparitions, they fled through the brightness of the flames without fully understanding what was happening or where they were fleeing. It didn't matter to the Knight of the
Word. It only mattered that they run and keep running and never come back.
When the camp was in flames and the pens emptied, he turned his attention to the isolated cluster of cabins that sat deliberately untouched at the very center. He stared at the ramshackle structures, and his rage drained away with the slow onset of his horror at what must happen next. He hesitated, a mix of almost unbearable sadness and disgust welling up inside him.
Then Michael's voice reached out to him from the long–ago.
Don't think about it. Don't try to make sense of it. Do what you must.
He took a deep, steadying breath and started forward.
'COME LOOK, BOY. Come see what hides here in the darkness."
Michael stands waiting on him near the shadows from which the hissing and mewling issues, his face carved of granite, his words hardedged and commanding. Nevertheless, Logan hesitates before advancing knowing he should flee, that what he is about to see will scar him forever. But there is no running away from this, and he comes forward as bidden.