Her head was spinning. “How could a kid like that consolidate White’s power?”
Bostock sighed, as if he were dealing with a child. “Ames White had hopes and dreams for his son — and there is a small but powerful faction among the Conclave who took the youngster’s potential seriously. Others of us considered that boy weak — his mother an ordinary who betrayed us, his father a failure, the whole family nothing but a negative influence to our goals... Let’s just say I removed a small problem.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “So, for all your posing... you and this Conclave are really no better than the ordinaries, are you?”
Bostock looked baffled, and offended.
“Petty jealousy,” she said. “Nothing more than petty jealousy cost that boy his life.”
“Petty?” The word seemed to explode out of Bostock. Suddenly the calm bureaucrat was a seething demon. “It was White’s family that burdened the Conclave with you transgenics in the first place! White’s father — this Sandeman, you consider him your father don’t you, all of you? — Sandeman lost his nerve, and now we have you mutated rabble to deal with. That family must be made to pay!”
Max frowned. “What is the Conclave’s obsession with Sandeman and the transgenics?... What possible threat could we be to you and your twisted goals?”
In an instant, Bostock was the calm bureaucrat again. “You don’t know?” He seemed amused — quietly so. “You really don’t know?”
Max’s hands went to her hips. “What don’t I know?”
Bostock’s upper lip curled, and his words dripped venomous contempt: “Anything. You... don’t... know... anything.”
“I’m crushed, Franklin,” she said. “And here I thought you held me in such high regard.”
The gun still trained on her, he shook his head. “You have no idea how important you are...”
“Now I’m important?”
“... and you’ve just delivered yourself to me all tied up in a Christmas ribbon. But you are dangerous. Perhaps too dangerous to serve as a hostage...”
He pointed the gun at Max’s head now, eyes tightening.
Alec and Joshua both started to rise, but Max patted the air, telling them to keep their position.
“If I’m so valuable, so important,” she said, easing a half a step toward him, “why kill me?”
“Your death is inevitable — it’s just a question of where and when... though it must be soon.”
“I need to die... soon.”
“Yes. You see, killing you represents victory, Max. May I call you ‘Max’? ‘Ms. Guevera’ is too formal for us now, don’t you think?... Your death means we win.”
“You know, I always knew you snake-cult kids were a wacky bunch.” She edged another few inches. “But maybe you can explain why the death of a mutant like me could be so important to a movement that dates back thousands and thousands of years...”
His laugh had a hint of hysteria in it. “You’ve really never figured it out?... And Sandeman never told you?”
“Never met the guy. He was kind of a deadbeat dad, ya get right down to it.” With each exchange now, she was narrowing the distance between them.
“A pity,” Bostock said. “He might’ve had some fatherly advice for you. He might have told you to be more careful.”
She squinted at him. “Am I in the same conversation? ’Cause I am definitely not following you, Franklin.”
His arm straightened, the gun aimed squarely at her forehead. “You’re going to die, that’s a given... but considering all the grief you’ve given us, perhaps you do deserve to know just how badly you failed.”
She moved another half step.
“That’s far enough,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a gesture of the pistol.
She halted. “How did I fail?”
He smiled, almost fondly. “Max, Max... you were the one... the one!”
“The... one.”
“The chosen one, the new messiah!”
“Me. I’m Jesus.”
“Yes. And how sad to die so close to one’s birthday.”
The guy was raving; even for a snake-cult practitioner, Bostock was ’round the bend. Max wasn’t sure how much longer she could stall...
“Then maybe after you kill me,” she said, “I’ll be back in seven days...”
“I don’t think so. This is a Christmas tale, Max... not Easter. So here’s a gift: your ‘father,’ White’s real father, the fabled Sandeman, he got Manticore pulled out from under him by a clandestine organization inside the government.”
“That much I know.”
Bostock went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “But before he left, before Colonel Lydecker and the others took over, he made one special child. You, Max.”
“Well. Maybe my daddy did love me.”
“In his way I’m sure he did. He did something very special for you, Max — he spared you any junk DNA... You’re the only person — ordinary or transgenic or even Familiar — on this entire planet who is like that. Even all the other Manticore freaks, like pretty boy here, and Jo Jo the dog-face boy... they have some flawed DNA. But not yours.”
“And this makes me the Messiah how?”
Bostock frowned at her, as if he was dealing with an imbecile. “You still don’t see the bigger picture? A pity Sandeman didn’t put a few more grains of IQ into that test tube.”
She just looked at him. With a Christmas fruitcake like this, what was there to say?
Bostock, his voice hushed, asked, “Do you know about the Coming?”
Oh boy.
“... The Coming?” she said. “Y’know, considering I’m the Messiah and all, you’d think I would... but why don’t you fill me in.”
Bostock’s eyes showed white all around. “The Coming is the end for most... but the beginning for our people. Thousands of years of breeding have gone into preparing us for survival from the Coming.”
“You still haven’t told me what the Coming is.”
He raised his chin and the eyes had a wild cast. “When the comet comes, it will signify the end of the old... and the beginning of a brand new world.”
Ames White’s words echoed in her mind: I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world.
“This comet,” Max said, “when...”
Bostock gestured to the ceiling... the sky... with his free hand. “It’s visible once every 2021 years — that means this year. The last time was—”
Abruptly, Alec entered the conversation: “The Christmas star of Bethlehem...”
Bostock bowed, just a little. “Very good, young man.”
Max swallowed. “And, uh... how exactly do I become the new messiah, out of a comet passing over the planet... two thousand years after the last messiah was born?”
He held the pistol steady on her, his gaze as steady as it was crazed. “Hard for me to believe you’ve had no signs... that Sandeman didn’t find a way to tell you.”
The markings!
Over the last year, runes that had started popping up on her flesh — new, instant tattoos unwantedly decorating her body, markings Logan had tried to translate, with no luck.
Bostock was wrong — Sandeman had found a way to let her know! She just hadn’t figured it out, till this moment...
“With the coming of the comet,” Bostock was saying, in a hushed voice worthy of church, “there will be a release of a biotoxin. It will wipe out the ordinaries — all those too weak to fight, too weak to be part of the new, pure order.”
No need to stall him, she thought. Bostock was a zealot — he loved the sound of his own voice expressing the “sacred” beliefs of his cult.