One by one Gregor lit the wicks. Shannah stared fixedly at the flame nearest to her shoulder. Her breathing grew faster and faster and at last she lay back, closing her eyes and letting a peaceful sigh pass through her lips.
“Say my epitaph, Gregor. I want to hear it.”
Gregor closed his eyes as if searching for something appropriate. Shannah whispered impatiently, “Hurry.”
The leader looked up. “This man bore the name of Edgar Allan Poe. He was a troubled soul who died young, grieving for lost love, but he left behind many true and somber words, such as these:
And, perhaps best of alclass="underline"
Shannah rested the back of her head on the watermarked plank. Her lips drifted into a smile of ecstasy. “Thank you, Gregor.” She straightened her fluffy blond wig, and then let out a long, low breath. Her face fell slack as she stopped her synHeart and shut down the microprocessor in her head.
Gregor and the other Wakers let out a keening hum and looked up. With rapidly shifting glances they searched the air, gazing higher and higher to the invisible girders and pilings above, as if watching for Shannah’s departing soul.
27
Fear made Jones stumble like a drunken man. The two Elite Guard flanked him and briskly ushered him to a lift shaft. He followed mechanically, dazed. He wanted to hide, or apologize to someone, or demand answers, but the two Guards marched in silence as if daring him to speak. What did I do? he wanted to shout, but the halls were empty, silent, and none of the other Enforcers would do more than put eyes to the spyholes in their rooms.
The lift doors closed like a guillotine as the three men began to rise upward. Jones immediately grew claustrophobic. Still only half dressed, he felt his sweat turn cold in the air.
They emerged at the roof-level parking bay. In the black early hours of morning an eerie silence clung to the sleeping Metroplex. Without a word the two Elite Guards urged him across the poured-stone of the parking bay. Jones felt the implacable hardness of their armor and saw the determined set of their shoulders.
He thought of Fitzgerald Helms for a moment and felt a bottomless sadness. Helms had to die before Jones could get into the Guild—and now his career would end like this. What would Helms have thought?
The Guards had let him throw a robe over his shoulders, but Jones still carried his white Enforcer boots in his hands. They marched with muffled footsteps to a private hovercar that had been painted a dark flat blue to be invisible against the night sky.
For a moment Jones thought they were going to lock him in a segregation chamber in back, but instead they made him sit close between them in the main cabin. As the craft rose into the air and banked sideways, Jones looked down at the Enforcers’ dormitory he had called home for two years, thinking it might be the last time he’d ever see it.
Probably, if the Elite Guard were involved, something terrible was going to happen to him.
Jones swallowed so hard he felt his Adam’s apple plunge down and up again in his throat. He had no chance. Nothing would help. Maybe he could reason with them. “I still don’t understand.” His voice had a thin, whining quality to it. “Why can’t you tell me—”
“No,” one of the Elite Guard said brusquely. The other Guard continued to pilot the hovercar, paying no attention. As they soared onward, Jones looked down at the lights of the intricate but deserted arteries of the Metroplex. For a moment he was struck by the fact that of all those people cowering down there, no one would miss him. He had made no real friends—Jones had festered with the death of his comrade Helms even after two years, and it was his own damned fault. That’s right—wasn’t one supposed to wax philosophical while being led to an execution? He was out of uniform—would they just jettison him here, high above the Metroplex? Or would they dress him up as a gang member, someone supposedly killed in the violent after dark street battles?
The hovercar homed in on the mirrored monolith of the Enforcers Guild main headquarters. Jones’s stomach tightened and his breath came in shallower snatches as they neared the tower.
The hovercar cruised to the private landing dock reserved for the Guild’s highest management personnel. Jones managed to tug on his boots, at least, but his uneasiness grew. His brain churned over and over, trying to comprehend what he had done that was so terrible to warrant such special punishment. He had lost the Servant. He had started a riot, but that wasn’t his fault. He had discarded his armor—he had made major mistakes, certainly… but by the book, by his Enforcer training, hadn’t he done what he was supposed to do? What was he supposed to do now?
The pilot powered down the hovercar’s engines and disengaged the door. At the top of the tower the wind whistled around the walls, bearing an oppressive dampness with an oncoming spring storm. His white armored boots stood out garishly against his dark skin, his black skin-pants. He cautiously emerged from the hovercar and then nearly tripped down a set of access stairs as the second Elite Guard hurried him along. His legs were shaking.
At the bottom of the stairs they reached a sealed doorway The first Guard typed in a long and complex access code; a silent moment passed, then answering flickers of light came from the screen by the door. The Guard entered a responding password, and with an ominous, cobralike hiss, the door slid open into the highest levels of Guild headquarters.
“In you go.” Blindly, without thinking, Jones stumbled forward. Darkness clung everywhere, and he blinked his wide eyes, trying to see. He realized after he had gone several steps that the two blue-armored Elite guard remained motionless outside the door on the steps. Would they kill him here? Why had they even brought him this far?
Jones looked around himself in a vast penthouse office that covered an entire quad rant of the building’s top floor. The air stuck in his throat; gooseflesh crawled up his arms. From the towering vantage of the headquarters he could see the lights of the Metroplex strung out.
Warm light glowed from an aquarium covered with a wooden tabletop, as if it were some odd sort of furniture. He could hear the bubbling of the tank and see the colorful forms of the fish trapped inside their glass cage as they pointlessly went back and forth, bumping up against the unseen walls….
Behind a huge semicircular clonewood desk, Jones finally saw a darkened figure waiting for him.
“Former Enforcer Jones,” a biting voice spoke from the shadows, “you’ve caused me a great deal of trouble today.”
Jones cringed and froze. He didn’t dare turn around, but he thought sure he could sense the two Guards each drawing a projectile weapon, aiming at him—
With a melodramatic twist the figure behind the desk brought up the lights from rosy banks around the rim of the room. Jones concentrated on the man at the desk, puzzled; he had black and oily hair that looked oddly out-of-place slicked back behind his ears. Then Jones recognized the man’s face after all.
Francois Nathans.
“I planned everything so carefully. It was so intricate. Too complex, I guess. Plenty of spots where a stupid mistake could drastically alter the outcome. I didn’t count on you acting like you did.”