“I do not know that word.”
“Navel gazing… Never mind. I will not be pigeonholed in either of your narrow categories, my good man. I memorized that quote because your Chairman was describing my career. You see, I seek to understand motivation and substance—”
Toru held up one hand to stop him. “Much like a theater actor must study their character, you began studying the way normal people think in order to better appear as one of them.”
Now that had gotten Wells’ attention. He nodded slowly. “You are a more perceptive man than I was led to believe, Mr. Tokugawa…”
“It is because I have known men like you. Your minds are twisted from birth. You are an outsider.”
“Something like that,” Wells answered slowly.
“There is no need for shame. In the Imperium, men such as yourself would be highly valued for your unique intellect. I have been led to understand that many members of Unit 731 share your specific mental affliction. It enables them to conduct their experiments on human subjects without hesitation or remorse. You do not feel what others feel, but your analysis of how they think has made you a very capable mimic.”
“Then you know why I’m good at my job.” Wells gave him that odd little smirk again. “Regardless of my original personal goals when I embarked on my particular path of study, today my understanding Saito better enables you to kill him better. Tell me everything about this bastard and I promise I will help deliver him into your hands.”
“That is intriguing…” Toru stroked his chin. It could help, and he had nothing better to do on this accursed tub. “Very well. If it helps me end Saito’s life, then I will put up with all manner of nonsense. Continue your questions.”
Wells looked around again for a spot to sit, but then finally gave up and sat on the hard metal floor. The pen went back to the notepad. “I think I’m going to enjoy our sessions together, Toru. May I call you Toru? Now where were we?”
Chapter 10
Germany has the strongest army in the world, and the Germans don’t like being laughed at and are looking for somebody on whom to vent their temper and use their strength. It is 38 years since Germany had her last war, and she is very strong and very restless, like a person whose boots are too small for him. With the formation of this great legion, a momentous hour has struck. The Ninth Army is an indestructible blend of technology and magic. Every last soldier is a mighty wizard. Nothing can match us. Nothing. Our rivals are envious of our magic, and they force us to legitimate defense. Germany will triumph. Bear yourselves as Huns of Attila. For a thousand years let the French tremble at the approach of a German!
Dead City, Germany
Dead City was a horrible place.
Faye didn’t like zombies one bit. To be honest, they scared the heck out of her, and she was a very difficult to girl to scare. She hadn’t allowed herself to be scared very much since the day Madi had murdered her Grandpa, and the times she had been afraid since had been more about being scared for her friends and very rarely for her own safety. There simply wasn’t much out there that she couldn’t handle if she just kept calm and took care of business, and being scared never helped that. Zombies were different though. They were unnatural. They were just nasty, gross, make-your-skin-crawl, make-your-stomach-hurt, make-your-hair-stand on end, scary, and in this awful city, they were everywhere.
She tried to move fast, never staying in one place for too long. Luckily, Dead City was a mess of broken edges and fallen walls. Very few of the buildings were in one piece. The only ones which had been repaired was from back when the people were still trying to make it decent and livable, by the living people like Heinrich, back before the Kaiser’s million undead soldiers had gotten too crazy and too hungry.
Faye appeared on the fifth-floor window ledge of what had probably once been a bank. At least she thought it looked banklike, since there had been big stone columns out in front. Only one of them was still standing and the others had fallen to lie broken in the road. The columns were whiter than the grey ground, so they looked a little like bleached bones. Not that there weren’t plenty of real bones lying around.
Scanning for threats, Faye leaned out around the corner. The gritty dust under the soles of her shoes crunched. At least this ledge didn’t break like the last one she’d landed on. The place was positively falling apart. The coast was clear. The poor hungry zombies who’d been chasing her around the first floor were still down there screaming and throwing a fit. She figured they’d forget soon enough and go back to their shuffling and muttering.
Jacques had given her a map. On it he’d marked the spots where he thought Zachary might be staying. It was a big, clumsy, hard-to-fold mass of paper, so she’d simply memorized the whole thing in a few seconds and was trusting in her far superior head map. It didn’t help, however, that Jacques’ map had been made from back when this place had still been Berlin, and things had made sense. Some of the roads on the maps were flooded canals now. Others were filled with buildings that had fallen. But even then, there were a lot of places to check, and so far she hadn’t had any luck.
Her search would be totally pointless if it turned out that the zombie she was looking for had gone crazy and wandering aimlessly like most of the undead around here. She didn’t mind the wanderers so much; they showed up on her head map just fine so she could stay one step ahead of them. The talkers and jabberers were nice too, because she could hear them coming. It was the ones who were holding still that worried her. Already she’d nearly Traveled right into two of them. Living things positively glowed on her head map, moving things too. Dead and still? That was a problem.
The windows on this floor had no glass in them. Come to think of it, she didn’t think a pane of glass had survived anywhere in the city. Hadn’t seen a single one yet, matter of fact. Had the Peace Ray shattered them all? Or had the undead smashed everything they might see their ugly reflections in? Either way, she could see inside the dusty room. There was nothing that she could spot with her grey eyes or that she could sense on her head map that suggested there was any danger.
Jacques had said that Zachary would gravitate toward “living” in the tallest places. Back when he’d been alive he had been some sort of artist, and he’d even drawn illustrations in the pulps, of cowboys and Indians and spacemen and pirates and gangsters. Surely it was in an artist’s nature to like rooms with a view. Jacques had also given her a package to deliver, should she find him. She didn’t know what it was, but the satchel was really heavy and felt like it was filled with books. Either it was a gift, or maybe Jacques thought that the more weight she Traveled with, the faster it would use up her Power, and he was simply trying to get her caught and eaten. Well, fat chance of that, because Faye was still the best Traveler ever. So she’d show him.
“Zachary? You in there?” Faye stuck her head through the window hole. “Hello? Anybody?”
She hadn’t seen the dead woman. She’d been still for so long that it was almost like she’d been stuck to the floor. The zombie sat up with a screech, spilling a choking cloud of grey dust. It startled her, but more than anything Faye really felt sorry for these poor dead folks. She would’ve loved to do them all a favor and kill every last single one of them, but zombies didn’t die easy. You could even cut them into pieces and the pieces just kept on twitching and screaming. She’d heard that they kept on feeling hungrier and hungrier, but nothing could ever feed them. They moved only because magic had stuck their souls to their bodies like some horrible glue. What would it be like to get hurt, but to never get better, and to always feel whatever it was that killed you? Delilah had been the toughest person Faye had ever known, so she’d handled it for a bit, but in the end getting turned into ash by the Peace Ray had been for the best.