A female voice came from the backseat. “Leave him alone, Sergeant. Each of us celebrates in our own way.”
“She’s right, Pete.”
Philips turned to Jon Ross. Their look lingered longer than necessary.
Price scowled. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Ivan Borovich,’ anyway? I just got used to calling you Jon.”
“Call me whatever you like, Laney. I won’t be listening anyway.”
Philips leaned against Ross. “I like the name Ivan.”
Price chuckled and spoke in a Russian accent. “Yeah, I’m sure the NSA will like Ivan, too.”
Philips waved him off. “Defending the U.S. government against a hostile takeover should be worth a green card.”
“I don’t know. I hear the requirements are getting tougher.” Sebeck slowed the car. “Here we go. . . .”
“We’re there?”
“No, but I think were running out of land pretty quickly on this peninsula.”
They were now heading down along a wide concrete road apparently made to deal with a high volume of container truck traffic. The traffic seemed much reduced. They had the place mostly to themselves—although a veritable skyline of multicolored shipping containers rose to their left across several lanes of highway.
Philips studied them. “What is the Daemon’s fascination with shipping containers?”
Ross looked as well. “They helped spread the consumer culture virus to every corner of the world. It’s no wonder the Daemon found them useful.”
Sebeck slowed the car again as they came alongside a truck yard, and he turned across the highway to a frontage road.
Price nodded. “A container yard. You’re going to open a container that contains something. Something Sobol sent to himself. Or—”
“Price, would you please? I can’t hear myself think.”
“Then think louder, man.”
Sebeck pulled into a driveway that surprised everyone. As he followed the golden Thread down the narrow lane, they all gazed through the windshield.
Ross looked puzzled. “A cemetery? In the middle of all this?”
Before them stood a rusted metal sign that read MORGAN’S POINT CEMETERY. The parcel was perhaps a couple of acres in size, and stood at the end of a long drive that placed it in the middle of a massive container yard. It was surrounded on three—and very nearly four—sides by towering container stacks. However, the driveway and the cemetery beyond looked green. Trees and shrubs covered the grounds, and a barbed-wire fence separated it from the surrounding shipyard.
Sebeck sighed. “Well, this is where it’s leading me.” He came to a stop in a small, empty parking lot. Everyone got out and glanced around.
“This place is positively surrounded.” Philips gazed up at all the containers looming above them.
Price pointed at the names on the sides of the center container in each wall. In big blue sans serif letters was the word “HORAE” painted along the corrugated steel. “Sergeant. Just like Riley told us.” He turned to Philips. “Doctor, you’ve read some Greek mythology, yes?”
“Yes, quite a bit. In native Greek.”
“Prove to us you are deadly boring: what are the Horae in Greek mythology?”
She shrugged. “They were the three goddesses who controlled orderly life. Daughters of Themis. The word means ‘the correct moment.’ And the earliest mention is in the Iliad, where they appear as keepers of the cloud gates.”
Price just threw up his hands. “Well that’s pretty damned impressive.”
“Is it a code?”
Ross stood alongside her. “Or an arrangement, perhaps. Like tumblers in a lock.”
“You mean these containers need to be arranged precisely like this to unlock something?”
He shrugged. “You tell me, Doctor. You’re the code breaker.”
Sebeck was already walking forward. “It’s no code. It’s symbolism. And as you know by now, Sobol’s worlds are chock-full of symbols.”
Price followed. Ross waited for Philips, and soon they were all walking down a cracked sidewalk toward an ornate, wrought-iron gate. It, too, was somewhat rusted, but the iconography of the gate was unmistakable—three female guardians holding long spears loomed in bas-relief on either side, wreathed in ironwork clouds. The gate was closed.
As Sebeck approached the gate, D-Space avatars of three towering female forms in robes and enclosed, plumed helms materialized from the shadows, holding tall golden spears.
Philips looked puzzled as all three men in the group backed away from the shadows. “What is it?”
Ross held her hand and tapped his HUD glasses. “Female avatars. The Horae, I gather.”
One of them spoke in a booming female voice. “Only the quest-taker may pass through the gates.”
Price held up his hands. “No problemo.”
Ross nodded. “I guess we’ll wait for you here, Sergeant.”
Sebeck glanced to Price as he stood with his hand on the gate.
“You know, Laney, I don’t think I would have made it here without you.”
Price shrugged. “Well, let’s wait to see if it’s good or bad before you go thanking me.”
Sebeck shook his head and entered the gate. It closed and locked behind him with an audible click.
As he continued to follow the golden Thread along the cemetery path, he noticed the graves were widely spaced. It was more like a shady garden—albeit one with colorful shipping containers as a backdrop.
Before long Sebeck’s path brought him to another D-Space apparition: a young, healthy-looking Matthew Sobol, sitting on a stone bench beneath a tree. There was an identical bench across from him.
As Sebeck approached, this younger, healthier Sobol nodded to him in greeting. “Detective. I’m very happy that you’re here.”
Sebeck couldn’t get over how vibrant and healthy Sobol looked, with his tousled hair, khakis, crisp button-down shirt, and suit jacket. He looked the very image of a successful man with his whole life ahead of him.
“Please, join me.” The avatar gestured to the open seat.
Sebeck swept off some leaves and dirt and sat.
“You might be wondering why I look different from the way I will . . . or did . . . earlier.” He sat back in his seat. “It’s because I started here at the end. Where you are now. I have no idea where here is or now is at the moment. But I did know that if I started from the end of the story and moved to the beginning, then the Daemon couldn’t begin unless it was complete. So really, your beginning is my end, and my end is your beginning.”
Sobol gazed directly at Sebeck’s eyes. “When I realized what our world had become, how humanity had become cogs in its own machine, I resolved to do something terrible . . . perhaps one of the worse things ever done. To exploit the automation of our world in order to plant the seed of a new system is reckless and irresponsible. But I didn’t see any other way we would change. Or could change.
“But now that humans have accomplished this quest, and you have arrived to tell me of their success, the question I need to ask you is this: was I right or wrong, Sergeant? Should I destroy the Daemon? Should I undo everything I’ve done? Yes, or no?”
Sebeck felt the shock work through him. He was speechless.
“You of all people would know, Sergeant. Should the Daemon be ended? Yes, or no? I will wait for your answer.”
Sebeck took a deep breath and looked back toward the gate. He could see no one. Just himself and this long-dead genius-madman. He sat recalling the entirety of his journey, from the point he received the Sobol murder case up to this very day. It had been years. He thought of his lost wife, Laura, and their son, Chris. Of his colleagues and friends who were dead or to whom he was now dead. He recalled all the people he had met who were building new lives on the Daemon’s darknet, and all the people who had perished in its birth—and in its defense. A procession of faces came to him. What was society, after all, but a group of people making up rules. At least on the darknet, it was a large group of people making up the rules instead of a small one.