Stop looking at me. I didn’t do this. I didn’t know. It’s not my fault. I didn’t want this.
But the old teachings of the Crawl’s channels and streams kept on echoing in the back of her brain with cold, determined anti-life tones.
Clean the Crawl. Purge us of vermin.
Deliver us from infestation with power and glory.
Commit them to the grave in our name.
Allahu akbar. Shalom. Amen.
She came around a corner and saw the Perl. He was an over-dressed mound on the ground.
“I didn’t know,” Celeste cried as she knelt by him. “Please, believe me.”
“Don’t blame you, Walker,” said Perl. “the way you’re wired is true. Trust the Perl. Save Grace. Find the man in the moon. Fuck him up hard for us, yeah? You do that for me?”
He closed his eyes, and died.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll do that for you. And me. And everyone here.”
Grace, I have to find Grace.
Celeste pushed her way through chaos, trying to find a way to be a hero. But, she was rounded up and pushed into a group of survivors. A cordon of black-clad soldiers closed around them.
“Be quiet please. Nice and quiet. You will be processed shortly,” said one.
“Why’re you doing this?” asked a man cradling son and daughter in his arms, “there’re children here, for Allah’s sake.”
One of the soldiers took a step towards him, “Nice and quiet. We don’t want to frighten children, do we?”
“Then why’ve you come down here and burned our homes? Tell me that, why?”
“Daddy…” the daughter said.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Don’t be scared. Daddy loves you.” He took a moment to kiss both children. Celeste caught her breath. This man knew what was coming next.
The soldier grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up. The children screamed and reached for their father. Celeste grabbed both of them and held onto them tight. They struggled against her. She held onto them tighter. Their father saw what she’d done and mouthed, thank you.
Thank you for saving them.
This wasn’t what she’d had in mind about being a hero.
A soldier struck the father hard in the stomach and kicked his legs out from underneath him. He fell prostrate onto the ground, gasping for air. Two more moved in. The children began to scream as the soldiers drew batons, which they brought cracking down on their prone father. The screams went up in pitch with each blow that fell. Instinctively, the man curled into a foetal position, hands over his head as if in pain. It did no good. There was no escape from this.
The batons rose and fell, rose and fell, growing wet with blood. Hair and moist pieces of bone clung to the weapons. The father raised a hand to try and ward off the vicious, repeated violence. They broke his fingers first, then his arm. His screams became one with those of his children. Convulsions and tremors passed through the softening body. He bit off his tongue. The whites of his eyes became red first, then black. The batons no longer cracked as they fell instead making dull, wet sounds no-one could put a name to. The soldiers stopped. The father didn’t move or make a sound. He was dead.
The cordon of soldiers drew away from the body.
Celeste looked at it. She must’ve blinked – it had all changed.
The mangled, beaten form was No.
He had sacrificed himself – why?
Numb silence followed. She looked down and saw her arms were bound tightly around thin air. The children were gone, evaporated. And the survivors around her – where were they? Had they crept away while the beating was going on?
No, they can’t have. I would’ve noticed.
Where were they, then?
And why had the zero-sec become so silent? No more screams and cries.
All the people here couldn’t have disappeared in the moment between breaths.
Celeste’s eyes wandered around the circle of soldiers. “Who are you? What’s going on here? Where am I, really?”
One of the soldiers stepped forward and raised its helmet’s visor.
Celeste saw Grace’s face smiling down at her. The others followed suit; raising their visors. They all wore Grace’s smiling face.
“What are you?” she asked, hoarsely.
“Who d’you think I am?” asked the Graces.
“You’re him. The man in the moon,” Celeste whispered.
Celeste closed her lips into a hard line. She stared into the face, hoping stupidly for some sign to deny what she’d said. There was none. The accusation stood. It was true.
Eyes she’d once thought were bright with life, she now saw as utterly empty and switched-off. Every time they met, death followed swiftly – and this slaughter was his crowning glory.
An extermination of the unlike, and it was all her fault.
Celeste didn’t try to fight them. There was nothing to fight for. Grace was gone. Never had been. Non-existent. She was alone.
Because of me, all these people died. They planted the seed in my head, and it grew into a poison tree.
“I am become death.” Celeste said to herself.
They put Celeste in hardlight handcuffs and took her away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The tower was taller than tall, its soaring exterior decorated with intricate patterns of polished obsidian octagons, outlined in filigreed silver and gold. At its peak was a thin spire that went on until it terminated bluntly; housed within this endpoint was a boardroom with oak-finish interior walls and thick burgundy pile carpet. The room’s centre-piece: a long, narrow, ornate table. Several chairs were evenly-spaced around the table; each appearing unoccupied. Old-fashioned light fittings dangled from the ceiling and at equal intervals around the walls, which are hung with memorial oil paintings of past board members. Each of the light fittings was empty, as if someone had carefully unscrewed and removed each bulb in turn. Upon closer inspection, one chair in the room was occupied – at the head of the table. This was where the man in the moon sat. His name was Tate. This was where he always sat, and where he intended to sit for a good long while yet. The rest of the board members were not present – they were below; waiting, sleeping. There were no lights in the boardroom because direct light hurt what was left of his eyes. A stiff finger, its wrinkles studded with glittering ice-crystals, tapped a button. Micro-servos whined somewhere inside him. An image of Celeste Walker flickered into being before him.
“She’s awake,” he said. “It’s about time.”
The finger tapped the button again, cutting off all sound. A spasm of harsh coughing wracked the body. The body could only take so much strain these days and recently it had been put through more than it had endured for the preceding centuries of isolation. The flesh was weak, almost completely crystallised. He tasted slow, old blood on his tongue, and swallowed it down, despite the primal urge to spit it out. Stain the suit. Despoil the boardroom carpet. Unthinkable. He could not do it. One of the few things he could not do.
After an hour of concentration and effort, Tate was standing straight again. Another hour of progress – one foot in front of the other – and he was standing at the frosted glass wall of the boardroom; from here, he looked down upon his world. The one he’d fashioned. The one of which he was the oldest living being. His hair was long and white and reached down to his shoulders, as perfectly preserved as the rest of him. Last combed a century or two ago, now it shone with the same ice and cold that permeated the rest of his body. The others had chosen to sleep, but he could not do it. He had to see it grow and be here. To dream away the millennia was to miss so much.