The knife came forward. Feteror felt it touch his eyeball, and pain, far beyond anything he had felt so far, hit his brain like a spear splitting it straight through. He screamed, his battered and sliced body straining against the ropes, which brought even more pain and deepened the primeval essence to the shivering cry he let loose.
But still he could hear the sound of the helicopters so close, and machine-gun fire. And screams coming from others. And then there was only blessed darkness.
The village was gone. They were back in the glade. Opa was crying, tears flowing down his weathered cheeks.
“Do you see now?” Feteror asked. “Why I must do this thing?”
Opa opened his mouth to say something, when the sky and glade disappeared along with the old man.
“Time to work.” General Rurik’s voice was harsh. There was a bright glaring light in Feteror’s face. He knew that was a construct the programmers used to get his attention, feeding the input directly into his occipital lobe.
“What is it?” Feteror was disconcerted.
“We have lost contact with one of our surveillance units,” Rurik said. “We want you to see what has happened.”
“Why don’t you send a plane?”
“Because it is very far from the closest plane,” Rurik said. “And more importantly, the surveillance team was watching where we used to be headquartered.”
Feteror waited.
“We are inputting the coordinates.”
Feteror read them as they came in. Information about the history of Department Eight had always been strictly withheld from him by Zivon on General Rurik’s order, under the theory that knowledge was power and the less Feteror knew, the weaker he would be.
Feteror could have gotten this information from Oma, after she had received the papers and CD from Colonel Seogky, but he had not wanted her to know that he wasn’t aware of the information contained in them. It had taken him four years to simply find out that the phased-displacement generator had been built, and that had only been because of a most fortunate meeting. The location of the generator had been something for which he had needed Oma and her organization. He had pointed her to the man in GRU records who would know that information. He could have taken it out of Vasilev, but the added fact that they would need the CD-ROM to program the computers to work the phased-displacement generator— and Vasilev himself the only survivor among those who had invented the machine, to properly operate the computers— had precluded Feteror from pushing the old man too far, too soon. Vasilev would pay, but only after he made penance.
Feteror translated the grid coordinates as they came in. The far north!
“Find out why the surveillance unit has not reported in and come back immediately. You are to observe only.”
“Why is there still a surveillance unit there?” Feteror asked.
“That is not your concern.”
“Why was Department Eight moved from there to here?”
“That is also not your concern. Just do as you are tasked.”
The tunnel beckoned and Feteror jumped. He felt the weightless feeling of flying as he roared into the virtual plane, assuming his winged-demon shape. It was what he felt comfortable in. The first time he had been like this was in the village in Afghanistan. Rurik and his minions thought they were so brilliant! The computer link only gave him more power, more information.
The body was basically humanoid, except larger, more powerful, and armed with sharp claws at the end of each hand. The wings were something he had worked out with Zivon. He had not liked the feeling of floating free or moving from place to place without a sense of spatial orientation. The wings gave him that, although it had taken him much time to get used to them. They gave him a solid way to control his orientation, direction, and speed. And they helped scare the piss out of anyone he appeared to on the real plane.
Feteror stretched his wings wider, moving faster, the virtual plane going by in a rush, his mind focused on the location he had been given.
The virtual plane was a strange place. There were times when even Feteror felt concern as he traversed it. It was a gray world, and traversing it was like moving in a vast mist, but references from the real world could be spotted poking through here and there if he made an effort to see. If there were no references, then Feteror would have to stop and come out of the virtual, into the real, and align himself. Sometimes he sensed other shadows, forms, moving in the fog.
Some he recognized— psychics, real ones— plying their trade. Sometimes he knew they were Americans, from their Bright Gate operation. He knew the presence in the rail station had been a Bright Gater. How much the Americans knew he could not tell. He was also unsure exactly what their capabilities were. He knew they could remote view but he had picked up some different disturbances at times that indicated the Americans were doing something more advanced than just RVing. He had tried once to breach their facility in the state they called Colorado, but it was well protected from psychic probing.
He had given General Rurik the information about the Mafia in order to move the timetable of everything up, so that whatever the Americans might plan would occur too late. But now he knew they also knew the timetable was sooner rather than later.
Feteror sensed he was over Siberia. He could feel the vast emptiness of that land reflected around him. He could not explain how he knew where he was, he just knew it. It was one of the strange aspects of the virtual plane. Often the emotion of an area was what passed through to him, not the physical realities. Feteror oriented himself and continued his flight.
He had no idea how quickly he moved. Sometimes he arrived at a place “instantaneously” in real time, yet it seemed like it took an hour on the virtual plane. Other times, going to the same place, real time had elapsed. There was no way to tell. He had asked the scientists, and their mumbo-jumbo answers had told him they didn’t have a clue why that was. He knew they didn’t even really know why he was able to do what he did.
Feeling he was in the right place and sensing death-something he was very familiar with— below, Feteror halted and focused so that he could see the real world. The island appeared below. Feteror could see the Cub transport plane parked on the edge of the runway. He swooped around in a large circle, going lower. He could see the backhoe and lines going from it into a hole in the side of a mountain.
Claws on the end of his feet splayed, Feteror landed right next to the hole. He bared his fangs in a grin as a couple of the mercenaries looked around, sensing something, not sure what it was, only that they felt danger in the air around them like a faint scent at the edge of their consciousness. Feteror could clearly sense their fear, like a wild dog near its prey.
Feteror was still in the virtual plane, the demon shape only something he felt, not something that was really there with the soldiers, but he knew the line between the two worlds was not solid and fixed.
He folded his wings and walked forward, into the hole. The ropes disappeared into a large elevator shaft. He looked down. There was a glint of light on steel far below. The phased-displacement generator.
“Careful, you pigs!”
Feteror looked at the man who stood on the other side of the shaft opening. Leksi. Feteror had seen the man before. And next to him the boy-man who had taken the papers from Colonel Seogky. Who was so stupid he had not listened when Feteror had whispered in his mind that his bodyguard was a double agent. Feteror remembered the name: Barsk, Oma’s flesh and blood.
Feteror blinked as an image of his grandfather passed across his mind.