No casual viewer would guess that Axiom is on the brink of disaster, and I’m guessing that’s the point: to cry for help without looking vulnerable. Anyone watching this without the code key would get only a vague sense of unease. A generalized fear that only firms their support for the strongman rising in their midst.
“We’re going to make a different announcement,” Julie says.
“We advise against creating any further instability at this time,” Blue Tie says as if guessing our intent. “People need certainty in an uncertain world.”
“That’s literally impossible,” Julie says. “What does that even mean?”
“People don’t need meaning.” Yellow Tie’s smile takes on an unexpected subtlety that sends a chill down my spine. “They just need to feel safe while they die.”
What kind of minds remain behind these waxy, interchangeable faces? From what inhuman script are they reading? And can we shred it?
Julie steps up to Yellow Tie and stares into her glassy blue eyes. She sniffs. “You smell like death,” she says quietly. “You smell like the plague.”
I hear muffled noises above us. The hiss of the basement hatch. Then Timothy Balt and two dozen of his Cock Street Boys come thundering down the stairs.
I sigh. Julie grinds her teeth. Tomsen keeps working.
“That was a nice little jog around the city,” Balt says, swaggering toward us with his pistol at his hip like a cowboy. “I needed a good workout, been getting some flab.” He lifts his shirt a few inches, revealing chiseled abs. “But shit’s getting serious out there, we don’t have time for—hey you! Butch!” He jabs his gun at Tomsen. “Quit fucking with that. Hands up.”
With an agonized grimace, Tomsen pries her hands away from the console and puts them up.
“We appreciate your work, General Balt,” Yellow Tie says with a sultry smile. “It’s clear we weren’t wrong about your abilities.”
Balt gives the two pitchmen a quick nod, avoiding eye contact. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him look uncomfortable, and I wonder how much he’s learned about the nature of his bosses.
“So you’re gonna hijack Fed TV?” Balt says to Julie. He forces a derisive chuckle, getting back into character.
“Yep,” Julie says.
“Gonna spread the news that Axiom is bad, get the people to rise up?”
“Yep.”
“Dumbest shit I ever heard,” Balt laughs. “You looked around lately? People are sick and tired. You think they’re gonna ‘rise up’ against the guys putting roofs over their heads?”
Julie stares at him, stone-faced. “Yep.”
Her voice is cold and blunt. This is one person she’ll make no effort to convince.
Balt’s grin flickers with frustration. No doubt he was hoping for a juicier tease. “Well,” he grunts, “if you’re gonna just lie there, I guess we’ll get on with—”
His mouth clamps shut. He spins around to face the staircase. “Who the fuck that?”
Another stampede of footsteps is rumbling in the house above us. A lot more than two dozen.
“You locked the hatch, right?” Balt shouts at one of his boys, who nods emphatically.
The noise is closer now, almost directly overhead. The sound of things banging and scraping on concrete echoes down the stairwell.
“Fuck me,” Balt mutters, putting on the fierce scowl he wears when he’s scared. “Fuckin’ Boneys got through the walls…”
But he’s wrong. I hear no warbling hum. No trace of the atonal theme music that accompanies those clattering horrors. This is something else.
“New orders from Executive!” Blue Tie announces suddenly, and Balt startles. “Please bring the intruders to the conference room for questioning at this time.”
Balt squints at the pitchmen. He squints at their walkies, which have not made any sound.
“Why?” he says. “We’re under attack, we don’t have time for—”
“Bring the intruders to the conference room,” Blue Tie repeats more forcefully, gesturing to a door on the opposite end of the chamber marked emergency exit.
Balt hesitates, gritting his teeth, then raises his gun. “All right.” He points it at me. “Move, corpse.”
Balt’s gun is huge. Some kind of high caliber magnum, so oversized it looks like a toy. How many times have I played this silly game? How many times have I stood frozen in the sightline of a gun, paralyzed by a bullet that hasn’t been fired? By the invisible threat, the fear of a possible future?
What if I don’t play? What if I walk away?
“Hey!” Balt shouts. “The fuck are you’re doing?”
I’m walking past the pitchmen. I’m walking around the edge of the pit. I’m walking away from Balt.
Incredulity pushes his voice to a girlish falsetto. “What the fuck? I’m pointing a gun at you, dipshit!”
I’ve circled behind his crew now, and they’re all staring at me, searching for some explanation for my behavior, but their frame of reference is limited. They begin to laugh—the corpse’s brain finally melted! Let’s watch the show!—and then I turn and sprint up the staircase, and their laughter dies.
Balt is probably shouting, guns are probably firing, but I hear only the scuffling and wheezing in the room above me. And my heartbeat, pounding slow, like I’ve never been more calm.
I flip the hatch’s lock and give it a nudge. Then I come back down the stairs at a leisurely pace, emerging into the chamber with my arms out, palms up, a gesture of surrender—not to Balt, but to whatever happens next.
I indulge in a small, slightly vindictive smile as Evan Kenerly and two hundred dis-Oriented people flood in behind me, swinging pipes and chunks of lumber.
WE
IN THE GLORIOUS MESS OF THE LIBRARY, books are bound loosely, pages migrate freely, and one moment of a life might disagree with the next. So when a corrupted man dies and can no longer cause harm, even his own memories rejoice. The better parts of his life, the Higher moments, they celebrate along with us and we bear them no grudge, because the Library is not a collection of people but a collection of moments, experiences, thoughts, and sensations, and we have only one goaclass="underline" to elevate the whole.
This is how we endure the flood of fear that rushes from Axiom’s troops as their victims finally fight back. This is how we maintain a grim smile as a man cracks another man’s head with a pipe and a woman plunges a broken broom handle into another man’s gut. We focus on the Higher shelves, bracing them for the weight of books to come.
R wrestles a man’s gun away and jabs him in the throat with it.
Marcus hits a man so hard his whole face crumples inward.
Julie keeps her back against Tomsen’s while Tomsen scrambles to finish whatever she was doing with the broadcast station, oblivious to the conflagration behind her. Julie clutches a piece of rebar like a sword, swinging it without mercy whenever the battle gets too close to Tomsen. Only a few shots ring out. Kenerly’s crew presses in on Balt’s so tightly that the guns are reduced to bludgeons. Shouts and grunts and crunching noises bounce off the angular dome and echo in the bottomless pit.
It’s mayhem. It’s a miniature iteration of the mayhem in the city, and Addis wonders how far this fractal goes as he crouches in the shelter of the stairwell. He thinks of the Russian nesting doll he played with at his auntie’s house, and how he would scratch and pry at that final piece, certain there was an even smaller one sealed inside.