Ragnarok (24 page)

Fiona.
When did I take off the helmet?
He looked down at himself. He was still wearing the rest of the armor.
So I was wearing the helmet before, and the only things coming in the helmet were light and…air.

It was something in the air. He recalled that Deep Blue was not wearing an armor helmet—he wore the special helmet Aleman had helped design for him. The black one with the computer displays. And Deep Blue had said it had air-scrubbing filters that could remove close to 98% of contaminants in the atmosphere that he breathed. So it wouldn’t have been a gas that was controlling King, or else Deep Blue might have been affected, too.

Why? Fiona. What then? Something airborne but not as potent as a gas?
Frustration welled up in the back of King’s mind and he was surprised to find it a potent remedy for his artificial bliss. He was used to fighting, but fighting with hands and weapons on a battlefield or in an alley in some Third World backwater. He could handle frigid polar wastes and arid desert climes. This sort of cerebral fight was new to him and he wasn’t sure how to go about it. He couldn’t isolate the enemy, its methods or its motives.

Fiona. She’s safe and that is the most important thing.
The next was figuring out how to get out of the happy trap. Frustration was good.
Maybe anger will be better?
He willed himself to be angry, but soon felt himself slipping into distraction and forgot what he was trying to do. He almost lost it altogether, when his thoughts again turned to those he loved and—

Fiona!

Why?

How?

In the air.

I’m breathing it.
Can I hold my breath long enough for the effect to stop?

But then another idea occurred to King. He turned his head again back to the broken window at the end of the hallway. The gaping grin was still on his face but he made no move to change that. He would need all his willpower to accomplish what he had planned. First, he took a breath and held it. Not a deep gulp but a covert intake. The dire wolves that lined the hall still looked at him occasionally, sniffing the air. If this worked, he didn’t want to alert them that he was gaining control.

As he was about to initiate the second phase of his plan, an overwhelming urge to look at the portal swept through him like a tornado ripping up trailer homes in the Midwest. He squeezed his eyes shut, and still holding his breath, repeated his daughter’s name again and again. His head buzzed from the lack of oxygen and from the monotony of the mantra, but he felt the urge to look at the light slip away from him.

When the desire became manageable again, he forced that small but growing voice to let out a scream in his head.

Walk!

He took a step away from the portal, toward the opening, the daylight and the city street at the end of the corridor. He opened his eyes and the hallway looked to stretch into the horizon like a perspective drawing, dwindling down into a tiny dot.

He felt dizzy now from lack of air but refused to breathe again. He took a second step. The smile on his face wanted to diminish. The artificiality of it wanted to fade. Not completely, but from a shit-eating grin to a smirk. He refused to let it and kept the grimace of a smile in place. Another step and another, past a dire wolf on the left wall. It smelled him as he passed, but made no move toward him.

He took a chance and reached out his hand and stroked the creature’s neck, smiling still. The creature didn’t move. Its skin no longer felt like soft down. More like rubber.
How much did this attack alter my perceptions?
But that line of questioning cost him control, so he returned his thoughts to Fiona and walking. Forcing all his will onto those two thoughts. The edges of his vision began to blur a bit, but he could still see. His lungs struggled to get to fresh air, but he denied them. Another step and past another dire wolf. Two more between him and the window.

The effort was taking its toll and he could feel a trickle of sweat on his forehead, dripping toward his left eyebrow. He closed his eyes and focused on Fiona. The grin slipped. The sweat dripped off his eyebrow and down his eyelid. He opened his eye and the lid flicked the remaining liquid away. Two more steps. The smile was down to just a notion now, and he let it go. It wouldn’t matter soon. He passed another dire wolf, this one moving slowly along the ceiling toward the portal over his head. He ducked a little as it passed him, but he kept his speed the same—deliberately slow.

Then he felt it. The November Manhattan breeze on his face, gusting in from the shattered window forty stories above the asphalt. He pulled air in through his nostrils, slowly, testing it. The breath made him happier, but not loopy.
Good. One mystery solved. It was the air.
He took another step, past a dire wolf crouched on the floor. This one swiveled its head to follow his stroll.
Does it know? Does it suspect?

Three more steps and he would be right next to the shattered window. He drew in another lungful of air and slowly exhaled. Crisp and cold, the always-static acrid tang of New York on his tongue. But happy? Not too much. He was nearly out of the zone of influence, which must have been the portal, because the dire wolf behind him was still within arm’s reach. If it was emitting the bliss, then King reasoned he would still be feeling the full effect at this end of the hall.

He took another step into the fresh air and heard movement behind him.

He turned to see that all five of the dire wolves in the corridor were now keenly staring at him, their ten bulbous eyes locked on target.

King stood stock still, and smiled wide. The biggest, goofiest court jester grin he could manage.

The dire wolves, three on the floor, one on the ceiling, and one on the wall all looked back at him. They each turned their heads in unison, facing their snouts at him. Their mouths opened wide. All King could see were teeth. Hundreds of pointy incisors, like sharpened crystals. The dire wolf farthest away roared. The others rushed along the walls, ceiling and floor.

He had just seconds to act or die.

FORTY

River Thames, London, England

BISHOP HELD TIGHTLY to the metal bar, helpless to stop the fragmented Ferris wheel from plummeting into the Thames, and certain he was about to die.

The wheel warped down to the muddy river. Saving the girls in the steel-and-glass cage was no longer possible. He held on with all he had as the wheel tipped out over the river. Four-hundred feet down, but the ride took only a few seconds.

At the last moment before his capsule hit the murky brown of the Thames, he considered leaping off the structure, to improve his chances of surviving the fall. But a split second of indecision was one second too many. He was out of time.

The capsule he stood on was the last part of the large wheel to reach the river. As the base of the wheel struck and sunk, his descent slowed some, but Bishop didn’t notice as the water rushed up toward him. A wave roared up, striking the capsule and slamming Bishop down against its roof. He coughed as his ribs and lungs compressed from the impact. His head spun, but he remained conscious, protected by the armor, which was living up to its reputation. Thick, brown river water coated Bishop, stealing his vision.

He dropped again, as the wave receded, and the wheel began to sink.

He looked through the capsule window; his hands still clenched around the metal bar he had used as a handhold during the descent. His grip tightened in anger. The three teen girls were dead. Their bodies had slammed against the steel and glass in the plunge. Murky tan water filled the shattered capsule. He could see two bodies floating and the third girl’s fractured head looked like a split-open watermelon left to wilt in the sun.

The very top of the capsule was still above the water level, but the rest had submerged. He turned, looking behind him at the crunched and mangled frame of the London Eye, which now resembled a toy construction kit hastily shoved into a container with bits sticking up in all the wrong ways. Bishop turned his attention to the bridge, searching for Knight. But the
Crescent
had retreated further along the river.
Where is he?

Then Bishop saw him through the murk coating his helmet’s visor. He quickly unfastened the catch buckle at the side of his throat and pulled the helmet off his recently shaved head. The cold of the air hit him and the rain spattered down on his face as he watched his friend being carried away by a dire wolf toward a portal.

He nearly dove into the river with the plan to swim to the Embankment, but he wouldn’t have time and his armor would drag him down into the depths of the river.

“Shit, shit, shit!” He reached to his earpiece to call the pilot back to him. But it was too late. Knight was stabbing the back of the white thing’s neck over and over, but then they were in the portal.

And suddenly it, too, was gone, leaving a tremendous hole in the side of Portcullis Building’s lower corner. Missing the struc-tural support the corner of the building provided, the rest crumbled in a heap of stone, sending a plume of dust up into the rain. The billowing cloud looked like a miniature nuclear detonation.

“Black One, this is Bishop. I’m in the river, north of the bridge. Come get me before I drown.” Bishop spat into the water. The remains of the Ferris wheel were still sinking slightly as water filled the capsule with the dead girls. Bishop smashed the helmet onto the glass of the capsule, his normal calm demeanor gone, along with his friend and half of London. The impact lined the glass, but the helmet bounced away into the brown swirling water and sank.

“On my way. The door or the rope?” The hovering ship banked sharply and raced back over the bridge and above Bishop’s head before slowly beginning to lower.

“Rope will do.” Bishop said.

The black nylon rope dangling from the still open door of the craft came within his reach. Bishop didn’t bother with the belay device—he just wrapped the rope around his arm a few times and shouted, “Go!”

“Where to Bishop?” Came the reply from the co-pilot, Black Two.

“To the next nearest portal. I’m going after him.” Bishop grunted as the
Crescent’s
engines blasted, increasing altitude until he was nearly as high as he had been on top of the Eye. The plane accelerated, swinging him on the rope, banking away from the river and over the top of Big Ben.

“But the device the MOD is bringing…” Black Two’s voice was hesitant, but he was right. The mission was to get the nuke inside the portal.

“If those lame dicks ever get here, tell them to throw the thing in after me.”

Bishop could see the next portal on the edge of the duck pond in St. James’s Park up ahead, filling the green clearing set aside in the middle of the gray city. He took a deep breath of the rainy air and made up his mind.

“Lower. Then do a flyover.”

“Roger,” came Black One’s reply.

The
Crescent
dipped a bit and the rope swung Bishop directly at the globe of crackling and spitting yellow fire. As the rain pelted it, the portal spit miniature lightning bolts, making this one look like it had electric hair. Bishop could smell the singed air as he got close. The rope swung right through the curvature of the wall of bright light, taking Bishop’s body with it.

A second later, as the
Crescent
sped past the globe, the rope swung out the other side of the sphere of light.

Bishop wasn’t on it.

FORTY-ONE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

QUEEN TENSED IN the dark. As the door rattled from the other side, she prepared to lunge.

The door swung open easily and a woman in a lab coat with short spiky blonde hair stepped into the room, without any hint of caution. The woman simply stood in the darkened room as if she couldn’t remember why she had come in. Light streamed in from the outside with a pulsing electrical quality that made Queen certain that it came from something large, like a spotlight.

She had been in the room for what felt like hours. She was wedged between two walls of the room, in the corner up by the ceiling. Her feet were braced in the open air vent and her hands rested on the frame over the door. Between her hands, like a garrote, she clutched the wire from the lightbulb she had pulled down. The cord’s coarse black insulating rubber dug into her fingers. She was ready to kill, but she stayed her attack, even in the awkward position. The woman hadn’t noticed her, and she didn’t display any alarm at finding the light out or at finding the room empty.

She just stood there, looking into the empty space.

Then the woman casually turned and walked out of the doorway. The door began to swing shut after her, but Queen quickly allowed one end of her weapon to unravel from the hand that had been braced on the doorframe, balancing herself on one arm, over the door closer. Once the thick insulation was in the crack of the door, she let the door swing nearly shut, where the wire stopped it from closing entirely. She dropped to the floor, landing in a silent crouch.

She paused, straining to hear anything from outside the door, but heard nothing. She stood and cautiously peered around the door, and out the crack. The woman walked away along the high metal catwalk near the roof of the huge room where Queen had come in with Rook and Asya. But that had been hours ago. Only one of the overhead Klieg lights lit the giant room, leaving the huge space shadowed and dim. Whatever brightness had been making the gigantic space crackle before was gone now. As Queen watched, the woman in the lab coat continued along the metal of the catwalk, her footsteps clanging in the silence as she went. Her posture was weird. The woman looked like she didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. When she reached the top of the metal stairs leading down to the floor of the room and the intricate metal finger-like shape that filled it, she just stopped.