Words scribbled themselves luminously on the floor just in front of him:
Turn right
A surveillance camera looked down the hallway. If he destroyed it, the feed would go blank— they'd know where he was. He ignored the camera and ran down the wooden-walled passage, through double metal doors into another building. Glanced at the floor...
Right again then left.
He hurried right, then left...and heard men shouting behind him. They'd almost found him again. He stopped at a closed door painted a dull green—with Scribbler's red handwriting luminous across it:
This is it.
As the words faded out, Bleak formed an energy bullet in his right hand, opened the door with his left, and stepped through—and time seemed to slow, for a moment, as he took in the crowded conference room.
He saw four men and a young boy. Three of the men, on Bleak's right, wore military uniforms— all three at a general's rank.
The man in the white shirt, with the slash-mark eyebrows and short beard, was standing next to the kid, on Bleak's left.
Gulcher,
Bleak thought, intensifying the energy bullet in his hand.
This is what Scribbler meant.
Gulcher and the boy were focused in concentration on the odd tableau in front of him in which one of the generals, a tall man with a craggy face, was
strangling
the shorter one, who was on his knees, face red and bloating, passively allowing it to happen.
And the third general was humming tunelessly to himself as he documented the whole thing with a small digital movie camera. His ID badge read FORSYTHE.
The strangling continued. The man's face was purpling, swelling. Bleak recognized the strangler —General Swanson. One of the Joint Chiefs—strangling another general. Apparently for the amusement of Forsythe—whom Bleak knew, by reputation, as the head of the CCA.
Forsythe was just lowering the camera, turning to look at Bleak. Who tried to decide what to do with the energy bullet beginning to burn his hand.
“Ain't this funny,” the chubby kid said, to himself, staring at the two men, the strangler and the strangled. The boy's T-shirt, Bleak noticed, read BRAINSUCKER. The boy's hands were clenching, though there was nothing in them, as if he were doing the strangling himself.
The kid was controlling the strangler, Bleak guessed. Gulcher was controlling the strangled man.
Bleak threw the energy bullet instinctively—it exploded with a strobelike flash in the air just in front of the boy and Gulcher. Both of them threw their hands up to protect their eyes, concentration broken.
General Swanson gave out a cry of relief and outrage, jerking his hands away from the other man. Wasn't the kneeling man General Erlich? From the Joint Chiefs? Erlich collapsed onto the floor, wheezing, clutching at his neck.
“Whatever's going on here,” Bleak said, “it can't be good. Let's give it a rest, what do you say .”
He began to form another energy bullet in the hand he held against his right side.
Forsythe turned, smiling coldly, to Bleak. “I suppose we have enough on video, after all. I can erase the last few seconds. Drake?” He set the camera on the conference table.
And someone stepped out to press the muzzle of a pistol to the left side of Bleak's neck.
Bleak realized that he'd unconsciously sensed the man all along, hiding behind the door—but the perverse tableau had held him fascinated. He'd become careless.
“Bleak!” the man said gleefully. “Remember me? Zweig? From Kabul? It's been a while! Where you been keepin' yourself?”
“Zweig. Yeah. I remember. Long time,” Bleak said, intensifying the energy bullet in his right hand.
“Zweig,” Forsythe said. “He's playing with fire again.”
“You dissolve that little glow-ball in your hand, there, Bleak,” Zweig said, “or I'll pull the trigger. We're talking safety off, finger already squeezin'. Just make that thing go away and don't even breathe deep.”
Bleak felt the metal chill of the gun muzzle jab harder into his neck. “Now, Bleak!”
Could he move aside, hit the gun with an energy bullet before Zweig shot him? Not a chance. He closed his fingers, extinguishing the ovoid of violet light, held up his hand to show it was empty.
General Swanson had taken off his coat, folded it and put it under Erlich's head. “What have you made me do! Oh, Jesus. He's in a bad way.”
“I...,” Erlich said hoarsely. “I'm still...not getting much air.”
“His windpipe is crushed. He needs help!” Swanson said.
“My eyes,” the boy said, blinking, whining. “That flash hurt my eyes.”
Gulcher, rubbing one eye, was squinting around at the others. Seeming to loathe everyone equally.
“This is not the room I expected you to go to, Bleak,” Forsythe was saying, looking critically at Gulcher and the boy. “Loraine Sarikosca is in another room entirely. But we can make this work. Zweig will escort you to her. Room Thirty-two.”
Swanson glowered up at Forsythe. “Recording this. You were recording it—going to claim it was surveillance footage? That I went mad and killed Swanson?”
“Oh, I wouldn't say so, no. The video is for our own research reference. What you call in-house documentation. No, we plan to simply dump your bodies somewhere interestin'.” Forsythe made a dismissive gesture with his hand—a kind of false modesty. “We'll have you destroy yourself after you're done with Erlich. We'll leave evidence suggesting you were driven to murder and suicide by the very forces that we must be free to stop—your death will be proof that CCA is needed! Ingenious? Yes. Forsythe has an ingenious mind. He's a marvelous resource.”
Bleak noted Forsythe speaking of himself in the third person. He'd suspected from the moment he'd first seen him that the general was under a dark influence; was controlled by an Outsider. He could feel the energy trail, in the Hidden, leading into the After; into the Outside...and into the Wilderness.
“And we will now conclude our business,” Forsythe said firmly. “If my proxies here have recovered. Gulcher? How are you feeling?” Gulcher just snorted and shook his head.
“I just want to point something out, gentlemen, if I might,” Bleak said mildly, while looking up at the overhead light. He focused the energy field in the room as he spoke. It was harder to funnel an energy bullet at a target by simply looking at it. But given a little more time. “Sean told me you need me. So if you shoot me through the neck, as Zweig proposes to do if I move, I don't think I'll be of much use to you. I think the gun is a bluff.”
“Try me!” Zweig growled. “I always despised you, Bleak, you smug son of a bitch! You came back when better men went down.”
“You didn't like my coming back,” Bleak interrupted, staring at the ceiling light, “because I was alive to tell people your intelligence was no good.”
Having a harder time focusing now. Zweig had stirred the anger, the old feelings. The day Isaac died.
The light, the light...the cocoon of darkness...
“Anyway,” Bleak went on, “I just wanted to establish that this might not be a time to do anything rash, Drake. Go for the good intel this once: ask Forsythe there.”
“General?” Zweig said, looking away from Bleak—just as darkness began to weave itself around” him. “Whatever he's good for—it's not worth it.”
Forsythe frowned. “Bleak? What are you...?”
Then the overhead light shattered, and the windowless room fell into darkness, with only a little illumination coming from the hall behind.
Bleak projected his image, formed of energy from the Hidden and twisted light, into the little swath of light falling on the opposite wall. He'd worked up the trick in Afghanistan and never used it till now.
The image was blurry, but Bleak was standing across the room from the door—while the Bleak that had been standing in the doorway seemed to vanish. Reflexively, Zweig swung the gun toward the image.
“No, you fool!” Forsythe shouted, as Bleak spun left and grabbed Zweig's wrist with his right hand, used his left hand and foot to pull him off-balance.
The agent's gun hand flailed and Bleak forced the pistol toward Zweig—as the gun went off.
A blue muzzle flash showed Zweig taking the shot from his own gun under the chin—and out through the top of his head.
“Billy! Gulcher!” Forsythe shouted. “Prove you're of some damn use!”
Bleak snatched the gun from the dying man's limp fingers, the reek of blood and shattered brains strong in his nostrils as he aimed the pistol toward Forsythe—who had taken a step toward Bleak.
Stymied by the gun, Forsythe froze in place—mostly a silhouette in the dim room, the right half of his face lit from the open door.
“Swanson,” Bleak said, “can you get General Erlich out of here?”
Even as he said it, as Swanson began helping the wheezing Erlich toward the door, Bleak knew he was under psychic assault.
Several things happened in a few seconds.
He was already feeling the strain of so much work with the Hidden, and he swayed, now, under the onslaught from Billy. It was like a hand made of icicles pushing against his chest, trying to stab its way inside. Bleak used the Hidden's energies to keep those gouging supernatural fingers back. But he was weakening—and he knew if that ethereal hand reached into him, it would take him over.
And that would be the end of him, in this world; the end of Loraine, and quite possibly the end of the world as anyone knew it. He had guessed what Sean was hinting at, in the pocket world.
And still the hand pushed, he felt it forcing its way through his defenses; he felt its subzero fingers clutching for his soul.
Bleak called out, inside himself,
Spirit of Light, guide me.
No answer.
Hey-Mike!
He felt something then—something subtle, but clear enough. A kind of wordless suggestion: if he increased his inner receptivity to the Hidden, help would come. He had to open himself to it, without opening himself to Billy's diabolic influence. He concentrated, dividing his attention, one part to keep back the boy's influence—keeping back, really, the thing that was using Billy—and the other part opening to help from the higher forces that charged the Hidden.
And something flooded into him.
Suddenly he felt as if he were a lightbulb, switching on. A flash of piercing blue-white light— emanating from Bleak himself...from his whole body.
Billy screamed and clawed at himself; Forsythe bellowed in rage. Gulcher had covered his eyes— sensed something of the sort coming.
The pressure, the probing, was gone. Forsythe was standing there, in the dark corner, breathing hard—a very visible target. And Bleak had a gun in his hands.
I could kill him right now,
he thought, feeling the gun heavy in his hand. He suspected that General Forsythe was the source of the worst rot in CCA. Was the locus of the threat.
But...Forsythe was unarmed. Bleak had never in his life shot an unarmed man.
And if he killed him—he'd be killing an innocent man. Because the threat wasn't
Forsythe
—it was what
controlled him.
Which was something that a bullet couldn't destroy.
There was no easy answer. Bleak shook his head and stepped back into the hallway, helping Erlich and Swanson through. Someone else came after them—Gulcher, hands raised as if surrendering. Bleak sensed no immediate threat from him, let him come out, then turned his attention to the door handle.
He slammed the door shut and pulsed energy from the Hidden, down through his arm, his hand, into the door handle—welding the lock closed. Locking Forsythe in with Billy Blunt.
“Nice trick,” Swanson muttered, turning to look warily at Gulcher. Erlich was leaning on Swanson, gasping raspily, his lips going blue, the scarlet mark of Swanson's fingers on his neck. Getting some air, but not enough.
Swanson turned to look at Bleak. “Now—who the hell are you?”
“Gabriel Bleak. Army Rangers, out of Kabul. No longer active duty.” Bleak saluted, though he was no longer in the army—and way out of uniform. It felt natural to salute the general; it felt good. He handed Swanson the pistol, butt first. “In case you need this, sir.”
“Bleak.” Swanson pocketed the pistol. “I've heard.” He looked at Bleak appraisingly. And nodded to himself.
Bleak decided he'd made the right move, giving Swanson the gun. “What about him?” Swanson asked, nodding at Gulcher.
Gulcher slowly lowered his hands. “We could make a deal. Let me go and I'll tell you all kinds of...” He hesitated, looking past them.
Bleak turned to see three black berets coming around the corner of the hallway, submachine guns at ready.
Bleak hesitated—then he heard someone running behind him, turned to see Gulcher running down the hallway, the other direction. Taking advantage of Swanson, Erlich, and Bleak blocking the hall between him and the sentries.
Gulcher paused at the turning in the hallway—grinning at Bleak. “You keep 'em busy, pal—I'm for the open road!”
Then he dodged around the corner.
“'Pal,' he says,” Bleak muttered, turning to face the three excited, uncertain soldiers.
Swanson stepped between Bleak and the black berets. “You there—stop pointing your guns at your commanding officer.”
The three men stopped, glanced at one another in confusion, lowering their weapons—two of them were the Hispanic-American sentries Bleak had avoided outside, newly rearmed; the third was the man who'd taken a shot at Bleak in the hall. A sergeant with a gaunt face, ears that stuck out. “Sir,” the sergeant said, “we're under the command of General Forsythe. I'm going to send one of my men after that guy who took off down the hall—he hasn't got freedom of the facility. We can't stand down without—”
“Sergeant!” Swanson barked. “Open your goddamned eyes. General Erlich is in a bad way—and that has priority. I outrank Forsythe and I've relieved him of command. You're all staying with me. We're going to get General Erlich to oxygen and a gurney. Now!”
“But that man there”—the sergeant nodded at Bleak—”he broke in here, sir—”
“That man just saved General Erlich's life,” Swanson snapped. “Unless you keep wasting time. Now call for medics!”