"Omari," the man said by way of introduction, voice pitched higher than Max expected for such a big man. "I've heard much about you. Your work in my properties has always been of value to me. Welcome."
"I never saw altars before," Max said.
"They come after a building has been. . . broken in. The Blood of Killers did this place for me. You boys been raising quite a bit of hell out there tonight." He pointed to a trunk next to the hole in the floor through which they had arrived. "Outside of showers, what you need is in there."
Lee joined Max at the trunk and pulled out medical supplies. "Ain't no beer in here," Lee said.
Mani knelt beside the boy and stared into its empty eyes. She reminded Max of a soldier separated from his platoon, lost in enemy territory, calling for help on a dead radio.
"You're late. There's business to be done," Omari said, closing down programs on the screens with deft taps on the keyboard and clicks of the rollerball. "And you don't need any damn beer."
"Is it here?" Lee asked, standing, peering into corners and staring at piles, searching for something apparently missing from the cornucopia of goods.
For a moment, Max thought he was still talking about the beer.
In the next room, on the edge of the glow of red bulbs, electronic equipment boxed in the original manufacturers' cartons was stacked in piles according to type, many marked for government use only. Weapon crates, some with Russian and Chinese markings, were stored farther away on the floor, nearly hidden behind rubble. Plastic bags with designer clothing name tags hung from rusty heating pipes. Cases of military M.R.E.s, Hooah! bars, and ERGO drink provided the foundation for a table set with bottles of wine, champagne, liquor and water, caviar tins and baskets filled with exotic cheeses, fresh fruit, pâté, crackers and bread sticks, and a variety of canned and jarred delicacies. Microwavable dishes lay atop the microwave along with the cappuccino maker on the shelf above the small refrigerator.
Omari leaned back in the swivel chair, watching the surrounding screens power down. "Your people dropped it off before the fireworks began. They explained the preset timer to control effect-duration after you turn it on, the tracking mechanisms installed in the carrier box, as well as the instrumentation available to track what's inside. I was told what would happen to me and about a square mile of the city if I tried to break the security seals, and what would happen to the greater consensual reality if I actually let out what the seals are guarding. They also pointed out who my sons and daughters in Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Wisconsin would be sold to and what would happen afterward if I didn't follow the established protocol precisely. Then they threatened my life if it wasn't here when they returned.
"And they took some of my inventory. Without paying for it."
Lee nodded, eyebrows raised in sympathy. "They were in a hurry; things are pretty crazy in the city right now. Sounds like they were short of equipment, too. You got off lucky. Most times, they give newbies like you demonstrations. Welcome to the club."
Omari stood, flicking power switches to shut off the computer web. "I thought you backed me with your employers. I thought you said, after years of loyal service hiding their shit, they'd trust me with their precious device."
"Don't take it personal. They check everybody out, Omari. They know people are going to exploit the thing, they just want to make sure it's done in ways that don't throw everything out of control. And they don't want you getting too big for yourself, either."
Omari cocked his head at Max. "They check him out?"
Max let the silence drag on until only Omari remained staring at him. "They only do background checks on what belongs to them," he said at last.
Omari snorted, turned away. Fists on hips, he surveyed his domain and shook his head. "The price for the privilege of belonging."
"Think of what you can charge those mumbo jumbo priests you're renting chapel space to downstairs," Lee said. "Think of all the networks and outfits you're plugged into now, the cost savings on your payoffs and purchasing, the profit margins on your distribution."
Omari grunted. "Sometimes it's hard to see what kind of garden will grow from a field of fertilizer."
Max laid out gauze, bandages, scissors, tape, antibiotic salves, medical needles, and thread on a blanket, all drawn from the trunk. Mani joined him, took over setting up. Max glanced at the dead boy. He was still firmly secured, squirming weakly. Mani got several liter bottles of springwater from the gourmet spread, then took the scissors and cut off the rest of Max's clothes, stripping him naked.
"Oh shit," Lee said, a wince turning into an expression of disgust as he looked away from Max. "Show me what they dropped off, and then take me to your bathroom, Omari? If I stay here any longer, I really don't think I'm going to be able to control myself."
"I suppose you'll all be needing a change of clothes," Oman said, heading for a section of interior wall partially obscured by shelving.
"And transportation for me," Lee said, following. "I've got things to do tonight."
"Additional services will cost you." He rummaged through cardboard boxes, tossed out packages of underwear and socks, then gave each of them a hard stare before returning to another set of boxes and pulling out jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers, all with designer marks. Mani gathered their pile of clothes and put them aside, while Lee ignored the pile at his feet to watch Omari draw a thick aluminum case from under a floorboard.
Breaking into a broad smile, Lee said, "Hey, you're management level now. No more overtime. Open it up."
Oman shook his head, an expression of pain battling with regret on his face, and brought the case into the web of computers, clearing away a pile of keyboards and a cable switcher to lay down the case.
Mani began washing Max's wounds, drawing his attention away from the men. She hovered over him like a bee over a rosebush, settling occasionally to draw blood as if it were pollen, a precious substance from which she could sustain herself. And like a bee, her ministrations stung. The Beast grumbled. Mani's shadow settled over his mind, encouraging him to let her heal him with pain, for her. He saw the controlling path she was taking as she tested the depth and strength of her influence over him.
He wanted to refresh the memories she had sampled from him, show her how his victims had fought in their desperate final moments. He wanted to tell her not all the scars he wore were earned at his work. The twins' mildest show of affection toward him hurt more.
The Beast's grumbling grew louder, provoked by Mani's stitching of one of his deeper wounds. Excited by her scent, the feel of her warm breath and fingers on his skin, the appetite emanating from her like midday heat off white sand, he became hard. She was letting herself go with him, releasing all that was inside along the bond they shared. "The beisac spirits' hunger infected you," Max said.
"I know," she answered, tying him off. She moved across his back, treating a bite on his shoulder, coming so close he thought she wanted to match the wound tooth for tooth. The Beast moved through him, rising to her need, eager to pounce. Mani's shadow answered the challenge, matched the Beast in threat and atrocity, promised more. The two spirits within them twined in a destructive embrace, eager for battle. Blood. Gratification.
Max wondered who, or what, was really in control of either of them. "Can you be satisfied?"
"No."
He let out air slowly as she closed another bleeding cut. "I understand." He rode the rising tide of pain on the Beast's back, trusting its appetite would take him where they had to go, as it always did. But Mani's beisac hunger rode the Beast with him, and suddenly he was no longer certain where they were all going.
He was not supposed to kill her. He could not kill her. He had to control himself, deliver her to his employers. Keep her safe.
A cut pinched shut under an astringent. Her fingers stung like wasps along the ribs under his arms.
Consume her.
He focused on Mani's spirit hunger, dissecting the quality of its ancient rage, trying to analyze whether its driving force was vengeance, a demand for compensation, or simply the poison expelled from some primal wound. When he found himself drifting to what he would do to her in answer to her rough touch, Max tuned in to Omari and Lee huddled over the open aluminum case.
"—fucking zombies thick as flies, a million cops coming down on us, our mission locked up in the trunk, and this asshole comes after
me
. Man, I could've shit bricks. So, is this the button that—"
Omari smacked away Lee's hand hovering over the case. "I have no intention of being caught in the Nowhere House field and losing memory. There, are you happy now? Seen one of the great achievements of Western science?"
"You're just jealous."
"Hardly. Like the discoverers of this anomaly, you miss the obvious."
"Kiss my ass. I know this is some kind of quantum device they locked down because they couldn't control it, and it does something with collapsing probabilities that creates a short-range field that drops everything inside it outphase with that. . . that perceived reality, and it messes with your head, but—"
"Please, go back to your American comic books. Everything is so vaguely scientific in your world."
"Yeah, and in your world, what is this, a down-on-his-luck god?"
Omari leaned into Lee and spoke quietly, so that Max had to strain to hear his words. "What this is is a stone, no bigger than your fingernail, that is part of the compressed remains of a sentient universe that leaked into this one. Or was drawn into it. The old Arabic scholars disagree. As they do over the cause of the breach between our existence and this entity's: Allah's will, the work of djinn and demons, a transgression by Mankind so great it tore the fabric of space and time."
"Oh, that must have been the day you were born, huh, Omari?"
"Your wit is exceeded only by your originality. No, my comrade, this treasure has been in the world for many eons, possibly since shortly after Creation. For it is believed by some that Allah created many worlds, indeed, many universes, and in each planted the seeds of life that took shape in ways different from one another, according to Allah's will. In one such place, formed one nanosecond before our own existence, the universal laws allowed Creation's foam to spread evenly through the void, rather than cluster in galaxies and stars. The life that came to be was not confined to a single ball of rock, but glistened in the forever of that universe, encompassing all of its reality."
"So this
is
a god—"
"It is Allah's will, as are we all. But the breach occurred, and this wretched sentience was introduced to space and, most traumatically, time. It beheld our universe, perceived probabilities, the constant of Allah's ever-changing glory; it tried to hold on to a single instant, and was driven mad by the splitting of moments and possibilities, past and future, and the infinite multiplicity of vows. Whether through the intent of escaping the trap of endless transformation, or an accident that is merely the will of Allah made manifest, this universe slipped through the breach and entered our time and our space. The husk of its matter was shredded in the rough transition, its invisible mass distributed among endless probabilities. The brittle essence of this existence, the quantum consciousness of another reality's single collapsed probability wave—its soul, if you will—did not go to Paradise, but instead settled like a volcano's fine ash to infect our universe with anomalies caused by its latent laws of physics. And so, even on this brightest of jewels in all of Allah's firmament, there exists a few fragments of fallen, mad, alien intelligence locked within the crystallized, even traumatized, ether of another reality. This case holds one such fragment. Others are scattered in the world's sacred places, where aboriginal minds first communed with spirits through such a medium. A trove lies at the bottom of the ocean, in your Bermuda triangle, stolen by the Spanish from Aztec temples devoted to experimenting with time and space, but lost in a storm during transport back to Europe. Your scientists claimed to have discovered this substance, though it has been known and explored secretly throughout humanity's history. More powerful than shamanistic hallucinogens, its effects on human perception and memory make its study problematic. All your scientists have managed to draw out from its nature is the ability to hide without detection. Very brave. Stunning ingenuity. I suppose, after the Siberian accidents, and all the men and equipment the Russians lost trying to gather its own hoard of material from the bottom of the ocean and from deposits on the Moon and Mars, your Western leaders decided to pursue a safer path through the mysteries of this matter's existence."
Lee's fingers tapped a labored, funeral rhythm on the aluminum case. "So. Do you actually believe even one word of this crap you're laying on me?"
"There are times when the will of Allah can only be approached through the gullibility of Mankind."
"You're so full of shit, you make me smell good. You know, I think there are parts of the world where you can get killed for talking that kind of shit."
"And you are the one who comes here talking of zombies, dragging a witch, an assassin, and a bound, twitching dead boy with no eyes or heart."
Max roused himself from the swelling and subsiding rhythm of pleasure and pain riding the currents caused by Mani's fingers: "You sound like two old men."