Ghosts of Koa, The First Book of Ezekiel (17 page)

In his dream, Caleb never made it to the room on time. He always got there right when the dark drops of crimson were already rolling across the marble floor, right as the body was hitting the ground face first. He struggled and reached out, to channel some sort of power,
something
protective and alchemic that would stop it, stop everything. But the familiar stirring in his gut was once again cut off from the rest of his body, like an engine without its spark plugs. The power was there, but he couldn't use it, and calling it forth only caused him physical pain, deep and wracking-- almost as deep as the sorrow that followed as he understood that he could never protect him...

Brrring!
The digital shriek of his cell phone cut through his REM, and Caleb slowly opened his eyes to the darkness, his mind still heavy with sleep.

Head still reeling, he rolled over to the bright green face of his alarm clock and squinted to get the blur out. These sons of bitches. Not even four in the morning and the goddamned phone was ringing. He felt around for it, and found it blaring and rattling behind the clock, practically throwing a tantrum.

"Huy
...?" He finally answered, not bothering to look at the number.

"Detective, this is Loka Torv, the police secretary. The Captain wants me to call in a squad. You're on the list. Demesne Seven has been bombed."

He shot up, his eyes widening. "
Nani
-- er, I mean, what?"

"Yeah."

"But why does he want me there? I'm not on field duty."

"I realize that, but the Captain put the request in personally. There's a debrief at 0530 sharp. Just get down here."

The phone clicked silent, and Caleb sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. A bombing. In a Protected Demesne. After he had finished organizing and refiling hundreds of dossiers in the past three days, he had been hoping that Palmer would reconsider his assignment... but he never imagined it'd be under these circumstances.
 

Be careful what you ask for right?
 

He looked at the clock again, wondering if he could catch some snooze time before the debrief. He had an hour before he needed to get moving, but thinking on it, he nixed the idea. He'd be too busy mulling over the attack. That and the dream... He put a hand on his abs, just below the ribcage, right where his powers had stalled. He winced. Still tender. Those bastards in the 52
^nd
really did a number on him.

Let's get to work, officer.

Resolved, he stood up sluggishly, grabbed a new pack of cigarettes off the nightstand, and headed for the shower.
 

It was going to be a long day.

Burke's fingers trembled as he tore out the innards of his top drawer and hurled them into the suitcase on the bed, not even bothering to fold them. Just hours ago, he had felt the floor move, felt the grains of plaster raining down on his head from the molding, and he wasn't going to stick around for what would come next. The bastards had breached the Seventh, with a hit on a popular Azure diner, and he knew it wouldn't be long before someone decided to leave a sweet farewell on his doorstep too. Sweat crawled down his temples as he moved.

Lay low in the 52
^nd
, just for a few days while I get my thoughts together.

He bit down, severing the thought in two, knowing that it was a lie even as it crossed his mind. Truth was, he was scared shitless. But that was okay. Being scared and valuing his own life was a perfectly normal human reaction, wasn't it? His departure didn't have to stop him from working on the new legislation for the Protecteds. And who could work in these conditions anyway? That this was a hostile work environment was an understatement, and it sure as hell wasn't what he'd signed up for. He shook his head, already knowing how the reporters would twist this. He could see the headlines now:

Councilman Micah Pencham Burke, Civic representative for the Protected Demesnes and Ambassador for the Alchemic Order, flees his home after terrorist attack on his own Demesne. Burke is currently unavailable for comment on this tragedy...
 

Whatever. Those left-wing journalist nut jobs could say whatever they wanted from behind their mahogany desks. They didn't know what it was like to live in sheer terror every day like he did. He was an
Azure
for Crissake, and he didn't have to be here. The Protecteds were lucky enough he'd stuck around this long at all. Rather than complain about him leaving, the civvies and the press
should
be helping him pack. Otherwise, they could shove it in and break it off for all he cared.

Flipping the luggage lid closed, Burke went downstairs to his garden, unable to resist looking at his tulips one last time. He stopped and stared at the red and white laced lips and their long stems. He'd started gardening out of a need to actually grow something, to see life flourish amidst the death and terror. He'd donated tons of vegetables, fruits, seeds,
 
and flowers to the Civilians during his years here. It had been one of his few positive contributions to the Protecteds while he'd served them. Now though, without him here, his Eden would surely shrivel and die-- and so would Demesne Seven.

The whisper of that simple truth bothered him, but he wasn't sure what else he could do. He'd tried his best, hadn't he? And there was a possibility that the Protecteds would see this breach through on their own. The Civic Order was its own entity anyway; its officials could fix this if they wanted to. But damned if he was going to get his ass blown off waiting for it to happen. It was time to go.
 

Burke turned to walk back in, also trying his best to avoid looking at the yellow rose bush at the far corner of his garden. Since his garden "accident", he hadn't gone near the bush, and its sharp tendrils had grown almost viciously over the spot where the dead infants had laid. The sunny rose petals had all fallen off their branches, shriveling into dead whimpers on the dry soil. He'd had no other incidents since then, though he had slept with his .45 under his pillow every night since.

Don't even know why. It was probably just a hallucination...
 

Or a bad dream. Or a trick of the heat. Or anything else he would have rather believed... but
 
when he had finally come back out of the house that day, the body bag
had
been gone without a trace. The more he'd convinced himself that he'd been stressed and sick that day, that he was just getting old and paranoid, the more he was able to make peace with the fact that it had never happened. His therapist had even said that the stress of his job could force him into having "walking illusions". War was stressful, after all, and so was his duty as a politician. Constantly under threat, constantly barraged with the sounds of bombs and terror. With impending death on the brain, Dr. Jacobs was surprised that Burke hadn't gone crazy sixteen years ago when this had all started.

But no matter what he'd been imagining in his garden, the Lakeside bombing--
that
was real. If he was losing his mind either way, he figured he'd just as well hallucinate on the powder-white beaches of the 52
^nd
Demesne, where he could fight his mental battles with yoga and mojitos. Yeah, that's what he needed. Once he was on his way, the tension would fade away, just like those babies in his dreams. His darling tulips would just be a small sacrifice for his peace of mind.

He still had to pick and pack his shoes. He walked back through large stucco kitchen, eyeing the gleaming copper pots on the wall above his stove. Rolling down his cuffs, he sauntered through, thinking more calmly about the things he would have to pack for the trip. He had his suits, swimming trunks, two pairs of custom shoes, his cufflinks, his ballroom tuxedo freshly tailored, cologne, and somewhere crumpled in the bottom of his suitcase were the testimonies, case files, and pending bills for Demesne Seven. He would bring the files just for good measure, though he doubted any of it would matter. Better to plan for problems he could actually solve, like sunburn and hangovers, than to fight city hall for impossible victories.

He walked past his kitchen island, past the plush stools. Then he stopped, his eyes widening. He had just passed something tall by the garbage can at his right, something that had never been there before. Something that shouldn't even
exist
...

He turned, his heart stopping as his eyes took in the impossible. Wooden roots seemed to have grown out of his tile, breaking right
through his Italian stucco floor to intertwine into a viney high chair... and in it, sat a small, figure, so dark that it looked like charcoal. Its swollen head slumped over a flaking, blackened chest--

"No," Burke's breath rushed out, and he shook his head, trying to ward off what he knew was just another hallucination. "No, it can't be."

The burned thing squirmed around in the chair, bringing movement back to the deadened limbs. Slowly, the creature's head rolled back, its gaping mouth disintegrating into a misshapen "O" of agony, the same milky, deadened eye opening wide, exposed by a melted, sticky lid.
 

"Mai...cah..."

Burke's throat tightened as the creature's mouth began to move, opening and shutting like that of a human fish.
 

"Mai-cah," it started again, its cycloptic gaze fixing on him. "Mai-cah you have forsaken me. You have forsaken your oath." The voice was human and older, but its tone was hushed, robotic even. Sexless. "You have be-trayed us," the corpse accused.

Burke's lips parted. He knew such strange things could and did happen so long as a skilled Alchemist was pulling the right strings. Still, for the first time in his life, Burke was sure he was about to shit his pants. The thing was grotesque, like something even nightmares couldn't countenance.

"Speak." The anger in the creature's voice was undeniable, and Burke had no doubt it would leap if he did not obey.

He swallowed, barely able to get the lump down. "I can't betray that to which I never swore an allegiance," he said shakily. "This was not my choice."

"It was not ours either." The rhythm in the creature's voice became smoother with every word. "It was not this child's choice. Nor was it that of the other innocents that have been consumed by this war."

He felt his face flush. "You are the one who opted for the betrayal of the Order!"

"You know that is a lie. You choose to believe lies so that you can continue to roll around in cushy Eden while the world dies around you. This is not the legacy that your House wanted to leave. You have become cowardly, Burke, and your cowardice has condemned this world to death."

He trembled as he watched the creature's eye become more conscious. The gaze was no longer clouded by sleepless death; now it was bright and alive. Aware. And it was staring at him with judgment. He broke his gaze with the disgusting thing, turning his sight to his fingers, which had locked themselves around the marble countertops of his kitchen island. His knuckles had gone white.

He relented. "What-- what do you want me to do?"

"Eventually, the Koan insurgency will force the Cabal's hand. They will try to repeal the Articles39, and all the protections that come with it. You will fight it. You will fight that, the zoning laws, and any other base attempts by the Alchemists to acquire Civilian territory and capital. You will advertise your position against the Gestapo policies of the Order and make clear your allegiance to justice. And you will do it all from Demesne Seven. You will stand by the people you swore to protect. You will put yourself at risk the same way your family did... the same way
mine
did."

Burke set his jaw and looked back up at the child defiantly. "And if I don't?"

The creature's wide mouth shut up tight in a smile. The highchair began to recede into the hole from whence it came, and the thing stared at Burke as it sank into the ground, its haunting grin never slacking. In the next minute, all traces of the child and its throne had disappeared, and Burke's floor tiles had rearranged themselves and re-cemented together seamlessly as though nothing had ever been there. Silence.

For what seemed like minutes on end, Burke waited, expecting something else to happen. But all that he could see was the sunshine peering in through his window. Somewhere in the distance, the birds of his eco-dome chirped pleasantly, digging for worms in the garden. He let himself breathe.

The "child" had said no more to him, but the threat was clear.
 

Burke ran his trembling fingers through his hair, preparing to make a case against the Alchemic Order.

Caleb got to roll call thirty minutes early. Chewing on a ham and tomato on kaiser, he took in the debrief room from the door. The lights were dimmed, and plastic chairs were scattered in broken lines in front of a large projection screen. Political maps of the three Protecteds, livened up by red, yellow, and black circles, were posted at random around the room. As he looked around, he realized he didn't know most of the officers in here.

Off to the side, a group of APs hovered around a tall, broad-shouldered man with eyes as dark as coals. The cops all looked worse-for-wear at best, most likely from the double shifts. The tall man in the middle, however, had not a wrinkle on him. His eyes were alert, their energy clear and yet muted beneath the seriousness of his gaze. He was talking to the officers with a tone of lofty authority... that is, until he looked up and saw Caleb at the door. Whatever he was saying remained suspended in the air as he bored through him with an unreadable gaze. Following the man's stare, the other APs in the group turned to Caleb, looking at him.

Here we go...

Caleb raised an eyebrow and took another bite of his sandwich. Sauntering up to the group, he wiped a crummy hand against his slacks, ready to make introductions.

"You must be Caleb." A bald dark-skinned man, nearly as wide as he was tall, broke off from the group, walked up to Caleb and shook his hand firmly. He was the only one of them who made a move to introduce himself. "Pleased to meet you, man. The name's Jake."