* * *
It was precisely 20 digits to midnight when his cell rang.
He sat up immediately, having been lying awake, and reached over to the bedside table. His eyes strained when the screen lit up the blanks of his eyes with the promised dispatch from the martial court (he recognised the format). He skimmed through the message until he reached the very end:
No. 1,
8 Block,
45th Street,
Nozick District
He read and reread the address. The suspicion bubbled up again when he recalled that last malignant smile on Eastman’s face. Something was not right. He knew it.
The cell screen went blank in his hands. He got up, tucked the blade into the beltline, put on his coat, raised the collar and walked out the door.
The maglev stopped at Nozick 5th Station. The cold front and the smell of rainfall blustered through the tunnel path as he entered the streets of the lower city. The rain showered cold and bitter with the brink of winter, dripping off the overpass, layering the path with a thick mist of shattered raindrops under the streetlights. Above was a moonless, starless sky.
His solitary footsteps echoed through the empty street amidst the pounding rain as he walked: head down, cold, drenched locks of hair hanging over eyes shot with blood, coattails side-swept in the drafts blowing down the side alleys. For an instant, he perceived the flanking buildings as war-torn ruins in the flashes of lightning, and he was a lone ghost drifting among the dead.
After a long, straight walk, he stopped at a crossroads. A gleam through the falling rain caught his eye. The sign on the corner of the crossroad read “5th Street.”
He turned at the sign and continued to walk down the adjoining street, narrowed by the tall, dark fronts of decrepit blocks on either flank. The water began to gush back up from the gutters through the grates in sewage streams fouling the air. About a hundred yards on, he stopped again, and remained standing in the middle of the street.
He lifted his head over his right shoulder and across the road where – slotted between two high blocks like a doorstop – stood a terraced low-rise about 10 stories lightless windows and a façade streaked with the black murk of aerial pollution.
A bolt of lightning split the dark sky from east to west and the white flash lit up the stained tablet by the black doors of the front entrance.
Thunder cracked an instant after the lightning. For a long while, he was rooted to the ground, glowering at the ill-omened façade and when the rain began to drum down with fresh vigor, he sauntered across the street and up to the doors. The heavy, malfunctioning doors were separated by a small gap, into which he slipped both hands. He pried the doors with all his force until they gave and opened into a pitch black corridor. Another bolt of lightning flashed just as the doors parted and, in the break of light, a door appeared at the end.
His first step into the dark was marked by thunder and he sidled through leaving a trail of water in his path. The septic air was supplanted with the smell of neglect which became stronger and stronger as he came up to the door, whereupon another flash of lightning bore a number.
1
He stood before the door a solemn minute before raising a closed, two-knuckled hand. He knocked three times and each knock sent a churn through the swelling cauldron of dread in his gut.
He waited for the sounds of footsteps on the other side. Nothing came.
Then, without warning, the locks clicked. The door opened, and a jolt like the instant before death shot through him when a phantom figure appeared through the frail light in the doorway.
A head, level with his, stood upon a form draped in shadows and eyes like the blanks of quasars swallowed him into their gaze. The figure was an aged man, with an old, deathly grey visage, fraught with the lines of eons, though his features were strong. His hair was thick, fraying tresses of silver, and a black garb shrouded his frame from neck to toe.
The grey figure stood, silent and austere.
He had no idea who this strange figure was, but there was an uncanny sense that he should have known. He waited, expecting him to speak first, which he didn’t. The man simply stood in the doorway, not a shadow of surprise or fear expressed in him, nor a word spoken.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I have come to the wrong place.”
Just as he made to turn, the figure in black spoke.
“You are in the right place.” A roll of thunder followed his words.
He pulled open the door, turned and walked away.
Saul lingered alone before the threshold awhile before reasoning away his caution. With a due sense of impending oblivion, he crossed over the brink of the entrance, coming into a narrow passage only slightly less dark than the outside.
The air suddenly warmed and was pervaded with a strange scent vaguely like the smell of a low-caste bordello. A staircase ascended to an upper floor, occupying most of the space in the passage. He noticed his shadow swaying against the barren walls, and when he looked down the passage he saw the place was lit entirely by little flaming wicks sticking out of homespun waxen blocks of varying size and shape.
A draft drew the door shut, snuffing out the two candles nearest the entrance. The cassocked figure stood just within the reaches of the light. His head was bowed and the shadows shimmered over the strong lines of his feature. His hands hung idle at his sides, concealed behind the sleeves of his robe.
“You may leave your coat at the door.”
“Where is she?” Saul demanded, as though suddenly woken from a trance.
The figure in black was slow in his response.
“The child is in her room … It is late. She is sleeping. It’s best not to wake her.”
“I want to see her.”
The greying man raised his head, and the dark, dark eyes came into the light. “You will,” he assured with a bow. “First, we must talk.”
Saul glowered back. Even though it was yet too early to tell whether this stranger was to be trusted, he felt a peculiar reluctance to refuse. A puddle of water had formed beneath his feet and he removed the soaking coat and left it at the foot of the stairs in a bundle.
“This way.” The figure in black turned and drifted down the dark corridor. A pale, vascular hand reached out from the sleeve, seizing upon one of the candles.
He watched the spectral being disappear through an open doorway before following down the candlelit passage, through an open door and into small room. A solitary flame hovered over a low table set in the middle. The candlelight gilded two chairs set on either side. Strange ornaments the likes of which he had never seen hung upon decayed walls. As soon as he walked in, the door behind him slid shut with a sharp click.
“Sit,” bid the figure in black, walking past him from behind and settling into the seat on the right.
Saul delayed momentarily before coming forward and lowering into the chair opposite.
For a long time the dead silence was disturbed only by the faint and intermittent resonances of thunder from the outside. He looked up at the figure in black. Two flames danced in the blacks of his eyes, and the austere silence endured a long while before he finally spoke.
“Naomi has said a lot about you.” His tenor was something between a murmur and a whisper and his lips barely moved when he spoke. “It was a while before she could bring herself to speak. She was lost and terrified in the beginning. She would not eat. She would not sleep. She would not leave her room. I would hear her cry through day and night…”
“Who are you?” Saul interrupted suddenly.
The unknown man fell silent and his eyes shut. The wasted head tilted all the way back with a deep breath and the veins and sinews of his neck swelled. “A name would not answer your question, even if I had one.”
“If the Commission knows you, you must have a name.”
“Names are repositories of the past; they mean nothing in this place.”
There was a disturbing sapience about the man’s demeanour.
&nbs
p; “What are you, then?”
“A more answerable question.” The figure in black nodded and lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I suppose it would depend on whom you asked and, since you are asking me … ‘hermit’ is probably as good a description as any.”
“Hermit,” Saul repeated. “What does that mean?”
“A voice,” the hermit answered succinctly. “A lone voice, weeping in the wilderness. Not too different from you.”
“Me?”
“Yes … You.
“What do you know about me?”
“Oh, I know all about you, Saul Vartanian.”
The flames in the hermit’s eyes flashed. His pale hand rose, and when the sleeve drew back from over his arm, the candlelight shone over the distinct lines of the faded signets. Their colour was a stonewashed blood-red.
“You might say I’ve known you your whole life.”
He watched the raised hand grip the collar of the cassock and pull it down to reveal the faded three-horned, three-headed beast of the martial seal, just over the collarbone. On closer look, he saw the seal was not faded by age, but by a single scar.
C. 5: Day 692