“Fatal? What are you talking about?” I ask, but he doesn’t respond. “Hey!”
The elevator lurches and Peter’s knees buckle. The huge man rolls off the wall, mouth moving without making sound. I try to catch him under the armpits, but his body is too heavy. All I can do is lower him to the floor.
Kneeling beside him, I push my ear against his chest. I hear sounds coming from inside. He’s still alive.
“Peter, tell me where we’re going.”
“Down,” he murmurs.
“What is this place?” I ask. “What do I do?”
He lies still, curled up like a child on the floor of the elevator. His fingers are twitching and he breathes, but otherwise he doesn’t move.
“Great,” I say to myself.
Peter’s wallet is bulging from an inside pocket. Reaching into his jacket, I fish it out. Flipping it open, I see without much surprise that he’s got a CIA badge and identification. His name is listed as Peter Alexeyevich, eyes brown, hair brown. The rest of the wallet is empty except for a wad of hundred dollar bills and a black credit card made of metal.
“Who are you?” I ask the unresponsive man.
My knees sag as the elevator slows. Shoving the wallet back into his pocket, I pat Peter’s body down for weapons.
A long dagger is sheathed over his thigh.
I tug the blade free. Holding the antique knife, I brace myself against the wall as the elevator doors part to reveal a foreboding, unlit concrete hallway.
Breathing hard, I push the silver elevator buttons with my free hand. Nothing happens. Hesitant, I step out into the maintenance corridor, knife up. Behind me, Peter lies still under the fluorescent glare of the elevator light.
“Hello?” I call. “Is anybody here?”
I take a step forward, flinching as overhead lights snap on automatically, one at a time down the long hallway. The bulbs hum over spotless concrete.
“Peter,” I whisper. “We’re here. Where’s your friend?”
He doesn’t respond.
A metal door clangs open up ahead. The shadow of a person hits the wall. I call to it, heavy knife wavering in my hands.
“Hey!”
No response, save for a strange clicking sound.
A head pokes around the doorway and turns toward me—a head with no face. I clench my teeth as the rest of a human-shaped machine steps into the hallway, thin limbed and gangly. Made of smooth white plastic, the thing stands perfectly still in the middle of the hall, silent and expressionless.
“Hello?” I call to it. “Batuo?”
The machine animates, taking slow, deliberate steps toward me. It seems to be more appliance than man, with no hair or skin. The only details that stand out are contours where the sculpted casing fits together, lines that curl over the sterile whiteness of its arms, chest, and thighs. That, and an empty face like a hockey mask.
“Shit,” I mutter, stepping back. The quiet sigh of its footsteps grows louder as the robot advances, and I can feel each impact vibrating the concrete floor. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I back all the way to the elevator mouth. The machine keeps coming forward, pincered hands widening. One slow step at a time.
Cornered, I bare my teeth and raise the knife.
“Fuck off, robot,” I say, my voice as unsteady as my hands.
As it nears, I lunge with the knife. The curved blade glances off a hard plastic shell. It doesn’t even leave a mark. Backing all the way into the elevator, I jab again and again—each time the knife point slips away. Finally, the machine shoves me aside and stands over Peter’s curled body.
Then it kneels beside him.
From the gentle curve of its spine and the way it balances without effort, I know this can’t be a human creation. The thing seems like it came from the future. With the little touches of smooth plastic, it seems almost alien.
Gently, it slides both hands under Peter’s body. The pincers that were so menacing a moment ago now resemble ice cream scoopers. And I notice it has padded forearms, built to cradle.
Standing up, the robot effortlessly lifts Peter’s limp body.
“Hey!” I shout at it. “What are you doing with him?”
Still holding the knife, I follow the robot, helpless, as it walks past me into the hallway. I watch from a safe distance as it opens the metal door and moves through. As the door swings closed, I take a deep breath and catch it with my foot.
I peek inside, utterly unprepared for what I see.
The narrow concrete hallway opens into a soaring medieval cathedral—stone ceilings disappearing into dusty heights, every inch veined with carved ridges and whorls that spread in fractal contours. The intricate patterns curve into arches that meet in rows of slender pillars rising from an expanse of dark, polished marble. The footprint of this room matches the skyscraper, forming a sort of negative image of the world above.
The robot seems small now, clacking over the broad, shining stone floor with Peter in its arms. A dozen dim shadows play at the feet of the machine, flickering in the light of a thousand candles and lamps that are lit in sconces and chandeliers and candelabras. The vague shapes of palm-size drones flit back and forth overhead, darting and hovering like hummingbirds—tending to the wicks of every candle.
What looks like a mausoleum wall dominates the far side of the room, its flat, smooth surface broken into a grid by hundreds of crypts. About a story up, an ornately carved wooden railing circles the entire room, clinging to the gracefully curving walls.
And now I notice the limbs. Rows of them hang on stainless steel hooks mounted below the wooden railing, some with skin and others just metallic bone. Several alcoves branch off from the central space. In one of them, I see a low, blocky table that reminds me of the aboveground tombs sometimes found in the alcoves of European cathedrals.
I startle as a voice echoes from somewhere high.
“You are a woman,” says the voice. It’s a man, a slight Indian accent with an amused tinge to his voice. The words float in the cavernous room. I can’t tell where the voice is coming from or even if it’s coming from a speaker or a person.
“That’s right,” I call, tensing my shoulders and scanning the room for movement. “What gave it away?”
“I mean, you are a human woman,” states the voice. “Certainly the first to visit this sanctuary. How interesting.”
“Where are you?”
“Well, I don’t know if I should answer that. You have a rather big knife.”
I shrug my shoulders, the blade flashing in candlelight.
“It’s not mine,” I say, examining the dim walls. I can’t seem to find the voice. It comes from everywhere and nowhere.
“Oh, I know. Peter is very fond of his khanjali. Has been for a long time. But even so, I am thinking it would be better to have my helper dispose of you. You are trespassing and, sorry to say, your presence is technically sacrilege.”
The robot lays Peter’s body on top of the blocklike table. Moving closer, I see it’s made of molded white plastic, an operating table enclosed by a large ring of metal at either end. Together, the two rings create an empty cylinder that encloses the table and Peter. On the far side of the table, a pedestal extends upward.
Standing up straight, the robot turns to face me and pauses.
“Peter said you two were friends,” I say.
“We were.”
The robot turns and takes a step toward me.
Backing up, I pull the cedalion from my pocket and lift it to my eye. I scan the room again, listening to the robot’s feet clacking on polished marble.
“I’m also a friend,” I call out. “I’m here for Peter.”
“Odd,” replies the voice. “Considering our shared friend is so much the worse for wear. What have you done to him?”
Through the brass ring, the room looks exactly the same so far.
“I shot him.”
A chuckle floats down from somewhere. “You are truthful, at least.”
/> Then I spot the man.
Walking toward the railing, I see he is sitting up high on the wooden catwalk that rings the entire room. Below him, the rows of disembodied arms, legs, and feet hang from the railing like macabre sausages. The man is round, older, his head shaved bald. Wearing a light brown monk’s robe, he sits with his bare legs dangling over the side, like a kid. On his feet are a pair of incongruous high-top basketball sneakers, bright white.
“Ah,” he says, smiling at me. “You have Peter’s toys.”
Click. Click. The robot’s feet scratch the floor as it moves closer.
The metal door behind me has locked. I have no place to run.
“You must be strong to be here,” says the man. “Now let us find out how strong.”
And he leaps off the catwalk.
26
INDIA, 1751
With the call of pravda beating in my ears, I seek battle in the name of my adopted sovereign, King George II—and I quickly find it. Established on the Thames, the frigates of John Company, otherwise known as the Honorable East India Company, are systematically deploying wave after wave of young soldiers to the shores of India.
Few questions are asked of new recruits.
A year later, I am perched in the winding parapets of a hastily fortified garrison, watching the sun ease itself over the low crooked buildings of a town in eastern India. The fragrant breeze washing up from the nearby river smells of lilac and mud. No water is visible from here, just heavy, vein-laced palm fronds that rustle gently. Frogs have begun their nightly mating songs, loud and hidden.
This meandering wall is all that defends a motley collection of damaged buildings and a hundred or so remaining British soldiers, nestled together in the heart of an occupied town called Arcot.
Wrapped in soiled white lengths of cotton, turbaned soldiers have swarmed the outer city, pikes and antique muskets bristling from their positions like river reeds. Among the broken faces of plaster buildings, shadow-drenched snipers lie waiting. I can feel their unseen eyes in the city, watching. The enemy army serves the Nawab of the Carnatic, Chanda Sahib. Draped over their weapons, the brown-skinned troopers seem unaffected by the heavy, alien heat that scours the land.
With the blade of my dagger, I carve another line into the stucco wall beside my position. One of our few cannons was placed here early on, promptly destroyed by enemy artillery, leaving only this crooked crow’s nest.
The visible light blushes to crimson, then fades away entirely with dusk, leaving the walls glowing gently in my eyes, radiating the accumulated heat of the day into a warm darkness. Each line in the stucco gleams like a pale scar. Fifty-one marks, representing the days John Company has been held under siege.
A proud man, the sahib threw his lot in with the French after some slight to his honor. As our captain took the men of the Bengal Army west from Bombay, the nawab laid siege to us here.
My khanjali was already old when I claimed it from Peter the Great’s armory nearly fifty years ago. Now the dagger has earned me a nickname. My English comrades simply call me the Russian. With no need for my whiskey or tobacco rations, I leveraged my share of supplies to earn allies among the troopers and quash any suspicions. Although nobody regards me with particular fondness, at least I am afforded respect.
Or I was, when my comrades were still living.
The last battle took place weeks ago, and since then our numbers have dwindled. Survivors have grown gaunt and wasted. Still wearing their once proud uniforms, the boys look like scarecrows stuffed into the clothes of other men. Although water is plentiful, there is precious little food.
The tedious expanse of time between fights has afforded me too much opportunity for contemplation. As streaks of starlight wink down at the parapets, my thoughts wander the contours of my Word.
Being here in service to my adopted monarch should have quelled the burning of pravda in my heart, but it has only cooled it to hateful ashes. Things were never so simple as they were in Favorini’s workshop. I fight and live with a thorn buried in my side, always staggering toward the illusion of true purpose.
The sun has gone, and it is time for my nightly foray. I sheathe my dagger and leave my flintlock musket leaning against the wall, my red coat draped over it. Donning a black riding cape over a loose cotton shirt, I kneel beside the edge of the parapet. The evening breeze is picking up, kissed with river scent, pushing the cape over my shoulder.
Under my gaze, the dark city animates, alive with the residual heat of the day, simmering camp smoke, and the furtive movements of troops.
I slide over the edge of the wall and drop to the outer street, boots scraping the rubble. Palms slicing the air, I pump my arms and dash across the starlit gravel of the no-man’s-land surrounding the garrison.
No rifle shots crack in the night.
Pressing my back against the remains of a building, I pause and listen. Out here, among the moon shadows of the outer city, my dagger has earned me a different nickname. Night after night, I am the thing that prowls the alleys. I take soldiers, one by one, each fatality adding to a mounting terror.
In hushed whispers, the nawab’s men call me the man-eater of the Carnatic.
The enemy sepoys—Indian soldiers allied with the French—have begun to sleep closer to their campfires and in larger groups. Their European commanders have claimed the houses, barricading their doors against the night, deaf to the occasional panicked screams of their native allies. The legend of the man-eater has grown quickly and taken a firm hold in the minds of the locals—in their whispered tales the man-eater is an evil ghost, as tall as an ashoka tree, who transforms into a prowling tiger every night to savage the unwary.
The wounds inflicted by my dagger are a near-enough approximation of tiger bites. And with the mind of a man, I can fan the flames of horror. Creeping beside an abandoned building, I pause when I smell smoke from a nearby campfire. Quiet murmurs and the soldiers’ perfume permeates the newborn evening.
This night will yield many lives to me, and in the gray morning I will place armfuls of food in a place where my besieged companions will find it—perhaps the only sustenance that keeps our hundred souls alive.
Blade drawn, I stalk toward the sounds and smells.
Hours swim past in the murky night, until the chilly scent of dew stings my nostrils and I notice the first tinge of silver dawn. On my way back, toting a bread-stuffed satchel, I notice the spy. Though I catch only a flash of a robe as he slips away, I charge.
Rounding the corner, I see nothing.
“Hello?” I call. “Reveal yourself.”
All is silent.
Over the distant murmur of the river, an inhuman wail rises. It comes from near the main city road that leads to the front gates of my garrison. It is a low, throbbing bellow that grows into an angry trumpet, punctuated by the smaller shouts of men, like the sporadic chirping of disturbed birds.
Leaving the empty alley behind, I leap up the side of a crooked building and slither through a wall shattered by cannon fire, crawling on my belly over singed plaster and dirt until I reach a broken window.
Peering out, I see a great mass of turbaned men carrying long wooden pikes, clearly cut from the forest on the fringes of town. The smell of fresh-cut wood mingles in the air alongside the rich, ripe smell of dung. Between clusters of wide-eyed men, I make out shifting gray shapes, beasts with great flapping ears and domed foreheads that slope over small, intelligent eyes.
War elephants, being fitted with iron masks.
I keep the glow of sunrise at my back, sprinting through the city toward my crevice in the wall. The armored elephants scream distantly as the men drive their pikes into their flanks to spur them on. Corralled onto the main road, the beasts are lumbering toward the garrison and my unaware allies.
Today, the nawab has decided to stop the depredations of the man-eater. The cost of this blockade has risen too high. Today, he means to finally break the siege.
27
S
EATTLE, PRESENT
The bald man streaks through the air and lands nearly silently, his round body lost within a brown monk’s robe tied with a golden sash. He is reaching out and shaking my limp hand before I can react.
“Welcome,” he says.
I don’t let go right away, marveling at him.
“Batuo?” I ask. “I’m June.”
The monk looks me up and down, a sudden smile sending crow’s feet cascading across his temples. Besides wearing Nike high-tops, he has a pair of stylish and expensive-looking sunglasses hanging around his neck.
“My, my,” he says. “What has Peter gotten us into?”
Batuo brushes past, leading the way to the strange table where Peter lies on his back. As we near, the table begins to hum, snake-skin glimmers of electricity arcing from the two polished metal rings that loop around either end.
Peter’s eyes are closed as if he is sleeping.
Gently, Batuo brushes a lock of his friend’s hair away and presses a pudgy palm against his forehead. Peter doesn’t respond, although his chest rises and falls as it replicates the illusion of breathing.
“He fought another one of you. Another…avtomat,” I finish, saying the word reluctantly.
Batuo shoots me a concerned glance.
“That explains the knife wound,” Batuo says, tracing a finger along the faint line that crosses Peter’s mended cheek. “Did you do this repair?”
“We didn’t have much time,” I say.
“I’m surprised he allowed you to touch him.”
“It was an emergency.”
“Good work, for a human,” Batuo says. “Now, straighten his legs and let’s get started.”
I go around the table and pull Peter’s feet, wincing at the noises coming from inside his broken knee.
“Can you fix him?” I ask.
The monk smiles sadly, taking position at the waist-high pedestal that rises from the side of the operating table.
“Peter has gone into hibernation, so he must be hurt badly. We can repair his body. But I cannot speak for his soul.”
Batuo’s fingers press into the flat surface of the control panel.