Broken Angels Page 6

  Zel bristled at the language. Normally Robert would have paused to apologize, but he was on a roll.

  “That’s Darryl’s thinking,” Robert said, “and he’s not a stupid guy. But he read this dumb book when he was in the hospital recovering from his most severe seizure, recovering from the brand new idea that he had a bizarre new virus, an STD. He read those poetic words, thought about the world around us, saw through the metaphors, and he put two and two together, concluding Vastion was on to something. Love really is a false god, the ruler of this crappy world. Peace is what we all should be striving for. Reading that damn book over and over, Darryl came to the conclusion that, as penance for the acts that caused him to get the Virus in the first place, in order to gain some type of redemption, he’d devote as much time as possible to acts of charity, steering people away from love, convincing them to accept peace.”

  There was a period of silence before Zel broke it by laughing. “Well, I guess everybody needs a hobby!”

  Robert only stared at him, his expression unchanging.

  Zel cleared his throat. “Okay, seriously, I see your point. Darryl is allowing his charms and good looks to attract women—”

  “And men.”

  “Okay, fine, both, and he uses his, uh, talents to convince them not to bother with trying to find love. Don’t even think about it. The pursuit of love is the wrong way to go.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Robert wanted to hit the table. “Look, ignore the fact this book he swears by has a flat-out ridiculous premise, ignore the fact this book he’s basing his entire life on is overwritten and terribly written, ignore the fact the philosophy is just bizarre and stupid, and—for the moment—just ignore the fact it’s interfering with the work we do for the Institution. People who are in our condition, who can do the things we can do, have a responsibility to either help humankind or stay out of the way. We do not have the right to screw with other people’s minds.”

  “What’re you saying?” Zel asked.

  “I’m saying that he’s not just reading them poetry or whispering sweet-nothings in their ears. Darryl’s using his talents, his real talents, to hypnotize these women, these men—anything he can attract—to come around to his way of thinking. From manipulating light—standing eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose—it’s not a far cry to manipulate another’s thoughts too. Maybe even permanently.”

  “Aggressive hypnotism?” Zel finally looked concerned. “Is that what he’s doing?”

  “I’m pretty confident.”

  Robert had a suspicion the act Darryl was performing was closer to an actual lobotomy than mere hypnotism, but he wanted to be careful with his words until he knew for sure.

  Zel clasped his hands on the desk and bent his head. It seemed he also wanted to carefully choose his words before he spoke.

  “Listen, Robert, I don’t pretend to know all of what Darryl does and doesn’t do, what he believes and what he doesn’t, but he’s been with the IAI for longer than you have. I don’t know him as well, but I know his reputation. And whatever philosophy, ideology, or theology he believes in—well, actions count far more than beliefs. And Darryl has helped the Institution recover dozens of lost children and young adults, including you. If he is taking whatever messages he sees in this book to heart, I’m sure he’s taking to heart only what he sees as good and useful, and rejecting all the rest that’s bad.”

  “None of it’s good.”

  “Maybe he really is just talking about living a careful life of peace,” Zel said, “just clean living and meditation, and hypnotism never comes into play. I haven’t spent enough time with Darryl to feel as if I could get inside his mind, but I have spent considerable time with someone who has actually been there. You shouldn’t worry.”

  Robert looked downward and shook his head.

  “You know that Darryl has spent dozens of hours working closely with Vince,” Zel asked, “assisting him with his experiments in Xyn?”

  “Yeah,” Robert said, “and those experiments have only helped convince Darryl that what he’s doing is having some effect, bringing order—piece by piece—to chaos.”

  “And maybe he is.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Robert said. “There’s no way to bring order to a plane of existence whose environment is constantly being altered by a countless number of minds. Every sentient being’s thoughts, whims, and wishes combined…You go into that realm confused and come out even more confused. I just don’t buy into the idea there’s any way to bring order to it.”

  “Okay, well, what would you buy?”

  Robert hesitated before responding. “I just want to know why— why is it that so many who have this damn Virus have to create these stupid, personal, religified fictions based on bad books of poetry.”

  “Would you be happier if the books were better?”

  Robert frowned in response to the toymaker’s smile and said, “All these damn Creation and Reformation myths, all of them variations on each other while being at odds with one another. Just like their Believers. None of them completely sensible—”

  “Just like their Believer’s actions.”

  “Right.”

  Zel reassumed a straight face and said, “Robert, you know as well as I that most victims of the Virus create or adopt mythological narratives because they have to. They have to find a way to survive, mentally cope with the rest of their lives after their horrific experiences of a realm like XynKroma.”

  Robert didn’t believe “horrific” was a strong enough description for an extra-dimensional realm composed of polluted light, a realm that didn’t adhere to the known laws of physics or even what the wackiest spiritualist would call common sense. He also didn’t believe there was only one way to survive after having traveled all the way there and back.

  “I didn’t,” Robert said.

  “So you keep telling yourself,” Zel said.

  “And I’ll tell the same to anyone who’ll listen. I never came out of the experience wanting to go on a messianic crusade to mess with people’s minds under the pretense that I was in some way saving the world.”

  “No,” Zel said, “but not long after your first extended stay there you joined the IAI and our crusading efforts to help save lost children, to help prove to them that they were never forgotten.”

  Robert took a deep breath.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. “After my first experiences of Xyn, I was convinced that the human family needs strengthening. But none of us need any fictions to tell us that, or to help us solve the problem.”

  Zel hunched his shoulders and leaned forward. Robert couldn’t see his eyes, but he could sense they were looking straight at his, maybe even through it.

  “Robert,” he said, in a tone far more serious than Robert had ever heard him use, “you’re much younger than I am, and I know you’ve been through a lot in your short time on this Earth. But you’ve never had children. You’ve never raised them, neglected them by paying too much attention to a woman who wasn’t their mother, or lost them before their time. I have. And I’ve had time to think about the experience—all of it—long after it was over. About the moments of happiness, about what made those moments so happy for us. And about how I could find joy in life after resolving myself to the fact that those moments were gone, irrecoverable and irreplaceable. And I can tell you, from experience, that elements of fiction are necessary help heal certain wounds, improve certain conditions; they can save the little personal worlds of most men and women, and maybe even save the bigger one.”

  Several moments of silence passed after Zel stopped speaking. Robert felt like he’d been punched in the stomach and, in spite of it, wanted to say he was sorry. But, beneath it all, he also felt that Zel was still missing the point. There was a rage within. Within Darryl, definitely. Within Zel, maybe—maybe once upon a time. But in his partner, Robert knew there was still a self-loathing, a hatred for his very existence and everything he’d done before he los
t his family, everything he’d done before he was left alone. Just like Vastion felt when he found out he was the seed of a false god, a god who made its worshippers sick, worshippers who in turn made their god sicker. Vastion coped by setting out to push the worshippers to indulge in acts that would consume them all. Zel coped by making complicated and dangerous toys, and would do so until the White Fire Virus consumed him. And Darryl? Whether it was mere hypnotism or more like a lobotomy, Robert knew it was wrong for Darryl to screw with anyone else’s mind, with or without their consent. And who knew what else he was doing with them? Hell, what were these women and men going on to do after Darryl had his way with them? Robert believed these so-called acts of charity were far worse than any one-night stand. After all, Vastion, the promoter of sexual terrorism, was Darryl’s poetic prophet. But Robert just didn’t know what more he could say to Zel at this point.

  The toymaker broke the silence.

  “Maybe you should meet with Vince, talk all this over with him. He can give you far greater insight than I possibly could.”

  “Yeah,” Robert said. “Maybe. Or maybe I should just—” He felt a sensation on his right wrist and looked at his watch. “Damn it.”

  “Problem?” Zel asked, rising from his seat.

  “Maybe. Adam wants to see me.”

  “Oh, must be important,” Zel said as Robert rushed toward the door. “If he’s sending you back out into the field, I’ll be here if you need to come back and borrow a yo-yo or something.”

  “Thanks,” Robert replied over his shoulder, “but I hope I won’t need to.”

  He stepped through the sliding door and entered a hall of The Burrow. With the exception of a couple of agents from other Watcher units, it was empty. Normal for a Saturday afternoon, and most other afternoons.

  The Burrow served as the central office of the Isaac-Abraham Institution and was comprised of three secure, mazelike floors located deep underground, beneath one of Northern Virginia’s many shopping centers. Like the toymaker’s workshop, the compound was a world apart from the greater world beyond it. Inside of its reinforced walls were things most people in the outside world would never see and would probably never understand. The IAI did, however, share the organizational structure of many other Washingtonarea nonprofits: a board, an advisory committee, and “researchers” like Robert.

  The Burrow housed offices for advisory committee members, conference rooms, and special training rooms for Watcher agents. In addition to more traditional offices, the Institution’s nine board members had their own personal workrooms. Zel, Adam, and some of the other board members even had their primary living quarters—fully furnished apartments—in The Burrow. There were also spare rooms that Watcher agents or “special cases” could use on a temporary basis.

  Adam Smith, the chairman of the board, had the initial idea for the IAI, primarily because he had no idea what had happened to his own children, or if he ever even had any. Like Robert, and Darryl, and Zel, and most everyone associated with the Institution, Adam was a victim of the White Fire Virus, one of the earliest. Among other maladies, the Virus caused the infected to have seizures and severe mental breakdowns, once or several times during the course of a victim’s abbreviated lifetime. One of Adam’s early breakdowns had been so severe he lost all knowledge of his family and background, including his real name. But the man still retained a large amount of technical knowledge in spite of the fractured state of his memory. He took on the name “Adam Smith” and, rather quickly, managed to raise enough money to fund and build his short-term dream project—the Isaac-Abraham Institution, dedicated to the deep study of familial relations and to the recovery of missing children, particularly Adam’s own.

  Early on, Adam established a relationship with the Heartland Security Agency in order to avoid any unnecessary legal issues. Thanks to the IAI’s board members’ brilliance and ability to provide important research, information, and other tools to assist the struggling Agency, certain government officials had figured it would be wiser to work with them—both organizations providing the other with mutual favors—instead of treating them as infringers or nuisances. As a result, Adam had been allowed certain liberties; few other nonprofits were permitted to have armed agents (though guns of any kind were a definite no-no).

  One liberty Adam would never be allowed, however, was the freedom to venture out into the sunlight unshielded or inappropriately attired. When the skin of Virus-carriers was exposed to too much electromagnetic radiation from a certain section of the spectrum, their bodies became like puppets on invisible strings, out of control, manipulated by a mindless sun or other source. Some of the infected, like Darryl and Robert, were sensitive to the properties of light but also possessed the ability to manipulate those properties to their advantage. Other victims, like Zel and Adam, were simply at light’s cruel mercy. If their eyes or sections of bare skin were subjected to too much light, they would experience severe epileptic seizures, seizures so intense they would feel as if each and every fiber of their muscles was unraveling, their bones dissolving, and their skin melting, layer by layer. To prevent that experience, they usually stayed covered from head-to-toe, often dressed in white, and stayed inside, underground, and away from windows as much as possible. Adam rarely left the premises of The Burrow, but his manner of dress was unusual even for one of his condition.

  Robert stopped in front of the closed door of Adam’s office. He pressed his fingers to the keypad and positioned his face so his eye was level with the scanner. After a few seconds, he heard a recorded voice announce, “Enter, Mister Goldner.” The door slid open. Robert hurried on through before it closed again.

  He stood in a dark reception room, the part of the office where Adam would sometimes meet and speak with his visitors. It was empty, as expected. Robert looked at but didn’t approach the second door, the door to the main office where Adam spent about twenty hours a day—most days—working. No one was supposed to approach it without an invitation. Adam always knew when someone had entered the reception room. He would open the second door and enter the room, or allow his guest into the main office, when he was good and ready.

  Robert took a seat and began to wonder why Adam wanted to see him. He’d come up with two good guesses before the door to the main office slid open and Adam called his name. Robert hurried through the portal then stopped just after crossing the threshold.

  He was always in awe of the large room. It was a lot to take in. There was the seven-foot long, oval-shaped glass desk, the black-leather swivel chairs, and the monitors—dozens and dozens of various-sized computer and television monitors on the walls all over the room. The pictures on the screens were always scrambled whenever Adam had a visitor, so Robert could only guess what Adam watched when alone. But he knew whatever Adam saw on his screens was important, as was anything Adam had to say to him.

  “Please come in. You are not a stranger here.”

  Robert did as he was told, but he did feel like a stranger, no matter how many times he’d visited and how many times Adam had told him otherwise. Adam’s appearance wouldn’t help anyone feel at home. From the top of his head to his fingertips to toes, he wore attire that, in Robert’s eyes, resembled the armor of a postmodern knight.

  At first glance the suit of full-body plate armor seemed to be composed of pieces of a silvery white alloy, custom molded and strategically fused together. In reality, it was made up of a different material—a more flexible, porous material that was at least as strong as steel but that also contained innumerable slits, each of them an inch long and not more than a pinhole’s size in width. These fissures allowed slivers of air and light to pass through, enter, and presumably touch the man’s undergarments or skin. In keeping with the motif, Adam also wore a helmet that covered his entire face and neck. The front of it was a smooth concave mirror that gave a funhouse view-of-self to anyone who spoke with him face-to-“face.” Curiously, while the suit had its openings for light and air, the front of the helmet had
none Robert could see. Still, even though there was something off about the way the man talked, Adam’s voice wasn’t distorted or muffled. One could hear only a thin metallic echo when Adam completed a sentence.

  The suit may’ve appeared ridiculous or frightening in the eyes of many, but Adam’s mobility would’ve been severely limited without it. Even with it, he needed the assistance of a sturdy iron cane to walk. Most often, as now, Adam was seen sitting uncomfortably in a high-back swivel chair.

  He wasn’t offered a seat, so Robert didn’t take one. He just stepped forward, stopped in front of the desk, and crossed his hands behind his back.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Yes,” Adam said. “I have managed to dig up some information on your latest find. Ava Darden.”

  “Oh,” Robert said. “Shouldn’t—? Is Darryl coming?”

  “You can fill Mister Ridley in later. There is not much, but since you happened to be at The Burrow, I thought I would just tell you face-to-face. Some of this information was previously gathered— last year, to be exact—when we first began to look into the disappearance of the McGillis girl and the incident that preceded it. All of their classmates were questioned last spring and summer.”

  “So we knew Ava was missing?”

  “No,” Adam said. “She was never officially reported missing. So I kept her name off of our lists.”

  Robert thought it odd that, whether reported missing or not, finding the Virus-infected girl who’d stopped a school massacre wasn’t considered to be a task just as important as locating the one who tried to pull it off. But he kept silent and listened.