Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(67)

“I am your final word! Your omega! Your bringer of peace and rest. Embrace me!”

No one embraced him. Mostly people cowered and pleaded for mercy, but the only mercy shown was the speed at which they were dispatched.

“Yesterday you were gods. Today you are mortal. Your death is my gift to you. Accept it with grace and humility.”

So focused were the scythes that none of them noticed Rowan slipping out behind them and crossing to suite 602, where he pounded on the glass door until someone came and Rowan could warn him what was coming.

“Take the back stairs,” he told the man. “Get as many out as you can. Don’t ask questions—just go!” If the man had any doubts, they were chased away by the sounds of desperation and despair coming from just across the hall.

A few minutes later, when Goddard, Volta, and Chomsky were done with suite 601, they crossed the hall to find suite 602 empty, save for Rowan, swinging his fire hatchet at computers and desks and everything in his path, doing exactly as he was told to do.

? ? ?

The scythes moved faster than the flames—faster than the flow of workers trying to escape. Volta and Chomsky blocked two of the three stairwells. Rand made her way to the main entrance and stood like a goalie, taking out anyone trying to escape through the front doors. Goddard spouted his ritualistic litany as he moved through the panicked mob, switching his weapons as it suited him, and Rowan swung his hatchet at anything that would shatter, then secretly directed whoever he could toward the one unguarded stairwell.

It was over in less than fifteen minutes. The building was in flames, the helicopter was now hovering above, and the scythes strode out of the front entrance, like the four horsemen of the post-mortal apocalypse.

Rowan brought up the rear, dragging his hatchet on the marble, until he dropped it with a clatter.

Before them were half a dozen fire trucks and ambu-drones, and behind that hordes of survivors. Some ran when they saw the scythes come out, but just as many stayed, their fascination overcoming their terror.

“You see?” Goddard told Rowan. “The firefighters can’t interfere with a scythe action. They’ll let the whole thing burn down. And as for the survivors, we have a wonderful public relations opportunity.”

Then he stepped forward and spoke loudly to those who hadn’t fled. “Our gleaning is complete,” he announced. “To those who survive, we grant immunity. Come forward to claim it.” He held out his hand—the one that bore his ring. The other scythes followed his lead and did the same.

No one moved at first, probably thinking it was a trick. But in a few moments, one ash-stained employee stumbled forward, followed by another and another, and then the entire mob was apprehensively coming toward them. The first few knelt and kissed the scythes’ rings—and once the others saw that this was for real, they surged forward, mobbing the scythes.

“Easy!” shouted Volta. “One at a time!”

But the same mob mentality that propelled their escape now pushed them toward those life-saving rings. All of a sudden, no one seemed to remember their dead coworkers.

Then, as the crowd around them got denser and more agitated, Goddard pulled back his hand, removed his ring, and handed it to Rowan.

“I tire of this,” Goddard said. “Take it. Share in the adoration.”

“But . . . I can’t. I’m not ordained.”

“You can use it if I give you permission as a proxy,” Goddard told him. “And right now you have my permission.”

Rowan put it on, but it wouldn’t stay, so he switched it to his index finger, where it was a bit more snug. Then he held out his hand as the other scythes did.

The crush of people didn’t care which finger the ring was on, or even whose hand it was on. They practically climbed over one another to kiss it, and to thank him for his justice, his love, and his mercy, calling him “Your Honor,” not even noticing he wasn’t a scythe.

“Welcome to life as a god,” Scythe Volta said to him. While behind them the building burned to the ground.





* * *





We are wise but not perfect, insightful but not all-seeing. We know that by establishing the Scythedom, we will be doing something very necessary, but we, the first scythes, still have our misgivings. Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest. Our hope is that by a set of ten simple, straightforward laws, we can avoid the pitfalls of human fallibility. My greatest hope is that, in time, our wisdom will become as perfect as is our knowledge. And if this experiment of ours fails, we have also embedded a way to escape it.

May the Thunderhead help us all, if we ever need that escape.

—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Prometheus, the??first World Supreme Blade



* * *





26


Not Like the Others




That night they feasted, although Rowan could not dig up an appetite, no matter how deep he mined. Goddard ate enough for everyone. He was invigorated by the day’s hunt, like a vampire sucking in the life force of its victims. He was more charming, more suave than ever, saying things to make everyone laugh. How easy, thought Rowan, to fall in with him. To be stroked into his elite club, just as the others had been.

Clearly, Chomsky and Rand were cut from a similar cloth as Goddard. They held not the slightest illusion of conscience. But unlike Goddard, they held no delusions of grandeur. They gleaned for sport—for the joy of it—and as Scythe Rand so accurately put it, because they can. They were more than happy to wield their weapons while Goddard inhabited his role as the Angel of Death. Rowan couldn’t be sure if the man believed it, or if it was all artifice. Theatricality to add flair to the show.