Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(77)

Was that why people came here? Because their own lives were so bad, they wanted to forget them? Lose all memory, all consciousness of who they were? To be absolved, in some way? Shriven?

I’d been up there maybe twenty minutes when I realized what was happening to me. That’s why some guys work in pairs, or groups. It’s safer. The trouble is, you miss things, doing that. Just having someone else around, you lose your focus. Sometimes you need to be alone. To know exactly what you’re dealing with, to face it, full on.

The first thing was, the floor dissolved.

I didn’t see it quite like that, though. It was slow, and subtle.

The carpet had a pattern of long, colored stripes, running lengthwise down the hall. I started to get careful where I put my feet. I didn’t even notice I was doing it at first. But I’d stick to all the brighter-colored lines—the yellows, pinks, mint-greens. Keep off the purples and the browns. It didn’t strike me as unusual. The dark colors began to look like shadows. Then like gaps—places where the floor just didn’t cover. Spaces in reality. I could sense the abyss down there, an emptiness that would drop and drop forever, the same void that had been under me my whole life. The space beneath the world . . .

I was in the hallway. I was reeling out the cable. And at the same time, I was high up, perched above the abyss, terrified to fall.

I jerked back into consciousness. I saw the corridor, stretched out ahead of me. How long had I been standing there?

Hours? Minutes?

I’d laid just twenty feet of cable.

There was carpet under me. Solid floor.

I picked one of the darker bands of color, a deep, rich purple, felt a little thrill of trepidation as I put my foot on it, rested my weight there, risked the fall.

No fall.

I pushed down, hard.

I grinned. I danced a little, two steps forwards, two steps back.

Then I went back to my work, unspooling cable, room to room.

Soon after that, I saw a man.

He was waiting there, in one of the guest rooms. I didn’t see him when I first walked in, but looking up, I realized he must have been there all the time, sitting in the armchair—a small, portly fellow, with white hair and a goatee; he looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out what he said. His gaze passed over me.

I started to apologize, then stopped myself. There was a reason why I hadn’t seen him. He’d not been here. It was my arrival triggered him. I’d brought him into being. He gripped the chair arms, much as old men do, and pulled himself onto his feet. He shuffled to the door, and as he did so, a second figure rose up from the same chair, almost an after-image, following the same path; and a third, and fourth, each within a moment of the last. They passed into a patch of sunlight, and they instantly winked out. Beyond that, there were only shadows, odd shapes that flickered without definition.

Warily, I laid the cable, and I left.

I covered, close as I could, the area that matched the god’s room on the floor below.

Then I heard Angel calling, “Chris?”

“I’m here. I’m fine.”

“You’re overdue.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry.”

She was waiting for me by the elevators, looking round, as if she’d missed something; like somebody who hears a wasp nearby, but can’t tell where it is.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

She had a flask and a second control box.

“I thought you might want these.”

“How’s things downstairs?”

“Ballington & Son? Same as before. Young one thinks it’s all a laugh. Old one’s strutting round like Mussolini, and Paul just films it all, like it’s some weird family sitcom.”

“Run that past HBO.”

I took a power lead, linked it to the new box.

“I don’t get Ballington. I thought he’d burn out, but he just gets stronger, from what I can see.” I picked up an auxiliary cable, screwed it into place. “You asked me how I knew he’d got the god in him. You see it now?”

“He’s manic.”

“He’s winding up. Whatever’s in him, it’s just driving him on, and on. I bet he hasn’t slept for weeks.”

“He’s got these crazy notions, taking over the country—”

“I’m not sure that’s the god talking. But it’s the god giving him drive, and power. What interests me,” I said, “is what’ll happen when he meets our guy on thirteen.”

“Dangerous?”

“Like two cats. Maybe they’ll get on. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll just tear the stuffing out of one another. I could bet on which . . .”

I linked the flask in. but I wasn’t sure of its position yet. I had a notion, nothing more.

We could hear things. Movement, down there on the thirteenth floor. Scraping, dragging.

Together, we moved towards the stairwell.

“The makeup,” I said. “Any theories? Or just trying to look good for the camera?”

I pulled open the door. We moved into the stairwell. I think we both expected something to happen. But the air was still. The thing had calmed again.

Our footsteps echoed on the stairs.

After a time, she said, “He still looks human. From the outside, anyway.”