Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(81)

The thirteenth floor.

I had put down cables in the room, quickly and without finesse: one path down the center, to the door, and out into the elevator lobby; two arcs round the edge. A leaf pattern. Basic, apprentice work. I’d not much hope of capturing the Second Eden god, even though I got a flask there, ready. Mostly, I just wanted it contained, the way that McAvoy had so spectacularly failed to do.

I dragged the table from the corner, knocked the coffee cup onto the floor, and set up the control box. I put it near the elevator, facing the containment room. The elevator lobby wasn’t big, and it felt crowded now. I’d got an audience. It wasn’t how I liked to work, but this time round, I’d got a reason for it.

There was one person I wanted there. Just one. Only I didn’t want him knowing that. So I’d invited everyone.

I was aware of Silverman, shadowing me while I worked, his lens fixed on my face, my hands, closing for a shot of the control deck. Then he crouched in front of me, the camera pointing up under my nose. “Hey,” I told him. “Give it a break, will you?”

Eddie-boy drank beer. He had a crate of it, and he’d offered round the bottles, only nobody was taking. There were a couple of Ballington’s soldiers, and Shwetz leaned on the wall beside the elevator, his suit rumpled and blotchy, eyes narrow with resentment. Him, I’d said I needed—for his knowledge of the building, and the god. Maybe he’d guessed those weren’t the real reasons. He didn’t speak, he didn’t interact, and under that stone-face exterior, I guessed he was still seething. Which was something else I’d factored in, as best I could.

Angel was upstairs, right above us, floor fourteen. The key to everything.

I’d got my phone back. Still bugged, not that it mattered anymore.

I called her, kept the line open. I powered up the gear, and had her do the same thing, overhead.

“Stay low. Start slow. Then bring it up.”

I counted out, a walking pace: “One. Two. Three.” I put a charge through the perimeter. “Hold that,” I said.

We stopped.

From the lobby, I could see into that big room, with its primitive containment loops, and ramshackle old engines shoved into the corners. I could feel the god. I could feel the air starting to move, hear the faintest rattle, like a flag rippling in the wind. The perimeter was up. The roof was on. Down below, on twelve, I’d got another charge running, just as a block. No way out down there.

Eddie-boy pointed with his beer bottle. “I don’t see—” But his voice trailed off. The light had changed. The shadows in the room began to shift. Perspectives deepened. There were hints of other shapes there, distant cities, landscapes . . . Smells I found evocative, though I could not say why—an evening wind across a harbor, say, the tang of ozone and the sour smell of refuse . . . and something chemical—factories, perhaps, across a bay? At once, I seemed to see great clouds of smoke, luminous, against a great, dark sky . . . An image out of childhood, maybe, or some long-forgotten journey . . . Visions, conjured by the presence of a god.

I don’t know what the others saw.

I bent to the control box, checked the levels.

“Angie?” I said. “Getting anything?”

Her voice came back, crackly, broken, much too far away. “For a minute, I thought . . . No, no. I’m good.”

I looked up, caught movement somewhere in the big room. A sense that somebody had been there while my head was turned.

That wasn’t possible.

“Pattern in the carpet,” Angel said. “It’s kind of weird.”

“I got that too. Don’t let it worry you.”

Something flickered in the center of the room, a sudden agitation. Dust began to whirl into the air. It swirled up; in seconds it was strong enough to raise the smaller debris off the floor. It spun, sliding back and forth, a tiny, indoor hurricane, a monster made of air—

“Might want to knock it up a notch,” I said. “I think he’s on his way.”

I raised the power a few degrees.

Something had startled it, and I was pretty sure that something wasn’t me.

I heard a sharp, high buzzing in the air. I put my free hand up to my ear.

The stairwell door came open.

And the movement in the room stopped dead.

Debris dropped and clattered. Dust clouds fled across the floor. The silence was as sharp as glass.

Edward Ballington, Senior, strolled into the lobby.

His face was flushed, his shoulders hunched. He had a hunter’s look, eyes moving rapidly, taking in everything. He came directly to me.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s an empty room.”

Captain Ghirelli had come with him. He stood, expressionless, hands at his side.

The perfect little soldier.

Ballington was close. I felt the heat from him. He stepped behind me and I felt him as he moved from one side to the other, the warmth against my back.

“Your human side’s seeing an empty room,” I said. “The rest of you—well. You tell me.”

“Human side,” he said.

“Come on. It’s not just you in there, is it?”

I was talking quietly, partly because I didn’t want everybody joining in, partly because I wanted him close by. Listening. Peeping round my shoulder. Watching me.