73
Time had run out. Teresa knew there would be only a few seconds before her sabotage in the control room was detected.
Sprayed with stolen Scramble, the execution techs wouldn’t come to their senses anytime soon. One sat dazed and oblivious, staring at the screens in front of him; the second babbled incoherent sounds, swaying from side to side in his chair. The rest of the upload schedule ran like clockwork.
With a gruff voice, pretending to be José Meroni, Teresa had ordered the BIE escort guards to take up alternate stations. Acting the part of a man still sour from the embarrassing defeat of the night before, she bullied them into leaving her alone with the upload technicians busily making their final double checks.
A hungry COM waited to receive Eduard’s soul into its labyrinth. Cables and conduits were already connected to the old woman’s body, electrodes attached, power sources primed.
Two quick sprays of Scramble had taken care of the techs. Everything would begin to fall apart soon. Succeed or fail, she had to be done in the next few minutes. . . .
Teresa hammered at the computer access pads, trying to shut down all power to the area, to the entire building if necessary. If she could crash the system locally, she would save Eduard—at least for a while.
Beyond that, she hadn’t thought of what she would do. Maybe she could shout out the story of what had really happened between Eduard and Mordecai Ob, maybe she could expose the Bureau’s cover-up, how they had refused to consider that their heroic Chief might be a monster inside.
Doing so would destroy Daragon, too. But it might buy Eduard a second chance.
Now, on the monitor, she saw Eduard engaged in a hushed but heated conversation with the old woman who would soon receive his body. Maybe he could resist the transfer somehow, cause a delay. That would give Teresa the few minutes she needed.
She wished she could talk to him, explain her plan—as pathetic as it was—but she didn’t understand how the BIE computer system worked. She didn’t know what she was doing, which commands to enter. She pounded on the polymer touchboard in dismay, cracking its coverplate.
She scanned through the system, selecting tangential items, meeting dead end after dead end. Finally, she found the right command string, a set of glowing letters that would act as a binary guillotine blade to shut down the facility. She looked down at the cracked control plate, hoping she hadn’t damaged anything in her outburst.
Lights flickered on the upload panels. Frantic, Teresa skittered clumsy fingers over the board, punching in the first part of the instruction set.
“You don’t want to do that, Teresa,” Daragon said, standing in the doorway. He looked imposing in his Inspector’s uniform. He had known all along. “It won’t help him, and it’ll only delay what has to be.”
Through the observation port, she saw Eduard and the old woman hopscotching. She had to act now.
Unwilling to accept defeat, Teresa finished her command string. Daragon sprang toward her, but couldn’t react fast enough. COM accepted the precise override instructions.
All the power went out. The termination facility shut down, swallowed in sudden blackness. . . .
Daragon sealed himself and Teresa inside the control chamber. “I’ll keep them out for now.” His face was ruddy in the emergency backup lights, full of anguish and never-forgotten love. “I don’t know how much I can protect you, Teresa—but I can’t let you get away with this. I have to stop you.”
“Why? Just because it’s your duty?”
Quickly and efficiently, he worked to restore the power, all the while talking to her. His patience and confidence were maddening.
“This silly stunt will only delay the end by a few minutes—and for what? Do you think it makes any difference to Eduard? This will only get you convicted, as well—and I . . . I can’t allow that.” His fingers flurried over the keyboard, trying to reestablish a link with the power supply and reconnect the termination facility to COM. “Eduard wouldn’t want that to happen.”
Guards hammered at the sealed door to the control center, but Daragon did not release the locks. He wouldn’t relinquish his control of the situation.
Teresa realized that in José Meroni’s body she outweighed him. She could pound him senseless using the guard’s muscles . . . just as Eduard had done for her, intimidating Rhys with the huge Samoan’s physique.
But the thought made her sick. She simply couldn’t do that, not to Daragon, not using the same abusive methods the Sharetaker had used. The violent thoughts drained out of her.
The power came back on, crackling through light tiles, dazzling bright. Daragon toggled the facility-wide intercom and spoke in an authoritative voice. “Our apologies for the inconvenience. The problem has been identified and resolved. We will now proceed without further delay.”
She looked up in panic at Eduard again, to fix his face—Garth’s face—in her memory. Teresa wanted to scream. Instead, she asked for help.
“Soft Stone . . . oh, Soft Stone, are you there?” She leaned closer to the terminal, begging the equipment, as if it could hear her. “I can’t do this myself. I’m trying, but I don’t know what to do.”
After an interminable moment, the COM screen blurred, and the old monk’s blunt-featured visage appeared. Daragon stared in amazement, his cool BTL demeanor melting away.
“I always taught you and Eduard to follow your own paths . . . even if they lead you to a cliff.” Soft Stone’s synthesized voice carried layered implications, questions, warnings.
Teresa could not allow herself to think beyond the simple inquiry. “Oh, please help me stop this.”
The placid monk looked at her from the depths of the filmscreen. “Do you truly think that is best? For him and for yourself? And for Daragon? Let me take him, little Swan. I will watch over Eduard, and you can live your life.”
Daragon had always been calm and reasonable, not impulsive like Eduard, not passionate like Garth, not uncertain and questioning like Teresa. “We have to finish this,” he said to Teresa, and to Soft Stone.
Teresa couldn’t answer, not even trying to fight back tears. She thought of the administrator monk at the Falling Leaves, poor Chocolate dead in his sleep before he could upload himself into COM. She remembered the beautiful ceremony in the monastery library, when Soft Stone had departed into the vast unexplored network. If only it could be like that for Eduard. Not this . . .
“After today, I will be gone, little Swan,” Soft Stone said. “I’ve interfered enough.”
Daragon stood with Teresa by the console, refusing to look into the execution chamber. He input the commands to prepare the forced upload into COM, then spoke into the private channel intercom. His words reverberated in the execution chamber. “Are you ready?”
Teresa bit back a moan. Inside the chamber itself, Eduard and Madame Ruxton sat anticipating, dreading, hoping.
“Don’t worry about Eduard.” The monk vanished into the screen, drowned out by gray static.
Daragon turned to her, his fingers poised above the controls. He lifted his eyebrows for her benefit. “I could call in another guard, but if it has to be done, don’t you think Eduard would rather have a friend do this? With compassion, rather than malice? I’ll have to live with the knowledge for the rest of my life.”
Before he could do anything, though, lights on the consoles flashed all by themselves. Daragon and Teresa looked at each other. The connection to COM was ready. The upload began of its own accord.
“Soft Stone,” she whispered. “Please.”
Through the observation port, Teresa watched Madame Ruxton’s body twitch and jerk, resisting the pull on Eduard’s consciousness, dragging him into the computer network in a final, irrevocable hopscotch. Eduard’s mind would add to the ever-expanding network, helping it grow in its own mysterious ways.
After a long, impossible moment, Teresa watched the old woman’s now empty and useless body die.
Daragon stood next to her, his back now turned to the execution chamber. He looked crushed, but said nothing. The glimmer of a tear in his eye looked startlingly out of place on his stony visage.
Finally, he unsealed the door and walked away, leaving Teresa to stare through the recorder glass. Ruxton’s unwanted form sat motionless, wickerlike arms akimbo, drained and dead.
Eduard was gone. . . .