Chapter Eight
Mike broke away from the table and stormed back into his and Alpha’s quarters. He picked up a spare boot, and flung it at the snoring lump under the sheets. “You! Get up! What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?”
Alpha flew out of bed, blankets tangled around his legs, his knife in hand. He was still asleep for the seconds it took to focus on what was happening, eyes widening when he saw Mike’s face. “What? Mike? What in -”
“Tell me. Is he telling the truth?” Mike’s fists were clenched so tight that his knuckles ached. “Have you been screwing around in the Deep Net?”
Alpha’s chest heaved. His pupils were drawn to pinpoint slits. “Mike, hold up for-”
“Don’t you fucking ‘Mike’ me.” Mike advanced on him, nearly bowling him back onto the mattress. “You did, didn’t you? You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why you did this, and why I shouldn’t turn you and Symon in to the Knight Captain.”
The confusion bled from Alpha’s face. He stiffened; he had gone pale, his expression clamped up and closed off. “Shut up. No one else needs to hear this.”
Mike was nearly nose to nose with him now. “Want to guess how many fucks I give? Let’em hear. Was Symon telling the truth? Did you break the Law?”
Alpha’s nostrils flared. His face had warped into a mask of expressionless anger. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
The quaking anger that had started in the common room while he was talking to Symon grew fangs. Mike nearly choked on his next words. “So one guy gets to leave this fucking shithole of a planet, and you endanger yourself and the rest of us? How the fuck does that make any sense, Alpha?”
“I need to know what happened to my soldier,” Alpha said. His tone was eerie, too calm.
“You were told what happened. The K.C. TOLD you and you’ve… you’ve gone and broken the Law, Alpha, the LAW of God.” Mike jabbed at his shoulder, and Alpha flinched back. “You have put us ALL in a very, very bad place, and for what? Pride? Fear?”
“I need to know what happened to my soldier.” Alpha frowned, and swatted Mike’s hand back. “And I want to know what was up there, in Yetzirah. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered? How does anyone live up there? How’d it get there? And why do we go? The guys that go never come back, they never send back word. Nothing.”
“I think about all sorts of shit, but I have the common fucking sense to keep it to myself.” Every night when they were deployed, Mike watched the moon pass behind the white glowing ring that halved the night sky and wondered. “This isn’t the way to find out. The Deep Net is forbidden. How did you even find a way in?”
“There’s back doors. Maybe even the one the Lamb uses, to stock the archives. Most of it’s unreadable, though. The data is old, corrupted. I worked that out fast.” Alpha grimaced. “It’s not that bad.”
But it WAS that bad. It was blasphemous. It was a step away from Alpha being scourged while Mike watched him writhe and melt and burn, helpless to do anything except to hope it passed quickly. He wanted to deck Alpha for being so stupid, land one right across his jaw. But Alpha still had his knife. Lover or not, Alpha was what he was. If Mike started violence, he wouldn’t be the one to finish it. “Don’t make light of this. This is evil. Symon is trying to stop the rest of us from being redeemed. You can’t trust anything he says.”
“Symon has his reasons for showing me this stuff.” Alpha’s pupils pinned, contracting to slits before expanding. “And I’m beginning to think we’ve been fed a lot of stuff that isn’t true. There was another Nation before the Reckoning that was never talked about in the Bible. The ESU. There’s stuff on the Deep Net that says that it was them that built Yetzirah.”
“You and I both know that Yetzirah was built by the Lamb during the Reckoning. Pre-Reckoning humans couldn’t build something like that. They couldn’t get into space.” The desire to comply with the Law was crushing him from the inside, needling him. Only his love for Alpha stopped him from opening the coronal link to their Chaplain on the spot. Mike fought down, choked on it, desperate to keep fanning the ember of hope that Alpha would snap back to sense. “Only the risen of the UNAC-”
“What I’m saying is that it was there before the Lamb returned. It might just be like one of the Shards. And you’re right, humans can’t get into space. So how the fuck do they get us up there?”
Yetzirah was God’s holy city. It was promised. Mike kept shaking his head, and took a step back. “No, Alpha, listen to me. You can’t say these things.”
Alpha was pressing him back, now. “I know you’re not stupid, Mike. You’re a doctor. You’re a smart guy. Haven’t you ever looked at the world and wondered why all those cities are just lying around? Did the Lamb do it? Kill them all? They say the contagion of Hell swept in and wiped the planet by order of the Lord… so why can’t the Host go down there?”
Mike said nothing, too shocked to hear anything but his own internal litany. Alpha was still armed, and his face was alight with curiosity, child-like. He had seen the same dark nimbus around Twofer at times, that openness. It was dangerous. “This is evil talk, Sir. Look at yourself. And stop waving your damned knife in my face.”
Alpha paused at that. He looked at the weapon in his hand, and then back to Mike.
“God has no reason to hide truth. He is open with his truth. It’s us who chooses to ignore it.” Mike let his tongue loose, let it be guided as he spoke. No quotes from the Book, even though they bubbled up in his mind, primed and ready to be recited. “The past is no good, Alpha. The future’s what counts. We still have to save the damned world.”
“But Twofer-”
“Did you find anything on Twofer?”
Alpha said nothing, but he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and reached back, fumbling for the knife sheath. He slid the blade home with a small click, and then sighed. “No.”
“I can see what’s happened here. Envy, Sir. Symon’s envious.” Mike crossed his arms. “He’s never been out there. He’s never picked up a real gun in his miserable little life. He’s two years older than us and hasn’t been saved.”
Alpha’s brows drew in, nearly touching. He rubbed his face. “Yeah… I mean, that’s possible. It’s hard, Mike. I tried to give it to the Lord, to let it go.”
“Of course it’s hard. We just lost a guy, no matter how we look at it. Of course it’s going to be hardest for us right now. The Devil’s going to be workin’ his tail off trying to drag us down and stop us from joining him.” Mike sat down beside him, and laid a hand on his thigh. “We’ve been at this nearly nine years. It’s about time one of us got a break.”
“Nine? Yeah. It’s almost been that long, huh?” Alpha snorted, but it was humorless. “You ever wonder why the guys who die out there never get to go?”
Mike shrugged. The effort of suppressing his obedience to the Host had left him with a ringing headache and a detached, eerie numbness. He felt emotionless, cool, as if he were watching himself and Alpha from a distance. “You can’t just let everyone in to Heaven.”
“It must suck, knowing everyone else is still stuck here. I can’t imagine. Watching from up there, knowing that the War’s still going on.” Alpha reached out, and lay a hand awkwardly on Mike’s thigh. “You know… I dream about Christchurch every night. The drone shadows, the noise. The Old Toms.”
The buzzing in his ears grew louder, and Mike found himself suddenly very tired, very heavy. He covered Alpha’s hand, and nodded his silent assent. His dreams also often went back to that place. Sometimes, he got on the game and deliberately went to the simulated Christchurch maps, forced himself into the virtual world that had been so real the year before. The front lines hadn’t shifted in the real war, but on the game, he could join a server and they could fight, and win. They had to win. Losing at games was almost as bad as the real thing. You were either the best all the time, or you were never the best.
“I just… wonder. The Toms were good men, real good.” Alpha dropped his head. “It’s not like they were bad soldiers. It’s never made sense that they’re gone forever while we’re still up here.”
“They were given the chance. It was just a chance.” Mike pressed his lips together. He linked his fingers through Alpha’s. The skin of his palms was leathery, callused from years spent slinging guns, gripping controls, exercising and scrabbling over rocks and mud and wood. “A chance to make it out of here. Have a bit of faith. We’re chosen when we’re chosen, if we’re chosen.”
“Heh. I just… something just won’t settle right in me. Twofer wasn’t like you,” Alpha said. He reached up and caught Mike’s chin, turning his face to look at him. He could wield his eyes like a weapon. Alpha had a gaze that held you at knifepoint, that sucked you in. The look on his face left Mike breathless. “I don’t want to doubt, Mike, but it doesn’t add up for me yet, and until it does, I’m not going to stop asking. You’re right—God doesn’t have anything to hide. So why shouldn’t I ask?”
“Sir. No.” Mike jerked his chin out of his grip. Alpha let it go, but barely. “We have a duty and a covenant to-”
“You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.” Alpha threw off Mike’s hand from his own and stood. “No one fucks with my squad, Mike. Not God, not the Devil, not the All-Pac. No one. I want to know where he is. I want to see it with my own two eyes.”
“This isn’t just about you.” Mike jerked his shoulders back, ready for a fight. “This is about the whole unit. Everything you do comes back on us.”
“Well, sorry if I don’t fear the truth. Isn’t that what you and the Chaplain and even the Controllers all want? You saying you don’t even want to search for it now?” Alpha tossed his head, snorting. He reached for his trousers and pulled them on with taut, angry jerks. “Well, you can fucking eat what you’re spooned. If you’re gonna report me, at least wait until we’re in PNG. I want to go out with Dragon blood on my hands.”
“I don’t want to report you. I don’t WANT to.” Mike got to his feet, squaring off with his fists by his thighs. “How do you even know it’s the truth? There’s nothing to support it. We live under the eye of the Lord, and they are listening to this, right now. You think they won’t notice? That we won’t be punished? Killed?”
Alpha looked over at him with blank predator’s eyes, his face wooden and still. “Mike, if Yetzirah is a load of balls and Twofer’s not up there, everything we’ve done doesn’t mean shit, and we’re already worse than dead.”
