“In other words,” the director said dryly, “the inmates have stolen the keys to the prison and for the first time since before Time, they answer to no one.”
The whiff of Cheetos reminded me I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a meal. My stomach commenced to growling and continued to growl for the rest of the briefing. I also didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, what month it was . . . although I was still pretty sure what year it was. What I needed, besides a meal, was something really ordinary, to remind me that I hadn’t fallen down some gruesome rabbit hole where the mad tea party included sixteen million guests, all of whom could make you tear your own eyeballs from your head.
“Let’s have SATCOM I-27S,” Merryweather said toward the ceiling. The lights dimmed again and sitting in the middle of the table was the gigantic bowl of glass in the desert. This image was a still shot, and Merryweather directed a laser pointer at a tiny black dot at the edge of the shiny surface.
“This, we believe, is the Hyena, minutes after the Seal was lost. This”—and he moved the tiny red dot to another speck in the scene—“is the altar. Enhance to the third, please.” The image grew, distorting slightly as it did, and now you could see the outline of the altar, though the edges were fuzzy. “The Vessel is gone. We assumed”—and here he cast a baleful eye in Op Nine’s direction—“that the IAs had absconded with the Lesser Seal as well. Now it appears they did not. The key operational assumption we will make henceforth is that the Hyena took the Vessel in the confusion after the ring was lost.”
“Why?” a lady agent named Sandy asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would Mike take the Vessel?”
“For protection, first,” Op Nine said. “He has a bargaining chip, should they find him before we do. He may also approach us to broker a deal.”
“I don’t understand,” Agent Jake said. “Why do they need the Vessel? We can’t put them back in it without the ring.”
“It is not a question of what they need,” Op Nine said. “Without the Vessel, there will always be the risk, however small, that somehow they might be returned to it. Having the prison in their hands ensures their freedom from it.”
“Their freedom to do what?” the agent named Greg asked.
“I don’t know,” Op Nine answered.
“Wait a minute, aren’t you the demonologist here? If you don’t know—”
“We do not need to know what they will do with their freedom,” Abby interrupted. “All we need to know is what they will do if they do not obtain the Vessel.”
She paused. Jake blew out his cheeks. Somebody coughed.
Op Nine was staring at the tabletop. Finally, Sandy blurted out, “Okay, I’ll bite. What will they do?”
Abby glanced over at me. So did Merryweather. I looked away. I didn’t want to tell them what I saw in Carl’s empty eye sockets. I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to think about it.
Op Nine spoke up. “Understand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night are their enemies. I do not know for certain what they intend to do, but I suspect it goes beyond our own pitiful comprehension of evil, our childlike notions of heaven’s opposite. We must assume their goal has not changed since the beginning of time. What will they do? They will consume us.”
29
“I still don’t get it,” Jake said. “What’s the point of pursuing the Hyena? Say we find him and get the Vessel—then what? We can’t use it because we don’t have the ring. We should be going after the ring, not the Vessel.”
“Yes, well, we’ll put you on that team,” the director said. “You can lead the assault up Everest against the sixteen million fiends.”
Jake ignored the sarcasm. “Maybe that’s what we oughtta do. Take it to them!”
“We are still making modifications to the 3XD,” Op Nine said. “As well as other applications for the active agent contained in the ammunition.”
“I’m talking a small team, maybe two or three ops with a couple Sherpas. We draw this, what’s-his-name, Paimon out and one shot to the hand does it.”
Op Nine shook his head. “Perversely, the Hyena’s instincts to seize the Vessel were correct. Obtaining it strengthens our position. At the very least, our possessing it will give them pause.”
“How so?”
“For the same reason they desire it. While it is outside their reach, they can never be assured of their freedom.”
“Maybe not,” Agent Jake shot back. “But they’ll still be free and we’ll still have no way of putting the genie back into the bottle. And you still haven’t answered my question, so I’ll ask it for, what, the third time . . . Let’s assume we get the Vessel—then what?”
I guess nobody had an answer for that, because nobody said anything.
“Gee, this is terrific,” Jake said quietly. “They better watch out, because we’re gonna give ’em pause.”
“Suggest an alternative,” Op Nine said icily. He didn’t like this Agent Jake, you could tell.
“Thought I already did.”
“We pursue the Vessel because it is the only option open to us. Your suggestion is a futile gesture, doomed to failure, and we must not abandon the one thing that separates us from the Fallen.”
“What’s that?” Jake asked.
“Hope.”
Dr. Merryweather clapped his hands suddenly and everybody gave a little jump. “So! We know where they are, we know what they want, and we know what they intend to do if they don’t get it. The Hyena must be found and the Vessel secured, or we may expect all you-know-what to break loose. The question is . . . where is he?”
Nobody said anything. The director looked at Abby. She stood up and Op Nine finally got to sit down. He didn’t look good. He didn’t look much better than Carl up in the morgue, and Carl was dead.
“All computer simulations return these ten locations as the most likely for target acquisition,” she said crisply. “Based on prior associations, duration, and comfort level.” She handed a stack of printouts to the person on her right, who took one and passed on the rest. The agent to my left took the last one, so I didn’t get to see what was on the printout. “We’ll dispatch teams of two to each location—”