STAR FALL PEOPLE Chapter 42

Tom: San Francisco

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He had been unconscious for most of the journey. His last memories were of explosions and shouts, running feet and more of those creepy people with ceramic visors for eyes.

Gideon, terrified, carried into darkness.

Tom’s turn. Byzantine hospital hallways, stairs, rooftop. Some kind of glittering machine, half chopper, half fighter jet, with fins and what looked like teeth.

Out. Floating in the dreamless ink.

His own private Darkout.

The apparition of Markus Mang, the crazed confidence in his eyes. Was this a dream or was it the man himself, standing impassively before him?

He felt upright, but his feet didn’t touch the floor. The air vibrated like the way a C-17 did when it opened its doors thirteen hundred feet above the valleys of Afghanistan. Mang didn’t move or tremble.

Out again, but his sleep disturbed by images of Mang, of the hotel room where he had been with Nadia, of Ella. He wanted to die. The mercury rush of the beer and the bourbon, and the dead cold of humiliation.

The things he had said to Kirsty. About her father. About himself. He’d do anything to take those words back. But that was impossible.

He had disgraced himself.

AIs and immortals. What kind of hell had he dropped into?

He was beyond redemption. At least, human redemption.

Tom prayed. He prayed for forgiveness. He accepted that none might be forthcoming. But he had nothing left. He surrendered.

Wherever he was, the place shook. His eyes remained shut but he heard the sounds of marching boots and the violent touchdown. I’m in an airplane. But this was no US military craft.

And he wasn’t about to parachute into Taliban territory.

He fought to open his eyes. They parted into slits and he saw what looked like a ghost, a golden-plated figure that moved as if raised from some medieval world. But this figure was surrounded by eyeless commandos, who looked more like the future.

Time flowed and he came and went. He realized he was suspended in some kind of sleeping bag. He was still in his hospital gown. His hands touched gauze bandages wound about his waist. The painkillers had long since worn off but whatever Mang’s people had injected him with had kept him pacified. He was now coming awake. The pain down there was dull and quiescent. Tom suspected it would assert itself. He didn’t know how bad it might get.

There was an open door along the side of the cabin. The interior was dimly lit and he glimpsed chains and straps around him. Maybe he was strung up by some. He tried to step onto the floor and his bare toes found cold steel. His arms were wrapped inside the sleeping bag but maybe he could free one…ahh, his gunshot wound didn’t like that. His movement brought the pain alive. Hello, Tom.

He squinted out the door. They had touched down on a parking lot. It looked like America. Only America had parking lots this big, he thought.

Then he noticed the rack of submachine guns. It was empty, except at the far end, two weapons remained, but they looked like they were missing their magazines.