Once again, my sincere apologies for the delay.
III-2
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"Well, well, I must say you look like a whole new woman, mademoiselle."
The voice floated down to her from a faraway place, half amused, half curious. The notion to leap up and defend herself flashed incoherently across her mind, and Aleph started, jerking her body upward, but gigantic rocks seemed to be piled atop her chest and limbs, pressing her down into the ground. In the end she could barely crack open her eyelids. A glittering whiteness stabbed like needles into her eyes; with an effort, she managed to keep them open.
The Merovingian's face swam into view, haloed with a ceilingful of fluorescent lights, no more than the faintest hint of a smile upon his lips.
"A thousand pardons, ma chère, for the tardiness of my arrival. There were...matters that demanded my attention, as you can imagine." He held a hand down to her gallantly. "No harm done, I hope?"
Sensations began to return, mostly a stony coldness at her back. The floor. With a laborious twisting of the neck, Aleph turned her head, and caught sight of a silent circle of armed henchmen standing at attention around them, the matched brace of dreadlocked albinos prominent and directly behind their master. No suitably sharp retort came to mind, so she only let out a low, irritated grunt, and pushed herself up onto her elbows. Each and every one of her muscles creaked. The sickening brightness of the station jabbed at her brain.
No. Wait. Brain. Muscles. She had no muscles.
With no more than an outward grimace, she fought down the attack of panic, and struggled to a standing position, carefully ignoring the other's outstretched hand. The station platform heaved promptly beneath her feet; the Merovingian reached across and caught her by the arm. Aleph shuddered, as if to shake him off, but was unable to muster much force. Surprisingly, the Frenchman let go.
"What...the hell was that place?"
The Merovingian arched an eyebrow.
"What, not a word of thanks for my courageous fighters, dear lady?"
Bloody bastard.
"What. Was that. Place?"
The grin on the other's face widened.
"I have already given you all the explanations I could, I'm afraid. But a visit is worth a thousand words, as they say..." He gestured with a flourish.
Glancing past his shoulder, Aleph took in the endless array of square tiles covering the walls, the black block letters spelling out a street name that was surely both unnecessary and nonsensical. Empty benches. An inconspicuous beige door far off at one end of the train station, maybe a custodian's closet. She didn't remember having seen it, the last time she was here...Or did she?
Another spell of lightheadedness caught up to her, and she had to steady herself against a pillar. The light had grown much brighter, and the space was contracting, erasing the pattern of tiles on the walls, turning them into smooth snow. A sense of familiarity. Out of the corner of one eye, she glimpsed something affixed to one wall, just beyond a patch of shadow, and for a fraction of a second she was certain it was a telephone—
"The door has been opened," murmured the Merovingian close by her ear. The tension, she could tell, was only partly anticipation. "The very last deed of your human hands, and you have done well, marvelously well..."
Aleph's heart constricted inside her chest. The light or the code was playing tricks upon what was left of her brain, and she could not possibly be seeing it here, the white antechamber in Zion, entrance to the archives. But before she knew it, the subway station veered infinitesimally, almost but not quite back into focus, and once more the tiles and pillars and gray benches were in the foreground, barely obscuring the other virtual room. The Merovingian's men, too, were still there: the cold menace of their faces unchanged, hands tightening perhaps a touch more upon their weapons. The twins caught her sight, and smirked at her simultaneously, their faces mirror images.
"Shall we take a look, dear lady?" asked the Merovingian.
For an instant, a part of Aleph's mind wondered what would really happen if she got shot, now that she was strictly speaking dead. It would probably not be a good idea to find out. Now the antechamber and the station were superimposed on top of each other, white on white, shimmering back and force as if competing for existence. Subway tunnel, benches, telephone—everything flickered in and out of reality. The walls or whatever code she was visualizing as walls kept vibrating, and it was impossible to tell precisely how large or how small the space was...
"Well?"
This time, Aleph detected the trace of impatience in the other's tone. Don't say anything, her mind found enough presence to whisper voicelessly. Pulling back her gaze, she peered into the Merovingian's face, hoping to keep down the dizziness a little. Didn't this bizarre quantum state of things bother him? Or did he—
She squinted into his eyes, but could not gauge if he was seeing what she saw. Steady, steady now. The room shifted again, and the white antechamber faded, the station falling back into place. It did seem to remain more...stationary as long as she concentrated on looking at him and nowhere else.
"Whatever you say." She shrugged. A deep rumble in the distance interrupted her barely-formed suspicions. At the train whistle's piercing cry, She spun around rather too quickly, and only managed to stay upright with an effort. A sudden draft of air touched her face as the train glided into station, grinding to a halt with a clamor of shrill brakes.
"I believe I spoke of invisible doors, the last time we were here," whispered the Merovingian. "Doors that go where the trains cannot, if I may spend a moment to recall my own words. But now, thanks to you, everything has changed..."
The doors slid open in front of them, solid enough for now. A solitary figure stood framed in the doorway, face half-veiled by long lank hair, a torn and dirt-splotched overcoat hanging from his shoulders. The smell of stale grease and alcohol smashed into her nostrils like a punch.
"Messire," he mumbled under his breath. His eyes darted from side to side, refusing to alight onto the Merovingian's face. Something about the way he spoke made Aleph straighten. The Frenchman, too, must have heard it.
"Show me," he snapped, each syllable all of a sudden tight and clipped.
"There's...There's something wrong, messire." The reply came back low and slurred, whether from drunkenness or fear, Aleph could not tell. Several interminable seconds passed before she dared to turn her head, only to be instantaneously transfixed by the Merovingian's stare, an icy blade upon her face. Another endless human heartbeat, and to her surprise, he was the one to look away, gaze sweeping once swiftly across the room.
"Show me," he repeated.
The other man opened his mouth as if to speak, then evidently thought the better of it and shuffled aside. The Merovingian strode forward onto the train.
"Will you do me the honor, mademoiselle?" Still calm, mild as if he was merely inviting her to step out onto a polished dance floor. Aleph stole a backward glimpse, and almost started: the white-suited twins were only a step behind her. The one on the left motion her to follow. None of the other henchmen moved. Aleph complied wordlessly. Say nothing. Betray no emotions. It couldn't be. It was far too much to hope for.
The pair followed her onto the carriage, and the doors shut noiselessly behind them. As the train started to move, the nearest albino leaned nonchalantly against a seat back, firearm at the ready. On her other side, his twin had already taken up position. Aleph shrugged, and folded her arms across her chest. Moment of truth now.
"So, where are we going?"
The Frenchman paced to the end of the compartment, ignoring her question and staring intently out of the windows. Aleph followed his gaze, but beyond the reflection of her own face upon the glass, she could see no more than blackness. Only after a while did she notice it was pulsing and spinning strangely. Was it simply the jolting of the train? She could not tell.
"I never figured you'd be the type to prefer the subway, you know," she said.
"Where is it?" asked the Merovingian softly, still not turning to face her.
What did he mean by 'it'? Aleph only had a guess. She glanced up again, and took in an abrupt breath, for the darkness outside of the windows had dissolved. The subway tunnel's smooth, wire-lined walls were gone, replaced by rough, bent rocks and protruding metal. Dark things dangled from above like seaweeds, or limbs of living organisms. Living machines. She had to suppress an urge to duck as a tentacle reached for the train, surely about to slam right into the carriage, only to draw away harmlessly at the last split second. A yawning hollowness swooped past, lit with a glow so faint as to be nearly invisible. It reminded her of very distant lightning.
"It's supposed to be here," the homeless derelict—or whoever or whatever he was that appeared just like a derelict—choked out by the door. His lips twitched. "I looked for it, man. I looked for it all along the line, every fucking inch..."
Aleph looked at the others, the bum with his wild bloodshot eyes, the two pallid henchmen, who merely kept watching her, apparently oblivious to whatever was going on outside. She looked at their master, and for the first time saw all the new emotions in his scowl and furrowed brow and the set of his shoulders: suspicion, low simmering anger, possibly even a touch of fear. Intuition solidified into knowledge, and she was certain of it now, the shadowy view receding so swiftly across the glass, the frigid, tangled tunnels beneath the earth—the real earth, the real world, through which the human crafts would fly, evading the flocks of sentinels, up to the shattered, desolate earth or down, down, down to Zion...
And she was the only one who was seeing it.
Now the shadows dissolved, the walls switching back to that of a mere tunnel, and then the station was gliding into view once more, just the same as they'd left it a few minutes ago, sterile-white, luminous. The little crowd of guards, bristling with guns, had not moved. Aleph lowered her eyes to the floor, mentally preparing herself for the vertiginous vision of the two realities or virtualities, impossibly superimposed. Against all odds her changes—the scribblings that she had not begun to understand, herself—had worked. It had kept him out of Zion.
"That's funny." She could not quite disguise the triumph in her voice. "I didn't think we were going around in a circle."
Before she knew it, the Merovingian had crossed the compartment in a few swift strides and was face to face with her, and it was all Aleph could do to remain where she stood and not backpedal. Next to her, the two albinos shifted, as if waiting for unspoken instructions. A few bone-chilling seconds passed.
"It seems you have fancied yourself clever, mademoiselle," commented the Merovingian at last, voice surprisingly and dangerously quiet. The train had already stopped, and the doors were open. Aleph let out a slow breath.
"Hey, it was your key," she retorted.
The Frenchman's eyes narrowed. Aleph saw no signal from him before the white-clad pair each laid a hand on her arms. She decided against struggling and allowed them march her off the train. The bum sidled onto the platform after them.
Movement in the distance: the shabby beige door at the station's end was swinging open. Several men entered, more of the Merovingian's underlings, presumably, the foremost one carrying a dark flat box in his hands, the others flanking him in formation. Just before the door slammed shut behind them, Aleph caught a flash of snowy brightness, even more bleached than that of the walls around her. As the group came to a halt, she saw the box was in fact a slim laptop computer. Another man stepped forward; something in his hand caught the light, sending a pulse of reflected colors across the immaculate aridness of the tiles.
"Wow, you guys actually managed to retrieve it?" she asked, if simply to cover the painful dryness inside her throat. The Frenchman glared at her for only a second before turning his attention to the laptop. There was a quiet whirr as the disk slid into the drive, and the computer fired up, the familiarity and normality of the sound utterly strange against the room's unreality. Aleph twisted slightly, craning her neck, but both of the hands on her arms immediately tightened, and she had to make do with the view of the other's face above the screen.
Green code. Its reflection flickered in the Merovingian's eyes, harsh with concentration as he bent over the screen. At his back, the guards stood impassive, and behind their dark glasses she knew they were watching neither the computer nor their overlord, but her. Aleph waited. The Frenchman's fingers darted over the keyboard, and she could see the muscles of his jaw tightening in silence. A minute or so, couldn't have been much longer even though it felt like an eon, and his hands slowed, then stopped, hovering above the keys. Finally, he looked up.
"You haven't missed much, really," said Aleph. She even attempted a small smirk, but the effect was rather ruined by the shakiness of her voice. "Let me tell you on personal evidence, it ain't all that it's cracked up to be—"
A deep growl emerged from the other program's throat, a noise that she'd never imagined to hear from him, and it grew louder, turning into a roar of rage as the laptop crashed against the wall. Aleph winced as a small shower of metal and plastic splashed in all directions.
"It's not the poor box's fault," she suggested.
The Merovingian did not spare a reply, and she was rewarded with the sight of the suave program down on his knees, scrabbling among the debris. Something glittered in his hand when he rose again: the disk, slashed across with a long, jagged crack, had not yet shattered. Holding it by the rim, he raised it to face level, and with a rapid twist of the wrists, the disk suddenly split into two full silvery rounds, one nestled in each palm. Aleph's brows lifted in grudging admiration. The one time she'd attempted this herself, it had taken her an hour to pry the thing apart edgewise.
The Merovingian lowered his gaze. Aleph drew in a deep breath. With startling coolness, a part of her considered what it meant for a program to die. All around her, the coded station started to shift and swim again, pulsing like a gigantic, white-hot heart. A human heart. If she could only keep her sight on the Frenchman...
"It was something you told me yourself," she said. "Look into the disk. Good hint."
The other stared down fixedly as if he had not heard her. Aleph stood too far away to see into his hands, but she did not need to. She knew what was there. The piece on the left: one line on the newly revealed inner surface, engraved in a smooth elegant hand.
"Putain de salope," the Merovingian forced out between clenched teeth.
"It's amazing, what you did," said Aleph. "The hacking programs, all that gorgeous code just for an diversion. I don't think anyone else would be capable of that, honestly. Still, they bothered me, somehow. It was hard to describe, but...I just thought there had to be something more to you, y'know?"
The Merovingian gave a little snarl.
"I am flattered by your estimation of my abilities, mademoiselle." His words were bitter with sarcasm.
"I was confused, of course, but I thought maybe I figured out what you meant by the sentence. Those whose bodies are made of the body of the world. Those who are made of verdant dreams. Programs. Only those made of green code would be allowed to pass through the door. But how? How could something so seemingly simple and primitive stand in place of countless lines of programming? How did you disguised the code of the hacking routines—the real hacking routines—so subtly?"
"I am not a hacker!" The Merovingian's voice rose, and he advanced a step toward her, then checked himself. Pause.
"I told you, my dear young lady. It is. Magic." He wrenched some semblance of control back into his tone.
Aleph inclined her head. Surely she would not escape this time, yet the small victory curled the corner of her lips. There was another line beneath what the other had written inside the disk, scratched into the metal crookedly and painstakingly with a pin. She knew what it said, too.
"I was surprised by the last part of your...magical spell," she said. "Those who have despaired?"
"I'm sure you would be," snapped the Frenchman. His face was unreadable.
"I had no idea how this could possibly work, but it was a threat to Zion," went on Aleph. "It was too beautiful to destroy, so I thought I could change it, add a provision. Of course, I also didn't know if I'd really have to write it in a virgin's blood by the light of a full moon, so to speak—"
"Yet who have seen Zion with eyes of flesh. Who have gazed upon the desert," said the Merovingian slowly, reading from the shard in his hand. "By adding to the original design, you have contradicted it. By requiring the one standing at the door to be both program and human, you wanted to ensure that no one could enter at all."
"And that part didn't work exactly the way I expected. Luckily for me, huh?"
"And this. The last clause of your sentence." Stalking another step closer, he waved the two silvery pieces in her face. "Those who have kept—"
"Yeah." She noticed the way he halted in mid-sentence, as if not wanting to say that last word. "I still had hope."
"You think you have gained a clever little victory over me. You think you can betray me and suffer no consequences."
Aleph stood straighter. It got a little easier to look directly at him, point blank. If she was going to die she might as well try not to die in ignorance.
"How did you do it?"
The sneer froze in his eyes, and he took a step back without replying.
"What was that place?"
Again no answer. The Merovingian had already turned away, heading toward the door at the back of the station. The nearest guard came forward, one hand gesturing with an automatic pistol, the other hand reaching for her arm. Aleph took a quick step as if to follow the Frenchman, staying just out of the retainer's touch.
"No need, I'm coming along, okay? But just one more question—"
Without finishing, she burst into a furious forward surge. Her form blurred like a whirlwind, and there was already a movement of air beside her, on the left: without turning her head, Aleph swiped sideways, concentrating all her force into the attack. The man stumbled backward. Code streaked around her, and Aleph whirled, cutting narrowly between the ghostly shapes of the twins. The Frenchman was just a few yards ahead. They wouldn't allow her to take their lord hostage but it was her only chance. The first burst of bullets exploded in the air just above her head—
"Nobody—touches this—woman!"
The Merovingian's roar was like an invisible blade across the air, and at the same instant something—a fist, maybe—slammed into her midsection with the force of a thunderclap. A blast of pain shot through her as she was flung backward, crashing into the side of a bench, and a millisecond later several powerful hands were on her shoulders and arms, wrestling her to the floor. Four or five guns, about a foot away from her nose. Everything had gone dead still.
"Not in this joint, babe," panted the bum through his mouthful of rotten teeth from somewhere overhead. Aleph grunted, momentarily unable to recover enough breath for an retort.
"I have said, dear young lady, that none of my people would ever touch a hair on your head." Parting the thicket of gun barrels, the Merovingian emerged from the crowd. To her astonishment, he was already smiling again, though the smile did not go near his eyes. "Surely, surely you will allow me just a little more credit?"
Aleph could only scowl back as the twins, one on each side, hauled her back to her feet and began to pull her across the platform. This time, they were much rougher. The Merovingian did not look back until they reached the door.
"I happen to own a rather pretty little place not far from here," Hes pulled out a set of keys from his pocket. "May I extend my hospitality to you for a while, chère mademoiselle?"