Rogue Oracle (27 page)

He didn’t move. He was still breathing. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest under her gloves. His pulse was quick, but thready. What had the Chimera done to him? She cradled his head in her hands, and tears gurgled into her respirator. Had the Chimera sucked Harry’s mind dry, like he had the others? Was this the sacrifice the Hanged Man had foretold?

Irina would bring help, soon. But she wasn’t going to leave him here, in the puddles and toxic moss. Tara grasped Harry under the arms and dragged him away to a piece of broken concrete that jutted above the ruined lot. It was clear of moss and water, and out of the line of sight of the truck if the Chimera came back, but not so hidden that Irina’s men couldn’t find him. Tenderly, she arranged his hands on his chest. She was reminded of the Four of Swords she’d seen in her dreams, the knight asleep in effigy.

Tara pulled aside her respirator and kissed him. Underneath his plastic armor, Harry made no move. What had been magick in her dream world was dreadfully ordinary in this one.

But, unlike in her dream world, she wouldn’t allow the Chimera to win. Tara’s hands balled into fists, and she searched the broken pavement for Harry’s discarded gun. She popped the jammed round out of the chamber with some effort, saw two shots left in the clip behind a distended spring. It would have to work.

Squaring her shoulders, she confronted the Sarcophagus. Her white-shrouded feet split the surface tension of uneven puddles as she approached. The shadow of the Sarcophagus loomed cold over her, though straw from bird nests leaked from the seams between its uneven and hastily erected lead plates. The windowless façade was streaked with rust from disintegrating bolts and seams forced open by wayward plants. Rain peppered her radiation hood, and she felt water begin to creep in at the neck, mingling with sweat. She paced the perimeter of it until she found an opening, a ripped panel beside a warped pine tree.

The Chimera wasn’t afraid of this place, and she was determined not to fear it, either.

She expected nearly total darkness, waited a moment for her eyes to adjust. It was dark, but light streamed in from split seams in the roof, drizzling water from rusted beams. Stripped electronics panels confronted her, windows pulled open and wires snaking out of steel cabinets. She wound her way around the cabinets, the plastic-draped consoles with silent dials, some scavenged for use elsewhere, leaving gaping holes in annunciator panels. Even here, in the control area, steel had creased and buckled under the force of the explosion. Overhead, rain drummed with a deafening sound.

At her hip, the dosimeter vibrated furiously. Tara ignored it, and tried not to imagine what was in the dust she shuffled through as she made her way through the maze. Spray-painted radiation readings were scrawled along the walls with the dates … In May of 1986, the background radiation was .5 roentgens per hour. Tara glanced down at her dosimeter. Her dosimeter crept near 1.0 roentgens … suggesting that whatever the Chimera had accomplished here had breached containment.

She swore under her breath, muffled by her respirator.

A rusted, bowed set of stairs extended before her. A padlocked door leading to them had been ripped open, a steel radiation sign curled back like paper. Tara guessed this was the path to the main reactor hall. The stairs were lit by dull yellow emergency lighting. She climbed them with her pistol at the ready, sweat trickling between her shoulder blades. The saliva in her mouth tasted like tinfoil, and she could feel the prickling of radiation along her skin, under her suit. Why any human being would voluntarily go in here was beyond her.

The floor of the reactor hall was filled with nearly two feet of uneven concrete and disintegrating bits of yellow plastic foam, poured in an attempt to reduce contamination. Beyond that, the debris field appeared largely untouched. In the dim yellow lighting, it looked like a scene from an apocalypse: torn I-beams warped around massive slabs of concrete and steel reaching four stories tall. Clay and boron particles dusted over the scene like snow, dropped from helicopters decades earlier. Shafts of light and water from the disintegrating ceiling poured through to illuminate the debris. Overhead, a bird flapped, trying to escape the rain. The weak structure groaned under the pelting of the rain, making a sound like sand dunes sighing that Tara could feel in the soles of her feet.

A shattered window to the main reactor perched on a ruined wall. Tara stood on tiptoe to peer in, through gravel and bits of glass melted yellow and blue. Part of the shell of the refueling station had crashed through that wall and landed on its side. This was where the fuel rods had been placed into the machine. Melted fuel, like frozen magma, extended below it from the sleeves where the fuel rods would have been inserted. She could see evidence of digging here: one of the barrels from the truck, hand shovels, and hastily made reinforcement efforts with scraps of metal.

Tara shivered. It seemed ungodly, the immense scale, the force. Unnatural. Evil.

The movement of a light glimmered on the top of the reactor, swept a beam in Tara’s direction. She lifted her gun.

“Chimera. Stop.” She didn’t know what else to call him. He was as much an abomination as this place.

He turned, regarding her. His rifle was at his shoulder. “What did you call me?”

• • • •

“C
HIMERA
.”

Galen cocked his head, looking at the small woman standing on the catwalk below him. He leapt down, curiosity stinging him as much as the air stung his flesh. This was the only living human who understood what he was. He heard Harry Li’s voice buzzing in the back of his skull. He knew Tara. Knew that she was special.

“You know what I am.”

“I know you survived this.” Her free hand, the one not holding the gun, sketched the devastation. “I know it changed you. And I know it shouldn’t have happened.”

Galen snorted. “It was inevitable.”

“It was human error.”

“Human error is inevitable in any endeavor. No matter what the precautions, there will always be an error.” Galen took a deep breath, tasting the dust at the back of his throat. His lungs ached. He could feel them burning.

“What are you doing here?”

Galen licked dust from his lips. “Everyone thought this place was dead. All the old fuel melted and hardened into rock, wrapped in lead and concrete. But that wasn’t true. I learned from the old spies that this place was being used … used to store radioactive debris from other sites, other reactors, other projects. And then forgotten.”

“Why not leave it alone? Let it rot here in lead.”

Galen laughed. “This place is a cancer. And they fed it, made it worse. I want the rest of the world to experience it, to understand what a fucking mess this is, until someone calls a stop to it.”

“That’s why you sold the information, the whereabouts of the other nuclear debris.”

“There’s enough poison for all of us.” The cesium in his mouth tasted bitter. The ceiling of the Sarcophagus creaked above him, as if underlining his point.

“And now … why get your hands dirty, why dig this out yourself?”

He stared up at the vast, dark ceiling. “I am like the firemen who knew they were dying. I have nothing left to lose. I am rooted to this place.”

“I cannot let you go.” Tara stared down the barrel of the gun at him. Her voice was short, breathy, as if she were having difficulty breathing through the respirator covering half her face. “You must be held to account for your crimes, for spreading this misery to others.”

Galen sighed. The stock of the rifle was pressed to his shoulder, moved with each breath. “I won’t go with you.”

The look of sadness in the woman’s eyes reminded him of the nurse in Minsk who snuck him apples. “I am sorry.” She pulled the trigger of the gun.

And nothing happened.

She pulled it again, with the same echoing click.

Galen let loose a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, coughed on his shoulder. That was the same piece of shit gun that Harry Li had. Useless. He advanced forward on the catwalk to her. Her eyes widened, and she lifted her chin.

“This is a good death,” Galen said. “A hero’s death. Unlike the men and women who died here of fire and burns, and who will continue to die here, of cancer … this will be quick. No invisible force cooking you alive as you sleep. Just a clean bullet.”

His finger flexed on the trigger.

“Harry,” she said.

The voice in Galen’s head that belonged to Harry Li howled at him. Galen’s grip on the gun shook. He saw, through Harry Li’s eyes, her scars and her smile. Her strength, how she had survived being buried alive. How she had found him, using her cartomancer’s talents. She was like Galen. A monster, in her own world, in her own way. But he could feel Harry’s love for her, strong and proximate. Not the distracted wistfulness Carl had felt for Lena. Galen could not understand how Harry had been able to leave her alone, and his fingers twitched. Galen had longed for that kind of love his whole life, that kind of a union, being understood with judgment suspended. But Harry had cast it all away, not realizing what he had lost.

“You’re a witch,” he said. “A witch who knows something of the horrors practiced by man.”

“An oracle. An oracle who knows something of horror,” she admitted. The plastic on her respirator flexed and caved inward.

“Tell me something.” He licked his sunburned lips. “Will this happen again?”

Tara stared at him with those inky blue eyes. “It might. All I can say is that I will do everything in my power to keep it from happening. There is an order of oracles which tries to keep this from happening—one of the stalkers here foresaw it, but no one would listen to her.” She shook her head, sucking the plastic close to her face. “I can make you no clear prediction, only say what I will do.”

At least she was honest. Not like those lying spies. Galen advanced across the catwalk. He wanted her voice in his head, wanted it more than Harry Li had ever wanted it. He wanted hers to be the last voice he ever heard.

T
ARA’S BREATH RANG IN THE RESPIRATOR, LIKE BREATHING
into a bottle, but something was wrong. She wasn’t getting enough air. She thought the dust might be clogging it, but couldn’t be certain. Instead, she tried to answer the Chimera’s questions as she stood, unarmed. The air trickled down to a thin wheeze, then nothing. The plastic sucked against her nose and mouth.

She lifted the mask from her face, gasping, inhaling dust and rust and all the breath of the Chimera’s world.

She stumbled in the debris, tripping on a piece of steel jutting over the edge of the catwalk. She landed on her hands and knees, disturbing a cloud of dust that washed over her face and hands. Tears stung her eyes.

She heard the Chimera’s footsteps behind her, felt the cool barrel of the gun brushing her hair.

She reached for a handful of the stained glass shards from the reactor window, glinting in the weak light. She took them in her fist, turned, and flung them at the Chimera. The Chimera dropped the gun and clawed at his face. The rifle rolled off the edge of the catwalk into darkness.

Tara reached for a piece of cable snaking across the floor of the catwalk. She yanked it free with all her strength. Tara clambered to her feet, brandishing the ruined cable like a whip. Rain sluiced down from the debris, pooling around her ankles.

The Chimera snarled, his sunburned face a mass of scratches. She lashed the cable at him. It struck him across the throat, and he grasped his neck, which began leaking blood on his filthy shirt.

She struck him again. And again. Rage bubbled in her for what he’d done to Harry, for what he’d done to Veriss, Lockley, and the rest. She wanted to scream at him that the way to stop nuclear devastation wasn’t by creating more of it. Just like killing wouldn’t stop any more killing.

The cable lashed around his neck. Tara yanked him off his feet, dragged him to his knees on the catwalk. The Chimera wound his hands around the cable, trying to yank the cable from Tara’s grip.

Tara moved behind him, wrapping the cable tighter around his neck. With her knee in his back, she grasped both edges of the cable and pulled as hard as she could. Tears streamed down her face as she watched his hands flail. She didn’t know if the Chimera held the last of Harry’s memory, if he was all that was left of Harry’s mind. But he had to be stopped.

The Pythia was right. Sometimes, killing was the only solution.

Something groaned overhead. Tara looked up in enough time to feel flakes of rust falling on her face, like snow. She blinked, seeing a flurry of bird wings flapping in the shadows overhead. A rusted I-beam began to shift loose under the force of water on the flat roof, ripped down in a wash of water and wings.

Tara released the cable and leapt away. The I-beam fragment crashed into the catwalk, severing it and sending it smashing into the debris field. Tara clung to an intact support rail, watching as the girder pinned the Chimera to the pile of rubble like a squirming bug. A plume of dust rose, and settled quickly in the rain that plinked over his skin.

The Chimera reached out for her. In a voice that sounded very much like Harry’s, he cried: “Don’t leave me alone.”

Tara picked her way into the debris field, climbing over bits of split concrete and metal to reach him. He was pinned completely under the beam, only his arm and head visible, pressed into a puddle. Tara tried to shove the beam aside, but it was too heavy for her by several tons.