Sorrow Space by James Axler & Rik Hoskin

Author:James Axler & Rik Hoskin [Axler, James & Hoskin, Rik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460312650
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Kane knew she was dead, he had even examined the body.

Helena Vaughn ignored Kane’s warning, took another step down the staircase toward him, and another wistful sigh emanated from her pursed lips.

“Stay. Where. You. Are,” Kane instructed, gesturing with the muzzle of his Sin Eater. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

Helena Vaughn continued to approach, her jaw dropping open. She was five steps above Kane, and he could smell her breath from here, the stench of something rotten, of death.

“I won’t tell you again,” Kane said. “Stop where you are.”

Bare feet sinking into the pooling water, bare arm brushing against the damp of the wall, the naked figure of Helena Vaughn took another step toward Kane down the enclosed staircase.

* * *

SEVERAL FLOORS UP FROM KANE, Brigid Baptiste was crying. “‘Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there,’” she whispered. “‘He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away.’” It was an old rhyme, something her eidetic memory had stored.

Looming over her, the figure of Daryl Morganstern was a dark presence, his breathing heavy, his aroma close—coffee and sweat and cologne. Brigid saw him out of the corner of her eye, through the salty tears that plucked at her tear ducts, washing against the nose clips of her spectacles. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You have to understand...”

“Oh, I understand just fine, my dove, my love, my precious flower,” Morganstern assured Brigid. “I’m a mathematician, logic is my arena, my playground. I died so that you could live.”

“No,” Brigid whispered, but Morganstern ignored her.

“Just like so many others have. I’ll bet that if we add it up here and now, you could name dozens of people who gave their lives so that you and your little team of do-gooders could continue running around playing your silly ‘save the world’ game.”

“It’s not like that,” Brigid insisted, but her head was already racing, calling to mind the faces of others who had been hurt and killed over the past few years: Skylar Hitch, Henny Johnson, Clem Bryant and others in the Cerberus ranks, and numerous more beyond the walls of the redoubt who had appeared in Brigid’s life for just a few days or simply a few hours. Her life, along with that of her field teammates, Grant and Kane, had taken so many casualties, people whose names she had barely had time to learn, some for whom she had never even done that.

“Do the math, Brigid,” Morganstern insisted. “How many lives does it make? How many lives equal just one Brigid Baptiste? I don’t think the equation is balanced, do you?”

“Please,” Brigid pleaded. “I don’t know...”

“Wouldn’t you say it’s time to make sure both sides of the equation balance?” Morganstern pressed, looming over Brigid’s shoulder, so near that she could almost touch him. “The operator requires that the equation be balanced. We’ll do it together.”

“Operator,” Brigid whispered, shaking her head.

Hell-o operator, give me number nine.

She tried to ignore the figure looming at the edge of her vision, tried to dismiss his accusing words.

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