“The Seal. ”
Op Nine whispered, “But you have the Seal—do you not?”
“But don’t you have the Seal?” I asked the dead guy.
“The Lesser Seal, Alfred Kropp. The Vessel of our imprisonment. Bring it to us, last son of Lancelot. ”
“O Wise and Magnificent One,” Op Nine whispered.
“O Wise and Magnificent One,” I echoed.
“We do not possess the Holy Vessel.”
“We don’t?” I asked Op Nine. I was shocked. He jerked his head toward the body as if to say, Don’t talk to me; talk to the cadaver!
I cleared my throat and said to the cadaver, “We, um, we don’t have it.”
There was a horrific screech like the sound of a car slamming on its brakes, the body on the slide-out tray jerked, and the head snapped forward, casting deep shadows over the empty eye sockets.
The head fell back, and the scream petered out into a soft hiss.
As I looked into those black holes, the blackness washed over me, and I went under, like a little kid in the surf. The blackness was as heavy as the weight of water all around me, and I could hear children crying, a million voices wailing in hunger and fear. I saw endless rows of bodies stacked like dried cornstalks in the autumn and a sky dark with roiling clouds. I saw the smoking ruins of cities and people scurrying everywhere, their clothes caked in ashes and dust, glass from broken windows crunching under their feet.
I saw the land stripped of green and all the other colors of life, pallid nameless things squirmed in the thick mud where the rivers used to run. And over all of it hung the sickly sweet stench of death.
From very far away I heard Op Nine’s voice calling me.
“Alfred! Alfred, what do you see?”
My mouth opened, but the only sound that came out was a wimpy echo of the hiss escaping Carl’s blue lips.
“Bring us the Seal, Alfred Kropp,” the corpse hissed again, and then it toppled off the tray onto the floor, landing on its bare shoulder with a sickening smack, and lay still.
Op Nine strode over to the body and bent down, examining the face carefully. One of Carl’s hands shot up and grabbed him around the throat. He tried to pull himself free, but the dead man’s grip was too tight. Abby and the doctor rushed over and pried at the fingers until suddenly they relaxed.
Op Nine scooted back, clutching his throat and gasping for breath.
The doctor was staring at the body.
“Impossible!” he breathed.
“Oh, we’re up to our hips in impossibilities,” Merryweather said. He turned to me. “What did you see?”
I cleared my throat. It felt raw, as if I’d been screaming.
“The end . . . the end of everything.”
He turned toward Op Nine. “According to your briefing, Nine, the IAs had absconded with the Lesser Seal.”
“That was the operating assumption,” Op Nine answered. “Clearly we must arrive at an alternative theory.”
“The Hyena,” Abby said suddenly. “He’s taken it.”
“Mike got away?” I asked.
“Both he and a sand-foil were missing after the battle,”
Op Nine said. “It is a reasonable assumption he did not perish after Paimon obtained the ring.”