Kevin Anderson - Resurrection, Inc.

The gateways closed on all sides, closer and closer. United, the other Interfaces were infinitely stronger, and Supervisor could not break through. She could see the knowledge of the Cremators all around her and was trapped by it. Although she battered her consciousness against the barriers, they became stronger and stronger, as her fear and helplessness grew.

More and more interlocks were placed around her as the other Interfaces rerouted the datapaths. For the first time in her memory, Supervisor was severed from The Net, trapped inside, completely isolated on a data island. Her incorporeal form had no voice with which to shout for help. And there was no possible way for her to get out, ever….

Back in the apartment, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 automatically stopped, returned to the beginning notes, then repeated itself again and again and again.

The mammoth headquarters of Resurrection, Inc. rose like a tombstone in front of Danal. Still hiding his Servant identity with the beige trenchcoat, he looked at the building in brooding awe.

Other people milled about; most moved hurriedly toward the enclosed plazas as an early spring rain started to fall. The Servant stood oblivious, but conscious of every droplet of water striking his skin.

“…return to Resurrection, Incorporated… meet with Francois Nathans…”

Danal walked toward the nearest transplastic revolving door, the entrance for workers and visitors.

“He’s eagerly expecting you.”

Danal pushed his way through the door, grasping the long brass handle as if he were a pallbearer. He had been here before. This place had given him a second birth, but he remembered nothing else about it. He had been brought in at night with a shipment of other corpses, through a different door, processed and turned into what he was now. But the techs had not been thorough enough. Too many stains of his past life remained, coming back to haunt him in incomprehensible flashes and painful knives of memory.

Danal wondered if the techs could purge his brain again, start him over fresh and clean and untainted. But for some reason he found that prospect more frightening than just learning to live with his past, to live with the shadow of a person he had once been.

As he entered the carpeted lobby Danal saw the main receptionist sitting behind a glossy black landscape of her acrylic desktop, tapping her impossibly long fingernails on a keyboard. Her eyes were a cool purplish color from mood-responsive contact lenses.

He shrugged off his trenchcoat and stood exposed as a Servant in his gray uniform. The receptionist looked up, mildly surprised at the audacity of his disguise, but then she recognized that no Servant could have done such a thing by himself.

Danal’s voice sounded dry and lifeless to his own ears. “My Master Van Ryman instructed me to come here. I am to see Mr. Francois Nathans.”

This is the trigger moment we’ve all been waiting for.

The receptionist turned away, ignoring him as she spoke into an intercom port. “He’s here, Mr. Nathans. ”

Danal heard no response from Nathans, but the receptionist acknowledged anyway. She looked coolly at him again, but this time her eyes were brown. “Take the fourth lift on the right. That’s a direct line down to Mr. Nathans’s main office. Command: Go.”

Before Danal could say anything, his Servant programming took control and sent his feet moving toward the indicated lift. Vaguely, he resented her use of the Command phrase, which stripped him of any discretion whatsoever. He had obviously shown himself to be independent just by coming here alone; the shackling phrase relegated him to the status of a puppet, and she could have seen that she didn’t need to use it.

As Danal moved away, the receptionist stretched out her arm to take the dripping polymer trenchcoat from him. He had no choice but to let her have it. He didn’t know if she was keeping it for him, or just making certain that he couldn’t drip rainwater in Nathans’s office… or maybe she was stripping him of something that could hide his identity as a Servant.

The dampness on Danal’s pale scalp and face dried quickly, and his gray jumpsuit had already volatilized most of the moisture in the fabric. Danal hoped his Master Van Ryman would not notice he had lost the black stocking cap. He didn’t want to explain what he had done.

The special lift doors opened automatically for him as he approached. The doors waited like an open mouth with the fangs cleverly hidden.

The doors hissed shut, and the lift obeyed his voice command, suddenly plunging downward, deep below ground level to the main offices of Francois Nathans. The lift didn’t distinguish between the words of Servants and those of humans. After a moment Danal stepped out, dizzy but reorienting himself quickly.

The corridors were dim and cold from the heavy air conditioning; a high humidity level and a faint musty smell made the place dank. Ahead of him a wide double door of walnut-attribute clonewood stood partly open, inviting. He took one step out of the elevator and the doors closed behind him. Listening, he could hear the whirring machinery as the lift chamber reset itself back to the main lobby level.

The Servant moved to the door of the office, stepping silently on the thick maroon carpet, though he knew that Nathans must have heard the lift’s arrival. He placed one hand on the brass handle of the heavy door, pulling it open wide enough to admit himself. Some instinct warned him not to knock. He could feel shadows around him, an oppressiveness, as if he were deep below the Earth’s crust.

His nerve ends tingled with a handful of invisible needles. His mouth felt dry and tasted like metal. Warning bells sounded in his mind, but he took a quick, cold breath and steeled himself, tensing his muscles to keep the mental turmoil trapped within.

Something was going to happen.

He felt like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point.

Danal stepped into the chamber. “I’m here, Mr. Nathans.”

In an eyeblink he saw all the baroque furniture, the tapestries, the faint illumination from thick black candles on the desk, the bookshelves, the reception table. A thick plate-glass window looked out through murky water; large and small fish swam in shadowy shapes out to the limits of visibility. Danal didn’t know if Nathans had had a large aquarium installed, or if they were indeed under the water of the Bay.

His eyes locked on Nathans, who was off in a corner hastily donning an embroidered white robe. Though Nathans’s back was turned, Danal could see he was short and bald, with real rubies implanted decoratively on his naked scalp. Nathans turned to show his face and smiled thinly at Danal, but the smile seemed directed inward.

“Welcome, Sacrificial Lamb,” Nathans gloated.

He made the neo-Satanist sign of the broken cross.

The juggernaut of memories buried beneath Danal’s thin Servant facade exploded, suddenly becoming a raging black monster that lunged to the end of its chain… and the chain snapped. Using the blurred reflexes from his microprocessor-enhanced brain, Danal leaped forward, unable to control his reflexive fury.

Nathans!

Satanist!

Schemer, murderer!

He hated this man, loathed him with a passion strong enough to transcend death. Danal’s Servant identity scrabbled to regain control, but his former self was too strong, too murderous. The Servant’s arms shot out with his hands rigid and his fingers extended like wooden stakes.

His resurrected mind, the other Danal, meant to strangle Francois Nathans, but his hands moved in such a blur of speed that they plunged through the skin of the bald man’s neck as if it were cheese and snapped his spinal column, wrenching the exposed vertebrae out of place.