Kevin Anderson - Resurrection, Inc.

Danal looked at the structure of the roof, followed the gables with his eyes until he located the spot under one of the enameled hexagram tiles. Then he crouched on his knees and edged up, ignoring puddles on the ground, until he almost touched the field itself.

The light drizzle would make finding the opening much easier.

He could smell a thick ozone stench from the ionized rain. Danal sat back, opened his perceptions, and stared at the glimmers as raindrops spangled against the field. Looking for the illusion, looking for the hologram projected across the opening. He stepped up his microprocessor, watching, until he finally saw the pattern mirrored. As one succession of droplets struck the invisible wall, an identical sequence—the illusion—was reflected exactly one meter away.

When installing the Systems a lifetime ago, it had taken a great deal of effort to design a distortion in the field for emergency access. But Vincent had insisted on being able to get into his own home regardless of who controlled the Intruder Defense Systems. The imposter couldn’t possibly know about it.

Danal stared a moment longer until he was sure, then pushed his head and shoulders through the unseen doorway, praying he had not misjudged the hologram. Vividly and mercilessly he recalled the blackened corpses of the first demonstrators who had tried to penetrate the field.

Danal froze and breathed an exhausted sigh of relief, then scrambled the rest of the way through. He stood up in the relative shelter and warmth under the field, brushing the mud from his jumpsuit. Up above, he could see the spangles of raindrops as they came down. Both he and the imposter were trapped here—like an arena.

Danal walked down the black poured-stone walkway and purposefully ascended the steps. He felt tall and powerful. He stared up at the eaves, watching the weathervane turn back and forth on its random motor. The gargoyles seemed to cringe from his presence now that he knew their secret. Danal smiled again, but brought his expression under control. The imposter would probably be watching by now.

He opened the front door of the house and stepped into the maw of shadows. The carpeting drowned his soft footsteps, but by the light of the dangling chandelier Danal could see the startled lookalike coming to meet him. The Servant stared at the man’s stolen face and felt disoriented, as if looking into a bent mirror.

Danal turned and closed the door, shutting them both inside.

The imposter came forward two more steps to face him, and stopped, nervous. His face was drawn and haggard, and he looked at Danal with a contradictory mixture of eagerness and dread. The Servant regarded him in cold silence, trying to choose from his handful of accusations.

The false Vincent Van Ryman spoke first, astonished. “Nathans said you might be alive after all.” He drew a deep breath, and a vision-driven fire ignited the man’s resolve. Danal couldn’t answer, choked by his anticipation, his conflicting anger. Though his silence lasted only a second or two, it seemed a long, long moment.

“Very well, alone then,” the imposter muttered and rubbed his hands briskly together. “Follow me, Danal. This is perfect. We’re about to embark on the most important event of the Technological Age.”

The false Van Ryman shuffled down the corridor. Baffled but ready to jump at any trick, Danal followed him past the control room of the Intruder Defense Systems, past the study in which so many events had begun, to the open sitting area overlooked by the upstairs rooms. The locked door beneath the staircase had once haunted Danal’s buried memories, but now the underground chambers beyond, offered only healed nightmares, the private meeting place for the neo-Satanist Inner Circle, where he had been held prisoner as the imposter grew the face of Vincent Van Ryman….

The imposter removed a key hanging from the leather thong around his neck and opened the door. A dank smell wafted upward, and the false Van Ryman drew a deep breath.

“I’m so glad you came back, Vincent—I really did want to see you again.” He turned to lock his gaze with Danal’s. “Will you join me for a little Sabbat of our own? It is Walpurgis Night, you know, and it’s only fitting that things should end this way.”

Without waiting for a response, the imposter turned and descended the stairs. Danal hesitated, confused; he had not expected this at all, and could not tell if the imposter was admitting defeat or if he had some deeper plan for luring Danal ahead. But the Servant realized it didn’t make any difference—he would never consider turning back now. Danal ducked and entered the passageway.

Paint, carefully done to look like moss, lined the cracks of the shallow flagstone steps, and a cassette played the sounds of echoing drips of water in the musty air. Stone benches surrounded a chipped granite pedestal; pentagrams, runes, and demonic symbols had been engraved into the sides of the podium, with the registered star-in-pentagram logo of the neo-Satanists prominent. Flickering electric candles stood like pitchforks in three brass candelabra. A Net terminal was set into two massive stone blocks on the wall, and the white-painted squares on the keypad looked like rows of teeth from a grinning skull.

“Wait here,” the false Van Ryman said confidently as he reached behind the curtains covering an alcove, withdrawing a billowy black High Priest’s robe trimmed with red on the sleeves. He glanced at his chronometer.

“Tonight it’s all coming to the end.” He donned the robe, shrugging his shoulders and straightening the fabric, then took a step toward the Net terminal. “With your sacrifice, Danal, we can set the final wheels of the universe in motion.”

The Servant cast aside the charade as he dropped into microprocessor speed again. Without a word he lunged forward, grabbing the folds of the imposter’s black robe and throwing him up against the stone blocks of the wall. He was careful to check his hand so as not to kill the man, but his fingers still slipped through the fabric and gouged the false Van Ryman’s chest. Friction from the cloth burned against Danal’s fingers. The imposter struggled, but the Servant’s reflexes countered every effort.

“You stole my identity, you bastard!”

“I gave it to you in the first place,” the man spat back, almost amused. The imposter’s eyes narrowed slightly. Too late, Danal realized that this was no mere lookalike— Nathans had selected him for his cunning, his intelligence and resourcefulness. The false Van Ryman barked an order.

“Command: Release me!”

To his horror Danal’s hands automatically withdrew as if he had touched hot wax. The Servant’s legs took two quick steps backward. He let out a helpless cry.

“Command: Stand still!” the imposter snapped.

Smug in his triumph, he collected his dignity, straightening the black robe, and looked at the helpless Servant. He briskly rubbed his hands together again, wiping the nervous sweat from his palms. “You’re still a Servant, Vincent. You have to obey my Commands.” He bent over Danal; his breath smelled of Glenlivet scotch. “Listen.”

With a swish of his robes he went over to the stone pedestal where he snatched up a mammoth leather-bound tome, one of the neo-Satanist holy compendia thrown together by Vincent Van Ryman and Francois Nathans. The imposter flipped to a finger-smeared page and began to quote from memory. His eyes never left Danal’s.

“‘And all have their missions, and all will Serve, though they may not know it. The greatest of these will be called Danal, and he is the Messenger. He is the Prophet. He is the Bringer of Change and the Fulfiller of Promises. He is the Stranger whom everyone knows. He is the Awakener and the Awakened. He is the Destroyer. The return of Satan rests in his deeds.’”