F. Paul Wilson - Ground Zero

But that flesh-and-blood girl wouldn’t stay long once she got a look at Diana’s eyes.

She stared at the reflection of those eyes now. With their black pupils, black irises, and black everything else, they looked like ebony marbles stuck in her sockets. Sometimes she wanted to rip them out. Yeah, she’d be blind, but at least then she could go to school instead of having tutors. And she’d have a true excuse for wearing wraparound sunglasses all the time instead of lying about a rare eye condition.

She guessed it wasn’t a lie. It was rare—only a few Oculi left around the globe—and it was definitely a condition.

So she was an Oculus. Big deal. These black eyes were supposed to allow her to see things regular eyes were blind to, warnings from Outside.

Alarms.

She’d yet to experience one.

Not that she was complaining. She’d seen her father when he’d received Alarms and it didn’t look pleasant. In fact, it looked awful.

Why was she thinking of Alarms tonight? She hadn’t—

Something flashed to her right. She turned to look but it flashed again, still to her right. She realized it wasn’t in the room, but in her eye. A scintillating scotoma. She’d looked it up. The flashing lights always preceded her migraines. This wasn’t the sparkle she usually saw, more like wavy lines, but she knew the sooner she dug out her bottle of Imitrex and took one, the better.

And then the room tilted. For an instant she thought earthquake or tsunami, but then the pain stabbed through her head—much, much worse than a migraine—and the lights flashed brighter and longer and fused to blot out her room as her knees gave way and she dropped to the floor.

As she lay there shaking, shuddering, writhing with the pain that suffused her, a tunnel opened through the light, revealing . . .

. . . a man in a loincloth, standing on an old-fashioned scaffold and carving a huge block of stone more than twice his height into some sort of thick pillar or column . . . his hammer striking the chisel again and again but making no sound . . . all eerily silent . . .

. . . the same man carving strange symbols into the side of the pillar . . .

. . . and others . . .

. . . and carving a cavity, perhaps three feet across and five feet deep, into one end of the pillar . . .

. . . and suddenly she is grabbed from behind and bound hand and foot . . .

. . . forced into the cavity . . .

. . . sealed over with a stone plug, plunging her into darkness . . .

. . . as she struggles for air she feels the pillar tilt as it slides into a deep hole in the earth and is covered over . . .

. . . she thrashes in the small space until her air runs out and darkness claims her . . .

. . . and then . . . a spark in the distance . . . growing . . . swelling . . . to become a glowing egg . . .

. . . the egg fades and darkness regains control until a booming voice splits the silence . . .

IT HAS AWAKENED!

. . . and then the egg reappears and a spot of darkness materializes within it . . . growing . . . growing until . . .

. . . it bursts free . . .

. . . a strange, formless, flickering, alien being . . .

. . . and as it emerges, an odd word forms in her mind . . .

Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . .

The vision faded, and with it the pain, replaced by beckoning oblivion. Diana fought the draw of the temporary reprieve it promised and forced her eyes open. She pushed herself off the floor and staggered to her bedroom door. She had to tell them . . . she had to go to New York.

She had to tell the Heir. She had to find Jack. But where was he?

2

For an instant her fingers froze over the keyboard—surely no more than a heartbeat—before she forced them to keep typing. But they were typing gibberish now.

The man seated by the door was watching her, she was sure of it.

The cybercafé was small but tended to be only half full at this hour—the reason she timed her visits for this time of day. She didn’t want anyone too close while she typed.

She made a practice of rotating among a long list of cafés, coffee shops, and libraries that offered laptops and computers for public use. The list was numbered and she used a random integer generator to choose which one she would visit on any given day. The only time she did not follow the generator’s choice was if it happened to produce the same number twice in a row.

On some visits she would simply surf through her list of blogs and Web sites, blocking and copying pertinent passages and storing them on her flash drive. She never posted on surfing visits. And she never surfed on posting visits.

Today was a posting visit. She’d typed out her posts last night and this morning, then stored them on her flash drive. That way, when she reached a computer, all she had to do was plug in her drive, block and copy the posts onto the various forums or into the appropriate blog comments sections, then be on her way.

She was just finishing up—no more than ten minutes at the keyboard so far and maybe two to go—when she noticed the man get a call. He spoke briefly on his cell, then began scanning the room. After studying everyone, his scrutiny settled on her.

She kept her face toward her screen but watched out of the corner of her eye. He had a bit of a Eurotrash air about him. Maybe it was the hair—bleached blond and short, combed forward for a Caesar look. A well-preserved fifty, tanned, muscular, with strong cheekbones. She didn’t know the country of origin of his clothing, but it was not the U.S. All in all he seemed just a little too well put together to need to rent a laptop in a cybercafé. He looked more like a BlackBerry type.

He was discreet, pretending every so often to stare off into space as if composing his thoughts, but she’d caught him eyeing her. Certainly not because she was attractive. She had no illusions about her appearance. After Steve’s death, it had ceased to matter much. She’d let herself go somewhat—gaining weight, dressing in baggy warm-ups designed for comfort and little else, letting her hair grow out and wearing it in a styleless ponytail. In fact, if her frumpy looks deflected attention, so much the better.

No illusions about her mental state either. Maybe a bit paranoid. She might have been pushing evasive measures to the extreme.

Or not.

You weren’t paranoid if people were really out to get you, but she couldn’t be sure. If the wrong people were reading her posts, they might— might —care. And if they did care, they might— might —want to stop her.

If they thought she was a threat.

A big if. Who frequented these Web sites besides weirdos and nutcases? But the weirdos and nutcases were on to something. They were ninety percent right about everything except who and why. They were pointing fingers in the wrong directions.

Everything was either political or religious or cultural to them. They couldn’t see that the real reasons were much darker, more sinister, and more dangerous and threatening than their wildest nightmare scenarios.

Only one man was listening—or at least not dismissing her as a kook as were most of the others.

When the kooks think you’re a kook, maybe it’s time to reassess your position.

No. Not when you’re sure you’re right.

And she was sure. Well, pretty sure. As sure as you could be about these things when—