Ground Zero Part 5

Someone-no, two people were sitting at Jack's table.

Right now they appeared as a pair of lighter splotches against the dark rear wall. He stood inside the door and waited for his eyes to adjust from the late morning sun.

Julio appeared. "They showed up half an hour ago. The guy handed me his pistol. I checked him and he's not carrying a backup."

Julio, short and muscular, had let his usual pencil-line mustache expand to a goatee. Jack didn't think it was inspired by his own beard, but who knew.

"What about the other guy?"

"That's not a guy. That's a girl. A kid."

"And you gave them my table?"

Julio shrugged. "They been here before, meng. You know them."

As his eyes adjusted, Jack recognized Cal Davis, back to the wall, looking his way. And next to him ... Diana.

He hadn't seen these two since January; he hadn't left Cal and his fellow yeniceri on the best of terms.

He looked around the spa.r.s.ely populated bar. No surprise, seeing as it was pre-noon, and only the heartiest digestive tracts dared eat at Julio's.

"Any noobs?"

"Nah. All regulars."

Jack went to the window and checked out the street. No sign of any yeniceri. He stepped back toward Julio.

"They say what they want?"

"What else they gonna want? Talk. You gonna?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You gonna want coffee?"

"Yeah. I think I'm in the mood for a double mocha latte with extra whip cream."

Julio gave him the finger over his shoulder as he walked away.

Jack approached the table. Davis rose but didn't extend his hand, so Jack simply nodded. He did however offer his hand to the girl.

"h.e.l.lo, Diana. This is a surprise."

Despite the dim lighting, she wore large sungla.s.ses. She'd changed some since Jack had last seen her, losing a bit of her baby fat, maybe a little taller.

She gave his hand a quick, light shake-more of a finger tug. "For me too."

"How old are you now?"

She lifted her chin. "I just turned fourteen."

Poor kid. Teen years were hard enough without being a bona fide freak.

He turned to Davis. "I a.s.sume this wasn't your idea."

He was dressed in a black suit and tie over a white s.h.i.+rt. His black fedora sat on an empty chair.

He glanced at Diana. "I was and still am opposed to coming here."

"Well then, let's do what we can to get you back to where you'd rather be and that's my seat you're sitting in."

Davis offered a tight smile as he moved to another. "I know. I was keeping it warm for you."

Jack took his usual place as Julio arrived with a cup of coffee that appeared to have a small t.u.r.d floating in it.

"What is that?"

"As close as we get to mocha, meng." And then he was gone.

Jack spooned out the object: a baby Snickers bar. He ate it, then sipped his coffee.

"So ... still in Nantucket?"

Davis nodded. "What's left of us. Just me and Grell and Novak now. Lewis, Cousino, and Geraci lit out after you that night and never came back. Finan and Dunsmore quit a couple of weeks later."

He knew Davis was talking about his fellow yeniceri, but Jack had no faces for the names.

"I thought all you yeniceri dedicated your lives to guarding the Oculus," he said with a nod toward Diana.

"Some more than others." He gave Jack a hard stare. "What did you do to those three? They vanished without a trace."

"The guys in the Hummer? You might want to drag the harbor."

His eyes widened. "How-?" He shook his head. "Never mind. Diana has something to tell you."

Jack turned to her. "You've had a vision?"

She nodded. "An Alarm, yes. My first."

Oh, right. Oculi called their visions Alarms.

"Do I want to hear this? I mean, considering what your father's last Alarm led to."

Diana paled and Davis's right hand balled into a fist.

She said, "I'm so sorry about that. I-"

"Not your fault. Not even your father's fault." He glanced at Davis. "But I can't say the same for some of the yeniceri."

"We were being used," Davis said through his teeth. "We were all being used. We're still still being used." being used."

Jack sighed and leaned back. "Yeah. I suppose we are."

"And you got your revenge-in spades."

Jack remembered that time. He'd really lost it.

"Revenge only in one case. The rest was preemptive. You gonna sit there and tell me you blame me, that if positions were reversed you wouldn't have done the same?"

Davis looked away. "No. Still, a lot of them were friends."

Jack dropped it. The past was past. No use rehas.h.i.+ng it. But he and Gia and Vicky would live the rest of their lives with the fallout from that last Alarm. And Emma ... Emma wasn't living at all.

He turned to Diana. Might as well get to it.

"What did the Alarm show?"

As she related her vision Jack realized she was describing the carving and burial of an ancient Opus Omega column.

"You're nodding," she said. "You know about this?"

"It's been going on for thousands of years. Those columns are buried around the globe in a specific pattern."

Davis frowned. "To what end?"

"When they finish the job, they believe it will give the Otherness the edge to change the world."

Jack also knew that every insertion of one of those columns into the ground was a knife in the back of the Lady with the dog, and left a scar. Was that the purpose-hurt her? Was she some sort of barrier between the Otherness and Earth, and if they weakened her enough the Otherness could make the leap?

He wished he knew. So many things he wished he knew.

"Are they crazy?" Davis said. "Don't they know what that will mean? h.e.l.l on Earth."

"Not for them. They believe partic.i.p.ants in the Opus Omega will be given special treatment and privileges in the new world order."

Davis snorted and shook his head. "Privileges or not, they'll still be in h.e.l.l. Ignorant dumba.s.ses." He turned to the girl. "Sorry, Diana."

She didn't seem to have heard, or care if she had. She sat twisting her fingers together.

"But in the vision they sealed me in the column-alive-and then buried it."

"Apparently it's not enough simply to stick a body in the column. Someone has to die inside inside it." it."

"It was horrible. But then the strangest thing happened. A glowing egg appeared and hatched something ... something I couldn't see ... a dark shape that seemed to suck in the light around it."

Jack tried to grasp that and failed. Could that be the goal of Opus Omega-create a cosmic egg with some sort of black hole within? He turned to Davis.

"You must have heard about a lot of these Alarms over the years."

He nodded and glanced at the girl. "From Diana's father, yes."

"Did they tend to be pretty much true to life, or more metaphorical?"

"From what he told me, true to life. The Alarms showed either what would happen if we didn't interfere, or what we should make happen. It wasn't always clear which. They could be ambiguous at times, but definitely true to life."

True to life ... a big egg hatching something. Sheesh.

"But that's not the strangest part," Diana said. "The thing that came out of the column ... it might have been human, but I don't think so. If it was human, it wasn't a normal human."

More vagueness. Couldn't anything be clear-cut?

"So you didn't get a good look at it."

She shook her head. "It was blurred, almost flickering, as if it was flas.h.i.+ng in and out of existence. And then a word sounded in my head: Fhinntmanchca Fhinntmanchca."

"Say what?"

"Fhinntmanchca. Don't ask me what it means. I have no idea."

Davis said, "Don't look at me. I've never in my life heard the word, or anything even close to it."

"I think it refers to whatever came out of the egg."

That seemed a reasonable a.s.sumption.

"Did the egg crack open?"

Another shake of her head. "No, this just sort of emerged emerged from it. One second it wasn't there, and then the next it was moving toward me." She looked at Jack. " from it. One second it wasn't there, and then the next it was moving toward me." She looked at Jack. "Fhinntmanchca ... you've never heard of it?" ... you've never heard of it?"

"No." He didn't even know if the word applied to the egg or the thing that hatched from it. "Why would I?"

"I don't know. The Alarm ... at the end it was clear that I had to tell someone who could do something about it."

"And you chose me? me?"

"Well, the Sentinel would have been best, but no one knows where he is, do they?"

The Sentinel ... that was what these folks called the point man in the war against the Otherness. Others called him the Defender. They ascribed all sorts of power to him, but he was just a man now, an old one. Jack knew his real name, but the old guy preferred to go by the name Veilleur.

"So, since I couldn't tell him," Diana was saying, "it seemed pretty clear I should tell his Heir. And that's you."

Yeah, he thought. Me. Lucky, lucky me.

What was he going to "do" about something he'd never heard of?

He'd have to wait until he could ask Veilleur about it, but he seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth the past couple of months. Maybe the Compendium Compendium had heard of this finnymacaca or whatever it was. But even if it was in there, could he find it? Worth a try. had heard of this finnymacaca or whatever it was. But even if it was in there, could he find it? Worth a try.