“Look carefully, Logan,” Michael tells him. “This is what we have been reduced to by our enemies. This is our future if we do not find a way to change it.”
Logan looks at the children because he cannot help himself, but he wishes he had never seen them. He wishes Michael had not brought him here, that he had been left behind. He wishes he could sink into the floor and disappear.
He knows he will never forget this moment. He knows it will haunt him forever.
“They are kept alive for various reasons,” Michael says softly.
“Some for work. Some for experiments. Some for things I cannot bear to speak about.”
Logan understands. He draws a long, slow breath and exhales. He thinks he will be sick to his stomach, and he fights it down. He swallows and straightens.
Michael’s hand closes on his shoulder and tightens. “We shall set most of them free and hope that some will survive.” He pauses. “Most of them, but not all.”
He moves to the farthest corner of the room, the corner that is darkest.
As he nears, a hissing, mewling sound rises from the shadows.
What happens next is indescribable.
*
LOGAN WOKE SWEATING and disoriented in the backseat of the Lightning, thrashing beneath the light blanket as if jolted by a charge from an electric prod. The dream of the slave camp, of what Michael had brought him to see, was right in front of him, painted on a canvas of darkness and air, blood red and razor sharp.
Madness, he screamed in the silence of his mind and was filled with sudden, ungovernable anger.
It happened then as it always happened, a sudden shift of emotions that took him from simmer straight to white-hot. The canvas of the dream expanded until it was all he could see. Memories of every atrocity he had witnessed since his boyhood surfaced like a swarm of angry bees from the dark place in his mind to which he had consigned them, and a quick, hard burn of rage tore through him.
He was suddenly unable to focus on anything but his horror of the slave camp he had passed by only hours before, unable to think with anything remotely resembling dispassion, unable to bring reason or common sense to bear.
His rage was all-consuming. It swept through him in seconds, took control of him completely, and left him with a single thought.
Destroy it!
Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he crawled into the driver’s seat, shut down the perimeter alarms, started the engine, and wheeled the AV about. Forgotten was his promise to himself that he would not let anything jeopardize his search for the gypsy morph. Abandoned was the quest that had brought him to this place and time. His rage washed all of it away, swept it aside as if it were unimportant and replaced it with an inexorable determination to go back to that camp and do what he knew was needed.
Because there was no one else to help those imprisoned in that camp.
Because he knew what was being done to them, and he could not abide it.
He took the highway back to the cutoff, back to where he could see the glow from the fires of the camp, and turned toward them, anger flooding through him like molten lava. He switched on the AV’s weapons, setting them to the armed position. His rune-carved staff rested on the seat beside him, ready to employ.
He might have taken time to make better preparations, but his rage would not allow for it. It demanded that he hurry, that he act now. It demanded that he cast aside reason and let impulse rule.
He blew over the flats toward the now-visible camp like an avenging angel, his inner fire a match for flames that burned in the perimeter pits. He had reached the walls almost before the guards could comprehend what he was about, too close for them to bring their heavy weapons to bear. He attacked the towers with the long-barreled flechettes that elevated from their fender housings, shards of iron cutting apart the walls and occupants that warded them as if both were made of thin paper. He swung the AV around after taking down two, left it in idle, and sprang to the ground before the fencing and rolled razor wire, his staff in hand. They were shooting at him now with their automatic weapons, but he was already shielded by the magic of his staff, an impregnable force of nature. He strode forward, his staff sweeping along the fencing and wire in a line of fire that melted everything it touched. Inside, the prisoners were screaming and crying, thinking it was they who were under attack, they who were meant to die. He could not stop to tell them otherwise.
He could only act, and act quickly.
He was through the fence in moments, a Knight of the Word in full-blown frenzy, as savage and unpredictable as the creatures he hunted. Feeders appeared as if by magic, swirling all around him, hundreds strong, hungry and expectant.
Cringing prisoners scattered before him in all directions, howling in fear.
Once-men came at him in waves, firing their weapons, trying to bring him down.