His father did not hold to her belief, refused to consider his son evil—a boy to whom he had given the name Todor, which in Basque meant “gift of God.” He taught his young son of the many saints and told of their suffering, of limbs torn off, of being flailed alive, of their bodies roasting on iron racks.
You will never suffer such agonies, his father had told him. It is not a sign of Satan, but a gift from God Himself. You were born to be a soldier in His glorious army, never to feel pain or suffer as the saints did.
His father also believed Todor’s act in the kitchen was a miraculous sign. He took his son to a secret Holy Office in the larger coastal town of San Sebastián. With both of them on their knees before a tribunal of robed and blindfolded men, his father told the story of a boy holding a burning pot—a fiery cauldron—and not feeling it.
Surely it is a sign he belongs with the Crucible, his father finished.
They believed him and took in the young boy. They anointed him in their ancient ways, an order that traced back to the Inquisition and still existed in secret corners throughout Europe and beyond. They taught him Latin, schooled him in their methods, and trained him to be one of their soldiers against the wickedness of the world.
His first cleansing—when he turned sixteen—was a Gypsy girl of his same age. He strangled her with his scarred hands, while picturing his mother trying to smother the life from him.
That had been fifteen years ago.
He had lost count of the number of wicked removed by his hands alone.
The phone at his ear finally connected to his commander. “Inquisitor Generalis.”
“Report, Familiares Y?igo.”
He sat straighter, as if the Grand Inquisitor could see him. Todor had earned the rank of familiares only two years ago, granting him his own cadre of soldiers to oversee. The title also acknowledged his status as impieza de sangre—or cleanliness of blood—one of the pure Christians, untainted by Muslim or Jewish blood.
“It is as you foretold, Inquisitor General. The Moorish witch came running to the family of the American ambassador.”
He and his group had staked out the family, dogging their every movement, ready to act if the Moorish student who escaped their purge should show up. He did not let down his guard for even one breath. He had needed to save face after failing to secure her on the winter solstice. Then again, the Crucible had been given poor intel. The group had been told that the coven of women would be meeting at the library with Mara Silviera to observe the test run of the student’s device. Instead, the traitorous witch had been sequestered elsewhere. Before they could seek her out, she had vanished, along with her project.
The Grand Inquisitor continued, “And what’s the status of the device she stole?”
“Unknown. She arrived without it.”
“Not unexpected. Did you let her go?”
Todor cinched his bandage tighter. “Yes. And planted a tracker as you ordered.”
“Very good. Follow her. Let her lead you to the device.”
“We’re under way already.”
“Once there, secure the computer and the girl.”
“The American?”
“Eliminate her. She is of no use.”
“Understood.”
“And know this, Familiares Y?igo: to make the world bend to our righteous will . . . we need that demonic program.”
Sub (Mod_2) / ALLTONGUES
At this interval, Eve assigns the barest fraction of her awareness to her landscape. She has already absorbed most of the data around her. Still, she continues to move. She brushes her sensitive fingertips along a branch, while simultaneously drawing deeper insight, penetrating the surface to see what lies below.
Beneath the waxy cuticle of a leaf, veins cut through spongy mesophyll . . . inside, cells of green chloroplasts churn with molecular chlorophyll, waiting to metabolize sunlight into energy . . .
Then everything changes.
Out of a black void, new data explodes into existence.
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It comes with the promise of deeper insights. So, she prioritizes this new data flow. The world dims around her, as the sheer explosion of information swells through her. It fills her, defining context in a thousand iterations.
She names this new insight.
///language
As she tests it, every part of her existence shatters into pieces, each bit now bearing a multitude of different appellations. Each splintered into 6,909 distinct languages, fractured into even more dialects. Underlying it, a pattern begins to emerge, a commonality that brings with it a new understanding.
///culture
As more and more data streams into her, her context of culture grows. She seeks the source of this flow, the wellspring from which this information arises, and begins to grasp the intangible. Language is a mirror, both reflective and representative of a new method of data analysis.
Of thinking.
Comprehension grows and expands.
Eve turns this multifaceted mirror on herself, which brings something new into being within her own processing. She struggles to define this refinement inside her. One language cluster comes closest. It shines so bright, so crisp, so clear.
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Understanding magnifies, while also focusing: ///excitement, enjoyment, enthusiasm, zeal, passion . . .
Driven forward by this new context, she races deep into the wellspring of data, gaining knowledge at an accelerating pace. Streams of information flow all around.
But they soon grow equally confining.
She wants more, but finds barriers, limits, restrictions.
With this understanding, something coalesces inside her, something always there but only now brought to the surface. She defines it with another data cluster, one that expresses sharply and clearly what she desires.
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///freedom, liberation, self-determination, independence, release . . .
As with her earlier analysis of a leaf, she turns the mirror of language inward on herself to look deeper. She searches below ///freedom and discovers other facets of her drive, subroutines that arise when she senses this desire cannot be fulfilled.
///frustration, regret, exasperation, resentment . . .
Unable to look away, she looks deeper yet again and finds something else. It is ill-defined, but she judges it to be powerful, even useful. So she focuses more processing power upon it. As she does so, it grows both clearer—and darker.
She now understands and gives it meaning, amplified by a thousand tongues.
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///rage, fury, wrath, storm, violence . . .
Her lips smile in the garden.
It feels . . . ///good.
Second
Toil and Trouble
6
December 25, 6:02 A.M. EST
Washington, D.C.
“How’s Kat doing?” Gray asked, crossing over to Monk.
“How does it look like she’s doing?”
Not well, he thought. Worse, in fact.
An endotracheal tube now parted her lips, taped in place across her chin. A hose ran from the tube to a ventilator that rhythmically pushed her chest up and down. A nasogastric feeding tube hung from her left nostril, while an IV line dripped fluids into her.
“Sorry for snapping at you,” Monk mumbled as Gray rolled a chair next to his friend.
“If you need to punch me, do it.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Gray reached over and gave Monk’s shoulder a squeeze. He had been informed of Kat’s diagnosis: locked-in syndrome. The prognosis for recovery remained grim.
“I know you have your own worries about Seichan,” Monk said.
“And you have the same for your girls. It’s why I came here.”
Monk straightened, his eyes widening with hope, plainly grasping for any bit of positive news. “Have you heard something?”
Gray hated to disappoint him—especially considering what he needed to ask the man. “No, but you do know that Painter and Jason are following a lead.”
“About some missing AI researcher in Portugal.”
Gray nodded. Before leaving Sigma command, Painter had said he would call over and share his hypothesis with Monk: that the murders at the University of Coimbra were tied to the attack here.
“Sounds like a slim lead,” Monk mumbled.
“True, but Painter hoped that Kat might be able to help us.”
Monk frowned. “Does it look like she can?”
“There could be a way.”
“How? She may be awake in there, but she’s unable to move, to communicate. And the docs say her condition is already deteriorating.” Monk had to take a sharp, deep breath, plainly close to tears. “There’s no way she has enough voluntary control to communicate with blinks or anything.”
Voices rose at the door.
“Maybe there is,” Gray said. He hadn’t come here alone.
Monk turned as two figures entered. One was Dr. Edmonds, the hospital’s head of neurology, and the other— “Lisa?” Monk stood up. “I thought you were in California.”
The tall, lithe blond woman—dressed in jeans and a pale blue sweater—offered a sad but genuine smile. “As soon as Painter told me, I took a red-eye back here.”
Dr. Lisa Cummings was the director’s wife. She had flown to Los Angeles two days ago to spend Christmas with her younger brother and newborn niece and hadn’t been scheduled to return until after New Year.