“I wish there had been another way to end this, but there wasn’t.” Sniper smiled as decades of training left it breath enough to preach, while its opponent panted. “As long as Jehovah Mason lived, the Hive leaders would have kept trying to make them their heir, and Joyce Faust’s army of client-spies would have kept trying to destroy any Hive that didn’t capitulate. Jehovah Mason would either inherit or destroy all seven, that was the plan. Tomorrow I’m sure leaders and experts will line up to question my evidence and motives, but don’t let anyone persuade you that the global coup I stopped today would have been anything less than the total destruction of the Hive system. They’ll say it’s not a coup if everyone was willing to give Jehovah Mason power. They’ll say Jehovah Mason was a good person, wise, competent, the best leader we could have had. They’ll say most of the Hives would still have existed, even flourished, even if they all had one leader. They’re wrong.” An angelic calm dawned on Sniper’s face. “The Hives are separate because they stand for separate things. I’m a Humanist. I’m not taking orders from any Mason, and I don’t think a Mason should take orders from a Humanist. Different Hives think differently, and need to be led by people who think differently. It doesn’t matter how wonderful or competent Jehovah Mason was, no one can think seven ways at once. The Hive system made monarchy popular again by eliminating the risk of tyranny, since if a bad Emperor came along, all the Masons would just switch Hives, but free choice requires options to choose from. Combining all Hives under a single ruler would leave this world no better than back when geographic nations gave people no choice. That’s why my bash’ has spent the last twelve generations killing people whose existence, whether they intended to or not, threatened to destroy the freest civilization—no, the only free civilization—that’s ever existed. That’s why Jehovah Mason had to die.”
Dominic’s blows grew fierce and faster, the rounded guard of Sniper’s sword ringing like a bell in a child’s abusing hand. Rage is an asset in the kind of rough, animal combat Saladin and I perfected, but fencing is an art, and Dominic’s rage contaminated his stance as roughness muddies paint. Sniper lunged, a deep strike which skewered Dominic’s wrist. The rapier fell from fingers no longer properly connected to the muscles which give grip its strength, but that would not stop Dominic. He hurled the weapon as it fell, and, as Sniper blocked the throw, Dominic flailed with his remaining hand and seized the blade of his opponent’s sword. Sniper gave the hilt a twist, but pain could not dislodge the zealot. Sensing bloody fists dangerously close, Sniper released its sword and leapt off the rooftop onto nothing. The crowd screamed, then screamed more as the expected plummet turned instead to flight. Sniper ran across the empty air, as if that eternal inner flame which fires each new generation’s athletes to break record after record had at last defeated gravity. Watch the footage in slow motion if you can, see how, like a dolphin chasing currents invisible within the sea, the practiced symmetry of Sniper’s footfalls chased the wind. That wind turned out, in fact, to be a plank covered in Griffincloth, laid invisibly between the rooftops to enable Sniper’s swift escape. I must point out, reader, the inhuman confidence it takes to sprint unflinching at Olympic speed along a walkway less than a meter wide and completely invisible, with only precipice below. I could not do it, nor could Dominic, who groped after his prey, marking the invisible path with his own blood as he lumbered forward over the heads of the crowd and stunned police. Even without cars, the cops had come, and they had almost finished surrounding the law courts, prepared to storm the roof. Now they could only watch their quarry soar over their heads to safety like some destructive angel, which does Providence’s dirty work, then retreats to heaven beyond the reach of Earthly law.
Papadelias cursed fiercely, brightly, rich colloquial Greek burbling from him as this crisis-of-a-century fired his old bones with a vigor almost as fresh as youth. “Third squad stay on the ground,” he ordered, “follow Sniper close as you can on foot. Ripper, Stark, and Bolenge, take Tully Mardi into custody. Everyone else, get the VIPs into the Censor’s office, then lock it down. The Senate’s already sealed.”
Kosala seized Jehovah’s limp arms and mine. “We can’t move them without stretchers!”
Papa nodded to his men to drag her off by force. “Mycroft, can you hear me?”
I had heard all, and seen, but only now grew strong enough to speak. “Bridger.”
I did not summon him. Rather, I named him when I saw him before me, the hood of the invisibility cloak falling back from eyes too tear-red any longer to look blue. He was above us, wracked with sobs, Hermes’s winged sandals fluttering in protest as he made them descend toward the blood-smeared stone. “It’s my fault!”
The guards drew their nightsticks at once.
“Let them through!” I cried, and mercifully Caesar cried it also, for my voice was too weak to reach even the nearest ear. “That’s Bridger! Let them through!”
I wonder what the others must have thought, Martin, Bryar, Vivien, our Utopian guardians who found themselves hurled out of the way by Caesar’s hands as this strange child descended with his play-stained child’s wrap, and winged feet, and tears.
“It’s my fault!” Bridger cried again. I doubt I could have understood words so twisted by sobs if I had not known his voice better than any other. “Mycroft, it’s my … I shouldn’t have … I didn’t know…”
He had the vial already in his hand, potion bubbling like the part of flame that is more liquid than destruction. It had no scent as he uncorked it, but, as he poured it over the wreckage of Jehovah, the air’s taste brightened, as when the Sun, emerging from cloud, makes spring grass tint the air with freshness. The Censor yelped feeling His dead hand awaken, fingers wriggling as the nerves which commanded them rethreaded themselves. The core of the brain regenerated first, blooming within the gore like an ugly orchid. All the nearby cameras were fried, but several spectators on balconies managed to record the restoration, and, with enhancement, one can see individual little arteries branching through the yellow-gray brain mass which swelled like rising dough. The miracle did not rewind the wound, did not draw the blood and shards of shattered skull back in, but grew replacements, the skull reknitting even as it rested blood-drenched on the pillow of its own discarded gore. It was not fast, Jehovah’s resurrection. God can create a cosmos in an instant, but to let us understand, Caesar, Censor, Papa, Kosala, Tully, to etch His miracle into all our memories beyond the possibility of doubt, that took time.
“I’m sorry!” Bridger’s words were shrill, like a cheap flute. “I shouldn’t have let it happen! I just wanted everyone to be okay, but everything I do just wrecks things!” His nose was running, the parent in me noticed that.
I was not strong enough to reach his hand, but managed to brush his knee with feeble fingers. “Don’t let Sniper see.”
Papa understood my warning faster than the boy. He ordered the wall of bodies closed around us, the static curtains of Utopian Coats overlapping to shroud the scene from the assassin, still retreating from a foe it thought well slain.
The rooftops of the Forum were Sniper’s playground now, path after invisible path tying building to building as it zigzagged an escape too tangled for the police to follow. Dominic plowed on, gaining ground as he grew used to the invisible paths, as if the blood he lost with every step just made him lighter. The world’s eyes followed them, not us, missing the miracle as their darling-turned-villain raced for its life. Sniper ran out of roofs in the end, the Cousins’ offices in the Temple of Venus & Rome marking the back limit of the Forum. Here Sniper vaulted down, not to the ground, but onto the back of Almirante, Sniper’s favorite practice steed, a tall, gray Hanoverian gelding, and now the fastest vehicle in Romanova. Some have criticized the lapse in security that let Sniper set this up, but after decades of Sniper’s state-sanctioned antics in the public and private sanctums of every VIP, what guard on Earth would find it strange if Sniper asked to park a horse even in the Emperor’s bedroom?
Settled in Almirante’s saddle, Sniper paused to flash its pursuer a salute, its own signature mock-pistol hand gesture, half courtesy, half taunt. “Go home, Dominic. We’re both done. It’s up to the Censor, the Senate, and the world now.” It sighed, its doll’s face sweet, even here. “It had to be done. Like Tully said, we were at the edge of war already. Even a well-meaning tyrant would have pushed us over. You knew that, but you didn’t care.”
“Aldrin!” Dominic screamed.
The Utopian needed no more instruction. She dispatched her unicorn, the slender black U-beast flowing dart-swift up the center of the Forum like the shadow of a crashing plane. Dominic mounted roughly, seeming too heavy for the doe-thin skeleton to bear, but whatever clever engineer had given the unicorn its processing power also made its frame stronger than Nature could. Sniper smiled at the sound of hoofs behind it, and led the chase, leaping rails and food carts and giving the young capital its first taste of the thunder of cavalry. The cameras and the crowd’s eye joined the chase, or half the crowd’s at least, for by now not a few of you had noticed something happening upon the Rostra.