I squatted in front of her and replied, very softly, “No.”
Her eyebrows twitched beneath the blindfold, trying to place my voice. Then her shoulders sagged forward a little, her head bowed. “You must be retribution,” she said at last. “I wondered how long you’d take.”
“Long enough,” I replied, and rattling the little tub of painkillers for her to hear, added, “We nearly missed you this time.”
“It’s my nerves,” she replied. “Quite literally. They’re shutting down from the periphery in. I’ll suffocate to death or my heart will stop just after I become paralysed from the neck down.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“I assume you want my birthday?” she added quickly. “It won’t be hard to find now you know it’s me. If you wouldn’t mind not torturing me for it; my heart really will give out very fast.”
I smiled despite myself, and said, “It’s all right. I don’t want your birthday.”
“I can’t give you any information,” she added firmly. “I’m very sorry, dear, but I really can’t. Not that I know very much worth knowing.”
“You must know why you did it, why you killed so many of us.”
A hesitation. Then, “We’re making something bigger. We’re making something better. We’re making… a kind of god, I suppose. Yes, I think that’s what we are doing, in fact. A kind of deity.”
The quantum mirror. Just enough technology, Harry, just enough lives, and we’ll build a machine that can solve the mysteries of the universe. Look at all things, with the eyes of God. How easily the idea seduced.
My technician was ready. He looked at me for approval, and I nodded, stepping back. Virginia flinched as the first electrode was placed against her skull. “W-what are you doing?” she stammered, unable to fully bite back on her fear.
I didn’t answer. As the next electrode was settled above her right eye she blurted, “Tell me. I’ve paid my dues, I’ve done my bit–always. I always helped the young, got the children away, served the Cronus Club. You can’t… Tell me.”
She was beginning to cry, the tears driving little pink rivers through the thick make-up on her skin. “You can’t… You can’t make me… forget everything. I’m… I’m not ready. I’m… I want to see the… see the… You can’t do this.”
I nodded at a couple of my men, who held her steady as the last few nodes were attached. She gasped as a needle was pushed under her skin, a chemical cocktail to soften up the receptors. “If I’m to for-forget,” she gasped, “you can tell me your name! Show me your face!”
I didn’t.
“Please! Hear me out! He can help you! We’re doing this for everyone, for all the kalachakra! We’re going to make it better!”
I nodded at the technician. The fat machine, all electric parts and stolen technologies, which we had lumbered down the tracks of South Africa, whirred into life, building up the charge that would be blasted into Virginia’s brain. She was shaking now with the tears, and as the charge built she opened her mouth to say something more. The machine triggered, and Virginia collapsed forward–a shell, the mind burned away.
In the years to come the Cronus Club was to debate extensively what to do with Virginia, but in the end they made no radical decisions. The Virginia who had murdered so many of our kind had been destroyed, her mind wiped blank. I had made the decision for them, and that was all there was to say.
Chapter 66
I spent the rest of my thirteenth life quietly hunting Vincent, and failing.