Helping me forget.
I hoped that Ballington was every bit as tough as he’d made out. I let him catch his breath. Then I jabbed him with another charge.
I had to make it rough, drive out the god, but keep the man alive.
I eased back. Jabbed again.
There was something happening to his face. His mouth stretched open. It stretched and stretched. For a time I thought that it was some distortion in the air, like looking through a piece of twisted glass. His face bulged. His skin rippled like water. Time stuttered, moved in spasms. I saw the image of my arm repeated, on and on, as in a time-lapse photograph, each instant locked into my vision, and I slid the controls back up, ran another charge around him . . . His head blew out like a balloon. His shoulders came up and his face sank to his torso. Limbs, weirdly flattened, slithered like snakes over the floor— The thing was using him, using the fabric of his body, twisting it, reshaping it. How much of that could anyone survive?
I cut the power.
“Jesus—”
He was breathing hard. He looked human again, but his chest heaved and his throat tore at the air, as if he couldn’t get it fast enough.
The man was choking. Dying.
He raised one arm. It seemed to take a dreadful effort. Was he reaching to me? He lay on his back, and his hand stretched out, shaking, helpless—then dropped.
Light ran through the cables, dancing round him. Sparks of light. They seemed to pass straight through him, weaving through the substance of his body, in and out—
I left the controls.
There was a crash at the stairwell door. Someone was trying to break the lock off.
Angel caught my arm.
“Chris—”
Ballington raised his hand again. A bloody tear ran down his cheek. The makeup on his face was smudged and melted, his features crumpled like an old rag.
His lips moved. Begging me.
I took a step towards him.
“He’s not human, Chris.”
“Part of him is.”
He reached to me. I reached to him. Sparks snapped between our fingertips. The sight of them amazed me, fascinated me. I felt them in my hand, my arm—a tingling that was almost painful, yet the instant it had passed, I wanted it again. These leaps of light. These sudden surges of excitement . . . I was taking the power from the wires. It was running through him, into me. Through me, into the floor. Into the walls. Into the building itself.
Away from us.
He pushed himself up on one elbow. His mouth moved. His shirt was dark with sweat. He kept his arm out, level, hand reaching for mine.
Angel was behind me.
“Back off, Chris.”
I tried. My legs weren’t moving.
Ballington had pulled himself up. He was kneeling. There was nothing human in his face. The human part of him had been forced down, driven back and buried. I was looking at a mask, a film of skin below which something stirred, firing the nerves, tugging the sinews, pulling the face into a semblance of humanity. There was light in his eyes. A power, surfacing. His lips pulled back till he was beaming like a skull.
To Angel, I said, “Don’t touch me.”
She didn’t touch me. She said, “He’s not stopping.”
“Any power you put through him he’ll send through me. It’s all switched round. My fault.” I couldn’t turn my head to look at her. “You should get out,” I said.
“I’m shutting off the power here.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m shutting off the power. Over the room downstairs.”
“Angie—”
Ballington was on his feet. He couldn’t leave the elevator yet—we’d got a good perimeter—but he was close to it. The sparks went flashing and he seemed to haul himself along them like a rope.
Then Angel cut the power.
Not to the elevator. To the hallways and the suites behind her.
The thing downstairs—she’d given it an exit route.
And I was fine with that, except for one small issue: the fact she, and I, were standing in its way.
Chapter 67
The God Is Free
She’d cut the power on fourteen. The roof of our containment field. But down below, on thirteen, I’d left the circuits running. All those little nudges that I’d shot into the big room, all those jolts to stir things up, and rouse the power there.
How did a god feel that? Like an itch it couldn’t scratch? A toothache, nagging at it, driving it half-crazy with the pain?