Jarrod’s head twitched to the left; a phantom pain bloomed in his chest and stretched down to his fingertips. He tried to think of the appropriate response, but his mind was blank. Then, his lips began to move on their own, and he said, “Thank you.”
17
Baltimore, Maryland
Though fifteen thousand Wardens lined the streets surrounding the fifth-floor office, it was quiet enough to hear the pigeons fluttering on the window ledge.
The man who had once called himself Henry Napp stood at the window, puffing his chest out as he examined the ranks and files of his troops. With every passing moment, the Wardens were becoming more intelligent, more ruthless, more dedicated. They were becoming more like him. And he could sense that each of them was as anxious for the battle to begin as he was.
All in good time, he reminded himself. Tomorrow at dawn, the fractured pillars of society would fall, and Hillcrest would be his for the taking.
Turning on his heel, he left the window, returned to his desk, and closed his eyes. It was true that his Wardens could sweep through Hillcrest now and suffer only minor casualties. His humblest soldiers were armed with blunt objects, knives, and makeshift spears, but they numbered only two thousand. The rest of his men had gathered pistols, shotguns, and even military-grade rifles. And each of them was willing to die for the cause, having been infected with nanomachines over a week ago.
Yes, victory was all but assured. The only thing left to do was wait. When the remaining free Americans awoke on Christmas morning—in less than twelve hours—they would begin to understand their new reality. The old world would vanish beneath a brilliant rainbow, and the pitiful Homo sapiens would be forced to choose between meaningless slavery or glorious servitude. Death by starvation, or godhood.
Napp wished he could speed up time, or fall asleep and awaken at sunrise. But he had no need for sleep. And the ability to control the passage of time was, for now, still out of his reach.
His lungs inflated and deflated as he conjured up a cherished memory. Reliving his past was one of the benefits of his elevated consciousness. He had heard that many of the lower Wardens were losing their oldest memories and sense of self. But it was not so with Henry. He was greater than the others—he had been chosen to lead because of his ferocity and experiences in war. That was why he had received a special dose of the nanomachines which molded, rather than erased, his consciousness.
Conjoined with the Great Intellect, he was more than the other Wardens; he was destined for a special position in the new world order. And in the morning, he would prove himself worthy. But for now, there was time to reminisce. And to savor. He closed his eyes.
A black cloud hung in the air, and it smelled like burning rubber. A thin shard of light struck Napp’s eyes as he peered between the boards. A tank rolled by, shaking dust through cracks in the ceiling. A squad of American soldiers followed the tank on foot, warily watching the rooftops.
Henry grinned. The soldiers weren’t looking for him, they were looking for enemy combatants. And their presence meant he was safe. He had plenty of time to satisfy his urge.
“Please,” a pitiful, wavering voice behind him said. “We aren’t terrorists. You don’t have to do this.”
Napp’s grin didn’t falter. He turned around and placed his hands on his hips. “I’m not stupid, Habib. I know you aren’t terrorists.”
The man was suspended from the ceiling, his wrists tied above his head with three strands of parachute cord. The cords were constricting the blood vessels in his wrist—his chestnut hands had begun to purple. He clutched a round grenade in his hand, holding the safety spoon tight to keep the fuse from burning down. “Then, why are you doing this?”
“Because. I. Need. To.” Napp crossed the room and gave a sharp tug on the man’s shirt, eliciting a cry of pain from the weakling. “I’ve explained this all before. You need to stop trying to understand it and simply accept it. You were chosen because you’re convenient.”
The man’s legs stretched out toward Napp, trying to use him for support, but Napp took a step back.
“Please. My grip. I…I can’t hold on.”
“That’s kind of the point, Habib.” Napp watched a bead of sweat roll down the man’s right wrist. The pitiful coward had been strung up for less than twenty minutes, and he was already losing his grip on the phosphorous grenade. “But if you had any balls at all, you would have tossed that grenade and tried to light me on fire.”
The man’s face pinched, reddened. “My…my wife.”
Napp bent at the waist and smiled at the woman on the floor, whom he had expertly bound and gagged. “You act like you care about her, Habib. But all that can change in the blink of an eye.” He grasped the hem of her dress and tugged it upward, exposing her knees. “If I took her right now, aren’t you supposed to stone her? Isn’t that what you savages do to women who sleep with infidels?”
“Don’t touch her!”
Napp stood and appraised the man. “That’s more like it. For a minute there, I was starting to wonder if you even had a spine.” He moved in closer, standing directly beneath the man’s right hand. “Do it, Habib. Light me up. Set me on fire, and your wife with me. I’ve heard burning alive is one of the most painful things a man could go through. And don’t you want that? Don’t you want me to feel pain?”
The hanging man took shallow breaths as if trying to summon the courage to let go. But after several seconds, he still held the spoon tight against the grenade. “You’re sick. A sick monster.” He clenched his teeth and spoke the Arabic word for “devil.”
Grinning, Napp patted the man’s bearded face. “I’m not the devil, I just work for him.”
He took a step back and loosened his belt. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, Habib. I’m going to show your wife what it feels like to be with a real man, and you’re going to hang there and watch. And then, when I’m good and ready, I’m going to walk out that door. At that point, you’re going to try your best to free yourself, but you’re going to fail. You’ll lose your grip, drop the grenade, and you and your wife will turn to ash.”
The vision faded, and Napp opened his eyes. He licked his lips and gingerly touched the raised pink flesh that puckered the left side of his face. The memory was one of his favorites because he had witnessed the triumph of animalistic rage over love. Rather than remain idle while Napp savaged his wife, the man had gathered all the strength he could muster and tossed the grenade at the floor. Napp had been taken by surprise and barely escaped with his life while the white phosphorus ate away at his flesh.
He’d suffered third-degree burns over a quarter of his body and had spent eighteen months recovering in Walter Reed Hospital. His idiotic commander had believed his story about being jumped by a band of insurgents, and he’d been awarded a purple heart. Then he would have been medically discharged and given a medical pension for the rest of his life, but the urge had gotten the better of him, and he attacked a nurse while he was still in the hospital.
The Army sentenced him to twenty years in Leavenworth, a military prison in Missouri. But even before the shipment of nanomachines arrived to set him free, Napp made the most of his prison sentence.