“The feeds have been cut,” Ayn told him. “It’s no longer streaming. We’re on damage control now. You can turn this around, Robert,” she said, cajoling him as best she could. “Make them think this is intentional. That it’s part of the show.”
The look on his face terrified her. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her until he said, “Intentional. Yes, Ayn, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
He raised the mic, and Ayn stepped back. Perhaps Constantine had been right. It was always in these moments of dismay that she could corral him. Control him. Fix what was broken before it became irreparable. She took a deep breath and waited, along with everyone else, to hear what he was going to say.
“Today was meant to be a day of reckoning,” Goddard began, spitting the words into the microphone as he spoke. “You! All of you who came here today nurturing a thirst for blood. You! Whose hearts quicken at the prospect of a man being burned alive before your very eyes.
“YOU! Did you think I would indulge you? Did you believe we scythes were so base as to pander to your morbid curiosity? Offering you a circus of carnage for your entertainment?” Now he screamed at them through gritted teeth. “How DARE you! ONLY SCYTHES may take pleasure in the ending of life, or have you forgotten?” He paused, letting that sink in. Letting them feel the depth of their transgression. Had Rowan not vanished, he would have been happy to give them their show. But they must never know that.
“No, Scythe Lucifer is not here today,” he continued, “but YOU, who were so eager to witness the spectacle, are now the object of my eye. This was not a judgment on him; it was a judgment on YOU, who have, on this day, damned yourselves! The only way back from perdition is penance. Penance and sacrifice. Therefore, I have selected YOU on this day to be an example for the world.”
Then he looked to the thousand scythes dotting the audience of the stadium.
“Glean them,” he ordered with contempt for the crowd so great that he bit his own lip. “Glean them all.”
The panic was slow to build. Stupefied people looked to one another. Did the Overblade actually say that? He couldn’t have said it. He couldn’t have meant it. Even the scythes were unsure at first … but an order could not be refused if one didn’t want their loyalty questioned. Bit by bit weapons were pulled out, and the scythes began to look at the people around them with a very different expression than they had before. Calculating how best to achieve the goal.
“I am your completion!” proclaimed Goddard, as he did at all his mass gleanings, his voice echoing throughout the stadium. “I am the last word of your unsatisfied, unsavory lives.”
The first people began to run. Then a few more. And then it was as if a floodgate had opened. The panicked spectators climbed over seats and over one another to get to the exits – but scythes had quickly positioned themselves in the neck of the funnel. The only way past them was through them, and the gleaned were already beginning to block the narrow paths to freedom.
“I am your deliverer! I am your portal to the mysteries of oblivion!”
People began hurling themselves over railings, hoping that splatting before they were gleaned would save them – but this was a scythe action. From the moment Goddard gave the order, the Thunderhead was helpless to intervene. All it could do was watch through its many unblinking eyes.
“I am your Omega! Your bringer of infinite peace. You will embrace me!”
Scythe Rand begged him to stop, but he pushed her away, and she stumbled to the ground, knocking over the torch. It glanced across the edge of the pyre, and that’s all it took. The pyre ignited – purple flames rushed around the base.
“Your death is both my verdict upon you, and my gift to you,” Goddard told the dying crowd. “Accept it with grace. And thus farewell.”
The best view of Goddard’s Armageddon was from the top of the pyre – and with the smoke drawn away by exhaust fans below, the tech could see everything … including the outer rim of purple flame, which had moved up the pyre, turning blue.
In the stands, the scythes, each glittering with jewels embedded in their new-order robes, dispatched their victims at an alarming rate.
I will not be alone today, thought the tech as the flames drew closer, burning from green to bright yellow.
He could feel the soles of his shoes beginning to melt. He could smell the burning rubber. The fire was orange now, and closer. The screams all around him from the stands seemed far, far away. Soon the flames would turn red, the guncotton gag would burn away from him, and his own screams would be the only ones that mattered.
Then he saw a lone scythe looking in his direction from the field. The one in the crimson robe. One of the few scythes who was not going after the crowd. They locked eyes for a moment. Then, just as the flames caught on the doomed man’s pant legs, Scythe Constantine raised a pistol and performed the only gleaning he would do today. A single shot through the heart that spared the tech from a more painful end.
And the last thought the tech had before his life left him was a wave of immense gratitude for the crimson scythe’s mercy.
“I will forgive you for trying to stop me,” Goddard said to Scythe Rand as their limousine pulled away from the stadium. “But it surprises me, Ayn, that you of all people would flinch when it came to gleaning.”
Ayn could have said a million things to him, but she held her tongue. Rowan was already forgotten – trampled beneath this larger affair. Rumor was that he had been seen leaving the stadium with Scythe Travis and several other Texan scythes. She could blame all this on them, but who was she kidding? She was the one who’d suggested Goddard find a way to make Rowan’s absence appear like part of a larger plan. But she never imagined where Goddard would take it.
“This was not the event that I asked for, but rarely do things come the way we expect,” Goddard said in the calm, collected way someone might discuss a stage play. “Even so, this day has worked to our advantage.”
Rand looked at him in disbelief. “How? How can you say that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” And when she didn’t respond, he elucidated with the smooth eloquence he was famous for. “Fear, Ayn. Fear is the beloved father of respect. The common citizens must know their place. They must be aware of the lines they may not cross. Without the Thunderhead in their lives, they need a firm hand to give them stability. To set clear boundaries. They will revere me, and all my scythes, and will not run afoul of us again.” He thought about his own self-serving rationalizations and nodded in approval of himself. “All is well, Ayn. All is well.”
But Scythe Rand knew that from this moment on, nothing would be well again.
Part Four
THE ONLY TOOL WE CAN WIELD
A Testament of the Toll
The sanctimonious Sibilants who would wage unwarranted war were an abomination to the Toll. He would descend on them as the furious beating of a million wings, and the skies would rage with Thunder. The unrepentant would be struck down, but those who fell to their knees would be spared. Then he would leave them, dissolving once more into a storm of feathers and disappearing to the calming sky. All rejoice!