The Naked God - Flight

A triumph, Ba

Qui

“Qui

Qui

“Erhard?” He wasn’t sure.

“Damn, we shovelled shit together for long enough. You must remember.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” A novice acolyte who’d joined the sect around the same time as Qui

The joy Qui

“It’s not fair, Qui

“You never did feed your serpent beast,” Qui

“It’s not fair!” Erhard cried. “I didn’t know what the sect was like, not really. And then they killed me. You killed me, Qui

“You deserved it.”

“Fuck you. I was nineteen. I had my life, and you took it away, you and that psycho fruit Ba

“No!” Qui

The ghost edged forward, holding out a hand as though feeling the warmth thrown out by a fire. “What are you?”

Qui

Three figures were marching along the corridor, one of them with desperate reluctance. Qui

Qui

Darkness has arrived. Even when the acolytes didn’t whisper it, the phrase hung in the smoky air of the sect’s Edmonton headquarters. A threat more menacing than any sadism the sergeant acolytes could bestow.

Ba

Their work suffered as a consequence. Income from the scams and hustling were well down in every coven across town. Even she, the High Magus, couldn’t rack up much enthusiasm. What chance did the lesser maguses have?

When she did rage at the sergeant acolytes, they just shuffled their feet and muttered dourly that there was little point continuing their old activities. Our time has come, they said, God’s Brother is returning to Earth. Who cares about knocking off dumb-ass civilians. Given the creed of the Light Bringer sect, it wasn’t an attitude she could effectively argue against. The irony of the situation didn’t escape her.

All she could do was keep listening to the rap from the street, hunting out clues. It was a thin source of information, especially now. Like a great many of Earth’s arcologies, Edmonton was slowly shutting down as it spewed out its own fear. Commercial districts were reporting increasing absenteeism. People were calling in sick, taking holidays. Parks and arcades were nearly deserted. Football, baseball, ice hockey, and other game fixtures were played to small crowds. Parents kept their kids away from day clubs. For the first time in living memory it was always possible to get a seat on metro buses and tube carriages.

The vac-trains weren’t shut. Keeping the routes open was a bravado example of Govcentral confidence, intended to reassure people that Earth was still safe. Passenger numbers were under thirty per cent. Nobody wanted to do anything that brought them into contact with other people, especially strangers. Civic utility companies had to threaten employees with lawsuits to keep essential services going. Government workers were intimidated with the prospect of disciplinary proceedings if they didn’t perform their duties as normal, especially the police. The mayors were desperate to provide the image of normality in the hope the public would follow their cue. A desperation that was taking on increasingly surreal dimensions in the face of such stubborn public reticence.

Ba

Acolyte Kilian was doing his level best not to shake as the sergeant acolytes hurriedly left him alone in Ba

Unlike several High Maguses she was aware of, Ba

When Kilian started to look round, he found he was in a place that was way beyond the worst-case scenarios that acolytes whispered among themselves. Ba