Page 97 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Oh he didnotdecide he got to withhold information from me because I might not do what he wanted,” said Annie, audibly furious.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Dead girl with a bomb, here. Where do you want me to put this?”

Sarah swept her eyes around the visible portion of the room, doing some sort of elaborate mental calculus, then indicated a position at the base of the nearest support column. “There,” she said.

We had appeared almost on top of the point she was, well, pointing at. I leaned over and released the bomb, which promptly fell over with a ringing clang. If any Covenant archivists were down here, we were going to meet them shortly. Both Sarah and Antimony flinched.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s not armed.”

“Because arming mechanismsnevermalfunction,” muttered Annie, crouching down. She set the cat carrier on the floor and opened the door before shrugging out of the bulky backpack she was carrying and unzipping the top flap. She began withdrawing blocks of clay-colored plastic explosive, packing them in around the bomb. I blinked.

“What’s this?”

“Insurance,” she said, glancing up at me. “If one of the bombs fails, or the walls are thicker than we think they are, this gives us a little extra boom.”

“A little extra? That looks like you’re trying to bring down the British Museum.”

Antimony stopped what she was doing, looking briefly stricken. “If we were planning to blow up the British Museum, we would have hired a team of art thieves to clear out all the priceless cultural artifacts before we set the charges,” she said. “But that’s essentially what we’re going to do here, and we haven’t had time to loot the place yet. Can we do this? Morally speaking, can wedothis?”

“We’ve already come to terms with killing noncombatants for the sake of our own side. Can we survive this war if we don’t do it?” asked Sarah. She bent down, addressing the open carrier. “Your priestess is having a crisis of faith. Your wisdom would be welcome.”

Two heads immediately popped out of the bedding, oil-drop eyes focusing on Sarah. “We live to serve,” squeaked one, and the two mice skittered out of the carrier, then up Antimony’s leg to climb onto the arm that was still extended toward the pile of plastic explosives. They didn’t shout or exalt. That was odd enough behavior for an Aeslin mouse that I frowned at them, perplexed.

“They’re following the scriptures,” said Antimony, in a more normal tone—normal for her, anyway. From anyone else, it would have been the beginnings of a lecture. “Mindy here came with me to Penton the first time, as my living black box, and had to agree to strict vows of silence unless invited to speak. Mork was originally from the resident colony. Silence is ingrained in him at this point.”

There was something tragic about an Aeslin mouse who defaulted to silence over celebration, but I didn’t have the time to focus on that. Instead, I focused on the mice themselves. “We have to destroy this place,” I said. “We don’t have a choice. Mork, you grew up here. Does your colony have any knowledge of what things should be preserved?”

“That is the province of the clergy of the God of Bitter Honesty,” squeaked one of the mice, presumably Mork. Ears flat and whiskers pushed all the way forward, he continued, “If any would know, it would be the priests of that litany.”

“The God of . . . ?”

“Charles Healy,” supplied Antimony. “Great-Great-Grandma and -Grandpa’s older son, the one they had to leave behind when they came to America. Mork, can you find us a member of that clergy?”

“We will go, Priestess,” said Mork, barely concealing his eagerness. Both mice darted off into the shadows of the basement, disappearing quickly.

I turned back to Sarah and Antimony. “While they’re doing that, we should set the second charge. Where does it go?”

“Over here,” said Sarah, and started walking.

The basement was large enough to be internally subdivided into smaller areas, although they weren’t rooms so much as chambers, distinguished by a few interior walls and an archway, no actual doors. Sarah led us through one of those archways, indicating another support pillar. “Here,” she said.

“All right,” I replied. Alex was already calling in the back of my mind, trying to summon me to Ohio. “Just let me bounce over to Alex, and I’ll be right back.”

With that, I vanished, flinging myself into the void. This trip was faster than the one where I’d been carrying the bomb, but still substantially slower than the norm, giving me plenty of time to watch the grain roll beneath me, and a sense of place and position that had never been a part of this transition before. The air was thick, like I was moving through maple syrup, and I was relieved beyond measure when I reappeared—not in the kitchen, but in the front yard, shielded by bushes and decorative hedges, but still outside.

I squeaked, going insubstantial, and basically ran inside the house, not going solid until I was safely back in the kitchen with Alex, Martin, and Uncle Mike. Alex and Martin were sitting at the kitchen table. Both jumped to their feet at the sight of me, Alex’s eyes going wide behind the lenses of his glasses. “Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?” I moved to start levering the second bomb off the floor. They were the same model, but this one seemed heavier. I’m a ghost, and ghosts don’t get physically tired, but I felt like no one had bothered to tell my body that. My arms and shoulders ached, and my lower back protested hiking the bomb into my arms in a way that would probably have been a promise of future troubles if I’d been alive. Lifting that thinghurt. I had carried heavy objects before. Never several times in quick succession, and neverthisheavy.

“Did it work?”

I managed not to drop the bomb as I stared at him. “Alex, we need all three bombs before we can set off the charges, or we’re not going to do enough damage to do us any good. No, it didn’twork. It hasn’thappenedyet. Have a little patience.”

“And when it does work, it won’t disperse the field teams immediately,” said Martin. His voice, as always, was low and deep, and entirely out of place coming from the mouth of such a mild, ordinary-looking man. He sounded like a supervillain and he looked like an accountant. “They’ll still be here, and while they may realize something’s wrong when they lose contact with headquarters, they’ll still be milling around for a while before they realize no more orders are forthcoming.”

“So we stay vigilant, and we do cleanup, but they don’t get reinforcements,” said Alex. “Works for me.”

“I’m going to go place this bomb,” I said. Annie was already yelling in the back of my head, demanding that I get back over there, because she wasn’t finished talking to me. “After that, I’ll be back for the third one, and when I come back fromthat, I’ll be able to tell you whether it worked or not.”

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