Chapter 05

In any given month, there would be between two and seven armada storms rampaging across Earth’s surface, a relentless assault they’d persevered with for over five hundred years. Like so many things, their name had become everyday currency. Few knew or cared about its origin.

It had begun with chaos theory: the soundbite assertion that one butterfly flapping its wings in a South American rain forest would start a hurricane in Hong Kong. Then in the Twenty-first Century came cheap fusion, and mass industrialisation; entire continents elevated themselves to Western-style levels of consumerism within two decades. Billions of people found themselves with the credit to buy a multitude of household appliances, cars, exotic holidays; they moved into new, better, bigger homes, adopting lifestyles which amplified their energy consumption by orders of magnitude. Hungry to service their purchasing power, companies built cities of new factories. Consumer and producer alike pumped out vast quantities of waste heat, agitating the atmosphere beyond the worst-case scenarios of most computer models.

It was after the then largest storm in history raged across the Eastern Pacific in early 2071 that a tabloid newscable presenter said it must have taken a whole armada of butterflies flapping their wings to start such a brute. The name stuck.

The storm which had swept up from mid-Atlantic to swamp New York was ferocious even by the standards of the Twenty-seventh Century. Its progress had been under observation for hours by the arcology’s anxious weather defence engineers. When it did arrive, their response systems were already on line. It looked as though a ragged smear of night was sliding across the sky. The clouds were so thick and dense no light could boil throughout to illuminate their underbelly—until the lightning began. Then the rotund tufts could sometimes be distinguished, streaked with leaden grey strata as they undulated overhead at menacing speed. The energy levels contained within would prove fatal for any unprotected building. Consequently, the ability to deflect or withstand the storms was the prime requirement of any design brought before the New York civil engineering review board for a building permit. It was the one criterion which could never be corroded by backhanders or political pressure.

The tip of every megatower was crowned with high-wattage lasers, whose beams were powerful enough to puncture the heart of the heavy clouds. They etched out straight channels of ionized air, cajoling the lightning to discharge directly into the superconductor grids masking the tower structure. Every tower blazed like a conical solar flare above the dome residents, spitting out residual globules of violet plasma.

Amid them fell the rain. Fist-sized drops hurled out by a furious wind to hammer against the domes. Molecular binding force generators were switched on to reinforce the transparent hexagons against a kinetic fusillade which had the force to abrade raw steel.

The noise from this barrage of elements drummed through the dome to shake the gridwork of carbotanium struts supporting the metro transit rails. Most above-ground traffic had shut down. Right across the arcology, emergency crews were on full standby. Even the shield of lasers and superconductors were no guarantee against power spikes in such conditions. In such times, sensible people went home or to bars, and waited until sharp slivers of pewter light started to carve up the clouds, signalling the end of the deluge. A time when fear was heightened. When more primitive thoughts were brought to the fore.

A good time. Useful.

Quinn looked up at the old building which was home to the High Magus of New York.

Under cover of the storm, sect members were piling out of the vans behind him. Only ten possessed so far: a manageable number for what he had in mind. The rest, the acolytes and initiates, followed obediently, in awe of the apostles of evil who now commanded them.

Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine, the notion that God’s Brother would never actually manifest himself. The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.

Now the souls were returning, owning the power to commit dark miracles. The acolytes had fallen into stupefaction rather than terror, the last doubt vanquished. Condemned as the vilest outcasts, they now knew they’d been right all along. That they were going to win. Whatever they were ordered to do, they complied unquestioningly.

Quinn motioned the first team forward. Led by Wener, the three eager acolytes scampered down a set of steps at the base of the wall, and clustered round the disused basement door at the bottom. A codebuster block was applied, then a programmable silicon probe was worked expertly into the crack between the door and the frame. The silicon flexed its way under the ageing manual bolts, then began to reformat its shape, pushing them back. Within thirty seconds, the way in was open. No alarms, and no give away use of energistic power.

Quinn stepped through.

The difference between the headquarters and the dingy centre on Eighty-Thirty street surprised even Quinn. At first he even thought he might have the wrong place, but Dobbie, who now possessed magus Garth’s body, reassured him this was indeed where they should be. The corridors and chambers were an inverse mirror of the Vatican’s splendour. Rich fittings and extravagant artwork, but sybaritic rather than warmly exquisite, celebrating depravity and pain.

“Fuck, look at this place,” Wener muttered as they marched down one of the corridors. Sculptures took bestiality as their theme, featuring both mythical and xenoc creatures, while paintings showed the saintly and revered from history being violated and sacrificed on the altars of the Light Bringer.

“You should take a good look,” Quinn said. “It’s yours. Those hours ripping off citizens and pushing illegals on the street, that paid for all this. You live in shit, so the High Magus can live like a Christian bishop. Nice, isn’t it.”

Wener and the other acolytes glowered round at the perverse grandeur, envious and angry. They split up, as arranged. One of the possessed leading each group of acolytes, securing the exits and strategic areas, the weapons cache. Quinn went straight for the High Magus. Three times, he encountered acolytes and priests scurrying along the corridors. They were all given the same simple choice: Follow me, or be possessed.

They took one look at the black robe, listening to the voice whispering out of the seemingly empty hood, and capitulated. One of them even gave a mad little laugh of relief, a strong sense of vindication flooding his mind.

The High Magus was taking a bath when Quinn strode into his quarters. It could have been the penthouse of some multistellar corporation president, certainly there was little evidence of idolatrous worship amongst the opulence. Much to Wener’s disappointment he didn’t even have naked servant girls to wash him. Slimline domestic mechanoids stood quietly among the white and blue furnishings. His one concession to turpitude appeared to be the goblet he was drinking a seventeen-year-old red wine out of, its vulvic influences impossible to ignore. Islands of lime-green bubbles drifted round his round frame, giving off a scent of sweet pine.

He was already frowning as Quinn glided over the gold-flecked marble to the sunken bath, presumably forewarned by the failure of his neural nanonics. His eyes widened at the invasion, then narrowed as the eccentric delegation stared down at him.

“You’re a possessed,” he said directly to Quinn.