The Sum of Zero: Part 6
by Dex
All recognizable characters and settings belong to Marvel; I am using them without permission but mean no harm and am making no profit. The plot and original characters, however belong to me. Any and all feedback is appreciated at dexf@sympatico.ca. Redistribution of this tale for profit is illegal. Please do not archive this story without contacting me first to obtain my permission.
The story contains disturbing imagery and subjects which may not be suitable for younger readers. Reader discretion is advised. Many thanks to Matt Nute and Tapestry for beta work and technical advice.
The mansion seemed too quiet and still in the mid-afternoon. Scott prowled through it, making his habitual check of the grounds. Bishop might have Cyclops beat hands down in paranoia, but Scott had lived in the house longer than anyone without the surname 'Xavier'. After satisfying himself that the house felt right, he disappeared into the bowels of the house. The sub-basements of the X-mansion always felt cold compared to the warm colours and comfortable furnishings of the living quarters upstairs. The mansion was a good metaphor for the lives of the X-Men in general, Scott always thought. Upstairs was a school and a home, normal in every way. Down in the basement it had been stripped; the normalcy and humanity scoured away to raw steel and energy, all to preserve one single purpose. Steel and energy; always alert and untiring in their duty. Scott could remember how sinister he had found it in the very beginning. Now, it was as much a part of him as his uniform.
The operations centre was empty, but still hummed as the hundreds of systems alive in it processed, searched and recorded the constant streams of data. Details insignificant on their own could create a devastatingly accurate threat warning system when combined. The cross indexing system had been the idea of a student of Xavier's, Douglas Ramsey. The New Mutant was a genius with computers, even without his astonishing language powers. He and Kitty Pryde had spent hundreds of hours putting it together; melding advanced code with the remarkable deductive leaps that the idiot slaved Sh'iar AI interfaces were capable of.
When the X-Men had re-established themselves at the mansion, the system had fallen in the hands of Forge, Beast and Banshee. It was that team that had added the smaller deductive abilities, with the scientific and police knowledge of the two men creating a much wider and more subtle net. It had taken five weeks to overhaul and upgrade the system, using an Interpol style database web structure to tier the incoming data stream through innumerable cross checks and evaluations. In seconds, it could boil down a thousand tiny bits of data into indicators of SPB activity, political unrest, probable confrontation zones and even new mutant contacts. The analysts at the CIA or the NSB would each gladly give their mothers to a Turkish brothel for a tenth of the system's capability.
Scott took a quick glance over the system to check for emergencies before he settled back into the main console chair. For once, no sudden disasters had cropped up; the X-Men equivalent of a vacation. The flight log showed X-Men Blue team on their way to Muir Island, something that had been planned before Scott had left. X-Men Gold team was on their way to Boston, listed in the normal laconic manner of Wolverine as 'checking on something'. Scott shut down the log and turned his attention back to the console. After a brief connection wait, the large screen suddenly flared up with the image of Kitty at a computer console, eyes red and still clad in a rumpled bathrobe and t-shirt.
"Kitty." Scott said, and the brown haired girl looked up.
"Oh, hey Scott. How are you doing?"
"Better than you, it seems. What's up?"
"Well–" Kitty stifled a yawn and clicked a few buttons. "I cracked it, and let me tell you, it was– well, a bastard." Scott chuckled and mentally agreed with Nightcrawler's statement that her boyfriend, Pete Wisdom, was having a major impact on the girl. "Scott, where did you get this?"
"Friends of Humanity hideout in Manhattan."
"Yeah, well, this is not over the counter stuff, Scott. It's a bastardized version of SHIELD's Guy Locklear encryptions. Maybe half a dozen people in the world can pack this much nastiness down into a computer that small. You need a super computer the size of a football field to even come to grips with breaking this."
"What did you use?"
"A super computer the size of a football field. Fortunately, I worked with Guy at SHIELD, and a couple of his little backdoors were still in place. Still, Scott, this security is intense stuff. Where did they get it?"
"Bastion, I'd guess."
"Figures. Anyhow, here's the real gem. I found the bombing schedules in here."
"Fantastic! Now–"
"Not so fantastic. They've been accessed remotely and altered. There's a half second delay in the files. Some one accessed them from a terminal off the main network and jimmied it."
"The thinwire." Scott muttered, and Kitty nodded.
"Yup. However, that's not the big deal here, Scott."
A thin wire of worry twisted in Scott's gut as he saw Kitty's expression change. "What?"
"How many mutants do we have on file with the Cerebro?"
"About twenty-one hundred and change. Why?"
"Because they have more than seventy-five thousand here." Kitty said, and Cyclops' jaw dropped. "Apparently more than half from official government records during mutant registration."
"Seventy-five thousand?"
"Yes. A healthy chunk out of Russian GKU files here. Now, most are Delta level or lower."
Scott chewed his lower lip while he considered. "That could explain it. Charles never used the Cerebro on alert for anything lower than beta-level, so it's only the ones we've run across over the years that have been added. But that many..."
"I know. There's even a Senator in here, Scott. It's unreal."
"Kitty, send me a list of those in New York, would you?"
"Sure, but why?"
"Because I'm hoping I can save someone named McCoy."
***
Sidney Lyttle sat in his booth and scowled at the police officer on duty at the side of the room. He switched from boiling anger to oppressive fear every few moments. Caulder and the mayor's aide had promised him a deal with the DA's office in confidence, and an FBI escourt out of the place. Every minute he stayed in the cell was one more minute closer to his promise of execution by the Friends of Humanity. Fortunately, the detective had honoured his promise to keep things quiet. However, Lyttle had other plans about how long he'd really be in jail.
The key to any real chance of his protection from charges of terrorism was Eckert. He was sure that neither the police nor anyone else was going to crack the computer encryption without getting the data inside fried first. That meant the only real link that they had between him and the bombings was Eckert himself. Otherwise, they had a bad weapons charge worth maybe a year or two in jail. Datars was a hard bastard, but the District Attorney was a sensible man. Lyttle could get himself in a witness protection program with a decent paycheck and a new identity in exchange for information on the Friends of Humanity. The more he doled out, the more he could demand in exchange.
That meant they couldn't find Eckert. A note to Lyttle's lawyer had delivered the man to ensure that no one would ever find Lyttle again.
"Aaron." He said, and the man picked up the phone. Sidney shuddered slightly, staring at the man through the glass. A slim man faced him across the booth, his dark skin washed out under the fluorescent lights. Aaron had been a thousand things to Lyttle; first only heard of, and then recruited for Operation: Zero Tolerance. Aaron had been a legend in the field for years, the best kind of assassin. He never asked questions, rarely failed a job, and never said a word about his work to anyone.
The rumour was that he'd been a mercenary in Africa for years. He's been brought in and assigned to him with the warning of not to use him too much. Reliable, effective, and as dangerous as a jar of nitroglycerin in the hands of a spastic. Now, Lyttle needed him, and could meet the price.
"You called." Aaron said flatly. His skin was dark, like charcoal, but his facial features were curiously sharp. One of Sidney's fellow chief's had said he thought Aaron was Egyptian, but even he hadn't been sure. His eyes were medium brown, and bored like augers into the back of Sidney's skull.
"I need a man found."
"Who?"
"Thomas Allen Eckert. He will not be an easy man to get a hold of."
"I'll put you back in touch." Aaron nodded, and Lyttle knew that meant Eckert would be dead as soon as he was found. "I might need some money to find him."
"How much?"
"Maybe fifteen or twenty dollars." Lyttle sucked in air through his teeth. That meant thirty-five thousand dollars for the hit. It would eat up a good chunk of the money he had stashed away, but it was worth it. Sidney nodded stiffly and sat back.
"Alright. Chuck will let you know when we last talked to him. He's got all the stuff."
"Very well. Five days, at most."
"Thanks Aaron."
The man nodded once and left, leaving Lyttle in his booth for a long moment, considering his options. If Aaron found Eckert, then Eckert was dead and he was safe. If he didn't, and Lyttle went down, he'd have Aaron after him for his retainer as well. When the officer came and brought him back to his cell, he almost brightened at the sight of the bars. At least behind them, he felt safe for a moment.
***
John Caulder scrubbed his face with his hands, and took a deep breath. He'd been working on back-tracking possible links to the killer's equipment. Unfortunately, the number of jewelers, watch makers and hobbyists in New York was making his search impossible. Still, like Adams had said, most police work was grinding away at every damn lead until somebody talks. His celphone had gone off, and Cortez had let him in on the news that another body had been found. He's been on his way back to the station when the scanner tipped him off to a bombing in Harlem. Community house for mutants wounded badly in Operation: Zero Tolerance was bombed, sixteen killed and no survivors. John felt very old all of a sudden.
He took the stairs down to the morgue two at a time, nearly running over the beat at the bottom of the stairwell. A quick flash of his identification had him through, and he paused at the door to the room, catching his breath and straightening his tie. He felt the old sweat around his collar from the heat outside, and tugged it from his skin. The cold air of the morgue knifed through his summer-weight suit, and chilled him. His shirt clung to his shoulder-blades like a clammy hand, and John again cursed having to come down here. With a final deep breath, he opened the door.
In the centre of the grey-tiled floor there was an examination table, and on it there was a body, it's shape covered in a green surgical sheet. The sharp smell of rubbing alcohol filled the air, and cutting through it there was a rich, sick odor of overcooked pork. Doctor Sharpe turned as he came in, and shot an annoyed look at her watch.
"Detective–"
"Right, I know." Caulder held his hands up. "I know. What do you have?"
"An investment banker named Karl McCoy. Wife found him an hour ago."
"Wife?"
"She works in the museum. Left for work as usual, and came home to find her husband dead. She's upstairs. Quite shaken up." Lillian's voice was cool and crisp, without a hint of sympathy for the woman.
"Wait. Why wasn't he at work?"
"I'm certain I have no idea. The report is on that table." Sharpe pointed, and John snatched up the file. The beat reports and crime scene pictures were there, but the actual art on the body wasn't. Sharpe had likely removed them to analyze already.
According to the report, the woman had left and her husband had called into his office after that time and let them know he was off sick. The wife had no clue that he was ill when she left. Something nibbled at John's intuition. Why would he take a day off of work without telling his wife? An affair? But how would his murderer coordinate with a lover? Or was the murderer his lover? Caulder mentally filed away the question and put the file back down. Obviously, the fact that the wife would be returning home at the time of the bombing was the reason for the setup of the execution.
"Shall we?" Lillian said, and John nodded. She dropped the sheet from the body on the table behind her. Caulder stared, then swallowed the sudden rush of bile that had risen instantly to the back of his throat.
"Sweet fucking Christ!" He groaned. The face of the thing on the table was barely human. The hair was almost completely burned away, the flesh on the right side of the skull turned to lumps and ridges of carbonized gristle to reveal the yellow bone beneath.
The ear was gone and the skin and fat of the right cheek had split like roasted meat, opening up the mouth, palate and teeth. The tongue, blackened and charred, hung back limply down into the throat. The right eye had liquefied, leaving a dark, empty socket, pink-edged and swollen like an angry open sore.
Doctor Sharpe smiled pleasantly. "Are you sure you wish to stay, detective? You've gone very pale."
"Yes." Caulder said shakily. "Just... just– go right ahead."
"Very well." Sharpe bent over the body, poking away at the cooked flesh around the nostrils with a long metal tool. "He wasn't just set on fire. The burns around the body were minimal. It was centred on the man's head, and went fast enough not to trigger every alarm in the building." Caulder looked away hurriedly and swallowed again as part of McCoy's face crumbled under pressure from the pathologist's hand. Sharpe continued unperturbed, bending low and delicately blowing away the ash obscuring her field of view. She sniffed, nostrils flaring. "Phosphorus, I'm sure. Something else as well. Thermite."
"So it was an incendiary."
"Yes. Something homemade specifically for our visitor here."
"But that wasn't the cause of death."
"If it had been, detective, I would not have called you down here." Lillian passed over a pair of x-rays. "You can see the outline of a projectile lodged between the second and third cervical vertebrae, just as before."
"I would have liked to see the body on site." Caulder said, frowning. Unfortunately, the men on the scene often are not aware of the connections to cases, and proceed with normal procedures. At least he had the scene photos for now. He glanced at one of the photos. "He was naked?"
"Yes. Sitting in a chair close to a window. If you look, you can detect ligature marks on the wrists and ankles."
"He was bound?" That was something new.
"Postmortem." Said Sharpe. "Just enough to keep him upright in the chair."
"On display. Any other connections? Was this one marked?"
Sharpe nodded and motioned him over the examination table and its gruesome cargo. She lifted up the corpse's right wrist, and turned it towards the light. A narrow blackened area curled around the otherwise unblemished skin, banding the wrist with a repeating pattern of 'X's.
"Quite ingenious." Said Sharpe. "It was done using electrical current. Postmortem again, like the other wounds. This was found at the scene." Lillian pointed to the counter, and Caulder saw a length of electrical cord lying like a black snake. One end of the flex had been stripped of it's insulation and connected to a length of heavy wire, bent to crisscross itself in a pattern of repeating 'X's. The plug end was intact. "Do you see it, detective?"
John nodded, as he lined the end up with the wrist. "Changing his pattern."
"In a way, it would seem. We'll run the normal tests, but I think we mostly have it, detective. I'll be in touch if there is anything new."
"Thanks." John said, and turned. He all but fled the room, pausing at the stairwell to gulp great lungfuls of air. The stench of the charred body and the all too antiseptic odor of the room had mixed in his nose, cloying and overpowering. He left up the stairs, feeling like a man paroled as he reached the second floor. Will was still at the FoH site, but Struan had the wife in one of the 'safe' questioning rooms. Caulder paused to gulp down a cup of water before he let himself in, nodding to both of them.
"Mrs. McCoy? I'm Detective John Caulder. I'm in charge of the investigation of the man we believe killed your husband. I know this is a hard time for you, but I need to ask you a few questions so we can clarify some details." John pitched his voice low, and keep his body language open to relax the woman. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and from the trembling of her narrow shoulders, she was on the verge of collapse. Darcy Struan raised a questioning eyebrow at him, and he shook his head. He wanted a female detective present to help anchor the woman.
"Y–Yes?"
"Mrs. McCoy, was there any reason that your husband might have decided to stay home at the last minute? Sudden errand to run? Anything."
"No. Karl was a bit of a workaholic. Even when he was sick, he always went into work for a few hours to check up on things. If there was something, he never told me."
"Mrs. McCoy, this is going to sound very harsh, but was your husband having an affair?"
"What?"
"Was there another woman? Someone he could have been waiting for?" John broke off as the woman began sobbing harder, her face twisted in grief. They sat for a few moment in silence, while she sobbed. With a few shaky breaths, she finally stopped her crying, and shook her head.
"It wasn't his fault. He loved me! But, he– he didn't know about it until after we were married. He cried when he told me. He didn't– he didn't want it to be a part of his life. But there were times that he just couldn't– "
"Mrs. McCoy?"
"My husband was not gay, detective! He just had... urges. Sometimes they got too much for him."
"You're saying your husband had a gay lover?"
"Never!" Her voice was so venomous that Caulder edged back from her. "He never loved them! They were– they were men there for what he needed. He never had a relationship with them. He loved me!"
"He hired male prostitutes then?"
"He'd use those Internet sites to set up meetings. Once every few months. He paid them cash. I knew about it, but he never told me when or who. He wanted to spare me that, and I didn't want to know."
John leaned back, tapping the side of his noise. "So, your husband would take a day off and bring up his... choice while you were at work."
"Yes."
"Different men each time?"
"He said so, yes. My husband was a good man, detective."
"How did they get up? Your doorman swears he didn't admit anyone to your floor that morning."
"Karl used to send them a building key with the money. They'd come up from the parking garage. He didn't want anyone else to know."
"Thank you, Mrs. McCoy. I'm going to leave you with Detective Struan. She'll take you home when they've finished." Caulder said and slipped back out of the room. Suddenly, things were falling into place.
The killer contacts his victim through one of the Internet sites he uses. He either is a homosexual or poses as one to get Karl McCoy's attentions, and sets up a meeting. He slips in the back way with a key, and McCoy lets him into the room. He waits for McCoy to strip, before killing him with a single projectile to the back of the neck, and then ties his dead body to a chair. Then, a homemade incendiary to his face; the whole thing to be discovered by McCoy's wife in time with the latest bombing.
It was sickly brilliant. Elegant even. Whoever they were looking for was more than confident about his abilities. He was unafraid of capture. He wasn't taking increasing risks or leaving behind the trademark signs of a man taunting capture. He simply didn't believe it part of the scenario. One thing was certain, and that was that the pace was increasing, and his systems with it. This was culminating towards something, and Caulder's instincts told him it would be more than just another corpse. Caulder sat down at his desk and stared at his files. Somewhere in here was the key to unlock the mind of this madman. And every delay he made in finding it would be counted against him in blood.
***
Emma Frost stood in front of Eastpark Mental Hospital, and suppressed a shudder. For her, this was about as close to fear as she came. Telepaths tend to avoid mental hospitals as a rule, since the chaos of the minds inside has a way of bleeding past even the best shields and can swamp a person. Most people have a sort of rudimentary form of mental shielding, which they use to hide their thoughts; the kind that are let down to those they trust or care for to create intimacy or are slammed up to prevent anyone from reading them in a situation. Frost was of the belief that mankind was slightly socially telepathic, both sending and receiving thoughts on a limited and extremely deeply buried subconscious level.
However, the insane worked differently. They might broadcast constantly and powerfully; a tidal wave of images and thoughts that could swamp a psychic not prepared for it. The flipside was that some had such intense blocks built up that it was like trying to split open a ball bearing. They had dense slick mental shields that even the most skilled telepath couldn't open without resorting to raw bludgeoning in, and potential permanent scarring of the psyche. Even worse was trying just to grip them, with their slick featureless walls.
Add on to that the wealth of memories from her own time in an institution like this, fighting the twin abuses of parental rejection and the guards attentions. Her virginity had been taken when she was twelve. Forcing her to give them oral sex had begun two years earlier. Emma had torn them apart when her powers had emerged. One was in her at the time. Last she heard, all three of them were still alive in the asylum she paid for to care for them, trapped in a constant loop of simulated rape and the mental capacity of twelve year olds. Emma did not take revenge lightly.
She forced back the swell of revulsion and slipped back into her icy composure. She was no longer a helpless child, and this was no more threatening than the other thousand buildings in the city. Frost tucked her portfolio under her arm and walked into the building. Eastpark was made up of a central block; two sprawling wings jutting out from it to the north and south, and two minor wings at the rear. Every window on the floor was glassed, wire-meshed, and barred. It was a bleak, grey building, built in the style of the Victorian institutions of the turn of the century.
Doctor Richard Hillman was seated behind his desk when Emma was escourted into his office. The director was in his late fifties, slim, and his thinning hair was a nicotine yellow. A pair of circular, wire-framed glasses perched on the hooked, wide-nostriled nose that dominated his face.
The desk in front of him was almost bare, with a single black telephone, a closed laptop and a plastic paper tray. Three Sword pens sat in perfect parallels at the top of his desk, and a half-dozen needle sharp HB pencils were aligned next to his paper tray. To Emma, the surface of the desk marked the overt expression of an obsessive-compulsive neurotic. Dr. Richard Hillman was half as mad as the inmates he controlled.
"Agent Frost." His voice was flat, almost metallic. Emma could taste the distaste behind the voice.
"Doctor Hillman."
"Please, have a seat."
"Thank you." Emma settled into the sole, underpadded chair and crossed her legs.
"According to my secretary, the FBI appears to have some interest in one of my patients." As he spoke, he used his left hand to disturb the row of pencils, and then to rearrange them again.
"Yes. Thomas Allen Eckert. He was committed here 13 months ago."
"Committed? Oh dear me, no. He was a voluntary patient. Signed himself in for extreme observation and treatment. Very strange mix of rationality and madness. His lucid periods were remarkably functional." The pencils askew, the pencils aligned. The movement distracted Emma, and she suddenly realized that the man didn't have the slightest idea what his hand was doing.
"Were you the director here at the time?"
"No, I was the Senior Staff doctor at the time. I became the director only a few months ago."
"Did you know Eckert?"
"I supervised his therapy. He was– a very interesting challenge."
"How so?"
"May I ask why the FBI has taken an interest in him now?"
"His name came up in connection with a case we're working on."
"I see." Hillman didn't sound convinced. The pencils moved magically under his twitching fingers. "I assume I don't have much choice in this."
"Well, it would not be in your interest to hamper us, Doctor. The FBI does not take obstruction very lightly, especially in a case of major importance." Emma said, letting her voice chill slightly. "I could obtain legal warrant for your cooperation, however, we would of course be happy to supply you with material should you wish to publish after our investigations are complete. That is if you were to do so willing." Emma reached out and lightly brushed his mind, seeding her suggestion with the right stimulus.
"Indeed." The movement of the pencils stopped, and Frost knew he had swallowed her lure completely. Publishing in conjunction with a big media profile case was a sure ticket to a book deal and a lucrative speaking tour. "Well, as I said, Eckert was fascinating. Demanded complete isolation for the first three months of his internment. After an initial diagnosis, we were inclined to agree with him."
"How was he diagnosed?"
"Restricted ego, substitutive, totemic."
"Not psychotic?"
Hillman smiled condescendingly. "Certainly not, Agent Frost. Psychotic is a term bandied about too much by the media."
"But he was violent."
"Only in terms of his substitutive neuroses," Hillman pontificated. "His anger was aimed at inducing his substituted mother-image to accomplish his wishes. He had no mother, ergo, he transferred those frustrations onto society in general. So, in his reactive phases, he could be extremely violent. But those phases were intermittent and rare."
Emma nodded, and tried not to roll her eyes. Hillman was a mix of Neo-Freudian and structural analysis. Notoriously the most egocentric professionals in the community.
"You mentioned totemism?"
"Yes. By far the most interesting feature of the case." Hillman offered a bland smile. "Were you aware of Eckert's obsession with the works of John Martin?"
"The painter?" Frost could vaguely remember seeing some of the religious artist's gigantic canvases on display during a trip to London years ago. Huge melodramatic evocations of biblical catastrophe and cataclysm. "No, I was not aware of that."
"He was fascinated by the man; compulsively so. Here, let me show you something." The director rose from his chair and opened a drawer in a set of dull green filing cabinets along the one wall. He withdrew a large manilla folder, and set it down on the desk in front of Emma Frost.
It was like staring into a neatly organized vision of hell. Dozens of carefully executed pencil drawings showed various scenes from the Bible and John Milton's 'Paradise Lost', each one with a neatly inscribed notation in the lower left hand corner, giving the date and the source. Pandemonium, The Bridge of Chaos, The Conflict Between Satan and Death, Satan on the Burning Lake, The Destruction of Sodom, The Opening of the Seventh Seal, The Deluge, The Great Day of his Wrath. There were also a series of images with a single repetitive image: The Last Judgement. In these the scene was always the same. Hillman read Eckert's own title aloud:
"God, seated on his Heavenly Throne, flanked by A Gathering of Saints, Sternly watching the Avenging Angel bringing the fiery Spear of God to the Damned assembled in the Valley of Jehoshaphat below."
The largest of the drawings, folded over twice in the file, had been done on translucent vellum and hand obviously been traced. There were literally hundreds of tiny figures in the drawing, each one numbered, faint lines joining one to the other, and all to the tip of the flaming spear.
"There is another file just as large of these. Martin was also an engineer and mathematician. He designed rail lines, sewers, that sort of thing. Eckert was very keen on those. The copies are done with remarkable precision."
"Doctor Hillman. Has Eckert had any visitors here since he was committed?"
"One or two. Not something I really tracked."
"And would I be able to speak with him?"
"I'm afraid not."
"And why is that?"
"Because, Agent Frost, Eckert has been dead for almost four months."
***
The Number stepped into the monitoring station and waved at no one in particular. He was ignored as he walked through the station and into the sub-levels. His uniform and easy manner immediately disarmed any suspicion that he may not be allowed there. He hoisted his toolkit and duffel bag as he ducked under a set of piping and finally entered the access tunnels. New York had one of the most complex and extensive gas infrastructures in the world, set to keep the giant metropolis breathing. The Number passed row on row of pipes, bundles, and tunnels, all carrying gas, power or communications to areas of the city.
The Number saw none of this, none of the engineering and innovation designed to keep the giant city running. To him, the thick cable bundles and stacked lines of piping were the veins and arteries of a beast that had to be vanquished at any price; the filthy pathways leading to the creature's dark heart and soul.
He stopped at a metal door and pulled two slim pieces of metal from his pocket. After a few seconds, the metal rods caught and the lock snapped open. The Number opened it and walked in. A tower of intersecting pipes and junctions rose from out of the cement, one of the great gas mains of the city. The station monitored the main from above, hooked into the system and controlling this area of the distribution to a million locations. But down here was the forgotten link to the controls. This was were everything connected and streamed out from.
The Number set both the toolkit and the duffel bag down, and eased with his back against the wall to the far edge of the piping. A thick layer of dust and mildew coated the pipes, and he bit back a disgusted oath. He was getting too close, too excited. That was a mistake. Control. He needed his control back, especially now. Purity of purpose. A single final sum. He felt the excitement drain away, and calm settle over him.
He wiped away a large area around one of the main conduits and pulled his bag closer. The pipes of the New York system were almost an inch thick, two-thirds of that being steel. He pulled four pill bottles from his bag and placed them at his feet. From his tool kit, he drew out a roll of duct tape, a number of wires and a compact flat gray coloured plastic box. The pill bottles had been three-quarters filled with thermite, mixed in the basement of his house and packed away. The rest had been packed down with the primer; cotton balls soaked in an ethanol/glycerine mix. He lined the four bottles up and wrapped several pieces of duct tape around them. Then, flattening the bottles to the side of the conduit, he used another half dozen long strips of tape to hold it in place. Into the tops of each bottle, he placed a sparkplug, using a thick dollop of silicone to hold them in place. The Number twisted the stripped ends of the wire around the tops of the sparkplugs, and bundled them with a twist-tie. He ran the wire back down the conduit, using a few pieces of tape to fix it to the side of the pipe. On the floor next to the pipe, he set the plastic box, and attached the leads to a set of pegs jutting out from the side. The box held the firing circuit and a small cell receiver. He could dial a single number, and it would activate the next receiver and the next and the next, in a parallel. He snapped a flat phone battery into the box and used more silicone to seal it to the pipe. He fished out a can of spray paint from his duffel bag and sprayed the entire setup, painting it the same dull gray as the rest of the pipe. A casual look would likely slide right over the bomb, or make them believe it was supposed to be there.
The Number tossed his gear back into the bag and closed his toolkit. He took a last look at the bomb, satisfied with the way it blended into the rest of the equipment. He had nine others in place, and two left to finish. Twelve was an important number. Extremely versatile. Divisible cleanly into five of the first six numbers. The Greeks knew its magic, as did the Aztecs. It cropped up in religious texts the world over. Twelve labours, twelve disciples, twelve books; it confirmed his equation was correct.
Twelve bombs, and twelve times twelve more hours before his symphony played; before his great canvas was painted in colours of fire. The Number smiled thinly as he gathered his equipment and slipped back out of the room, leaving it's warm fog and still shapes behind him.