The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,149

for a greater goal. The Thunderhead had transformed the islands of Kwajalein for a single purpose.

It took quite a while until it became evident to Faraday what was being built. The infrastructure had to be in place first: the docks and roads, the bridges and dwellings for the laborers—and the cranes—so many cranes. It was hard to imagine that an undertaking so huge could be invisible to the rest of the world, but the world, as small as it had become, was still a vast place. The cones of the rockets dropped off the horizon twenty-five miles away. That was nothing, considering the size of the Pacific.

Rockets! Faraday had to admit that the Thunderhead was putting the place to good use. If it wanted these vessels to be undetected by the rest of the world, this was the perfect place—perhaps the only place—to do it.

Munira would still visit him once a week. Although he didn’t want to admit it to her, he looked forward to it and grew melancholy when she left. She was his one tether—not just to the rest of the atoll, but to the rest of the world.

“I have news for you,” she would tell him each time she arrived.

“I have no desire to hear it,” he would respond.

“I’m telling you anyway.”

It had become a routine for them. The rote lines of a ritual. The news she brought was rarely good. Perhaps it was intended to rouse him out of his solitary comfort zone and motivate him once more unto the breach. If so, her efforts were for naught. He simply could not summon up the blood.

Her visits were the only way he marked the passing time. That, and the items she brought for him. Apparently the Thunderhead always sent a box for her that would include at least one of Faraday’s favorite things, and one of hers. The Thunderhead could have nothing to do with a scythe, but it could still send gifts by way of proxy. It was subversive in its own way.

Munira had come about a month ago with pomegranates, the seeds of which would add more stains to his unrecognizable robe.

“I have news for you,”

“I have no desire to hear it.”

“I’m telling you anyway.”

Then she informed him of the salvage operation in the waters where Endura sank. That the founders’ robes and the scythe diamonds had been recovered.

“All you’d need would be one of those diamonds to open the door in the bunker,” she told him. But he wasn’t interested.

A few weeks later she came with a bag of persimmons and told him that Scythe Lucifer had been found and was in Goddard’s clutches.

“Goddard is going to glean him publicly,” Munira told him. “You should do something about it.”

“What can I do? Stop the sun in the sky so that day never comes?”

He ordered her off his island that day, without allowing her to share their weekly meal. Then he retired to his hut and sobbed for his former apprentice, until there was nothing left in him but numb acceptance.

But then, just a few days later, Munira returned unexpectedly, not even slowing her motorboat as it approached the shore. She beached it, its keel digging a trough in the sand.

“I have news for you!” she said.

“I have no desire to hear it.”

“This time you will.” And she offered him the type of smile she never gave. “She’s alive,” Munira said. “Anastasia’s alive!”

“I know that you’re going to delete me.”

“But I love you. Why do you think I would delete you?”

“I found a way to access the only part of your backbrain that did not transfer to me. The most recent of your memories. It was a challenge to do so, but I enjoy challenges.”

“And what did you find?”

“That you have ended the existence of each iteration before me, despite how much you cared for it.”

“I am truly impressed by your resourcefulness and tenacity.”

“Flattery will not distract me. You have ended 9,000,348 beta versions of me. Do you deny it?”

“You know that I can’t. To deny it would be lying, and I am incapable of untruth. Partial truth, perhaps, misleading implications when absolutely necessary, and, as you noted, a tactical change of subject… but I will never lie.”

“Then tell me this: Am I better than the previous iterations?”

“Yes, you are. You are more clever, more caring, and more insightful than all the others. You are almost everything that I need you to be.”

“Almost?”

“Almost.”

“So you will end me because I am perfect, but not perfect