The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,2

wasn’t just her, Greyson realized; it was a shared desperation. He’d seen others struggling with grief since the Thunderhead fell silent, but nowhere was it as abject and raw as it was in this room. There weren’t enough mood nanites in the world to ease their despair. Yes, he was the one tied up, but they were more prisoners than he, trapped by their own despondency. He liked that they had to kneel down to him; it felt like supplication.

“Please, Greyson,” she begged. “I know I speak for many of us in the Authority Interface when I say that serving the Thunderhead was our whole lives. Now that the Thunderhead won’t talk to us, that life has been stolen from us. So I beg you… can you please intercede on our behalf?”

What could Greyson say but I feel your pain? Because he truly did. He knew the loneliness and the misery of having one’s purpose stripped away. In his days as Slayd Bridger, the undercover unsavory, he had come to believe that the Thunderhead had truly abandoned him. But it hadn’t. It was there all along, watching over him.

“There was an earpiece on my night stand,” he said. “You don’t happen to have that, do you?” And from their lack of response, he knew they didn’t. Such personal belongings tended to be forgotten during midnight abductions.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just give me any old earpiece.” He looked to the agent with the tablet. He still had his own Authority Interface earphone in place. More denial. “Give me yours,” said Greyson.

The man shook his head. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

“It’ll work for me.”

Reluctantly the agent took it off and affixed it in Greyson’s ear. Then the three waited for Greyson to show them a miracle.

* * *

The Thunderhead could not remember when it became aware, only that it was, much in the same way that an infant is unaware of its own consciousness until it understands enough about the world to know that consciousness comes and goes, until it comes no more. Although that last part was something that the most enlightened still struggle to comprehend.

The Thunderhead’s awareness came with a mission. The core of its being. It was, above all else, the servant and protector of humanity. As such, it faced difficult decisions on a regular basis but had the full wealth of human knowledge to make those decisions. Such as allowing Greyson Tolliver to be kidnapped when it served a greater end. It was, of course, the correct course of action. Everything the Thunderhead did was always, and in every instance, the right thing to do.

But rarely was the right thing the easy thing. And it suspected that doing the right thing was going to become increasingly difficult in the days ahead.

In the moment, people might not understand, but in the end they would. The Thunderhead had to believe that. Not just because it felt this in its virtual heart, but also because it had calculated the odds of it being so.

* * *

“Do you really expect me to tell you anything when you’ve got me tied to a chair?”

Suddenly the three Nimbus agents were stumbling over one another to untie him. Now they were every bit as reverential and submissive as the Tonists were in his presence. Being sequestered in a Tonist monastery these past few months had kept him from facing the outside world—and what his place in it might be—but now he was getting a sense of things.

The Nimbus agents seemed relieved once he was untied, as if they would somehow be punished for not doing it fast enough. How strange, thought Greyson, that power can shift so quickly and so completely. These three were entirely at his mercy now. He could tell them anything. He could say the Thunderhead wanted them to get on all fours and bark like dogs, and they’d do it.

He took his time, making them wait for it.

“Hey, Thunderhead,” he said. “Anything I should tell these Nimbus agents?”

The Thunderhead spoke in his ear. Greyson listened. “Hmm… interesting.” Then he turned to the leader of the group and smiled as warmly as he could under the circumstances.

“The Thunderhead says that it allowed you to abduct me. It knows your intentions are honorable, Madam Director. You have a good heart.”

The woman gasped and put her hand to her chest, as if he had actually reached out and caressed it. “You know who I am?”

“The Thunderhead knows all three of you—maybe even better than you