Changeling

EPILOGUE — REVELATION

The call came just after noon.

Jade had been lounging poolside, an activity, or more accurately a lack of activity that under normal circumstances, she would have found unbearably tedious. After the events of the past week however, lying out in the open with nothing buy sky above her, was just what the doctor ordered, literally as well as figuratively. The urgent care provider she’d seen the morning after her “climbing accident” had prescribed a regimen of rest and relaxation, along with ice, physical therapy and some heavy duty painkillers. She wasn’t keen on the ice treatments, but she was developing a new appreciation for sunbathing

The spa resort where they had booked a suite was just a thirty minute drive from Bell Rock and the hidden ruins beneath. They had not gone back to the site, which had been closed by the Forest Service due to “seismic instability,” and at last report, it would be several weeks before the popular tourist destination was open for business again.

Jade wondered if it would still be as much of a draw now that the source of all the paranormal activity associated with the place had been destroyed. She supposed it would. Stories of the Bell Rock Vortex, coupled with the human capacity to believe the unbelievable, would sustain the phenomena long after Jade was gone from the earth.

She had just returned to the room when Professor’s phone rang. He muted the television, which was tuned to a cable news channel, and answered. “Hey, Tam.” He glanced at Jade and then said, “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Jade?” Tamara Broderick’s strong voice crackled from the device, but Jade couldn’t tell if her tone was one of disapproval or awe. “You do have a knack for kicking the hornets’ nest, girl.”

Jade settled onto the couch beside Professor. “Hey, if it wasn’t for me you’d have no idea the hornets were even there.”

“Simmer down. It’s a mess, but I’m not unappreciative. The problem is figuring out who I can trust with this. God da—” She stopped herself. Tam had a smoker’s relationship with profanity — she was always trying to quit. “Frigging shapeshifters.”

“Changelings,” Jade corrected.

“They aren’t able to change shape,” Professor said. “It’s all just theatrical makeup and method acting.”

“I’m not stupid,” Tam shot back. “I know what they are. That little package you sent us is the gift that keeps on giving.”

It took Jade a moment to realize Tam was referring to Eve, the Changeling prisoner Professor had captured in Tasmania.

Tam was still talking. “We’ve got a list of probable infiltrators that includes at least two members of the President’s cabinet. That’s just in our country.”

“Well that explains your good mood,” Jade remarked.

“When does the roll-up start?” Professor asked.

“There’s not going to be a roll-up,” Tam said, wearily. “If we started arresting senior political figures and pulling their masks off, the world would come apart at the seams.”

“You can’t just leave them out there.”

“Actually, we can.” She paused as if trying to figure out how to deliver an unpleasant message. “There’s going to be a negotiated phase-out.”

Jade exchanged a worried glance with Professor, but neither of them interrupted Tam’s explanation.

Tam explained that, in order to keep the secret of the Changeling conspiracy a secret, the infiltrators would be given the opportunity to voluntarily relinquish their positions of authority in exchange for a promise of amnesty and resettlement in the witness protection program.

“How do you know they’ll go for it?” Professor asked.

“Why wouldn’t they? They can’t hide anymore, and you’ve utterly dismantled their raison d’etre.” She paused a beat. “You have, right?”

“The Vault was completely destroyed,” Jade said, letting Tam draw her own conclusions.

“These people are dangerous,” Professor intoned. “They’ve held power for a long time. They aren’t going to just roll over and give it all up.”

“We had all better pray they do,” was Tam’s grave reply.

Jade wondered if it really mattered. Despite Roche’s conspiracy theories, it seemed unlikely that the Changelings had ever wielded absolute control over the world’s governments and economy. She wasn’t sure that was even possible. In any case, if the Changelings were removed from power, someone just as unscrupulous would probably take their place.

Power corrupts and nature abhors a vacuum, Jade thought.

Tam was speaking again. “Do have any insights into what made the thing tick?”

“Infrasound frequencies can be used to induce a dream-like state,” Professor said, authoritatively. “People in that state see what they expect to see.”

“That doesn’t explain how Jade knew the vault would be in Arizona.”

Professor had no ready answer for that.

“It’s not the first time we’ve found something we can’t explain,” Jade said with a shrug. She had no inclination to speculate further. “What about Shah?”

“Latest intel puts him in Tehran. He’s gone back home.”

“So we can’t get to him?”

“Bigger fish to fry,” Tam said. “He was never much of a threat, and from what you’ve told me, he has reason to hate the Changelings even more than we do. Whether he meant to or not, he did us all a huge favor by destroying the vault.”

“Not sure how I feel about him,” Jade said, thinking aloud. “I don’t think he even knew whose side he was on.”

“Maybe we’ll run into him someday,” Professor said. “And you can ask him.”

Jade shrugged. “Or not. I’m just glad it’s all over.”

When Professor did not respond, she looked over and saw him staring at the television. On the screen, a graphic banner announcing “Breaking News” was flashing over stock footage of naval vessels on the ocean. The crawl beneath the picture said, “Possible debris from Flight 815 found.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”

But for the mountains towering behind the city skyline and the signs on the shops — Farsi written in the elegant Nasta’liq script — Atash Shah might have believed he was back on Park Avenue. The affluent Zafaraniyeh neighborhood in northern Tehran was every bit as modern, and almost as cosmopolitan, as Manhattan. It even had a synagogue, which probably would have astonished most Westerners.

It had been a long time since Shah called this place home, but there was nowhere else to go.

He recalled a line from an old poem. Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

The reunion with his family, and particularly his father who had never approved of his son’s travels — both literal and philosophical — had been a little strained, and Shah sensed there would be many more tense conversations in the days to come, but for the moment, things appeared calm.

Deceptively so.

His entire world had foundered. He was in exile. Everything he owned was gone, his possessions abandoned along with his New York apartment. He did not know if the authorities in the United States would seize his assets or pursue criminal charges against him, and it seemed prudent not to find out. He still had a controlling interest in the Crescent Defense League, though whether it could or even should continue remained in doubt.

After what he had learned under Bell Rock, he wasn’t sure of anything.

The dream of a second Golden Age of Islam — an era of spiritual and secular prosperity, an end to the destructive schism between Sunni and Shiite — was dead for him. He believed it was possible, probably even inevitable, but he would have no part in bringing that dream to fruition. He would never be the promised Mahdi.

How could he, knowing what he now knew?

It was all a lie. Islam. Christianity. The holy writings. None of it could be trusted.

Raina shuffled into the sitting room of the furnished flat they had rented, carrying a tray with a delicate silver tea service. His wife had been extraordinarily supportive through everything, which only deepened Shah’s sense of guilt at having been led astray by the wanton seductress Gabrielle Greene.

Gabrielle was dead by his own hand, but her poison was still in him.

I will make it up to Raina, he promised himself, yet he knew not how.

“Atash,” she clucked. “Drink some chai. It will calm your nerves.”

He managed a wan smile. “Thank you, my wife.”

She decanted a small amount of the amber liquid into a cup and passed it to him. He had never been much of a tea drinker. Coffee had always been his beverage of choice, an appropriately hyperactive drink for his hyperactive existence in New York.

Maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf, he thought. A new drink to begin a new life.

He took a sip. It was mildly spicy from the addition of zardamom pods and cinnamon, and just sweet enough to make him wish that it was more substantial.

This will take some getting used to.

He had just finished a second sip when a knock at the door startled him. They were not expecting visitors. With the possible exception of his parents, who believed it was his place to visit them, not the other way around, no one even knew of the apartment.

He jumped to his feet in alarm, and nearly toppled over from the resulting head rush.

“Atash, calm yourself,” Raina said. “It is only the groceries. I cannot make a home if I have nothing to cook. Finish your tea, then you can help me put things away.”

Shah sat down quickly, fearing that he was about to black out, but the wooziness lingered. He tried to place the tea cup on the table, but misjudged the distance, spilling its contents onto the floor.

Behind him, he heard Raina speaking to the deliveryman. “You are early,” she scolded, though not too harshly. “Five more minutes and he would have been out.”

What?

He jumped up again, whirling toward the door, and then promptly collapsed onto the floor. He could feel the puddle of warm tea soaking into his clothes, but his limbs were completely unresponsive. A black fog was settling over him, but just before the light went out completely, he saw his wife and the man that she had just admitted to their apartment.

Her voice reached out through the ether. “Oh, Atash. You almost ruined everything.”

Because I spilled the tea?

His thoughts were as muddled as everything else, and it took him a moment to connect what he had seen in that last glimpse before his eyesight failed, and what was now happening to him.

She drugged me. Raina drugged me.

“It was yours for the taking,” she continued, only now there was a hard edge to her words, a tone he had never heard in all their years together. “We worked so hard to prepare the way. Oh, we knew you weren’t ready, but that cretin Roche forced our hand, and then had the audacity to tell Jade Ihara about it before we could put him in the grave. But still, Gabrielle showed you such wonders. How could you do this to us? Why?”

The questions must have been rhetorical. There was no way he would be able to respond, and he knew she was not speaking to the man she had just ushered in.

Yet, in a way, she was. He had caught a glimpse of the visitor’s face in the instant before the drug took away his vision. A face exactly like his own.

“You almost ruined everything, Atash,” Raina repeated. “Fortunately, you can be replaced.”