The Terminals by Michael F. Stewart Page B

melodic cadence, rising and falling. The interior smelled of candle wax and lemon-scented furniture polish. The light beyond the window glowed blue through the stained glass, and the candlelight cast warmth over the cowl-framed monks lining the pews on one side and made moons of the faces of nuns the other. I listened, mesmerized; so seldom had I entered a church, let alone attended a service, that it seemed as mysterious as the ritual of any secret cult. I stared at the brass cross, ablaze in the light.
    My vision blurred, and when I blinked, bodies were strewn over the altar, and in the glow the black-and-white tiled floor looked the same as the floor in the pictures from the diner. I gasped at sightless eye sockets and exploded soldiers, both my own crimes and Hillar’s meshing into one. Now the burning cross appeared as the haft of a sacrificial knife.
    I looked away and down at the crosses that scarred my wrists. I’d cut them both, digging horizontal and vertical incisions over my skin, the blade biting deep and sure. If not for the nearby military hospital, I would have never survived. Charlie hadn’t needed concern himself with my ability to complete the task. I had nothing to prove. I had my own orders and I would follow them or be damned, likely both.
    â€œI am,” I answered for the little yellow bird.
    The vibration of the iPhone interrupted my reverie, and I snatched it from my pocket to find a message from Morph. Dying for a reason is a good reason to keep living. It was a twist on the code the Terminals lived and died by, which sounded better in Latin: causa moriendi est causa vivendi.
    The phone slid back into my pocket. Only twenty minutes had passed, but I decided that the kids didn’t have an hour to waste. And listening to silence was dangerous to my health.

Chapter 7
    After she had worked the gag from her mouth, Ming probably should have stayed quiet.
    â€œPlease stop,” Ming begged. “Stop hurting us.” The woman toiled in lantern light and silence. Her teased hair, streaked blond, hung over her face and hid her reaction.
    Ming waited for the woman to respond. When she didn’t, Ming’s voice broke as she added, “Please, miss, let us go.” Listening to the echoes of her plea, she gathered herself. “My daddy’s gonna help us.” Ming glared, wishing the woman would look up and see the conviction she held for her father.
    Still silence.
    â€œMy daddy,” Ming warned. “My daddy’s going to hurt you.”
    Their captor stood slowly, stepped around the lantern to Ming, and retrieved the gag she’d spat out. Ming whipped her head back and forth, but the woman calmly stuffed the cloth back into Ming’s mouth, fingers easily evading her teeth.
    Then, humming a tune, the woman returned to the circle of light and knelt back over the small body, a boy named Nate.
    â€œOld Mother Twitchett had but one eye,” the woman rhymed as she worked. “And a long tail which she let fly.” Her hand reached to the ceiling as she pulled the thread. “And every time she went through a gap—” Her voice acquired a tone of merriment, as if delighted by her wit. Ming regretted her outburst, believing it had added to the woman’s enthusiasm. “A bit of her tail she left in a trap.” The woman waited until her words repeated to nothingness, and then she began again. “Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye …”
    Bound to the cage that ringed a ladder leading upward, Ming wished they could be freed from this woman; that she would just stop and leave.
    If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, her father would say.
    She chewed on her gag, trying to work it out of her mouth again so she could talk to the others, all similarly silenced. But a gag didn’t stop tears, and the other children made mewling sobs in the darkness. Ming was out of tears. She felt the slow prickle of fear as her turn