At first, if not for faint signals indicating the presence of life somewhere above him, and a pervasive droning of machinery that resonated from deep beneath the floor, he might have assumed the entire base was deserted. He made his way through the rusting labyrinth of walkways and corridors and storage rooms leading from the docking bay without encountering a single guard. For once, the invisibility device and cloaking mechanism he had equipped before setting out seemed unnecessary; there was no one around to detect his presence, and they wouldn't have been able to see him in the near-total darkness of the corridors. He would have had the advantage there at any rate; his enhanced sensory abilities made darkness an asset rather than an obstacle. Cast in the feverish glow of his night-vision sensors, the interior of the base had an unreal quality, like a cheaply constructed virtual location on the AMN.

"Are you sure they gave you the right coordinates?" said Doctus over the interlink. "This place doesn't look very lively."

"There are life signs on the upper levels." They blinked faintly at the edges of his visual range, but he was too far away to determine anything more than their presence; he would have to get closer before he could analyze their individual signatures and try to match them with the data he had received on the hostages.

He searched the nearby storage rooms and found a working elevator to the rear of one of them. When he was sure the immediate area was clear, he used it to reach the deck above. This floor appeared deserted as well, but with signs of recent activity that had been absent from the lower decks. Now that he was within range, his sensors picked up more life forms, all of them headed in the same direction, towards the central part of the vessel.

"They appear to be gathering at a certain point," he said. "That might be where the hostages are."

"Careful," said Doctus, over a murmur of static in the back of his head. Ziggy had noticed an interference in their communications when he landed; now it seemed to be getting worse.

As he made his way among the upper levels of the base, his surroundings began to conform to a certain Ormus-like aesthetic that reminded him of Pleroma, although the two bases didn't have much else in common. The architecture had an ancient look, as if it would have been made out of stone if it were economical or practical to do so, and it made the presence of more recent technology seem anachronistic. Of course, recent was a relative term, as nearly every piece of equipment on board would have been manufactured before the collapse of the UMN.

He encountered the first two guards outside a control room, their uniforms and weapons highlighted in the violet glow of the monitors from a window facing out onto the hallway. Still concealed by the cloaking device, he managed to get close enough to hear their conversation.

"Is that it?" said the first. "That's all we have to do?"

"You heard our orders, Keil." He started down the hallway and waved for the other guard to join him. "Come on, we're late enough as it is; just leave it and it'll take care of itself."

"Magni, wait."

The second guard stopped. "What is it?"

"I feel ...." For a moment the first guard stared straight at the place where Ziggy was standing, long enough to make him wonder whether his camouflage had failed as it had done on Pleroma, but then the guard turned away with a dismissive shake of his head that looked like an attempt at concealing a shudder. "Listen, I've got a strange feeling about all this. What's this New Pilgrimage business got to do with the test data anyway?"

"Hey, keep it down, will you?" Magni glanced around restlessly, as if he also suspected an intruder on the premises. "You got a death wish? You've got some nerve questioning the will of the Executor. If our superiors heard you--"

"Right, I know." Keil bowed his head. "It's just that ... you wouldn't happen to know anything about this 'revelation' people have been talking about, would you? They say something's going to happen at the meeting today, and ever since those guests arrived ...."

"Keil, you need to stop listening to gossip in the mess hall and start paying more attention to the words of our savior. Having a little more respect for your orders wouldn't hurt, either." He had raised his voice and spoke in an affected manner, perhaps for the benefit of whomever he thought was listening in on their conversation. He gestured down the hall again. "We're wasting time here."

"Ah, right. Sorry." He fell into step with Magni, and the two headed off down the corridor.

Ziggy started after the guards, but Doctus stopped him at the door to the control room. "You mind having a look in there?" she said.

Collecting data on the organization wasn't one of his objectives for the mission, but he walked over and stood in front of one of the terminals. "It's running some sort of program. What do you want me to do?"

"Just stay there for a minute," said Doctus. "I'm analyzing your visual data. Do you notice anything unusual about the machine itself?"

He tried to take a closer look without moving his eyes away from the screen. "No, what do you .... Wait a minute. This is a new model. It couldn't have been manufactured more than a few months ago."

"That's right," said Doctus. "A Nov-OS Technologies AMT-56670. That company didn't even exist before the UMN collapsed, and this particular model dates to right around the time the column to Patmos was first opened. Of course, that unit will have been heavily modified on the inside; it'd have to be, to run that program."

"I see what you mean. That doesn't appear to be a standard network interface. Can you tell what it's doing?"

"Well, it's definitely transmitting something, but that address doesn't appear to correspond with any known location on the AMN. Looks like the data itself's under a lot of protection; whatever they're sending, it's probably pretty damn important. Do you still have the backup drive I gave you?"

He retrieved the portable storage device she had pressed into his hand during their brief meeting at the docking colony--another one of Scientia's classified devices, the infinity symbol barely visible in relief on its surface. "How does it work?"

"Just connect it somewhere and it'll start copying automatically."

He searched the casing of the terminal for an available port, and inserted the drive when he found one. "I find it necessary to remind you that this isn't part of my official assignment."

"I'm well aware of the precise nature of your assignment. Don't worry, I'll make sure you receive compensation from Scientia for assisting our research. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only payment you'll be getting out of this, isn't it?"

Ignoring her, he checked his visual field. The guards' signals had vanished, and those of a larger, slower-moving group he had observed earlier were moving out of range. When the drive had finished copying, he resumed his pursuit until he reached a vast open space beneath a central walkway that spanned the room like a bridge. Crates and storage containers had been stacked near the walls, and he ducked behind one of them to observe the procession as it passed overhead.

The signals filed out along the walkway, drawing a dotted line across his sight. A few men and women in uniform marched at either end of the column, those at the rear goading the plain-clothed people ahead of them when they failed to keep up with the pace set by those in front.

"That's not the Patmos Delegation," said Doctus, in the same instant he realized it himself.

"No, it isn't." He studied the figures half-marching, half-stumbling along the walkway, magnifying the image in his view until he could see their faces, their heads bowed in reverence, the medals and prayer beads clasped in their hands. Some of the younger ones clung to the adults' sides, gazing around in a more primal form of awe. For a moment his lingering unease sharpened into a stab of recognition at the back of his mind, but he pushed away the memory before he could tell what it was. "What are civilians and children doing in a terrorist base?"

"My guess is that they're members of the Immigrant Fleet who went into hiding after the incidents on Michtam two years ago."

He considered for a moment. "So we're infiltrating a refugee camp."

"Well, a refugee camp that also happens to serve as the headquarters of an anti-Federation terrorist organization, yes."

"I see. This ... complicates things." That was the problem with planning for the worst-case scenario; there were limits to what he could imagine, and reality could always manage to be worse. The static on the line gnawed at his thoughts. "They seem to be headed for the same place everyone else is. I guess we should follow them."

"You mean you should follow them. Not a hell of a lot I can do from out here."

"Ah. Right." He waited until the procession had gone on, then he made his way to the upper level and crept out along the walkway. In the next room, the signals he had been tracking joined others as they arrived from other parts of the base, and they all continued as a group. He kept following, maintaining a safe distance to avoid being noticed; the incident with the guards earlier had reminded him that even though he had camouflage, it didn't hurt to take precautions. He recalled the guard Keil's gaze passing through him, the bizarre sensation of making eye contact with someone who couldn't see his eyes. Sometimes human intuition picked up on signals the most advanced detection systems missed.

He followed the group ahead of him deeper into the base. Several times they met up with other groups and reformed into a larger entity, until at last he estimated a crowd of a few hundred people gathered in a large room near the center of the ship, where they appeared to have stopped moving.

"I think I've found where they're meeting," he said. "I'm going to try to get inside without being seen."

"Sorry, could you repeat that?" The words barely surfaced out of a sea of noise. "I can't hear you very well, there's--"

"Doctus? I said I'm going in. Are you there? Doctus!"

Static.

He sighed, wondering if he should disable the interlink; the noise in his head was distracting. But he decided against it, in case she managed to get through later.

He examined his surroundings. He had stopped in a dimly lighted hallway with a door at either end, with lights set into the walls at intervals to give the effect of torches or candelabra. Through the open doorway at the far end he made out an enclosure like the interior of a church, an aisle leading to a domed vault, stained-glass light slicing down from somewhere above the altar. The people he could see from here had their backs to the entrance.

He moved closer, fighting some nameless dread that held him back at every step. The vague sense of unease he had felt at the beginning of the mission was overwhelming now; like the static in his mind, it had grown too pervasive to ignore. It was just like Michtam two years ago, and like the first time, a hundred years before that. The chapel here didn't bear much resemblance to the cathedral in Archon, but perhaps the similarities had been enough to jog his memory.

He willed himself to calm down. He knew it was irrational to react this way; it was one of the reasons why he had considered having his memories erased, since he often performed poorly on missions that reminded him of his previous life. Logically, it should have been the reverse; he had encountered situations like this before, so experience should have taught him to remain calm. But all he could think about were his previous failures. Pushing aside his fears as best he could, he approached the doorway.

No one saw him as he entered the chapel and stepped behind a pillar framing a darkened side-aisle. No one watched the entrance; they all stood facing the altar, singing a hymn in a language that sounded like the Latin phrases Doctus sometimes quoted. He made his way along the aisle until he stood in the shadows behind the vault; from there he could see the hostages, kneeling at the base of the altar with their heads bowed, although they didn't appear to be restrained in any way. A man in the robes of an Ormus priest stood in front of them, and when the hymn subsided to an expectant silence, the priest stepped forward and addressed the congregation.

"Behold, my friends, the moment we have long awaited is upon us. For at last we shall ascend to the promised land; at last we shall depart from this condemned world, which has rejected our very existence and denied the truth of our beliefs. The one who speaks to us from the promised land will guide us there, but now we must lend him our wills, so that his work may be done ...."

While the crowd was distracted, Ziggy approached the back of the altar and tried to get the hostages' attention. The nearest, a woman in her late twenties with limp bedraggled hair falling across her face, jerked around when he touched her arm.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, keeping his voice low. "I'm an agent working for the Federation government. I'm going to try to get you out of here."

"Oh ...." The hostage lolled her head upright and stared through him with glazed eyes and a vague, fixed smile. "That's a shame. We were about to go with them ...."

He backed away in shock, as if the woman's gaze had burned him. The static in his head had risen to a piercing whine and he couldn't think clearly enough to revise his strategy. He retreated behind a nearby arch, waiting for his regulatory mechanisms to take effect and slow down his racing heartbeat.

"The rulers of Babylon have sealed the way to our homeland and denied us passage," he heard the priest saying over the rasp of static and the oceanic roar in his skull, "but we no longer need to rely on their empty promises and false mercies to reclaim our heritage. They wish to negotiate with us, but how can we reason with them when they are drunk on the blood of our saints and martyrs, when they have driven themselves to madness with their own debauchery? And now the enemy has come within our midst, and in this most sacred hour those who would destroy us shall bear witness to our salvation. For the one who will lead us has come to show us the way to the promised land. Come, loyal followers of his ways, and let us prepare to depart."

Silence entered the room like a living presence, and even the air seemed to waver, shimmering at the edges as if the space itself were a mirage, an illusion about to disperse. The speaker raised his arms toward the light that filled the vault, and the crowd--refugees and soldiers alike--hung suspended on an indrawn breath.

The light enveloped them, erased them in an instant, without a sound, and he didn't comprehend what was happening until it was over.

The static in his mind had gone, leaving his thoughts stranded in the sudden calm like fragments of clouds in a washed-out sky. They drifted there, a few isolated wisps of cognition too insubstantial to grasp. On an impulse he got up, walked over to the altar, stared at the crumpled bodies of the hostages; the priest had dissolved into the light along with the rest of the congregation. The Patmos Delegation might have witnessed whatever had just happened, but they hadn't survived to tell about it.

As he turned away something caught hold of his leg, and he glanced down at the hand gripping his ankle, the outstretched arm, the eyes staring up at him through the glassy sheen of agony. It seemed he had been mistaken in assuming all the hostages had died at once. He recognized the young man whose profile he had reviewed at his briefing, the one who had delivered the terrorists' message in the audio broadcast, and with the recognition came a renewed stab of apprehension, as if he had suddenly found the object of all his fears from the outset. He had never seen the man before, but that verse, those words--

He saw the strain in the young man's face, realized the hostage was trying to speak again. Ignoring the instinct that told him to pull away from the straining fingers and run as far and fast as he could from this place, he bent down to listen.

"The beast ... that you saw ..." gasped the young man, and once he had managed to utter the first few words at great effort, he continued in a rush, "was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is."

The young man closed his eyes and sighed as if he had just fallen asleep, and his fingers eased their grasp.

Ziggy walked away from the altar and sat down, surprised at how calm he felt, as if he had lost the capacity to feel anything at all.

"Ziggurat 8, do you hear me? What's going on in there? Are you all right?"

It seemed a long time before he recognized the voice, and he didn't know how long she had been trying to reach him. "I'm here." He didn't know what else to say.

"Oh, thank ...." Through the interlink he sensed her relief, an impression that fell between an audible sigh and a momentary spike of emotion, subsiding in an instant. "My sensors just picked up some kind of massive transfer to the imaginary domain. What the hell happened? Never mind, I'll be there in a second. Hang on."

She made her way down the aisle in swift deliberate strides, hurrying without appearing to be in a hurry, pausing only to examine the contorted figures sprawled beneath the altar. Then she walked over to where he sat. He lifted his head as she approached and stared at her without comprehension.

"Sorry, looks like I got here too late."

"It's all right." He heard himself respond automatically, as if reading from a script; he didn't even know what the words meant anymore, only that they seemed like the appropriate ones for the situation. "You wouldn't have been able to do anything."

"Maybe not for them." She held out her arm. "But for you ... at least, this time, it's a different story."

He gazed at the outstretched hand, then into the lenses that concealed her eyes, at the lighted spots embedded in the dark glass. For a moment he forgot where he was, forgot what he was looking at, and the lights became stars glimpsed from the dark end of a long tunnel, and a staggering vertigo overcame him, and then he blinked and recovered his bearings. "What do you mean, 'this time'?"

Doctus shook her head. "Forget it. Come on, let's get out of here."