“You’ll still be Fixers, but you are my Fixers. You’re the Righteous. Let me hear you say that and mean it.”

“We are the Righteous,” they said, tripping only slightly on that.

“No, boys, say it like you mean it,” said Eve, giving them a dazzling smile. “Say it like you love me.”

“We are the Righteous!” they roared.

And each and every one of them said it like they loved her.

CHAPTER 58

VAN DIJK BIOMECHANICA

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

The barking dog woke him.

And nearly killed him.

The man saw the headlights coming toward him without any understanding of where he was or why he was driving.

Reflexes took over. No hesitation, no panic.

His hands moved on the wheel, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas. Adjusting, compensating, avoiding by inches. The Doppler wail of the truck horn scolding him as the semi blew past, rocking the car.

Then the road ahead was clear. No oncoming nights. Nothing at all except a wash of pale moonlight over the asphalt and headlights on road signs.

They were all in Dutch. Well … Dutch and English.

That made no sense. Why were Italian road signs in Dutch?

He slowed to a stop and looked around. He was on a country road. Two lanes. The billboard beside advertised a Burger King four kilometers away, but the street address was in Rotterdam.

“What the fuck?” he whispered.

In the back seat, the dog barked again. Just once. A hungry bark.

The man realized that he was hungry, too. Starving, actually.

With only that as a destination, he stepped on the gas and drove.

He remembered ordering food. Remembered opening three burgers for Ghost. Remembered eating while sitting in a darkened parking lot of a closed factory.

Thoughts drifted out of the shadows, and he grabbed at them, hoping to puzzle them together, to form some kind of picture. Hoping for coherence and cohesion, for insight.

He remembered faces and names. Some of them. Engelbrecht, Bishlow, Fong, Orlando, Barbaneagra, Kaschak, Jones. Others.

Names belonging to dead faces. No. Not all. Some, he was certain, were still alive. Had that been circumstance or mercy? He couldn’t be sure. Not on any level of his awareness.

And information. So much of it. Cybernetics, chemical therapies, something called a K-110, militia groups, explosives, implants, chips. Something else, too. He spoke that last thing aloud.

“The American Operation.”

Hearing it aloud triggered something, but not the right thing. No details. Merely dread.

“The American Operation,” he said again and looked at Ghost as if the dog were able to fill in the details. Ghost looked up from a burger that he was eating with great delicacy, and for a moment, those dark brown eyes softened. Became wet. Which made his own eyes burn with unshed tears.

“What’s happening to me?” asked the man. “What’s happening to us?”