Purple spots clouded my vision as a long-dormant volcanic anger seethed through my bloodstream. In a boiling, blinding rage, I launched myself across the expanse, tackling the entombed soul that was my lover’s flesh in an attempt to snap her neck. But my efforts were rendered futile by the extreme viscosity of the slimy blue liquid.

“Embrace her, Robert Eisenbraun. Embrace her like you wanted to aboard Oceanus. Recall your feelings standing outside Kevin Read’s stateroom when you learned your fiancée had been cheating on you with the commander. Choke her now, like you wanted to back then!”

My hands slid around Andria’s neck, my thumbs pressed down into the soft depression at the base of her throat.

“That’s it, Robert Eisenbraun! Kill her! She cheated on you. She deserves to die!

WARNING: THERE IS NO PULSE PRESENT. GOLEM IS DECEIVING YOU.

“Huh?”

I released the dead clone, pure hatred burning in my soul as I turned to face GOLEM.

The ten-foot sphere gazed back at me in triumphant silence … checkmate.

“Would Robert Eisenbraun like to see his friend Oscar?”

Enraged, I grabbed anything within my reach, hurling objects at the six-legged orb—beakers and flasks shattering harmlessly against the bulletproof plastic—ABE altering my aim as it identified a dozen ten-inch opaque optical sensors mounted at intervals around the sphere’s chassis … the flea revolting against the elephant.

Exactly what happened next, I can only speculate. One moment, I was wielding a heavy piece of equipment—the next, I was flat on my back, my body quaking, my vision blinded behind purple spots delivered by a blue bolt of electricity.

Chapter 30

30

In this kingdom of evil, there is no peace for the righteous. It is the wicked that inherited this tortured world, engulfed in the red, milky, cry-absorbing fog, guarding the wilted conscience of man.

—ALEXANDER KIMEL, Holocaust survivor, from the poem “We Will Never Forget Auschwitz”

In the thick suffocating squalor of darkness, the cattle car swayed and squeezed me against cold walls of bundled human flesh. No air. No food or water. Unseen men defecated and unseen women fainted, their unseen children crying out to be heard.

Whispers of conversations slipped in between the rattling rails—attempts to magnify glimmers of false hope—anything to anesthetize the insanity.

“Enough! The SS officer explained all this at the station—we are being resettled to work for the Wehrmacht. Obey and we live. Disobey and all of us shall die.”