Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  I pushed and scraped, shoved and shuffled the rubble over and over again, bracing the tunnel with reshaped spans of metal as I went. Beads of sweat poured down the sides of my face as I bent or fused as needed, ensuring the walls were as stable as I could make them. No sense in clearing a section just to have it collapse as the team came through behind me.

  Another flurry of clearings later, and the air in the tunnel changed. At first, it was just a welcome coolness on my cheek, then it seemed less choked with decomposition and dust. I could sense the surface nearing and my heartbeat surged with hope, my energy renewed.

  Stewart rasped somewhere behind me in the marching procession of lights. “Jameson, see if you can raise the birds over the comm-sat.”

  In a burst of excited power, I cleared out another section as Jameson sought to arrange our rendezvous with aerial rescue. More rock scraped and rumbled, and I pushed forward and set to work again before realising I needed to pace myself or I’d black out before we reached our destination. Hope and adrenalin could only do so much.

  I grinned in the dark despite the bone-deep fatigue, sending my metallic sense to stretch to its utmost hoping for the tell-tale auras. Sure enough, I felt the resonance of a section where the tunnel was still whole, less than a dozen metres through the rubble. Beyond this, I could sense the change in metal as the tunnel became a bar-grated portal to the surface, complete with rail-flanked steps.

  A sound that was part laugh, part sob wracked my body but died off as the last of my metallic sense trailed along the periphery by the door and felt something familiar. The complex metallurgy of combat rifles, the sturdy steel of trauma plates.

  The enemy was waiting for us on the other side.

  “Sergeant Stewart,” I called behind me, and there was a rattling and grunting as he came to join me.

  “What?” Stewart snarled around the small flashlight clenched in his mouth like a cigar.

  “We are only ten metres from the way out,” I said, trying to force my tone to be even despite the exhaustion and anxiety plaguing my breathing. “But we have a problem.”

  He gave an impatient jerk of his chin. Well?

  “They’ve got men outside the tunnel exit,” I explained. “Once we go through, we’ll probably have seconds before they hear us and clog the way out with gunfire.”

  The light bobbed as Stewart nodded, taking it in stride. His calm demeanour bolstered my weary spirit. I felt ready to cry, but if our leader felt as unruffled as he looked by my discovery, then surely there was hope.

  “We’re going to have to punch our way out.”

  “Yes,” I sighed and then through the haze felt an idea bludgeon its way to the fore.

  “If you can have the whole team ready to move on my go,” I began mustering myself to the plan even as I spoke it, “I can use the last bit of rubble as a smokescreen to drive out the tunnel exit as I shove the grate away. If they follow the dust cloud out, they can make a way through.”

  Stewart considered this then flicked his chin up at me, the flashlight dazzled me momentarily.

  “What about you?” he asked with a grunt.

  I looked back down the wormhole I’d carved.

  “I need to collapse the tunnel so they can’t follow us.”

  Stewart gave something like a snort, and when he spoke, I swore I could hear mirth in his voice.

  “Dinna worry aboot that,” he told me, his brogue extra thick. “Had to find a use fer those noot-crackers after all.”

  I just grasped his meaning when somewhere below us a tectonic rumble shook the dust from the walls, followed by a grinding crash.

  “Breach,” came the static laden report of the rear-guard.

  Stewart and I stared at each other in the dark, and then he gave me a hard but jovial slap across the back.

  “Do what you got to lass,” Stewart growled, a wet, hungry sound. “We’ve got yer six.”

  I didn’t have time to bask in the rush of heady accomplishment to be treated so by the crusty sergeant. Straightening, I tucked it away for future reflection and turned back to the rubble clogged tunnel.

  “Almost there,” I snarled in my own leonine tone and then launched my powers forward.

  7

  “Herr Niemand, eh?” Marks asked, her voice dancing between the edges of amused and concerned.

  I wasn’t sure if the question was directed at me – had I mentioned Herr Niemand? – but I was in no mood to answer Marks’ probings.

  The office chair I was sitting in was unusually comfortable and gave only the slightest creak as I settled deeper. After our daring escape from the tunnels in Iraq, I’d done nothing but sleep between zombie-like shuffling from helicopter to plane to van, but it wasn’t enough. I was tired.

  “Yes, mum,” Stewart said. “Half of what the wretch said was loony whingin’ but that much was clear.”

  My thoughts wandered to the things the pitiful man had said concerning my connection to Ninurta. My mind swam with half-formed images, huge and ancient buildings, thrones wet with blood, and the sound of cities dying as mountains crumbled. Behind these horrific vistas was a burning awareness that some vast intelligence drove them all, racing forward. What forward meant I wasn’t sure exactly, but I was certain of some insidious purpose the same way you know you aren’t alone in a room.

  Ibukun

  The whisper was soft as silk, but I felt its pull like gravity.

  Ibby

  I knew I needed to fight, to shove it away, but I was exhausted body and soul.

  Ibukun Bashir

  The will behind the whisper slowly enfolded me like a velvet-lined python coiling around my mind.

  “Ibukun Bashir! Attention!”

  The martial bark, suffused with years of assumed command, smashed through the encircling glamour, and I started awake.

  Sitting bolt upright, my seat tilted and I tumbled forward. It was then, in that half-second of falling, that I realised my chair hadn’t been on the floor. I landed hard on my shoulder with a wounded uffh and rolled to my back. Suspended above me--spinning in a slow orbit--was my office chair, a second chair, and several office items.

  I hadn’t felt the current of power keeping the objects suspended like that, and the very second I realised it, the floating items did too. I scuttle-scooted on my back and posterior just in time. The chairs crashed down together, one losing an arm in the fall, while the hole-punch, stapler, and paper clips pattered and thumped down like hailstones.

  Hoisting myself up onto my elbows, I looked around. I was still in Marks’ office. Stewart and Marks were standing by the door, the sergeant standing protectively in front of his superior despite one arm bound to his chest by a harnessed sling.

  “What happened?’ I gaped. “Is everyone alright?”

  “You tell us,” Stewart said, his voice flat and hard to match his gaze.

  I flushed and had a childish urge to jump up and run away. This wasn’t the first time my powers had been at work while I slept, but it was the first time anyone else had been around when it happened.

  “I … I’m not sure.” I climbed to my feet. “I must have fallen asleep. Sorry.”

  I bent down to right the chairs and gather the scattered office detritus.

  “Sorry,” I muttered again as I put the arm of the office chair on the seat. “I’m not sure what happened.”

  I wasn’t sure if seeing me picking up after myself like a repentant child had helped, or just the fact that no one seemed to be under attack, but Stewart and Marks both moved back into the room. Marks took her seat, a venerable and immaculate piece of leather and dark wood that hadn’t answered my metallic summons. Thankfully, her computer seemed to be mounted to her desk, though she took some care in setting everything else back in its proper place. Stewart remained standing, his expression one of acute attention. I finished making a little pile of office bits n’ bobs on the corner of Marks’ desk, squirming under her scrutiny.

  “Thank you, Ibby,” she said with practi
ced civility as I stepped back and stood next to the broken chair, hands folded in front of me.

  “Again, I’m sorry,” I offered and my cheeks flushed again.

  Marks gave me a long look, and then one of her expert smiles appeared, bidding me to be at ease.

  “Not at all, my dear, happens all the time,” she said, pointedly ignoring the quick look Stewart gave her. “But I do think you need to be checked out to make sure everything is alright.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to find the right thing to say.

  “I don’t think it is a … eh, physical issue, ma’am,” I said suddenly finding it hard to look her in the eye. “I think it’s more …”

  I searched for the word and remembered with a pang how Lowe would have described such things.

  “More of a metaphysical issue.”

  Marks nodded, and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Good thing I keep a metaphysician on staff, then.”

  ---

  “I think Ms Marks was being a little … dramatic in her description,” Dr Hiroki Emoto explained as we sat drinking tea in his office. “I function more as an assessor than a counsellor, though I am a very good listener if that helps.”

  The small, not-quite-smile that followed was equal parts self-deprecation and invitation, and I couldn’t help finding the slight man endearing. I was glad for this as when I’d first stepped into his office I’d been a wreck of nerves and suspicion.

  His office was an exercise in minimalism, except for a few curated plants and a single large photograph hanging on the wall. The picture looked like golden sand dunes rising out of white rock, with a dark churning sea on the horizon, all lit by a harsh dawn or grim sunset. The landscape, sinister and alien in its strange, inhuman proportions, made me even more nervous than I’d been when Marks had first told me I was to see a metaphysician.

  I couldn’t help feeling that the bare, sterile aesthetic was because this was where they would be strapping me down to do invasive tests. The spartan decor was just to make sure nothing got in the way of my examination.

  Yet, no scalpel and probe armed legions had assailed me, only a thin Japanese man who’d offered me a seat and then some tea with gentle civility.

  “Is there something you would like to talk about?” he prompted, bringing me back to the moment.

  There was, but as nice as he seemed, I wasn’t sure Dr Emoto was the person I wanted to talk with. The two people who I’d usually go to with such things were currently indisposed: one in a coma, the other fused to a treacherous enemy. Even Uncle Iry, bless him, was still recovering and didn’t need any extra burdens.

  Though his expression had remained patient and his tea-sipping frightfully quiet, I felt the doctor’s eyes on me.

  “That picture,” I nodded toward a photograph on the wall. “I don’t recognise the desert. Is it Africa? The Middle East?”

  Dr Emoto looked at me over his cup of tea for a long second before giving his head the slightest shake.

  “No,” he answered, eyes never leaving me. “It is actually not a desert at all. It is a stretch of sand dunes outside the village of Higashidōri, where my father was born. The dunes are used almost exclusively by the Ministry of Defence, but many years ago, I was given the opportunity to assist them and had the good fortune to take that picture after a fresh snowfall.”

  I squinted and realised what I’d taken to be a foundation of white rock was actually drifted blankets of snow. The realisation made the photograph seem a little less sinister, if not any less alien.

  “You don’t keep much in your office,” I observed, to which the doctor nodded and gave a small smile. “So why that picture?”

  Dr Emoto’s eyebrows rose incrementally, then he set his teacup down.

  “I am happy to answer this question,” he said, somehow driving utter sincerity into every word. “But may I ask that after I do, you answer a question for me?”

  I gave the slight man a once over, a hundred and one different suspicions running through my mind before I gave a stiff nod of assent. I supposed if I didn’t like what he was asking, I could not answer or lie. I wouldn’t feel good about either and was terrible at the latter, but I supposed this was part of the whole dance; give and take.

  “I keep a copy of this photograph in all my offices,” he said, turning to look at the dunes. “Because it reminds me of that wonderful moment of beholding. As a young boy visiting relatives in the village, I was never allowed to go near the dunes. They filled me with a curious longing, and though I hardly spoke of it, the desire to see them, especially in the snow, never left me. Then through no intention of my own, I was there, seeing what as a child had been a fantasy. It was beautiful, terrible, and humbling, standing there shivering before what felt like a gate to an impossible world.”

  He turned back to me, his dark eyes glistening.

  “It is the same thing I felt when I began to work for The Nakesh Corporation and witnessed my first paranormal event. I’ve borne witness over and over again to a world most can’t imagine. I use this photograph to remind me of that, and to remind myself to be mindful and humble before that truth.”

  “That’s … an impressive answer,” I admitted lamely, acutely aware that my turn to give an answer was coming. “How many offices do you have?”

  “Altogether, three. This one here in London. Another in Sweden, and a field station in the wilds of North America which I’m not permitted to pinpoint.” Taking up his tea, he gave me a quick wink. “But we have a bargain, and that was two questions I answered.”

  I let out a breath and crossed my arms over my chest. “Alright, let me have it. What’s your question?”

  Dr Emoto nodded again, took out a small notepad and pen with one hand, before setting the tea down.

  “In reading the reports of the last mission, I noted that you took no direct action against the enemy combatants. You disabled their weapons or deflected their attacks, but I don’t see any report of actively using your abilities to attack hostiles. Is this how your powers operate?”

  “Not always,” I said, remembering with a degree of uncomfortable pride the times I’d put down men twice my size with a thought. “There have been several times I’ve knocked men out cold. I also dropped a refinery on top of a demon once. Didn’t work in the end, but it was one of my more aggressive uses of power.”

  Emoto nodded as he jotted notes on his pad. He looked up, his expression inscrutable.

  “May I ask then, if you are capable of using your powers more aggressively, why not compel the metal to kill those who were attempting to kill you and the team? It would have been more final. No?”

  I considered the question before recalling Uncle Iry’s words stinging my ears: You are no assassin, Ibby.

  “I suppose it’s because killing people, even bad people, is not what I want to use my powers for,” I shifted in my seat. “I guess it comes with being an Inconquo.”

  “Could you elaborate, please?” Emoto asked between further scribblings.

  “When I found out I was an Inconquo from Professor Lowe, he told me that I was part of a long line of guardians. That resonated with me and still does. Using my powers takes its toll, but when I am using them to protect others, I find I have more to give even when I feel used up. I’d like to believe that’s because of what it means to be Inconquo.”

  Emoto nodded and then looked up from his pad, and the smallest frown creased his features.

  “Very interesting, and I thank you for being transparent,” his eyes flicked down to his notes. “But would you allow me another question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  Emoto bobbed his head and smiled, but I could tell that there was a level of discomfort crinkling the corners of his eyes and making his smile brittle.

  “Of primary concern is defeating the entity known as Ninurta, the progenitor of the Inconquo. Does the threat he poses in any way alter your perception or the application of
your abilities as a member of his bloodline?”

  My mouth opened, a sharp rebuttal halfway up my throat before I snapped my teeth together and choked the words back down. The question was a fair one, but the implications lifted my hackles.

  “I … I don’t know.” I retreated against the back of my chair.

  Emoto studied me a moment longer and then was about to say something when there was a knock on the door. Emoto’s brow furrowed, but before he could respond, the door opened. I turned to see Marcus at the door, his face flushed.

  “Ibby,” he gasped, pointing back down the hallway toward the elevator as he panted. “You need to come with me.”

  My gaze whipped to Emoto, who was doing an admirable job concealing his irritation at the intrusion. His attention shifted from Marcus to me, as if to say your call.

  “Can it wait?” I asked Marcus. “Marks told me to meet with Dr Emoto, we’re in the middle of things.”

  “Ibby,” he growled, “you need to get up there now. It’s Jackie!”

  8

  She’d started breathing on her own shortly after I’d left and had woken up about an hour before I’d arrived back with the security team, but they’d neglected to let me know – on top of not letting Uncle Iry and Marcus know that I’d returned. Marcus had spied Stewart on the medical floor and realised I was back. His flushed and agitated appearance in Dr Emoto’s office was the result of trying to find me.

  We’d practically flown without touching the ground from Dr.Emoto’s office to the elevator.

  “How is she?” I forced aside my frustration at having not been told immediately to focus on Jackie.