Unity

by Carl Stubblefield

  Chapter Seventy

  Doom Crossing: Eternal Horizons

  “I’ll work on that crafting and provide a distraction,” Aurora suggested as she turned to her mentor. “Rory, you should probably stay here, we don’t know how you’ll react out there.”

  “He can watch over me,” Yuki suggested, “I’m going to try to enter the system from here and see if I can beat the Faction AI. If I can, I should be able to get some answers, as well as hopefully modding how the sensors track us.”

  “I’m on extraction,” Darik offered, “but I need to find them first. That’s going to be a little difficult in a crowd.” He looked at the others questioningly.

  “Don’t worry. I can help with that.” Anastasia raised her hand.

  “Okay. We all meet back here after we find Harmony and Grimdark?” When the assent was mutual, Darik offered his arms, elbows bent and Aurora and Anastasia reluctantly locked arms, this time all facing the same direction. “We run toward that wall. Not too fast, mind you; you two are taller than me. Got it?” They trotted off, a portal opening a second before they hit the wall, swallowing them and irising shut.

  Yuki turned to Rory. “Just make sure my head is supported, I can tend to thrash about if things get dicey in there. Once I even gave myself a concussion.” She took off her hoodie and balled it up under her head as she laid down. With a deep breath, she reached up to the port, extended her cables, and connected with the system.

  There was the usual sensation of falling, but gravity didn’t reinstate itself like it normally did. It was there, but much weaker than normal. Green-tinged light filtered through the canopy. Rich, earthy smells permeated the air, dust and pollen floated in the swath of a light that shone unimpeded through a tiny breach in the leaves overhead. Nearing a branch, Yuki grabbed it and propelled herself upward with a light shove.

  She felt like a fairy as she sailed through the peaceful, sylvan environment. The feeling was so freeing. Aurora was lucky that flying was in her power set. It felt so relaxing. The arc of her floating path allowed her to land atop a thick branch. Some thick moss-like plant covered the bark, cushioning her light steps. At the end of the branch, a cute animal held a small purple fruit in its little paws. It cocked its head and looked at her quizzically.

  So adorable! It had a long tail and a fluffy chest, with little stripe rings along its back and tail. The little paws looked like tiny hands as it turned the fruit, gauging what she would do. While she had never seen one in real life, this animal resembled a lemur. A sudden cross wind blew, and Yuki had to hold on to the trunk of the tree as its intensity increased. The mossy covering easily peeled away as she slid, and she had to struggle a bit to pull enough off to dig her fingers into the gnarled bark underneath and get a grip.

  The diminished gravity made it harder to cling to the tree, as her weight wouldn’t anchor her as she was accustomed. She also had to squint, because the wind filled the air with plumes of pollen and dust. As quickly as it started, the wind stopped, and Yuki saw that she was coated with a fine yellow powder.

  She attempted to brush herself off, shaking her hair and coughing. She was never more glad she didn’t have any allergies. As she swiped her eyes clear, she noticed the branch now had five of the small little animals, all facing her. They peered at each other with curiosity. She crouched and beckoned one to come closer.

  One ventured forward, looking back at his fellows, and stopped about a foot away. Yuki stretched forward her open palm, trying to keep her movements slow and unthreatening. The lemur leaned forward and sniffed a fingertip.

  “That’s right, I don’t want to hurt you, little—damn it!” she screamed as the lemur gave her finger a hard bite. Its little teeth tore furrows in her skin as she yanked it away.

  “What the hell was that for?” she scolded. As the little animal turned back from looking at the others, it was licking its jaws. Its eyes had become bright red and the pupils were huge. The other lemurs became agitated and hopped from foot to foot. One let loose a barking screech and the trees began to rustle all around her. The one that bit her smiled widely, revealing predatory fangs more at home on a vampire than a cuddly little teddy bear of an animal.

  Drawn to its call, other lemurs began appearing from the surrounding trees. They jumped and swung with their long arms, legs, and tails. Some joined the others, while a few landed on branches above and started crawling down the trunk with eager intention.

  When will I ever learn?

  Darik dropped them on the rooftop of a building near the coliseum. People were already streaming out the front doorways, an obvious choke point. Despite its name, the coliseum was not typically an area where many supers congregated. The sheer number of people spilling out the entrance was alarming, and they just kept coming.

  “They’re all in a panic. I can’t use Dazzle or it’ll block off the exits.”

  “You see that smoke? It really is a fire!” Darik gasped.

  “Why is no one putting it out? We should have some supers here with water-based abilities!

  “Quiet, you two, I need to concentrate.” Anastasia scanned the crowds looking for any sign of Harmony or Grimdark.

  Herd mentality, people are panicking. Thinking with their lizard brains.

  There was a flash of motion and Anastasia barely saw someone slip inside a window. A zipline was anchored nearby to one of the tiers of the coliseum. Someone going into the fire?

  The supers who could fly pulled above the crowd as soon as they got a little space around them. Some tried to grab them to extricate themselves from the crowd, succeeding only in pulling some supers back into the mass of people roiling out of the building. Others escaped and flew away. It was a massive free-for-all. Neither Grimdark or Harmony were flyers, so she could ignore those.

  Anastasia’s eyes flitted to face after face with lightning speed. In less than ten seconds, she had determined that out of the three-hundred people that had pushed out of the coliseum, Harmony and Grimdark had yet to leave. It was much easier to scan the entrances and evaluate and discount the new faces.

  Why the terror, though? Supers shouldn’t be afraid of something as mundane as a little fire. No. The faces showed something else was at play here.

  As the crowd grew, she noted that whatever had overcome the supers was wearing off now that they were in the fresh air. A few began to turn back and try to make their way back inside, but they made little progress trying to fight the people pushing out. If anything, those leaving now were even more insistent and violent in their attempt to flee the building.

  A flash of curly hair, lost in the crowd. Then again. And black hair with silver highlights. Jackpot!

  “Keeper, come here.” She motioned to Darik, keeping her eyes on the pair. She touched his shoulder and asked, “Can you see them?”

  “Whoa, how do you do that?”

  “Yes or no?!”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go. You will only be able to track them for a short time after I break contact.”

  Darik ran off the edge of the building, cannonballing into a portal two stories down. Anastasia finally took her eyes off the crowd. Aurora was assembling something from a pile of components on a cloth in front of her. She nervously peeked up at the large spire that towered over them nearby and back down at the crowd before shaking her head and turning back to her frenetic work. She snapped two halves together and flipped a switch.

  “Anastasia, clip this to your suit.” Aurora backed up a step to survey her work. “Huh, that actually works. Ooh, and a blueprint dropped too. Nice.” She knelt by her cloth and started working on the next one. “The next ones should be quicker. I just wish I’d finished one for Darik. Can you keep an eye on the doors and let me know when people stop coming out?”

  “Of course,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on where she had sent Darik.

  Darik rocketed out of the portal. He loved inverting the portal exits and screwing with gravity. He had always loved thrill-rides when he was
younger and didn’t get nauseated in the slightest. Plus he could move so much better when he wasn’t ferrying others around. He couldn’t see the pair at this height so he dropped another set of portals, this time exiting even higher. Some of those in the crowd pointed at him as he managed to spot Grimdark with Harmony in tow.

  He quickly fashioned another set of portals, before he could build up too much momentum, dropping out to the side of the crowd.

  “He’s one of them!” a husky man shouted, pointing directly at Darik. Three other supers blinked as if coming out of a trance. “He’s avoided orientation; look at his name. No purple diamond by it.”

  “I know this piece of trash. Time to teach you a lesson, midget,” a voice taunted from behind the others.

  Darik rolled his eyes. He recognized that voice.

  Not now.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  The Beginning of the End

  Finally things were coming into fruition. The groundwork he had meticulously laid was finally reaching the tipping point.

  It had taken a lot of work, creating alliances and working with lesser minds, but he was getting closer to finally moving ahead with his plans. Not that it wasn’t fascinating fun along the way, but this would open up so many new avenues. Mysteries that humanity had wrestled with would now be able to be unraveled and woven to fit the patterns of his design.

  So many intricate shapes, all coalescing into a majestic mosaic on such a scale that only the gods would be able to perceive it. He would surpass the barriers imposed by mere humanity and become something greater than them all.

  Mengele pulled the animal out of its glass case, admiring his handiwork. A perfect blending of his design. To all appearances, it was an adorable miniature bear, the size of a small domestic cat. In actuality, it was a triumph of his skills in spatial manipulation and recombinant DNA wizardry. He pet the coarse fur of the surly animal who struggled in his grasp but could not twist enough to bite the hand that held it. It was for the best. The animal would only hurt itself in the attempt.

  Sharp claws extended but could not penetrate the dense material that formed Mengele’s suit. Many mistook the material to be merely his skin, black as basalt and equally as hard. In actuality, the suit had incalculable layers of material, pressed in upon itself, creating a substance harder than diamond. Any pressure exerted on the outer surface would be absorbed by layers and folds as he bent reality back and forth upon itself. It allowed him to operate without any fear of contamination as well, saving the time needed to scrub in.

  There were still many preparations to make but this phase was almost complete. He would change this reality to one of his own design, correcting that which he saw as aberrations and creating or importing what the design required. The others objected to even the smallest part of his plan that he dared to share, concerned about how everything would interact if he altered the ecosystem. There may be things that needed to be refined and perfected. But they would bend to his will. Everything did eventually, no matter how resilient.

  Mengele played with a section of the Nun, folding it and shaping it in a hand. The others insisted on calling it ether, but the ancients had it right. This was the substance of creation. He had mastered its manipulation long ago, and had moved on to working and fashioning its counterparts.

  His research with Mr. Sterling had yielded so many interesting results. While most supers could wield Nun, they knew next to nothing about Ka and how it, too, could be manipulated and moved, bent and fashioned, if one knew how. It took finesse, though. Unlike Nun, it had a strong affinity for what form it wanted to take, and would resist if crudely managed.

  The Ba aspect would take over and stubbornly resist change, insisting on retaining its unique character. You couldn’t force Ka into what you wanted, you had to convince it to adopt the form you wanted. And if there was anything he was good at, it was manipulation. In every sense of the word. Even those who he had condescended to serve would eventually be under his influence—and they would never know he had planned it all along.

  He just needed the data from Thoth to finalize his calculations. Mengele had learned to be precise with his measurements. Mastery demanded it. Especially in the weighty matters of the soul, he thought, chuckling to himself. After years of planning, things were sliding into place. Each piece was carved obsessively to specification and polished. Then set aside until the right time. Now he was ready to slide another into its proper place.

  Thoth was in his debt now, after he had provided consistent subjects for his own research. Especially those valuable ones that allowed him to finish his own pet projects. Thoth could have his imaginary worlds. Mengele had set his sights higher. Reality and beyond.

  An alarm on his display caught his attention. He replaced the bear in its case and stepped out of the adjoining lab into the operatory. Gus had already rebounded, at an even more accelerated rate than before. He made some adjustments to the timing intervals, shortening it again. That was the fourth time. Just when he thought he had everything figured out, this subject kept providing more riddles to unravel.

  His hands made a rasping noise as he rubbed them together. Time to begin again.

  “Why?” Gus wheezed as Mengele readied himself, straightening instruments and raising the tray to just the right level.

  “Why what? Why you?” When Gus only glared defiantly, he continued. “I am not sure why you are the way you are. It’s like being able to dissect a dinosaur or something once thought extinct. You are different. Why? That will take some time to determine. In a way, your uniqueness makes you valuable to me. But it also sets you apart.

  “I will admit—I continue to be impressed that you decided to take me on alone. It was ignorant and foolish, but… refreshing. I have never understood why so many people rely on others for so much of their daily lives. To the point where they won’t even do something they want without someone accompanying them.

  “Have you ever been like them? Not going to something as mundane as a movie unless someone would go with you? Just so they can sit beside you in silence while you passively take it all in? That somehow that makes you less alone? I wouldn’t be surprised if you had. Ultimately, we all are alone, regardless of how we fool ourselves. Yet that still doesn’t stop the majority from chasing after some kind of validation through the acceptance of others.

  “It wasn’t until I realized my own uniqueness that I cast those pursuits off forever for the wasted energy they were. That which makes me unique also isolates me. I fought against this at first, but then realized that it was an unexpected boon. Without distraction, I could accomplish so much more than before, giving the requisite time needed to placate the insecurities of everyone else.

  “I usually never speak with my subjects. But when I get the rare opportunity to see my own handiwork, I must say that sometimes I even impress myself. That folding was done over ten years ago, and it looks as flawless today as it did then. I see you’ve been able to invert the fractal, what is it, two, close to three times? How many layers do you surmise there are?” Gus continued to say nothing, so Mengele shrugged and went on. “Then I’ll let you wonder. I know how many there are, but ignorance is its own reward.

  “Maybe coming alone wasn’t totally your choice. It is possible that you are just so repellent that no one wanted to join you, hmm? Ah. There it is, that’s closer to the mark. I can see by your expression. Even still, a good lesson to learn early. Well, it would be if I were going to allow you to live.

  “It’s better this way. Most humans are so weak that they fool themselves into a false security by propping themselves up with other pieces of straw, imagining they are somehow more sturdy and secure. If they only knew how fragile they really were, even when they feel their strongest.

  “I’m sure you thought I was just monologuing, correct? Just like all the one-note villains out there. So isolated that I need to reveal my plans to just one other soul to establish my brilliance?

  “But I asked you a question. L
et’s try that again. How. Many. Layers?”

  When Gus hesitated, he grasped Gus’ neck and pushed him down into the table.

  “Fff-five.” Gus had to struggle to push the air out and guess. He didn’t think it was even audible, but finally the pressure on his windpipe relaxed enough to allow breath again.

  “Wrong! But it is good, you can follow orders. I have no tolerance for those disinclined to cooperate. That will help you suffer less. Or more, depending on how you look at things.” Mengele threw back his head and laughed.

  “These next steps will take some of your cooperation. Let’s see how firm your resolve is…”

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Make Yourself Get Up

  “This healer you mentioned in your ravings—BoJack was the name I think you said?—I will need some more information about him. The correlation of longevity that all healers possess cannot be a coincidence. I think that was part of the deficiency in my model. I assumed there were only three parts to the system, when there are possibly four, or more! I imagine you will resist giving me the information again, but such is the way of self-proclaimed heroes. Let’s see, what worked last time?” Mengele tapped his chin. “Ah yes, I think it was the needle.”

  At these words, something deep within Gus cracked. Not in a way of breaking him, but in destroying a barrier he had erected himself long ago. Protecting himself from being hurt, he had erected a wall of self-interest. To hide from his own inefficacy and powerlessness, he had receded inwards, placing more bricks as he increased the distance from others. If you never let anyone in, then they couldn’t hurt you. It was really the only way you could protect yourself.