The DRAFTlite lay on the floor, lenses to the ground and temple arms pointing at the ceiling. Too bad the microcams only pointed fore and aft. I made a note to talk to Alex about installing side cams.
“Were we in another world?” I asked after settling the glasses on my face. Ouch, the bridge of my nose was already beginning to swell. “Is that possible?”
“According to former Agent and Magician Marcin, the weak spots, a thinning of the dimensional barriers between the worlds, are all over the planet, and according to the notes I retrieved in Las Vegas, he marked a probable sight of one such weak spot in St. Louis.”
Gerard Marcin. Yeah, I remembered him all right. Complete dickhead and all around assbag. He’d found a way to travel between Earth and a planet on the other side of the universe. He’d surmised that a race of ancient aliens used these weak spots to travel back and forth from their planet and ours. I guess they viewed Earth as part of an intergalactic time-share.
Marcin had used that weak spot in Vegas to travel to that other world where he set up a Roman-style coliseum, arranging gladiatorial combat for the super-rich, athletes pitted against the strange and deadly creatures that inhabited that unusual world. What Marcin hadn’t expected was to be mind-controlled by the infamous Joseph Goebbels. But that’s a long story, best left for another time involving time traveling Nazis and a trip back to 1943. That’s where I met the woman who was to become my wife, Jeanie. Either way, I heard the Bureau and my Hollywood agent were negotiating the movie rights with Universal with Kevin Smith to direct. Should be interesting, to say the least.
The mention of the weak spots got me thinking hard, which produced a smell like burning batteries. “Ghost, you think that red orb in the lobby sucked the magic out of our gear?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my damaged nose. “Is that how we got … ah … teleported to that cave with Spidermonk?”
“That theory is better than most, considering the fact that the gems do not work anymore.”
Once I got the old noodle working, the thoughts kept coming, which posed another kind of danger altogether. “That orb and that strange fog … you remember that, right?”
“I saw what you saw, Kal, so yes.”
“Did you see anything through the building’s security cameras?”
“The system that operates those cameras has been compromised. Perhaps broken beyond repair. There is no Wi-Fi or hard line access to the building anymore.”
Go figure. I took sip of water. How funny … just a few minutes ago, Ghost was telling me he felt disconnected from humanity, which raised the specter of world dominating-AIs, and now we were back to our old partnership, cutting through a mystery with our wits. Who says life isn’t interesting?
Enough of that. “Well, that strange lightning that didn’t hurt us sure seemed to like our Bat Belts. I wonder if it was siphoning the magic from our gear?”
Another one-second pause. “That seems likely.”
“Hmmm. How about that?” I mused. “Supposing that’s true, then that orb must’ve sucked in the magic from Omicron as well, which means that it doubled its magical storage in a short period of time.”
“How much magic could it absorb, Kal? What were you carrying?”
Ah, there’s the rub. “Ghost, I always carry a Sunfire spell just in case, as does every team leader. And a dozen other gems of varying power. But Sixer, he loved loading up on the big mojo. I checked the records of his requisition before I left.” Not exactly standard procedure, but having an entire team disappear was far from standard itself. I stood slowly and my knees popped like shotgun blasts. “He checked out six PRIORITY ALPHA gems plus a LAMBDA ORANGE level gem.” LAMBDA ORANGE gems were the crème de la crème, large stones containing complex spell Shapes that, while not terribly juiced with merlins (units of magic), had effects that would make the average Straight require an emergency change of underwear. One example is the Nova spell, which causes a limited chain reaction like that of a small nuclear detonation (two or three city blocks worth), but without the radiation. There are four spell Shapes that are classified LAMBDA ORANGE, and I knew that Sixer packed the most powerful one known as Tidal Wave.
“Oh my,” droned Ghost. “With all those spells between two teams, there must have been at least a teramerlin of energy drawn by the orb.”
At least. “Possibly two, Ghost. Alex would know for sure by checking the records and totaling the merlins. Problem is, I can’t call to check.”
“Kal, I have news.”
The wall looked a little wobbly, so I used my back to keep it steady. “As long as it is good news.”
“I am afraid not.”
Awesome. I sighed. “Go ahead.”
“Agent Billings’ computer amulet was left behind on the 15th floor. I have re-integrated the Ghost copy and analyzed the data.” Ghost paused. “It appears that Agent Billings voluntarily removed the amulet and left it behind after talking with an entity the copy could not see or hear. Perhaps Agent Billings became unstable. Either way, he is gone, and I have no means of tracking him.”
Well, crap on a cracker. It would just have to be Billings now, wouldn’t it? I knew he had a tenuous hold on sanity (who was I to judge?), but according to BB, he’d been solid ever since joining the Bureau, never falling prey to his darker side. I wanted him on this op because his desire to commit mayhem upon Supernaturals was equal to mine, and I didn’t expect him to be the weak link. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if his mind decided to head south for the winter. Crazy is crazy, after all. “Perhaps the copy couldn’t see or hear the other party or entity because it simply couldn’t. Perhaps something was there for Billings to talk to. Perhaps it wanted to communicate with him and him alone.” Good to have intel on Billings, but what about the others?
“Do you really think so?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think; the results are the same. We have to find Billings, though.” There, the wall seemed steady enough. I rose to my full height and stretched. “What about the rest of the team?”
“They are currently unaccounted for. I do know the limited range on DRAFTlite to DRAFTlite communications does not extend beyond the 18th floor. According the Quint Building layout, Dervish Industries is on the first floor, so I surmise that is where we are.”
First floor? Damn … long way to go yet and things weren’t coming up roses. “So they could be in some strange world.”
“Or above the eighteenth floor, yes.”
“Awesome,” I muttered.
At that moment, the door to Dervish Industries opened and a man stuck his head out. “What’s with all the racket?”
Chapter Twelve
Rat
Round and Round
The Shape exploded out from my eye, takin’ form as a fireball that raced over harsh blue dust and into a critter with more tentacles than I wanted to count anytime soon. It let out a noise like a cross between a little girl’s shriek and the cry of a wounded rabbit. Come to think about it, those two sounds are an awful lot alike, ’cept this was worse because somethin’ that had tentacles covered in screamin’ mouths shouldn’t sound like that. It wasn’t natural.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” I growled, puttin’ some extra oomph into my legs as they commenced to gettin’ me the hell outta there.
Not that I had any place to go, really, not on a world that seemed specifically designed to kill me.
The ground underfoot sent up clouds of blue dust with every step. “Hey, Ghost-Lite, you there?”
“Where would I go, Mr. Carson?”
“Rat. Call me Rat. Everyone does.” The second time I had to tell the copy to call me that. I reckoned it might be offended by the notion.
“Noted.”
Ahead lay a green-water swamp with trees more like fractal nightmares. What looked like human organs hung heavy on branches that were all right angles. I wasn’t about to see if they were edible; that’s for sure.
In front of me was an ugly swamp, while behind came monsters.
>
Yeah, monsters. Really. They were the first things I saw when I woke up on this damned … planet, or dimension or whatever.
My boots threw up clouds as I slid to a stop next water that seemed more jelly than H2O, thick and green and smellin’ like heated molasses. If the Jolly Green Giant hocked up a loogie, I imagined it would look like that scummy water.
“Any ideas?” I panted, voice rough with fear. A few dozen yards away, somethin’ that looked like a jellyfish the size of a forklift with a parrot’s beak in the middle of its bulbous, pus-covered body hopped my way usin’ razor-lined tentacles.
“My suggestion is … not the swamp, sir,” replied Ghost-Lite.
Well, whoop-dee-frickin’-doo. “Thanks for the [DELETED] obvious observation, Captain Obvious.” With no time to think, I let loose with another spell. A ray of white light shot from my palm and hit the jellyfish square, freezin’ it solid in less than a second. It exploded in a shower of icy fragments. Unfortunately, there were about twenty or so other monsters headin’ my way as fast as they could jump, roll, run, and ooze. Disturbin’ shapes that hurt to look at.
No time to lose, I began a slow run along the edge of the swamp, a pace I could keep up for hours even wearin’ NewTanium armor and enough weapons to start my own war. Too bad the guns were almost useless against anythin’ bigger than a bear. That’s why I had to use magic, but even my magic would run out eventually. Everythin’ costs somethin’, even magic. Ain’t nothin’ for free in this world or any other.
When I woke up an hour or so ago after that big ball of red and gray gas knocked me out, it was in the middle of a flat plain of blue dust. I mean blue dust everywhere without a rock or pebble or even a twig to mar the overall blue sameness. And that’s another thing … blue. Blue all around—the sky, the ground, everythin’. Not easy gettin’ your head around where you’re at when you can’t tell the sky from the dirt.
Oh yeah, no sun. Nothin’ to disturb that blueness. I had no idea where the light came from, but there was enough to keep the place in perpetual twilight. Enough to see by, but that was it. Still dim enough to squint.
It was after Ghost-Lite made its introductions as a construct of Ghost that the first monster attacked.
I had just risen to my feet and was studyin’ the mind-numbin’ sameness when I noticed movement from the corner of my eyes.
“What’s that?” I asked the AI, drawin’ my Glock 17 and thumbin’ the safety.
“I do not know, sir,” replied the program. “It looks as if something is tunneling beneath toward us.”
He’d hit the nail on the head. Plumes of azure dust, three inches thick where I was standin’, streamed into the air as the world’s biggest gopher headed my way. Dirt rose in a mound some eight feet across and three high. Distance was tricky, considerin’ the blueness, but best I could guess, it was close enough to worry me some. I aimed the Glock and fired.
Couldn’t tell if I hit—too much dust and stuff—but that didn’t stop me from tryin’ my best to put enough rounds into whatever it was to ruin its day. The pistol had been fitted with a twenty-round mag, courtesy of the Bureau, and I emptied the whole darn thing in less than ten seconds.
I musta hit the thing because dust and dirt exploded everywhere as what was below burst free to the above world. Big as a grizzly, that thing, and I call it a thing because I couldn’t categorize it. Think of a sponge, the natural kind that lives under the sea, not the ones you find at the grocery store, with white bony hooks all over and leprous lookin’, like they was ready to rot off in a hot second. Then throw in a few dozen dark-blue cat’s eyes covered in some sort of transparent, tough membrane. Got it? It’s close, but not close enough to the critter that was makin’ its way toward me at a good trot.
The spell that came to mind was one I’d cast dozens of times before, and it sprang into bein’ so quick I could scarce believe it. Blue flame covered my fist and the heat of it almost crisped my eyeballs, but I threw it at the monster and it hit square and true. I guess it must have been bone dry because it flared up and started to burn quick, lettin’ out a scream like an engine revvin’ into the red line before blowin’ out. Still, it stopped dead and burned, smellin’ like God’s own rottin’ garbage heap.
That was number one. Numbers two through … well, a bunch, came a few minutes later, kickin’ up more dust with the speed of their tunnelin’.
So I began to high-step it. Not much else I could do, considering I was facin’ more critters than I wanted to and my magic could only last so long. I’m good, but not that good.
That’s how I found myself puttin’ one foot in front of the other, joggin’ at a pace that wouldn’t kill me, because if I stopped, it would be the last of Mr. Rat.
As I jogged, I drank a bit from my small canteen and chomped down a few bites of beef jerky. It wouldn’t last me long, but it didn’t matter much because if I couldn’t find a way outta this place …. Well, you know the rest.
I left a trail of blue clouds behind me as I ran, steadily drinkin’ in the dry, stale air, the cries of my hunters spurrin’ me along. Hours or minutes later, I spied somethin’ in the distance, a darker blue against the sameness ahead, a break from the monotony.
“Ghost-Lite, can you magnify?” I puffed. The dust was gettin’ in my mouth, coatin’ my teeth and tongue. Yuck.
The DRAFTlite zoomed in on the anomaly and my heart performed a little stutter skip. Hills, harsh and ragged, but hills nonetheless. Barren blue rock as severe as screams cut the sky at hard angles, as hard as the strange fractal trees with their human-organ fruit. I looked off to the side where the gelid green water stank its sickly sweet stink and glanced at the trees.
Gone were the kidneys and hearts and livers that had hung on the cruel branches. Instead each right-angled wooden monstrosity held a human head that dangled by hair long or short. Instead of ragged stumps, the necks ended halfway down in a smooth skin, as if they had grown there. Perhaps they had, but it was more disturbing than any bloody end. Evidence of beheadin’ would mean that someone had placed them, rather than them growin’ there like peaches.
Peaches. What I wouldn’t give for a ripe one, sweet and soft. That got me thinking of Donna Mae Holbrook in Mrs. Harper’s 10th grade English class and the way her jeans hugged her hips and the heaviness of her breasts ….
I don’t know what I tripped on, but my mind’s wanderin’ was cut short by a mouthful of blue dust as I fell headlong, sprawling, scraping my nose on the dry, hard earth beneath the dust.
Terror flooded my senses because the monsters weren’t that far behind and I didn’t want no critter to be chompin’ on my gluteus maximus anytime soon. I scrabbled to my feet and commenced to steppin’ and fetchin’ because the burrowin’ things, the hoppin’ and crawlin’ things, were right behind—only a couple dozen yards. Fear did its best to get my energy levels up and I sprinted ahead a few more yards, increasin’ my lead, but I couldn’t keep the pace up forever, not luggin’ all my gear, not sloggin’ through a three-inch layer of dust.
The hills were a little closer, and I could see some details without the use of the DRAFTlite. They were as ugly as I feared, brutal-looking humps of stone that led off in the distance, parallelin’ my course.
Before I knew it, the swamp became a memory, the human-head fruit from hard-angled trees fadin’ behind. The critters kept comin’, only now they commenced to howlin’, a strange ululatin’ sound like the whale song of the damned.
“How … far to … those hills?” I panted, gulpin’ down more dust.
“A few hundred yards,” replied Ghost-Lite. “I do hope there is shelter there.”
“You … and me both, brother.” A stitch began naggin’ my side, pokin’ pins into my skin, and the coppery taste of blood coated the back of my tongue. I musta used up most of my reserves puttin’ a bigger lead on the critters after I fell. It wouldn’t be long before the tank went dry. I prayed that the monsters couldn’t climb worth a damn.
The closer I got t
o the hills, the more the details became evident, especially in the DRAFTlite. What I saw set my spirits a-plummetin’.
Those blue, harsh slabs of rock looked to be too tall and sheer for me to climb, and I was damn sure there weren’t any mountain goats in my ancestry. Boulders the size of boxcars littered the sheer sides of cliffs, and even though the walls were only fifty or sixty feet high, that was fifty or sixty feet I knew I couldn’t climb—so smooth were they. I also didn’t have anythin’ close to a levitation spell in my repertoire.
“Oh, damn,” I sobbed, more afraid than I’d ever been. “Oh damn, oh damn.”
Ghost-Lite cut into my pity party. “Look to center right, sir.”
Center right, center right … there! Barely bigger than a pinprick, it grew into a manhole under the magnifyin’ properties of the DRAFTlite. A split in the rock, a natural fissure that ran from top to bottom, it looked big enough for me to enter, but small enough to keep out most of the bigger critters, assumin’ they couldn’t flatten themselves like cockroaches.
Don’t go buyin’ trouble, Rat, I told myself, clingin’ desperately to hope. I needed that hope because if that wasn’t the way to at least a little bit of safety, I might as well pull a General Custer right here and go down hard, swingin’ for the fences.
Despite the pain in my side and the taste of blood in my mouth, I put on some considerable speed, because even if those beasts could follow me into that narrow crack in the cliff, I could pick them off one by one, makin’ every shot and spell count.
Sure I could.
Pant, pant, pant, pant. Damn, my lungs started hurtin’ and sweat was runnin’ down my face, minglin’ with the blue dust and givin’ me a face paint like those crazy Scots in Braveheart. What did they use again? Oh yeah, woad. Strange word, that. Woad … sounds like a kind of frog.
Before long I’d almost made it to the rocky hills—although ‘hills’ wasn’t the right word because they looked like giant slabs, monoliths that had been punched down into the earth by giants. In fact, most of monoliths seemed planed and smoothed by hand, not by weather, not that there was any weather about in this blue hellhole. The boxcar-sized boulders lay strewn about and I could see where they calved from the main body of the cliff face, perhaps due to some sorta violence or maybe by the force of the blow that planted the monoliths there. Wasn’t important. What was important was gettin’ my narrow ass into that crevice, and it looked to be comin’ up quicker than a blink. The critters behind set to howlin’ even louder, which was a feat because they were puttin’ out more decibels than a speed metal concert.
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 12