True Dark

by Niall Teasdale

  True Dark

  An Ultrahuman Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2018 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Chinese Whispers

  Interlude: Ashes

  Part Two: The Darker Side of Light

  Interlude: Fire and Shadows

  Part Three: The Fire Giant

  Interlude: The Light at the End

  Part Four: Midnight in the Soul

  Part Five: Politico

  Part Six: Just Click Your Heels Together

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Honai, Chamdo Prefecture, Tibet, 18th November 2016.

  The village was not especially large. It clung to the south-facing side of a valley as though it was held there by the determination of its residents. There were lots of little, blocky houses, many of them apparently manufactured out of logs with flat, thatched roofs. Some walls appeared to be packed earth. Mostly they were showing up as different reflection profiles on Cygnus’s radar: the village was a mile ahead and two thousand feet below her.

  ‘I’m seeing heat signatures,’ Jacob said. He was in Cygnus’s arms, dressed in his full Frostburn suit. The new helmet had thermal vision. ‘Fires, most likely.’

  ‘That’s definitely the place?’ Cygnus asked.

  ‘It’s the right GPS coordinates and there is a village there. We’ve looked in a lot bigger places and not found her.’

  ‘Yeah…’ Cygnus dropped in toward the little group of houses, landing lightly in the partially metalled track which wound its way through the place; calling it a road would have been generous. There was no snow about. Cygnus thought that was disappointing: you come to Tibet, you expect snow. This was the dry season, however, and the daytime temperatures were enough to melt anything that did fall. Not that it was warm now: after dark, the temperature could drop below freezing pretty quickly.

  Back on his feet, Jacob unsealed his helmet and pulled it off. To him, the cold was an advantage. His glowing, pale-blue eyes scanned around for any sign of life. There were lights in the windows, smoke rising from chimneys, but no one about. ‘I guess we could try asking someone.’

  ‘Assuming we can find someone who speaks English.’

  ‘You can do that language trick.’

  ‘I guess.’ Cygnus set off toward the nearest log house.

  A man opened the door of the house, looking more or less like you’d expect a Tibetan to look: Asian features, a broad nose, and weather-beaten skin. His dark hair was unbound and fell past his shoulders. He was, however, wearing western-style clothes rather than anything native. He looked at the man in the armoured suit with the glowing eyes and at the stunningly beautiful woman in what amounted to a swimsuit and thigh-high boots, and his eyes narrowed. He said something Cygnus figured was in Tibetan.

  ‘Uh, I don’t suppose you speak English?’ Cygnus asked, shifting her power configuration as she did so.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, in Tibetan. Either he could recognise the question in English but not answer, or he was just being difficult.

  ‘Well, now I speak your language,’ Cygnus said, smiling warmly. ‘We’re here looking for a woman. A little shorter than me. Black hair. Black eyes. All black eyes. We’re friends of hers. We’ve been looking for her for about eighteen months.’

  The man was still wary. ‘You’re American?’

  ‘The accent is a bit of a giveaway, I know.’

  A woman’s voice came from the room behind the man. ‘Send them to her, Dorji. If they are not who they say they are, she’ll deal with them.’

  The man – presumably Dorji – frowned, but he said, ‘She lives in the house at the end of the village. The one without lights. She doesn’t need light.’

  ‘Thank you. That does sound like Twilight.’

  They started walking toward the end of the village Dorji had indicated and, after a few seconds, Cygnus asked, ‘Do you see the kid running ahead of us?’

  There was no moon and little in the way of light. Jacob was having to keep his eyes on the ground just to be sure he did not trip over anything. ‘You’re the one who can see in the dark. You think that guy sent someone ahead?’

  ‘Probably. Let’s face it, we’ve found people loyal to her ever since we started finding places she’s actually been. The last few, they seem to have genuinely liked her while she was there.’

  ‘True. So why hasn’t she come home? She’s obviously not– She broke free of the other one a while ago.’

  ‘Hopefully,’ Cygnus said, ‘you can ask her that question in a minute.’ Despite the darkness, Cygnus could see the boy standing in the doorway of a house. It was indeed the last house at the end of the village and the child was talking to someone inside it, but the angle was wrong for Cygnus to see who that was.

  The boy turned his head as the two Americans approached and Cygnus heard the person inside speaking Tibetan. ‘It’s okay, Dechen. I know them. Go and tell your father that there’s no danger tonight.’ The kid bowed, gave Cygnus and Jacob one more look, and then ran off back toward his home. Andrea raised her voice, switching to English. ‘You two had better come in. I’ll find a light for Jacob.’

  ‘Andrea?’ Jacob asked as he edged ahead of Cygnus to walk in first. At first, he was not actually sure he had found his wayward girlfriend. She was the right shape, sure, but this woman had long hair pulled up into a pair of pigtails. She turned, holding a lit candle, and he could see the wild mess of bangs hanging as a wispy curtain over her face. But it was Andrea Morgan’s face. She was not wearing a mask.

  She smiled. ‘Hi, Jacob. New armour?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Hugh decided I needed an upgrade.’

  ‘June worked on the styling this time,’ Cygnus added, stepping in beside Jacob.

  ‘Another new costume for you?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s to complement– You know, we can get to all that when we’ve got you home. I want to know about your new look too.’

  Andrea settled onto the wooden floor and put the candle down in front of her. ‘I can’t go back. Not yet anyway.’

  ‘You can’t–’ Jacob cut off his rather angry-sounding words and spent a second controlling himself. ‘We figured out some of what happened to you. You’ve been staying ahead of us for months. We finally track you down and you say you can’t come home?’

  ‘There’s something I have to do. Here. Look, sit down and tell me what’s happened to you. I’ll tell you what’s happened to me. You’ll see why I need to… finish things up here and I’ll see whether I’d really be welcome back home.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you be welcome?’ Cygnus asked, settling down with her legs crossed.

  ‘The other me, Midnight, she did some pretty bad things.’

  ‘Arguable, but I guess you’re right. But she’s gone. Isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s not in control. It cost a lot to get rid of her, but I did it. I think we’re getting ahead of things. You obviously survived the ship explosions, Cygnus. So did I, more or less. What happened when you got back?’

  ‘Oh, lots of desperate and fruitless searching for you along with clearing up the mess in the cities Naryan Tan nuked. Uh, you know about the nukes, right?’ Twilight gave a nod in reply. ‘Good. That saves time. Wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was bad. And then June started developing powers.’

  ‘June?!’

  ‘Oh yeah. You must’ve noticed how crazy things got in China. Well, they’re not quite as bad back home, but Ultras started popping up all over. Of course, when we told Hugh that June could fly, he was all over it…’

  Part One: Chinese Whispers

  Union of Ultrahumans HQ, Antarctica, 7th June 2015.

/>   Cygnus had always said that the light in Doctor Ultimate’s super-cosmic-energy scanner was bright. Andrea had claimed it was very, very bright, but she was some sort of shadow avatar. Objectively, June figured it was pretty bright in there, but she was pretty comfortable and, thanks to her chosen profession, the nudity did not bother her.

  The boredom was an issue though. It was boring, standing there with her arms held out from her sides while the room analysed her cosmic energy signature. She was rather pleased when the lights died and the door began to open. More pleased when she saw Cygnus – tall, beautiful Cygnus – waiting for her with a robe.

  ‘Hugh’s been glued to his displays the whole time,’ Cygnus said, grinning. ‘I’m not sure, but it sounded like he was running at least three thought streams over the data at the same time.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m that interesting,’ June replied. She slipped the robe on, tying the belt rather loosely. Cygnus was in a robe too: she had been through the scanning process before June.

  ‘That rather depends upon your perspective, my dear,’ Doctor Ultimate called out. ‘From your perspective, for instance, I’d imagine you’d consider yourself rather ordinary, in an extraordinary way.’ He was still perched on a stool in front of the bank of monitors he was using to examine the data from his scans. He was, as always, a slightly rumpled, fairly average sort of man in wrinkled slacks and a dress shirt with a lab coat over the top. No one who met him viewed him as anything other than average until he opened his mouth.

  ‘What Hugh means,’ Alice Last said, ‘is that we’re sure this is all very strange to you, but you fall within the usual range of Ultrahuman expression.’ Alice was as much her husband’s interpreter as his wife. She was an attractive redhead the Union members referred to as Patience; they claimed that her power was putting up with Ultimate. Other than that, Alice Last was smart but quite ordinary. ‘Magnitude four, Hugh?’

  ‘From the general power level, a borderline three or four. There is a subjective element to the analysis which we won’t be able to judge until we know precisely what your powers are, June.’

  ‘So far,’ Cygnus said, ‘it’s just flight. Uh, though I think she was hitting harder when we were sparring. There may be some added strength.’

  ‘I, uh, didn’t think that scanner was as bright as everyone said it was,’ June said.

  ‘Glare-protected vision,’ Ultimate mused. ‘Not impossible. I suggest some further exercises, Cygnus. At the very least, you can determine her maximum flight speed easily enough, and you have that equipment for strength testing.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Cygnus agreed, nodding. ‘What do we have today?’

  ‘Ah, well, here we come to the part which is interesting to one such as myself.’ Ultimate flashed a smile at June and waved at the screens. ‘I don’t suppose all this means a thing to you.’ He paused and frowned. ‘Let me just… uh, serialise… and that one… Yes! Now, you’re both aware that we have had some rather unusual expressions of Ultrahuman powers in various parts of the world since Naryan Tan’s ships exploded in orbit.’

  Cygnus nodded. ‘Sure. I think I’d have to say June is one of them. She’s too old to be an X-class. There was no accident or experiment and I don’t think she’s suddenly doing magic.’

  Ultimate shook his head. ‘The energy signature is neither magical nor psionic. Frankly, I’m working on a new classification system with various agencies worldwide. People like yourself, Cygnus, are making the current magnitude scale obsolete. We arbitrarily assign magnitude seven to Avatar- and Leviathan-class Ultras. That is simply not cutting the mustard these days.’

  June giggled. ‘Not a phrase you hear much.’

  ‘Probably not. I’m anachronistic. I believe we may need some additional origin classifications, or simply need to drop the origin code and apply a different scheme. For now, June’s powers appear to have been caused by the cosmic energy from the Guardian ships, hence a classification of accidental, A-class, seems appropriate. You represent, June, an unusual case, though there are similarities to Jacob’s emergence. Your genetics should not have resulted in the expression of powers, but here you are with powers. His aberrant expression was caused by Excelsior. Yours appears to have come from exposure to cosmic energy.’

  ‘And you’re not the only one,’ Alice added. ‘We’re getting reports of new Ultras from various parts of the US, Canada, and various areas of Central and South America.’

  ‘What about that monster they claim came out of Beijing?’ Cygnus asked.

  ‘Very likely to be the same phenomenon,’ Ultimate said. ‘China is a mess at the moment.’

  ‘Most of their central government died when Beijing was nuked and they have a very centralised system of government,’ Alice said. ‘We’ve been doing what we can to assist them, but their communications took a bad hit from the EMP. They’re disorganised and the reports we’ve been getting from them have been little more than gossip. We suspect they have a significant number of new Ultras besides this Leviathan, but no one is sure.’

  ‘Naryan really messed up the world, even as he died,’ Cygnus said, her tone low and a little depressed.

  ‘Not your fault,’ Alice told her.

  ‘And, I believe, he left you something of a gift in passing,’ Ultimate added. ‘Your latest scans are showing an even greater level of activity than the previous ones. I… simply don’t have a means of describing how powerful you are, Cygnus. You are off the charts, so to speak. Obviously, the charts scale, so you aren’t off them, but–’

  ‘I think she gets it, Hugh.’

  ‘Well, I have got faster in the air,’ Cygnus said, ‘and I’ve got more power allocated to strength in my standard configuration. Yeah, I guess I’ve got more power out of it. It seems like that might come in useful the way things are going at the moment.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Doctor Ultimate said, ‘I think you might be right.’ He turned his attention to June. ‘So, young lady, I suggest you find out what it is you can do beyond flight. Your power levels suggest you may be capable of much and we may need that in the future.’

  June grimaced. ‘Oh. Well, at least there’s no pressure.’

  New Millennium City, MD, 8th June.

  ‘Well, you’ve seen me do this. Just, um, punch the gel.’ Cygnus indicated the metal tube with its jelly-like contents. Perhaps jelly was not the right term since the stuff was a sort of brownish, orangish colour and did not look especially appetising.

  June, dressed in exercise gear of brief athletic shorts and a sports bra, took the stance she had been taught by Twilight and Cygnus, readied herself, and drove her fist into the impact-absorbing gel. There was a chime from the computer attached to the tube and Cygnus nodded.

  ‘How did I do?’ June asked.

  ‘You’ve gone from about average to well above average. You’re hitting harder than Jacob. Now, I want you to really focus. Try to push more energy into it.’

  Frowning, June got herself into position, tightened her fists, and… ‘I have no idea what I’m doing.’

  ‘Um… Have you had a photographer you really wanted to punch in the face recently?’

  ‘No, but I wouldn’t mind doing that to my agent. I get it.’ Focusing on her desire to break Maurice’s jaw over a recent issue with an advertising campaign, June let her fist fly. She felt her hand sinking deeper into the gel and figured she must have done better.

  ‘Yeah, remind me to avoid getting you annoyed.’

  ‘I’m that strong!’

  Cygnus grinned. ‘Well, not really. But if you’re going to start using these powers, you need to be careful of using punches like those on normals. You could kill someone. Not for certain, but it would be quite possible if you hit them right.’

  ‘I think whether I use this depends on what kind of defences I have. How I use them if I do probably depends on that too.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable. Let’s try the push bar.’

  June started for the second testing machine, a d
evice which looked like it was designed for doing bench presses, except that there were hydraulic rams in place of the weights. ‘I mean, if I can hit hard and fly, but I can’t stop a bullet…’

  ‘Still might be workable if we put you in armour.’

  June flashed a grimace and then settled down on the bench. ‘If I can’t be sexy while fighting crime, I’m not sure it’s worth it.’

  Cygnus giggled. ‘That’s one way of looking at it. Push that bar.’ June set her hands under the bar and pushed it upward. ‘That’s about what I’d expect from the punching figures. You’re pressing about a thousand pounds.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve no excuse to make me carry all the bags now.’

  ‘I bet I could think of– Holy shit!’ The bar pressed back and June’s arms flexed under the sudden weight, only to bounce back.

  ‘And almost two thousand if you have to. We can definitely call you super-strong, love.’

  ‘Awesome. I think. What’s next?’

  ‘You do the obstacle course. Let’s see how well you can manoeuvre in the air. After lunch, we’ll go out and see how fast you can go.’

  June got to her feet and looked up at the suspended bars and hoops. This was not going to be easy. ‘Do I need a mask or something?’

  ‘Not yet, I don’t think. We’ll go high just in case you can break the sound barrier. If anyone does try snooping on us, I’ll just make us invisible or something.’

  Willing herself to rise, June floated upward. ‘Okay. You’re the expert…’

  ~~~

  ‘H-how high are we?’ June asked. She was still in her shorts and top, but now she was flying out over the Atlantic and the waves looked a long way down.

  ‘Uh, about twelve thousand feet,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Any trouble breathing?’

  ‘No. Should I be having trouble breathing?’

  ‘Well, up here the air is thin enough to notice. Maybe a little blurring of vision?’ June shook her head. ‘I think you’ve got at least some adaptation for low pressures. Follow me.’ Cygnus surged forward, accelerating at a slight upward angle.