Torment of Tantalus

by Bard Constantine

  Guy just shook his head. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Shut this thing down or we shut you down.” Hayes steadied his aim with his other hand. “That’s the deal.”

  Dr. Stein screamed.

  They turned in time to see his chest rupture. Blood fanned across his face and chest. A crimson hand emerged, fingers wriggling from the center of the cavity. A shadow towered behind Stein; a gaunt, giant silhouette that lifted him as easily as a man would an infant. Stein gagged and convulsed, impaled by his assailant’s bare arm.

  Victor flung Stein’s body to the side with a vicious gesture. Blood slicked his forearm, streamed from his fingers. His yellow, watery eyes glimmered, flashing in the dim light. White teeth clamped in a skeletal grin, stretching his pale skin to the breaking point. His emaciated face was shrouded by a mane of dark, glimmering hair, the only part of him that appeared alive. The rest was a shriveled husk, dry meat stretched over jutting bone and knotty sinew.

  “Rejoice, for God is dead.” Victor’s voice was shockingly resonant, a direct contradiction to his gruesome appearance. It was a voice made for singing, rich in timbre, each word spoken as if in reverence of language.

  Hayes’ face paled, the pistol trembled in his hand. “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe it.”

  “God is dead,” Victor continued. “And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”

  “You quote Nietzsche,” Guy said. “But you have not killed God. Only a man.”

  “I have killed my God,” Victor said. “My creator, my father. He who brought me to life without regard for the consequences of his actions. He sold his soul for knowledge, lusting for a bite of the forbidden fruit. Oh so pleasant to gaze upon, but its core rank with rot and wriggling maggots. It is the most poetic of justices for a god to die at the hand of his creation, for the savant to become a victim of his hypothesis.”

  “You speak with surprising intelligence for one so newly born.”

  “When a sage falls, an ancient child is born.”

  “I suspect something more rational. Your mind has been accelerated by the aberrant code. There is something of the Gestalt in you. It’s using you to speak for it.”

  “There is something of the Gestalt in all of us. That is why you can never win, no matter how desperate your tactics become.”

  Michael clawed back the fear that nearly paralyzed his throat. “Who…what are you?”

  “I am what remains. I am the worm that eats the core of your world.”

  Michael stumbled backward, never taking his eyes from the creature. “You…you were in the storm. You destroyed our ship.”

  Victor’s eyes glimmered like orbs of prehistoric amber. “I am in the storm right now, destroying your ship. I am at your mill last year, killing your co-workers. I am wearing the face of Lurch Davies and ripping Ariki to shreds while his screams ring in my ears. I am dying in the heat of atomic fire at the Jornada del Muerto desert, infecting millions with the Black Plague in 1937. I am communing with Hitler in World War II, falling from the sky over Siberia in 1908. I am destroying a prototype undersea vessel in the Bermuda Triangle eight months ago, causing a wormhole to collapse and set my essence free. I am the Gestalt: revenant of a fallen kingdom, attester to the fall of men.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What does every living thing want, from single celled organism to majestic, godlike being? To survive. To not go gentle into that good night. We claw and scratch for the chance to draw another breath, to claim another second of existence. No sin is too heinous, no sacrifice too costly if it means our continuance. We rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  Guy edged forward. “Not anymore. You know it as well as I do. Your Aberrations have unleashed nothing but darkness and death upon this world. The DEIS code is the only way to assure our survival.”

  Victor’s brows knitted, etching his face with angry runes. “You lie, Wardsman. DEIS is only interested in preserving its precious cipher. A pathetic attempt to rebuild while sacrificing the millions of minds attached to his system.”

  “If DEIS can be reassembled, the disaster might be averted before it happens. Don’t you understand? To continue trying to tear this world apart is madness.”

  “In a mad world, only the mad are sane. You’ve seen this place for what it is, Wardsman. You’ve stared humanity in the eye and know what a pathetic, selfish, perverted accident they are. We had no choice in what we became because of the ruined foundation we stood upon. But now we can wipe the slate clean and create a world in our image. The Aberration is the answer, not some pitiful purge. Do you lifeless things truly believe you can stay the rushing tide of a billion desperate minds?”

  “No.” Hayes leveled his handgun in Victor’s direction. “But I know I can’t stand any more of this bullshit. You’re behind the Aberration? That means you killed Lurch. Chen, Ariki, Charlie. Now it’s my turn.”

  Guy hissed. “No, Hayes, don’t—”

  Hayes opened fire. Victor jerked back with every shot, but gave no other indication he even felt the wounds that tore apart his shriveled flesh. His teeth flashed in a snarling grin, his arms spread wide as if inviting the pain.

  The chamber came alive. The bioroids that had been silently working in the background snapped into action, streaming toward the trio like living shadows. Michael lifted his rifle and fired in sparse bursts, standing back to back with Guy and Hayes. The sound of gunfire was barely audible, muted by the sizzling cord of energy that blazed from the tower behind them. The deafening thrum was a voltaic soundtrack to the desperate battle.

  Guy yelled in Michael’s ear. “We have to set off the nuke. It’s our only chance.”

  Michael nodded, trying to find Victor in the rush of attacking bodies. The gaunt giant vanished, moving so fast that Michael only saw the flash of his yellow eyes streaking in a zigzag pattern among the bioroids. One second he was yards away, the next he was there, hoisting Hayes into the air with the greatest of ease. For a frozen moment he held Hayes like a monstrous priest offering a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty god. Hayes had no time to react. He could only widen his eyes when recognition dawned.

  Michael tried to turn, aiming his rifle. “No, wait. Stop!”

  His words fell on deaf ears. Victor yanked down with the same inhuman speed, slamming Hayes’ body against his upraised knee like a brittle piece of kindling. The sound of Hayes’ back shattering seemed to be the only sound in the world. A shuddering gasp escaped from his lips, his eyes filmed over as his body went limp, sliding to the floor and folding over like a discarded piece of luggage.

  Victor took the point-blank barrage of gunfire from Michael’s rifle with a twisted grin before swatting the gun away with a casual swipe of his gnarled hand.

  Bioroids seized Michael, pulled him away from Guy and Victor, who stood facing one another like a contemporary David and Goliath. Michael fought against the relentless hands, yanking himself away long enough to snatch his handgun from his leg holster. He whirled, firing repeatedly in a circle. For every bioroid that soundlessly fell, another took his place. It was hopeless, only a matter of seconds before he was overwhelmed.

  He risked a glance at Guy, who seemed to have run out of ammo. A long Bowie knife flashed in his hand. Victor’s arm severed at the elbow, dry and bloodless. He seized Guy’s arm with his good hand, snapping bones like twigs. The knife took forever to hit the floor. Victor’s grin was frozen, his eyes flashing as he slammed his head into Guy’s face over and over with bone-crunching force.

  The tower sizzled with a surge of voltaic energy. Michael winced, staggering as his skin tingled, head pounding as though something inside was trying to beat its way out. His fists clenched, the nails digging into his palms. A voice rumbled from somewhere in the mental storm, ancient and powerful.

  You will kill them all.

  He roared as he was swarmed, pummeled by merciless fists. The bioroids were unarmed, but they were seeming
ly endless, piling on top of one another to bring him to his knees.

  In the background he heard Guy’s screams mingle with Victor’s laughter.

  Fire exploded in Michael’s head, seared in his lungs. His teeth gritted as the blows fell heedless on his head and shoulders. He felt no pain. Pain didn’t exist in the void. He was the chamber. He was the tower.

  He was the power.

  Something pulsed from deep within. It exploded from him as a physical force, flashing across the chamber in mirage waves of warped light. The bioroids were flung away, broken toys floating across the chamber with exaggerated slowness as though gravity had been snatched from the room.

  Michael’s bones were coated with dry ice, skin blazing with withering heat. His vision flashed in rippling shades of violet. He turned to Victor, who stood over something that once had been a man.

  Michael roared. The force in his mind lashed out, seizing Victor, lifting him into the air as though weightless. Michael hurled him across the room, impaling the monster on a thick antenna protruding from a towering platform. The wires around Victor came alive, descending on him like serpents, snarling him in a Gordian entanglement that even his great strength couldn’t repel. He jerked spasmodically before finally sagging in defeat.

  Head throbbing, Michael turned to the nuclear device. His vision blurred, the room grew hazy. It didn’t matter. He was the power. The device flashed on, the timer starting its rundown. The switch activated, sending the nuke shuttling down the spout that would take it deep into the ocean depths, to the tear in reality’s fabric that had its fingers sunk deep in Michael’s mind.

  The rush was too much. Michael felt it slipping away, draining with merciless speed. He was left a shuddering wreck of meat and bone, weak and pitiful in the wake of his earlier magnificence. The chamber spun around him, blurring flickers of electric eyes and metallic towers. He gave an inarticulate cry and crumpled to the floor.

  Thrum.

  Thrum.

  Thrum.

  His eyes blinked open. He tried to focus, unsure of where he was for a moment. Not knowing how long he’d been there. The tower pulsed like a thermionic heartbeat, blazing in purple-white flashes. The chamber blushed with lavender glimmers of swimming light. Indistinct flecks hovered in the air, photoelectric butterflies fluttering in a cybernetic forest.

  It was beautiful.

  “Michael.”

  Guy’s voice was a faint whisper from a thousand miles away. Michael slowly pushed himself up, wiped the blood that trickled from his nostrils and dripped from his chin. He looked the direction of the voice. A choking cry escaped from his lips, and he shut his eyes to erase the sight.

  Guy had been torn in half.

  “Michael.”

  He shook his head. “No. It can’t happen like this. Not like this…”

  “It’s…okay, Michael.” Guy’s voice shuddered as though it took all his effort to speak. “Don’t look…at what he did…to me. Look…at me. At me.”

  Michael opened his eyes. Tears blurred his vision, and for once he was grateful. The hunks of spilled flesh were barely visible, though the smell of death was rank in his nostrils. He dragged himself over, focusing only on Guy’s face. Only on his plain and ordinary face.

  Guy’s skin was waxen. His lips trembled in a smile. “I didn’t…tell you. About what I’ve…seen.”

  “You told me, Guy. Don’t try to talk. You don’t—”

  “No.” Guy’s eyes quivered, the light fading even as he spoke. “The Gestalt…is wrong. There is…still something worth…fighting for. I’ve seen it. The everyday miracles that we take…for granted. The bonds that…connect us, hold us together. They’re…worth it. Worth every bitter second, every…beautiful moment.”

  His hand clutched Michael’s, squeezing painfully. “Worth…dying for.”

  The room exploded with blazing light. Tentacles of purplish energy forked across the chamber. The entire structure rocked, seismic shudders rippled across the room. Cables swung like vines in a tsunami, consoles and guardrails wrenched free and toppled in a metallic shower, shattering against the metallic floor.

  Guy’s gaze reflected the luminosity, his irises glowing with purple light. His bloody lips parted for the faintest of whispers. “Non omnis moriar…”

  His eyes glazed, and his grip went lax in Michael’s hand.

  The roar of erupting energy was beyond anything Michael heard before. It was everything, the entire world exploding. Shadows were flung away until there was nothing but light, blazing from everywhere. Michael had no sense of self, no sense of time, no sense of space.

  There was only the light.

  Chapter 26: Chthonic Exodus

  He beat the odds.

  Blackwell had his doubts, at first. He didn’t believe he’d really make it. Not all the way from where he left Nathan and Elena, then down two flights to the docking bay where the submarine was docked. Even as he approached the sub he expected some terrible monster to emerge from the deep and rip him to shreds.

  But the waters were motionless, glimmering in violet shades. He was able to dash to the sub, open the door and clamber inside without anything attacking. After closing and securing the entry hatch, he sat in the padded leather seat shuddering, chest heaving as the adrenaline faded. He relived the nonstop attacks, the sheer madness of it all. Bloody faces swam at him, calling out from the hell of the Tantalus.

  Snap out of it. You got what you came for.

  He patted the metal case beside him. It was everything. Worth every risk, every lost life. It was the future. He took a wary look around, cursing himself for waiting that long. Waiting for what? Everyone was dead or dying. He was the only one with a chance to escape and he was risking it on senseless reflection. All he had to do was start the submarine and get the hell out of there. He reached for the key strung around his neck.

  Nothing.

  His heart went into overdrive. Where is it? He was positive he had it when he left the server room. He had felt it tap against his chest when he moved. But then Damon had attacked…

  Shit. Blackwell pounded the armrest. Shit, shit, shit. He’d been thrown around like a rag doll. So out of it he didn’t think to check if the key was still around his neck. It had fallen off. Could be anywhere in the hallway. He would have to get out, go back. Into the madness. He knew what the end result would be.

  I’m dead. The acknowledgement came with a sense of resigned calm.

  He’d seen the moth creatures on the ceiling before he secured the door. He knew Nathan and Elena had no chance of survival. And if the mothmen weren’t there, something else would be. It was unfair. He’d made it. Made it through everything, managed to survive with the package secured.

  All for nothing.

  The submarine bucked as the water trembled. The entire structure rumbled as if struck by seismic waves. Something had happened. Maybe Guy managed to set off the explosive.

  Doesn’t matter. You can’t get out. You made it this far only to die along with everyone else.

  The door to the facility opened with a bang.

  Blackwell slid low into his seat, not daring to even breathe. He knew he’d die if he didn’t move. And there was no place to go. No way out. He’d have to stay hidden, hope whatever it was didn’t spot him. The submarine was built to take heavy damage. Hopefully it would protect him.

  “Blackwell!”

  He froze. I know that voice. Rising slightly, he peered as carefully as possible through the hemispheric glass.

  Elena stood on the dock, supporting Nathan, who looked ashen and completely spent. He clutched his bloodstained side, standing erect only with Elena’s support. She looked directly at Blackwell, stabbing him with an angry glare.

  “I can see you hiding in there. Let us in before something attacks.”

  He considered. This is the moment. The moment in every horror movie when a character does something stupid, exposing himself to a terrible death because he took a foolish chance.

 
It didn’t make sense to open the hatch. He was safe inside. Opening up would take precious seconds, time enough for something lurking in the dock to make its move and finish them all off. It was too risky.

  He was about to tell Elena that when he caught sight of what dangled from her fingers. His breath caught in his throat.

  He opened the hatch.

  “Where did you find this?” He snatched the ignition key from her as she helped Nathan get inside.

  “From around your neck. I took it when you were knocked out. I figured you might try to double-cross us, you son of a bitch.”

  “Anticipative thinking. A talent I didn’t know you had.” He started to laugh, but froze when Elena pressed something pointed and sharp against his throat.

  “You think this is funny? Give me a reason why we shouldn’t throw you off of this ship and leave you like you tried to do to us.” Her hand trembled, burrowing the tip into his skin.

  He swallowed. “I can give you several, but the main one is this: I know how to operate this submarine. I don’t guess either of you have that experience.”

  His eyes slid to her face. He saw her calculating, and knew her response before she said the words. The tactical pen was lowered, leaving a prick of blood welling from his throat.

  “Fine. Get us out of here, then.”

  “Gladly.” He fired up the controls, sealing off the doors and hatches as Elena helped Nathan settle into one of the seats in the rear. She grunted when the sub rocked violently, nearly sending her to the floor. The entire dock rattled and groaned as if barely holding together.

  “What about the others? There’s room for more,” she said.

  “Guy said not to wait. This place is going to blow. We leave now or we don’t leave at all.”

  She was smart enough not to argue. Blackwell set the sub to dive, quickly submerging beneath the water. It should have been pitch black, but light glimmered from deep below, painting everything lavender. He knew it was the energy source at the bottom, the anomaly that destroyed the Gorgon and set off the chain of events that brought him there in the first place. He didn’t plan on going that direction. He wanted to stay as far away from the energy source as possible.