She sat back in her chair, supporting her head with her palm.
She'd make one more attempt, and if that failed, she'd turn it back over to her programs.
She entered: The First Conference of Three Beings
ACCESS GRANTED
She pumped her fist. "I am a badass!"
"Made some progress, eh?" Mathias said.
"Yep," she said. "I'm gonna set up voice authorization now."
The prompt came up, telling her to speak into the microphone. She spoke a single sentence she'd learned in theater. There was no way to key her biometrics into the system from her tiny laptop; she'd have to go down to the main security station for that. It could wait anyway voice authorization was good enough.
"It's done," she said.
"You're now the proud owner of a top-secret military research base," Mathias said. "Have any thoughts?"
"We're still fucked."
"Hardly. The others aren't even close to qualified. Besides, there's the fact that Lena... No I shouldn't say anything."
Her eyes stabbed in his direction. "What about Lena?"
"I really shouldn't say anything, it's a private matter between Lena and your brother."
Something snapped inside her, and she found herself at his side, grabbing hold of Mathias's collar, nearly lifting him out of the chair. "What the hell did that bitch do?"
"It's not what she did, it's more of what they did."
Ira thought back to when she had been watching over Nico's cell, how Lena had been so adamant about seeing him.
She kept touching her stomach on the security feed, she thought. And Hugo...
Then, she thought about the last thing Lena had said to her...the way her brother had been buttoning his shirt that time she'd slammed Lena against the wall...and the scratches on his neck, the blood on the collar of his long johns...
"She was screwing him," she said quietly.
"Indeed, and your brother didn't want that little secret getting out, because he thought it would sour the morale between us."
She let him fall back into his chair. "He was right."
"There's something else." He straightened his collar.
"And what's that?"
"She's carrying his child."
3
The explosions caused dust, rubble, and dirt to fall from the sky, and a ringing assaulted Nico's ears. He stayed low and clutched his rifle tight. The ringing persisted, but he peered over the edge anyway.
The battlefield was littered with corpses, both enemy and comrade alike. The constant gunfire filled the street; through his helmet they sounded like miniature firecrackers popping in the distance. The silhouette of one of his boys caught his attention as they ran out into the crossfire—the bullet caused blood and glass to explode like grotesque glitter as his body hung there, like it was frozen in time, before it came crashing down lifeless in the dirt.
So much for full-body armor coverage.
Nico shook his head. This was no time to close off, no time to be a coward. He summoned all his strength, picked himself up, and charged toward the building.
His courage was short-lived; his heart sank through his chest, when he heard the hair-splitting whistle of a missile careening through the air toward him.
He watched it, as if time had slowed to a crawl; it collided a meter ahead of him, but its blast radius was still in range to knock him clean off his feet. He felt his exo-suit slam into something, and heard the sound of metal bending and grinding against metal.
His HUD went dark, and he couldn't feel one of his legs. Which leg was it again?
"Wake up, Nico." He could have sworn the voice was his sister's. He tried to move, but his exoskeleton was dead, and soon he would be too.
"Wake up, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Wake up, you son-of-a-bitch!" Hugo said.
Nico sat up and resisted the urge to scream and clutch at his stump, but only found Hugo standing before his cage, his arms holding his own AR-15.
"You're holding it wrong, jackass," Nico said. "If you're gonna shoot me, at least stop chicken-winging it."
Hugo was shaking, heavy bags beneath his eyes, bandages around his steadying hand. "Shut up!"
"I'm guessing Mathias told you about me and Lena." Nico stood up and started inching toward Hugo; if he could get close enough, he might be able to reach through the bars, offset his aim and get the weapon from him. "That fucking coward."
"You're the bitch who had to take my woman!" Hugo backed up, aimed the weapon with his shaky arms; his left arm was out supporting the barrel, and his right hand was holding the receiver, finger shaking over the trigger, his right elbow still out to the side—with that grip, even the light kick from the AR-15 might be enough to miss on a first shot.
"Listen to yourself, Hugo." Nico put his hands up. "I've been locked up down here, where I received the news. I would have told you, man to man, if I wasn't—"
"That's a fucking lie!"
"I give you my word!"
"Your word ain't shit! Mathias told me that you wasn't gonna say shit, that you didn't want to upset morale! Sound familiar, B? Same shit you told me after you cut Eddy's throat."
"And look at that." He rolled his eyes. "The morale is all upset, just like I predicted."
"Motherfuck—"
Nico lunged in just as Hugo started pulling the trigger, grabbing for the barrel through the bars.
4
She and Mathias were making their way to Nico's cell when Ira heard five muffled bangs. She instantly recognized the sound, even through solid concrete and metal.
"That's coming from Nico's cell!" She started sprinting, leaving Mathias behind her.
She rounded the corner and slid to a stop at the door to Nico's cell. She threw the door open and saw Hugo standing before the cell's bars; Nico's hand was clutching the barrel, and Hugo's eyes were wide with primal anger.
Ira's mouth dropped wide. She felt her insides hollow out. The barrel of the AR-15 was in Nico's chest, smoking from the recent discharge.
Hugo's eyes focused on hers, blood spattered all over his face. Ira rushed at him as he attempted to focus the barrel on her—she grabbed it, still hot from murdering her brother, and shoved it sideways just as Hugo squeezed the trigger two more times. She knocked him off his feet with a right hook, keeping hold of the barrel, even as his body hit the floor.
"Let go of the weapon, you fucking bastard!"
"Fuck you!" His fingers were struggling to get to the trigger again. "You and your brother can go to hell!"
Ira reared her boot up and stomped on his face. His hand went limp, and he fell back against the wall, probably unconscious. Her body fell to the floor, clutching and hugging at her brother's rifle.
"Ira." Nico was coughing, wheezing, his words bubbling, oozing; Ira's mind ran wild with possible causes as she stood up and made her way to the bars, dragging the gun with her like a child clutching their favorite teddy bear.
She fumbled for the keys, unlocked the cell, and dropped to Nico's side. Crimson rivulets flowed out from his mouth. Blood gushed from three wounds in his chest and soaked his long johns.
"Oh my god." Her hands hovered frantically over his body, unsure what to do.
She looked around for anything that might help stop the bleeding, then tore part of her shirt off and desperately applied pressure to the three wounds. Her hands were barely big enough to cover them all.
"Do they go all the way through?" Ira said.
"I tried." Nico coughed, creating a fresh stream of bloody rivulets running down his cheeks. "I dodged the first two. Asshole can't shoot. Still nailed me with the last three."
"Don't talk, damn it, save your breath."
"What should I do?" Mathias asked.
"What the hell do you think you should do, Mathias?" Ira said. "Call Lena now!"
"Hang on, Nico," she said. "We're gonna get you some help."
His hand clutched at her arm, shook his head. "I'm done, sis."
He
r lips began to quiver, tears warming her cheeks. "No! No you're not!"
"Now—" He started to laugh and it transformed into a coughing fit. "—I bet Hugo told you all about what I did."
"Yeah, but shut up about that, save your strength." She covered her mouth. "I'll scold you later, when you're better!"
"All things considered, much as I deserve it, what a shitty way to go..."
"No, you're not going anywhere!"
"I'm a pretty...pretty terrible person, Ira...what I deserve..."
"No, no, no, you can't go! We need you! I need you!"
His chest started heaving, up and down. His coughs got worse. Blood was coming out his mouth. Ira tried to keep the pressure on his wounds, stop the bleeding, but she knew they probably ran all the way through. Her tears were nearly blinding her.
"Where the hell is she?" Her voice seemed to echo, and Nico's eyes rolled back into his head.
Her bloody hands reached up, slapping at Nico's face as she tried to keep him from going into shock, tried to keep him focused on the sound of her voice. When Lena finally did arrive, she shoved Ira to the side and attempted to stop the bleeding.
When that wasn't enough, she tried CPR in an attempt to revive him.
They were too late.
Nico lay there on the floor of his cell, eyes open wide, a grin on his bloody face, lifeless. She crawled backward, her brother's blood still fresh on her hands, creating a trail leading all the way back to the wall. Her hands dug into her hair and she rocked back and forth, back and forth.
She couldn't stop thinking about how she'd been the one to put him there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"We're so close," Doctor Weber said. "I can feel it."
Weber sat at his desk in the pyramidal room Mathias had awoken in before, scratching at his beard, rubbing at the purple and green bags which hung beneath his eyes like swelling egg sacs, fit to burst at any moment.
Mathias spent the night watching log after log. He had plenty of time for research with Ira and Lena so distracted. The logs gave him great new insight into the man's theories and ambitions—and prepared him further to complete the bargain.
"And as I feel us drawing closer to the end, I can feel his presence...and something else," Weber said. "At first, only a couple researchers went missing, volunteers, and that seemed to satiate its appetite, but it always comes back. It's only a matter of time before it gets to me. Carries me off into the shadows to that place which still haunts my dreams.
"I wish I could say that it was luck that protected me so, but it is not. I knew that it would find its way to me eventually, as it did the author of Messages. I've surrounded myself with lights and warding symbols as much as is feasible; I've even placed them around my personal deprivation tank.
"Still, I did not anticipate the arrival of the Harvester. He waits for me every time I travel in the tank, snatches me up and drags me to places my mind cannot quite handle. My warding symbols have effect on him.
"I have not met with the beings Lilly described for a very long time. And I fear that the Harvester will feed my essence to the Eye in the Abyss before long if I do not offer a substitute sacrifice, someone with equal knowledge. Few options exist in that regard.
"Though I do not relish the idea of sacrificing one of the people I'm attempting to save, there is an option. She's seen much of my work, and though I've protected her from the details contained within the grimoire, she would be a ripe substitute if her knowledge were to be...completed."
Mathias thumbed the pages of the grimoire in his hands carefully, caressed its aged leather surface.
"Even if I managed to conduct the experiment successfully, the grimoire is clear. The harvester of the abyss can travel anywhere it so chooses. There is no escape."
A being with the capability to travel anywhere in the universe—no—the multiverse? Mathias couldn't help but glance around the mainframe room, carefully pausing on the shadows.
Then there really is no choice?
He opened the grimoire to the page he'd been studying. There were occult symbols, triangles, all-seeing eyes, strange hieroglyphs, all meant to do one thing.
Summon the Harvester to his world and complete the bargain.
The text that was written in English was very specific. The symbols had to be arranged around the intended sacrifice exactly as it was laid out on the page. If one single, minute detail was off, the text warned of absolute disaster.
The energy requirements were also insane, requiring point-zero five percent of the Sun's total power.
Fortunate we have a fusion reactor, then, Mathias thought.
But the question remained...would the Harvester even honor the bargain? It seemed strange that a being like that would even allow itself to be summoned. It seemed archaic.
It was his only hope, though.
"If I'm unable to contact those beings again, it may become difficult to finish the preparations for the final experiment."
Mathias had seen strange things too. Perhaps even Lilly had, and simply had not reported on them? It made Mathias wonder—a flicker of doubt—whether perhaps Weber had been insane himself. And if Weber was insane...what did that say about him?
The stress of the experiments had taken its toll on Weber's body in such a short period of time. His gray hair was falling out, and though he was young, his already wrinkled skin was beginning to yellow. Weber's eyes had seen the most change.
"I'll take another session in the tank." Weber rubbed his tired red eyes. They had once been a vibrant green; now they were a dull, lifeless gray. "It's the only kind of rest I can seem to get these days."
It was a curious thing, to hedge your bets and hopes on a potential madman's design, and yet, what choice did he have? After all, madness was no stranger to him. A healthy combination of schizophrenia and Alzheimer's had plagued his family's genetics since the early 1800s.
"I've made tank time mandatory for all research facility personnel. It's my hope that this will give new insights to how the mind's horizon works, how we can finally activate it and pierce through the veil." He shook his head. "But, research personnel, specifically those chosen to be subjects in the Mind's Horizon experiment, are beginning to experience strange things inside their quarters...
"Some have complained about hearing footsteps, disembodied voices, and even claim to have seen personal objects being moved of their own accord. At first I believed that this was nothing more than paranoia; perhaps the combination of being secluded inside the mountain and the nature of our experiments was causing them to imagine things. Wishful thinking. It would seem that the grimoire has a profound effect on everyone around it, even if they themselves know nothing of its existence.
"Now, however, three people have vanished, and the volunteers are starting to ask questions. Since I'm the only one with admin permissions, I'm the only one who has access to the security footage from their rooms. If only they could see what it was that snatched their friends and lovers up.
"It's awake!"
Weber slammed the top of the desk with his fist, then took a lengthy drink from his bottle.
"I remember the first time I saw it. Its eyes, seven of them, pulsing with eerie gray light as it regarded me in the tank, in the darkness of the abyss.
"Did I call it here?"
Another drink. Weber started to slur his words.
"No. If it is the being that killed the grimoire's author, then it is likely tied somehow to the book. I can't let guilt hinder my progress. It is better to be down here than to be up there. The new ice age is beginning to bury the northern states, and I have reports that the northern ice sheet is forming much earlier than climatologists had predicted it would. We thought we had more time, and we were so wrong. The government has decided to give us as much of an operating budget as we'd like, when in the past we were an afterthought.
"I suppose I should be grateful to them, but this definitely is not a good sign. It means they've lost hope that any of their other p
rojects will bear significant fruit."
He paused, and took a drink from the bottle.
"It won't be long before food and gas prices shoot through the roof, and by God, there will be looters, and militias, and if they think the Revolutionists were bad, well, they're about to see the entire country—no—the world, fall into a similar conflict. But now, wars won't be fought over land, religion, or ideals. They'll be fought over food, energy, heat, and the right to simply not freeze to death.
"We're fortunate to be down here with our monsters, hidden away from the world and its woes."
Weber checked his phone. "Ah, 6:00 pm, time for my tank session."
He reached for the camera's controls. "End log."
Mathias leaned back in his chair and stretched. He'd watched twelve videos since Lena and Ira had taken Nico's body to the surface to give him a snow burial. Mathias had told Ira that he should get back to work, but he wasn't quite sure she'd heard him. They'd locked Hugo up in Nico's old cell; the blood was still fresh.
That little bit of encouragement he'd given Hugo had done its job well. Though he’d never expected him to go so far as murder. That part was regretful, but the ends would justify the means.
He was going to save them all.
2
The wind spiraled down, dragging ice crystals into the air in wide sprawling arcs. The dim sunrise was snuffed out by storm clouds, desperately clawing to shut out the light. With the wind and ice stabbing into Ira's facemask, it was almost enough to mask the drying tears pooling in her goggles.
There was a fresh mound of snow covering her brother's corpse. Lena stood bundled up next to her. The tears had stopped, either because she had no more to shed, or because she was so dehydrated that she couldn't physically form them.
They stabbed their shovels into the snow, and Ira fell to her knees, heaving.
"He was a good man," Lena said; an uncomfortable jolt shot up Ira's spine when she felt Lena's hand pat her back.
"No, he wasn't," Ira said.
"What?" More surprise than anger in Lena's voice. She hadn't actually loved Ira’s brother; to her he was probably just a fucktoy.
"He was, once, before the war, before all of this. He had demons, and he could be cruel."
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