Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  He broke off. His eyes bulged out of his unshaven face.

  "That's it! That's why you're shaking me! It's revenge! Revenge for our duel, revenge for what I was doing before you cheated! You! You should be serving me right now! You cheated! You cheated!"

  During their first duel in the simulator, Stock had hacked the power of the sinful gods into the machine. After she defeated him, he rose again and battled her with a hideous monstrosity, some dark monster of fingers. She'd only triumphed when the Spire itself pulled him out of his pod and flung him to the floor. He'd spent the fight shaking her pod, banging her painfully against the walls and boasting of his impending victory.

  Stock pointed at her with a long and jagged nail. His finger trembled uneasily in place.

  "You! You're shaking me because I shook you! Unfair! Unfair! Unfair! That's dirty! So dirty!"

  He burst into tears.

  "Please stop! Please! That was just a joke! That was in battle! I'm a prisoner, an innocent prisoner! This is a war crime! You can't just torture me for your own amusement! War crime! War crime!"

  She stared at him.

  "What do you mean?"

  "The shaking! The shaking! You keep shaking my home!"

  He pointed wildly around him.

  "Look! The shelf! The shelf!"

  "Is that what happened to the food too?"

  The food didn't look like it'd fallen during a quake. It looked like he'd thrown it around.

  His eyes bulged.

  "The food? The food?"

  He stomped over to a half-eaten plate on his desk and flung it against the wall.

  "That is not a meal fit for a god! It's a meal for peasants! For slaves! For thralls! How dare you!"

  He started screaming again.

  Alex's mind whirled.

  Stock had no idea what was happening. He thought that the quakes were some sort of punishment. He didn't realize the core was breaking down.

  She shook her head and swallowed her hate.

  Who would shake someone else's house as a punishment? It was only the sort of thing only he would do.

  "Where are my workers? They are loyal! They know who brought greatness to this colony!"

  Alex stared at him. She was completely revolted.

  "You sacrificed them."

  "No! No! No!"

  Stock shook his head insistently.

  "Only some of them! The true believers! Not all of them! What about the ones with Contracts! They should still stand by my side. They promised they would! They signed their names! Did you kill them all? You killed them, didn't you? Murderer! Murderer!"

  "Of course we didn't kill them! Why would they help you? You enslaved them!"

  "Not everyone knows it was me! We kept most of them in the dark! It was only the ones that saw your friend's lies! Only they found out! And besides! It was legal! It was all legal! I had permission from Waters to do whatever I wanted with the tunnels! They signed the Contracts promising to obey me! Legal! Legal! It was all legal!"

  Spit flew from his mouth as he spoke faster and faster. His voice gradually rose to a shout.

  "What about the others? I created millions of jobs! Don't they know what they owe their existence to? Without me, they would have starved! The colony would have fallen apart without me. Millions of jobs! Millions! They must free me! They must strike at once! It was all legal, and it created millions of jobs! It saved people from homelessness! I have the Contract with Waters! It was all agreed on!"

  The disgust swelled through her entire body. Her mind burned, and her stomach filled with bile. Her muscles tensed so hard she almost felt herself locking up.

  But she forced herself to think. She was here to get information. Stock didn't sound like a man with a plot. He was just rambling madly, and it seemed like he had no idea what was going on outside. He didn't even know about the quakes. They'd carefully taken away all his tablets and computers so he couldn't contact associates, but Alex had always feared he'd kept something hidden.

  Alex unclenched her jaw and forced herself to talk to him. He seemed genuinely delusional, but she had to find out if he was just feigning ignorance.

  "Do you know anything about the ghosts?"

  She kept a careful eye on him to see if he'd betray even a flicker of emotion.

  He didn't.

  "Ghosts? Ghosts?"

  "What do you mean ghosts?"

  He suddenly let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  "You're going to kill me! You want to kill me! You destroyed my legacy, and now you're going to kill me! You want to make me a ghost!"

  Stock charged. He stumbled awkwardly across the room. He almost lost his footing when he slipped on a stain.

  Alex drew the Eternium from her pocket. It morphed and twisted as she raised her hand. When it emerged from her fist, it was a wickedly curved dagger. The knife glowed like a blue sun in the dimly lit house.

  Stock squeaked in terror. He backtracked furiously and slipped on the carpet.

  He crashed ass first to the floor, frantically waving his unblemished hands back and forth.

  "No! Don't kill me! That's a crime! That's a war crime! The Governor will hear about this! I signed the Contract with him! He'll tell you! Everything I did was legal! I bought the train tunnels! And the mines! And everyone signed Contracts promising to obey me! Where is Waters? He'll tell you!"

  He looked around and screamed.

  "Waters! Waters! Waters! Where are you? She's trying to kill me!"

  Alex ignored his screaming. There was only one way to find out whether or not he was bluffing. After fighting Stock, first in the simulator and then again in the library courtyard, Alex had seen the core of him.

  He was a liar and a cheater who didn't care about anyone but himself. He was a sixty-year-old man who acted like he was six. His deranged desire to become a god would have killed the whole colony. He'd happily sacrificed countless people, and he happily would have sacrificed a thousand times more just to avoid a minor inconvenience.

  The only thing he cared about was saving his own skin.

  As she stepped format, his whimpers grew louder and louder.

  "No! No! Guards! Guards! She's trying to kill me! Help! Kill her! Shoot her! Millions of jobs! Millions! Stop shaking me! Stop it! Stop it!"

  Alex briefly morphed her knife into a flat surface and pounded against it. Eternium sang, drowning out his pleas and proclamations.

  He instinctively screamed at her for interrupting him.

  "Attitude! Attitude! Watch your atti –"

  Then he stopped, caught himself, and returned to whimpering.

  "The ground is shaking because we are still missing Eternium from the core. If we don't replace it soon, the whole colony will fall apart."

  That was an exaggeration, but Stock didn't need to know that. His eyes widened in terror. He'd known what his mining would lead to, but he'd planned on being far away from Plenty when everything came crashing down.

  It was a good thing she'd dismissed her knife. She didn't think she would have killed him, but it was hard to tell right now. The hate coiled endlessly through her guts. She suddenly felt nauseous.

  "We took apart your artifacts in Southern Robotics HQ. We melted down the Paragon parts we found in your hangar. We melted down all the busts and pillars in the Spire. We're still missing a lot. Where's the rest of it? You thought you'd get off the colony, so you didn't give a shit about it blowing up. Now we know that's not going to happen. We've already built shuttles to escape in. If the missing Eternium isn't replaced, we're going to make sure you're the only one still here."

  Stock howled in terror.

  "No! No! No! Illegal! War crime! Illegal! I owned that Eternium! I bought it fair and square! Waters! Save me! Where are you Waters?"

  "Where is it? Give me a list of where all the Eternium is."

  He screamed and screamed, yelping so loudly that the door opened, and the guards peeked inside.

  Stock sobbed and sobbed.

 
"I don't know! I don't know where it is! Peter took it! Peter handled it!"

  "Who is Peter?"

  "He signed the Contract with me! He wanted to go to Earth. I wanted to become a god!"

  "The man in the orange pod?"

  "Yes! Yes! Peter knows! Peter knows where it is! I don't know! You can't kill me! You can't! Peter broke the law! Not me!"

  "Where is he?"

  Stock took a long and shaky breath. Then he giggled, suddenly changing course.

  "Oh, Peter! Yes! Peter is still loyal! He'll destroy you in a moment's notice! You need me! You need me! You won't escape Plenty, not while Peter is around!"

  Alex ran her fingers across the Eternium. With the Eternium Vein, she'd be ready no matter when Peter attacked.

  But she had a feeling Stock was lying. Peter wouldn't help him, not when Stock was in such poor condition. The big man had slammed his cooked and ruined hand into the wall of the Spire, shouting that he and his wife would return to Old Earth as he summoned his orange pod. The last time Alex went down to check, the massive hole in the basement was still there.

  For all she knew, the big man might have left the colony entirely. He was loyal to his family, not to Stock, and Stock couldn't help him now.

  A sly look crossed the defeated oligarch's face.

  "I could tell you where he is! But I have some demands first. You need to give me all of them if you want me to cooperate! Every single one!"

  He waved his hand in the air, merrily counting them off.

  "First! A proper meal! I'm a god. I shouldn't have to eat this slop."

  They were good and honest meals. Alex thought of the torn and broken hands. She thought of how thin the lost citizens of Block 12 had become while locked away in the dark.

  Stock continued counting, utterly oblivious to her anger.

  "Second! Servants! I can't live in this squalor! Third! A personal barber! My hair must emulate my Noble ancestors! Fourth! Restoration of my reputation. You must admit that I created the most jobs on Plenty. You must admit that the colony would have been worthless without my leadership. You must admit that I never broke a single law! There must be no fewer than five Eternium statues around the colony bearing my likeness. Eternium busts, just like those you arrogantly destroyed!"

  Alex couldn't hold back her shock at his last comment.

  "We need to replace your stolen Eternium! How can we find more of it?"

  He cackled, sounding just like a child throwing a tantrum.

  "You better find a way to make more then! I'd love to see you fools try without my brilliance! And I didn't get to the most important one yet. You must give me a personal Paragon so I can escape this wretched colony! If you don't appreciate genius, I'll find someone else who does! I'll go to Generosity! I have friends there. Plenty of friends who would be glad to have me! And you better give me my money back too! Theft! Theft! You took it away with theft! You stole it!"

  Alex stood up.

  He hadn't meant to, but Stock had completely tipped his hand. He wouldn't make these demands if he had a plan to escape. He was powerless now. Powerless and useless.

  Alex stared at the comical "inventions" he'd scrawled all over the papers on the ground. He was such an idiot. He'd always been an idiot. His Paragons didn't even work. It'd been everyone else on Plenty who'd made him a success.

  Her suspicions about Peter were more or less confirmed. The big man in the orange pod had been careful and ruthless. He was willing to kill a little boy. He'd cooked his hand defending himself and his wife. He had the iron will to command Eternium. He wouldn't hitch his wagon to a penniless and defeated Stock.

  Alex knew how to test her hypothesis.

  "How many machines did you create?"

  Stock sneered.

  "An army. You better watch out! Peter will rise again! He'll kill you for what you've done to me! He is the most loyal man on all of Plenty! Fulfill my demands, and I'll give him away. Otherwise, you die. You'll all die!"

  "How many machines. What's the number?"

  "Fifty-seven."

  He didn't even freeze. He answered without batting an eye, but she knew she had him. He was only bluffing. She and Jared had measured the amount, and he wasn't even close. He hadn't created fifty-seven machines.

  She stood.

  "Yeah. You don't know anything. Thanks."

  If there was a plot, Stock wasn't a part of it. He knew nothing about the ghosts and nothing about the missing Paragons.

  It didn't take long.

  He immediately began to panic.

  "Wait! No! Wait! No! Please! Wait!"

  Alex walked out the door without even turning around. She smiled and thanked the guards as Stock screamed and howled and begged.

  "Let me out! I never broke any laws! This is a war crime! A war crime! Look at the laws! Look at my Contracts! It was all legal! I followed every law!"

  Alex closed the door behind her and smiled.

  When they were finished with all this, they'd make new laws.

  ____

  When she returned, Nico had already left with his mom, but Jon and Alice were leaning eagerly from the backseat.

  "Are you alright?"

  "What happened?"

  "Was it Stock?"

  Alice looked her up and down with an exceptionally careful eye.

  "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

  Alex laughed.

  "Of course not. He couldn't do anything."

  The idea of Stock harming her was comical now. He'd lost everything, and she'd gotten far stronger. She might not have been able to confront him like that even a few weeks ago. Perhaps she really was becoming Plenty's ace.

  "It wasn't him. He's nothing without his money. I tested him."

  She explained Stock's demands and how she'd tested him on the missing machines.

  "He might still have been acting, but it really didn't seem that way."

  Jared nodded thoughtfully.

  "Yeah. That's what I thought. Did you find out anything about where the machines might be?"

  "He said he didn't know."

  "It wouldn't surprise me. My dad was always complaining about his poor organization."

  Alice cried out in surprise.

  "But it's Paragons! Why would he misplace Paragons!"

  Jared chuckled dryly.

  "He thought he had as many as he wanted. If he lost them, he could just go back to the core."

  Alex thought about all the Eternium busts they'd found strewn across his company's headquarters. The holy metal had been nothing to Stock. Just like the sinful goddess in the Spire and the lives of Plenty's people, Eternium was only a stepping stone to his goals.

  "He mentioned a man named Peter."

  Jared frowned.

  "Peter? He used to be in the Inner Circle."

  "Was he fired like you guys?"

  "No, no, not at all. He died a few months ago. There was an accident in his house. We all thought he was trying to do some private experiment."

  Alex felt a chill.

  Ghosts and a dead man.

  "That can't be right. I saw him."

  Jared's frown grew deeper.

  "Where?"

  "In the book-corridors. He was a big man with a beard, right? And he had a wife or a girlfriend. She seemed like a wife, at least?"

  "Tall? Beautiful? Silver hair?"

  "Yeah. She was very pregnant. They said they wanted to have their child on Old Earth."

  This time, it was Jared's turn to shiver.

  "They said she died too."

  Alice and Jon were the most frightened of all.

  "Is it ghosts? Is it more ghosts?"

  "No."

  They'd seemed very alive in the book-corridors.

  The librarian grimaced and kept the next part to themselves. The night of the ritual, Peter had carried a pale boy with him into the tunnels. Jon's brother had more or less died by Peter's hand.

  "He probably just faked his death so he could work on this."
/>   Jared nodded. His voice was tight and frustrated.

  "Yeah. But that doesn't help us nearly enough as it could have. His own house was destroyed. So he must have hidden somewhere, and the machines are probably still with him. You said he wanted to go to Old Earth right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then he probably was pilfering Eternium for himself too. Stock would never notice. His hideout could be anywhere on the colony."

  "It was probably somewhere on the early Blocks though, right? Otherwise, it would have been destroyed in the quakes. He'd know not to pick a place where the quakes might expose him. Imagine how angry Stock would get if Peter's hideout fell apart to reveal stolen Eternium."

  Jared brightened a little up at that, but not by much.

  "Unfortunately, that just brings us back to where we were before you talked to Stock. The early Blocks are going to be tough to search. There are a lot of big houses, and he could have been in almost any of them."

  "What do you mean?"

  Alex had been to Block 1 many times before to visit Jared and play on the simulator. The area's jealous residents would never allow Peter to hide Eternium in their homes.

  Jared sighed.

  "Most of the homes there were empty by the end."

  "What?"

  "Yeah. Well, so some were empty to start with. Just built out to look like a big neighborhood, but there weren't enough people who could afford to live there. And a lot of people lost their homes after they got fired."

  "How is that possible?"

  He shrugged.

  "Just living too large. There were people with five Paragons. They spent their money as soon as it came in."

  This time, it was the kids in the back who were shocked. Unlike Alex, they'd never seen the gaudiness of the early Blocks.

  "What?"

  "Five Paragons? How is that possible?"

  Jared shook his head and chucked.

  "You guys will see when we get there. I don't expect great results, but let's take a look until nighttime. Then we can go get more information on the ghosts. We'll call a town meeting first thing tomorrow morning."

  Alex nodded. It was still hard to shake the feeling that they had no idea what to do. She and Jared had no experience with leadership. They were just making things up as they went along.

  But then she thought of Stock again and felt better. Making things up as you went along was still far better than having to obey a monstrous fraud.