by J M Guillen
A pool of liquid?
From the way it shifted and bubbled, it might be.
Wyatt walked around one of the cylinders that clustered the edge of the pool of burbling murk, running his hand along the metal surface. As he passed, he shielded his eyes with his hand and peered into the soft, greenish glow.
“It’s—” His eyes went wide. “There’s a person in there!”
“The fuck you say.” I frowned.
Anya and I stepped around together.
Sure enough, a female figure floated in the urine-colored goo filling the vat. From below, that greenish light illuminated her naked form. Tubes ran into her nose, ears, and several points on her arms.
Anya took her readings. “I cannot say what all this is, but—”
“I can.” I heard the terror in my whisper. “Look. In the liquid.”
As one, we all peered into the metallic cylinder.
Wyatt and Anya saw what I’d seen at the exact same moment. I saw the cold horror drift into Wyatt’s eyes just as Anya’s breath caught.
“Oh. Oh, fuck me!” Wyatt’s tone held the heavy weariness of despair. I watched his shoulders deflate.
Inside the cylinder, swimming in the goo, I saw dozens, hundreds of pitch-black larvae, the largest no bigger than an earthworm. They undulated in the liquid. Some wound around each other to form impossible bodies before releasing to join up with others.
As I watched, a thick strand swam out of the woman’s nose.
“The Vyriim.” I shook my head, a dreamlike dread creeping over me. “Maybe some kind of incubator?”
“Confirmed.” Anya nodded. “This is almost certainly the larval state of Aberration 45171R.”
“That’s bad news.” I turned toward Anya, who studied the writhing larvae. “The idea of a container of larval Vyriim, all in a room designed to traverse different realities, disturbs me.”
“Kinda drives home the whole ‘invasive species’ angle, don’t it?” Wyatt paced to another of the cylinders.
“We saw how large these things can get. The idea that one of them breaks through to Rationality is horrific, but hundreds?” I peered closer at the larvae. “Truly monstrous.”
“Well, it ain’t a container,” Wyatt informed me. “It’s containers. There are people in several of these.”
“It’s like a fucking nursery.” I turned toward him. “If Anya is correct, they can just send this entire room wherever they want, setting these infected people loose in the population. It’s a damn invasion!”
“Yes.” Anya faced me. “That is not an assumption, Michael. Every piece of tactical data we have on the Vyriim state that colonization is their primary goal. They have never been encountered in these numbers so close to Rationality.” She shrugged. “I think their plan is apparent.”
All logic pointed in the same direction. There had to be hundreds of the creatures in a single cylinder. Positioned this close to Rationality, this wasn’t just a simple incursion.
More like the first volley in all-out war.
“Seems there’s only one place where humans would be the vessel of choice,” Wyatt responded.
“Not humans.” I heard the trace of alarm in Anya’s tone.
“What?” I turned toward her, my hand on one of my katana.
“I read a local spike, sub-Rational.” I watched as she brought her left hand up, pulling at nothingness. The furrow between her eyes grew deeper.
“Where, Anya?” I nodded at Wyatt, who began tapping on keys.
“It is small, but—” Anya glanced behind me, her eyes wide. “Oh, Michael.”
I turned to gaze at the woman adrift in the thick liquid. Her black hair floated around her, and her eyes blinked open.
Open, aware, and filled with an alien blackness.
She screamed.
2
The muffled sound rippled into expanding bubbles within the liquid. It echoed through me, a haunting cry that hunted me, stalked me through dark places in my shadowed mind.
I gaped, lost.
The woman had huge, dark eyes, no white within them. Only madness dwelt there.
“Not humans, not anymore,” Anya repeated. “These are Irrationals. The Vyriim have infected Irrational targets.”
“Do we have local telemetry?” Wyatt growled.
“Rationality negative two.” Anya turned to me. “That is from the ambient Rationality. We were already sub-Rational.” She paused. “Negative three.”
The world around us rippled and undulated like a serpent. Dizziness gripped me, a nausea that rippled from the center of my being.
“Fuck!” Wyatt yelped and hurled himself to one side.
A dark tentacle of shadow and talons writhed out of the gloom. I spun and saw its source, the shrouded pool at the center of the room. The eyeless, knotted strands of corded tendrils ended with wicked hooks and small, hungry suckers. They glistened with unknown ichor.
The large man stumbled backward in a blind panic.
“Wyatt!” I headed toward the center of the room as I pulled both katana off my back.
My sidekick fell against another of the cylinders. Within it floated a naked Asian man with hauntingly pale skin. The moment Wyatt slammed against his small chamber, the man’s eyes opened. Like the woman’s, they were orbs of haunted midnight.
The man’s mouth opened in a feral cry that bubbled through the liquid and sliced at my mind. Lonely, forsaken vastness lurked within that wail, an emptiness that filled me with despair.
As I drew closer, I saw tubes ran from the cylinders. They stretched across the ceiling, then dropped into the foul-smelling pool.
Immediately, another pair of hungry tendrils appeared in the darkness. They whipped around as if tasting the air.
I leapt forward and swung with one of my blades.
Nothing. They’d disappeared back into the shadows.
“What. The. Fuck?” I spun on one heel, tracking Anya in an instant.
“Multiple Irrational targets,” she continued. “Each being in these devices is a snarl in Rationality.”
“Lovely.” Wyatt pounded a few keys, his eyes reflecting the greenish light of the columns. “Damned ’Rats.” The Tangler began to whine.
Behind me, an explosion of viscous bubbles burst from what I had only suspected might be a pool of murk. It gurgled as if something beneath suddenly began to thrash.
Ssssshhhhhhmmmmsssss… Just as before, the Vyriim buzzed in my mind like whispering hornets. Their sibilant murmurs reminded me of the whispers of the long mad.
“They know we’re here.” I turned to face the pool.
“I hear ’em,” Wyatt confirmed.
“Negative five, gentlemen.” Anya’s voice grew tight.
Within her glass and metallic device, the dark-haired woman still screamed; gurgling cries of anger and horror echoed through the thick liquid. I kept expecting her to break forth or to use some fell power against us.
I glanced at Anya, then at the Irrats.
“Can we shut her up?” Wyatt peered at the dials and switches at the base of the woman’s cylinder even as he watched the shadows.
“We have no way to know what these do, Asset Guthrie.” Anya checked her readings. “For all we know—”
Blindingly fast, one of the cold, hooked tentacles swiped at us from the brine.
I leapt back and swung both katana but missed. As I watched that tentacle, a second swiped at my leg. Boney hooks tore through the fabric of my quasi-steel slacks.
“Fuck!” I cried and rolled away even as it tried to curl around my leg. Engaging the Wraith. I’d already begun the process as I linked.
“Oh, fuck this.” The high-pitched whine of the Tangler amped up.
Wyatt tapped so intently he didn’t see the shadowy tendril looming behind him.
I lunged again for the place in the darkness where the tentacle had just been.
Again nothing.
My leg throbbed in agony where those hooks carved into the meat, sending a
n icy sensation straight to my bones. My heart thundered as I wondered if those wicked teeth had somehow injected me with larvae.
No time. I ignored my wound, instead glancing around for the next tentacle.
Hhhhhshhhh mrrrrrrrsssss. I felt the aberration laughing, mocking us, like knives in my mind.
The woman still raged. That scream changed in pitch, from fury to primordial fear.
I didn’t even turn around. I had eyes only for those strands of coiled darkness. I watched, my blades held high.
“I’ll stop ’er,” Wyatt snarled.
“Will you?” I stepped sideways. “What’s she doing?”
“Pissing me off,” he grumbled. “I dunno, Hoss, but it ain’t good. That screamin’ gets under my skin.”
Ambient Rationality has dropped another two points, Anya informed us. The Irrational is certainly responsible.
“Jus’ a sec.” He tapped keys. “I can shut ’er up, but you’ll wanna move, Anya.”
WHUF. WHUF.
Before me, the sludge in the pool rippled sinuously, gurgling and bubbling. A tentacle whorled up to show an inhuman cluster of eyes. They blinked, gazing outward balefully.
Behind my mind, those whispers grew louder.
“If you’re doing something, you should wrap it up,” I hissed. “I’d love for you to be available when the murder-tentacles decide to attack.”
Wyatt continued keying something up, his fingers flying. As he worked, the woman’s screams grew louder, changing into wails of agony.
“Jus’ a sec,” he repeated.
I focused on the burbling pool, knowing I likely didn’t want to see what Wyatt unleashed. While the Tangler hadn’t been intended for offensive use, he could make blood boil, reduce the water in living cells to absolute zero, or forced bones into a gaseous state. Such options were never pretty.
I didn’t need to watch.
The woman’s scream choked off, liquid and wet. The sound ended suddenly with a final gurgling gasp.
“There,” Wyatt spat. “Done.”
As the woman’s strangled cries silenced, however, I saw the briny pool ripple. The muttering in the back of my mind shattered into angry shards.
Wyatt, that may not have been—
I hadn’t even finished my link when the Vyriim exploded from the brine. It splashed globules of stinking filth across us. Grotesqueness dragged itself from the pool and swam into the air, an immense, vaguely squid-shaped mass of bundled, graceful tentacles.
Wordless madness screamed in my mind.
With less than a thought, I had the Adept in play. I tumbled across the floor, aiming to be directly beneath the bundled mass. Perhaps if I struck at its center with my blades—
But it had already moved, arcing through the air like some terrible denizen of the deep ocean. A few tentacles broke off to form smaller clusters, swarming before they rejoined the whole. The creatures surrounded us in a cloud, a thunderstorm of ichorous fury. Their menacing whispers harried us, sharp and spiteful.
With an urgent intensity, that storm bore down on Wyatt, dozens of hungry, writhing tendrils.
He didn’t have a chance.
“Stay back, assholes!” He ducked, dodging a grasping tendril, only to hurl himself sideways to avoid another. Wyatt tapped madly at his crescent-shaped keyboard, almost unconsciously gearing up his spikes.
I watched in horror as one tentacle wrapped around his waist and two more grabbed a leg.
You can fuck right off! Fury and unreasoning panic echoed through his link. The Tangler whirred.
WHUF, WHUF, WHUF. One of the spikes flew wild and pierced the side of another glass-and-metal cylinder. A second tore into one of the canisters against the far wall, which immediately began to seep fluorescing blue fluid.
Wyatt! I sprinted toward him, katana out.
My friend cursed and spun, squirming free of one of the Vyriim that grasped at him. But the vile things obviously knew full well who had attacked the Irrat woman, as another clutch of them swarmed from the opposite side of the room, eagerly wriggling and writhing.
Using every bit of fluid grace the Adept would grant me, I vaulted forward and swung the katana. With one strike I severed a knot of the slime-coated creatures, which mentally screamed as they fell around me, squirming on the floor.
This act sprayed me with their sticky ichor, the scent making me retch.
Michael!
Anya’s warning came just in time, as I managed to duck a second group of the aberrations. I hurled myself to the left, slipping a bit in the gore from the sliced and dying Vyriim.
That one tiny slip proved to be one microsecond too long. The clutch of glistening black tendrils fell on Wyatt, grasping both arms and a leg.
Oh shi— Wyatt’s link thrummed with primal terror and mental anguish.
The barbed tentacles shredded both clothing and flesh.
In an instant, that miscreation swam back toward the pool of bubbling brine, dragging Wyatt along as he bled.
I felt the adrenaline in his body, the agony of the hooks, and the terror of death.
No, no, no! Still beneath the Wraith, I leapt forward, blades flashing. I couldn’t possibly reach the tentacles that held Wyatt, but I had to try. I sliced through a small cluster of the serpentine filth, my blades cutting cleanly.
A yellowish ichor splashed the floor, and the severed tentacles continued to writhe, undulating where they lay. They screamed in my mind. Those wriggling parts spasmed, hungry tendrils seeking.
It seemed like the aberrations had sensed me through the Wraith in the past, though I still had no idea how that could even be possible. Now, however, the ichor-coated lamentations lashed out blindly, even though their filth covered me.
Instead, they focused on Anya.
Like a nightmarish cuttlefish, they swarmed toward her, appendages writhing.
No! I spun toward it, slicing as I came.
Three more of the rubbery tentacles fell before my blade, spraying a mist of otherworldly viscera.
I’d swung again when Anya screamed, sending shards of ice through my Crown, cutting me to the quick.
Michael! The link carried with it shock and sensation. I felt the fiery pain as gore-coated hooks dug into her, as they shredded part of her white tactical gear and the skin on her arms and legs.
The awareness crushed me, and I suffered a horrified realization. The hooks had a terrible purpose: They removed any barrier between the creature and any orifices it could use to claim a body as its own.
It all happened so quickly. My connection to my friends was so intimate I experienced their pain and fear as smaller tendrils sought ingress to their bodies. I felt Wyatt’s panicked link as a slender strand snaked its way up his leg—
No. No! No! Nooo!
It slid around his more… intimate areas, seeking only a means of ingress.
I lunged forward in an attempt to reach the tentacles that held him, but the entire tangle moved. It again swam back toward the pool of slime, hauling him along.
In a shining moment of clarity, I realized what would happen. It would retreat into the brine, dragging my friends with it into those murky depths.
They would be truly lost.
I only had a moment to think. Anya and Wyatt were across the room from each other; I couldn’t get to both of them. Every time I struck with my blades, more tentacles sprouted in their place. No, I needed something different—
Frantically, I scoured through my pockets, my mind whirling.
My hand came to rest on the cool disk of the Tabula Rasa—the one I’d grabbed in the airport.
“Fuck yes.” I’d completely forgotten I had it.
A last-ditch device, the Tabula Rasa banished all matter, leaving a spherical void in its place. The device created an unstable axiomatic field, and then vented the matter into the aetheric tides.
It could destroy this entire room, Vyriim and imprisoned Irrats alike.
Of course, if I wasn’t careful, it’d slaughter us jus
t as easily. The thought of being adrift in the aetheric tides didn’t exactly appeal.
“Mich—” The Vyriim had Anya in the air when her cry cut wetly off with a strangled gurgle.
As it carried her toward the pool, the Vyriim forced one of its thick, greasy tentacles down her throat, suffocating her. She gagged around the invading filth as tears streamed down her face.
It savaged her, forcing its way into her body.
Anya squirmed, helpless.
I couldn’t look away, stunned at the sight.
“Fuck this.” I shook my head.
I’d rather us all be dead than hosts for these monsters.
My fingers grasped the small disk of the Tabula Rasa and pulled it out, while I watched the slithering aberrations. I pulled the silver lever along one side and began twisting dials.
I knew I wouldn’t get the settings exactly right; I couldn’t possibly judge distance perfectly in this gloom.
“No time for exact,” I growled to myself. My breath came fast, my limbs felt full of lead, and my head pounded with my thundering pulse.
I sprinted, desperate.
I only had one chance.
3
As the device began to heat in my hand, I leapt toward the main body of the monstrosity. The undulating tendrils had all gathered together, squirming and slithering. I reached the gigantic clutch just before it slithered into the pool.
Three of the tentacles curled toward me, as if unconsciously sensing my presence. I stepped carefully, dodging one’s casual swipe.
I tried not to retch as I pushed as deeply into the mucous-laden knot as I could. The rot of low tide combined with the sensation of dozens of tentacles slithering against me had bile rising in my throat.
I buried my arm to the shoulder before I triggered the Rasa.
I felt the hard CLICK as the device engaged.
Tabula Rasa initiated, my Crown reported. Please retreat to a safe distance.
“You think?” I cried. With revulsion burning in my blood, I yanked at my arm.
For a terrifying moment, it stuck.
I yanked again.
“Oh, fuck me!” The second I’d touched the strands they’d wrapped themselves around my arm and sank tiny barbs into my jacket. I pulled again but to no avail. The Vyriim’s barbs bit into my flesh.