by J M Guillen
“It is you,” she whispered. “Fucking Gentlemen.”
“The worst what now?” I turned from the woman to Wyatt.
“You aren’t here to save me, I’ll bet.” She coughed a wet gurgle that brought up thick yellow mucus. It stank of low tide and bile.
“Well.” I stared at the woman—the Irrat? I didn’t know what to think. She’d been in the tube, and our working theory indicated the Vyriim were using Irrats as hosts.
I felt as if I’d lost control somewhere.
“Are we?” I gaped at Wyatt. “Here… to save her?” The large man obviously had intel I didn’t.
If we can, he linked. If she’ll let us. She’s good people.
Well, of course we can. We can just knock her ass out if we have to. I shrugged and holstered my katana. What’s the deal?
“You don’t get it.” He adjusted his hat, frowning. “She’s good people,” he repeated.
“You…” I stared at the nude woman and then my friend. “Is this some kind of Firenzei thing? Are you collecting all the wrong kinds of friends?”
“What’s the deal with you even being here?” Wyatt asked her, sounding legitimately concerned.
“Just another example of you folk screwing over the little guy.” She shrugged and flapped her hand irritably. “Girl. Whatever. You get it.”
“That’s not really telling us what the deal is,” Wyatt observed.
“Garret can fuck himself in his Ass-hat ass. That’s the deal!” The young woman coughed again, even as she snapped at Wyatt, “Dude double crossed me. Left me to rot with these Sadhana apes.” She paused. “Taught me all I need to know about you people.”
“This place is…” I took a step forward as I searched for the right words, “horrifically dangerous. Maybe you should come with us.”
“We’re talking here,” the young woman snarled at me. “Maybe you should step back.”
“We don’t have time for this,” I fumed, waving my arm. “We can make you come peaceably.”
Behind us, I heard gunfire as Anya held the door.
Bishop. Wyatt’s link carried a soft warning.
“Can you.” She gave me a stark, bitter smile. It cut like the wind in winter.
“We can,” I confirmed.
“How about you make a saving throw, Ass-hat?”
“What?” I blinked, confused both by the young woman’s words and her rapid transformation.
In an instant, her eyes burned ice and ember blue, bluer than the sky in summer. That dark hair lifted, flowing around her, teased by an unnatural and spectral wind.
Something screamed, something dark and terrible. For a moment, I felt caught in a hurricane, an endless storm of wind and lamentation.
Her eyes.
Inhuman. Terrifying.
Irrational.
“Elizabeth,” Wyatt cautioned, “you can’t—”
“It’s Liz,” she snarled at him, her words echoing through wind-filled caverns. “And I’ve had about enough of being told what I can’t do!”
An azure symbol burned in front of her for the briefest instant, a sign in some ancient and forgotten tongue. With the fury of a wrathful god, a sharp and savage tempest pummeled into me, a strike like a wayward comet. I didn’t even have time to blink before I found myself hurled backward, ass over ankles.
I landed on the far side of the Broodwell, slamming into the ground.
I crumpled like a puppet.
Violet light washed over me, sharp and stark. I found myself blinking at it, mesmerized by that discordant shine. The shine of Wyatt’s stasis field flickered faster.
After an eternal moment, I pushed myself up.
Wyatt?
I got it here, Bishop. I know the lady. I’ll be right back.
I’ll check on Anya, then. I turned, wondering how he had come to know an Irrat?
Mid-thought, I found myself face to face with an imprisoned woman, still within her mechanical incubator. That dark gaze glared at me, raw hatred in her eyes. She pounded one naked fist against the glass.
“Oh. Um, hey.” I took a quick sidestep, keeping my eyes on hers.
I couldn’t help but notice one stark fact.
The amber ichor had drained almost entirely from the container. The nude Irrat, along with several of her companions, appeared to be completely aware.
Awake.
Filled with a dark and terrible fury.
With a sibilant hiss and wrathful verdant light, the cylindrical incubators began to open.
Extraction
You’d better fall the fuck back, Asset, Stern barked in my mind.
Yeah. I watched as three more of the incubators opened. Billowing steam pooled out from the devices as naked forms stumbled forth.
I bravely ran away.
We had one overriding objective after all: remain whole and functional. At this point in the game we weren’t fit to take on a squadron of Irrats by ourselves. We just needed to hold out. When the extraction team arrived, we’d gain the help we’d need to make away with the data we’d worked so hard to gather.
I toggled both the Wraith and the Adept. As cool shadows settled over me, I began to move back toward the same door we’d entered by, the door Anya held. Behind me, Wyatt’s stasis field pulsed, throbbing and thrumming.
My mind scrambled. That remained our greatest threat, even though it seemed handled for now.
I hoped.
We had no way of knowing how long the stasis field might hold the drone. This singular question mattered more than any other, but I couldn’t lend it any attention.
I knew what we needed to do.
This is a wait out the clock kind of deal, I linked my cadre. Our primary objective is to stay alive.
Three new hostiles have arrived outside this door. I heard Anya fire more shots. However, they remain deterred.
I’m on my way, Anya.
Understood.
What about you, Guthrie? I leapt past Firenzei’s dead body. Did you deal with your lady friend over there?
WHUF. WHUF. The echoing sound of the Tangler answered me. Moments later, Wyatt linked, Situation handled, Bishop. Yer not gonna have to worry about that particular Irrat again.
Good man, I congratulated him. For a moment there, I worried you’d insist we rescue an Irrat.
That young lady is far beyond my ability to rescue, Wyatt replied. But the issue’s resolved.
Good, I replied.
However, I do have something like two dozen hostiles stumbling out of their glass coffins over here.
Use those spikes. Keep yourself safe.
Any suggestions?
Before I could respond, a shadowy figure fell on me.
He lunged from my left. Fast. Faster than I could track with my eye, even running the Adept.
Michael!
Lines of agonizing fire sliced across my upper arm. With one swipe, the shambling figure disintegrated part of my quasi-steel suit, rending the flesh beneath.
“Fuck!” I threw myself backward, stunned at the sudden pain. “How do you assholes keep finding me?” I reached for the lone katana strapped to my back but stumbled backward over Firenzei’s corpse.
As I sprawled to the ground, I glanced up to behold the entirety of the figure.
Certainly, a human silhouette remained within, yet that form stood so deep inside a shroud of shadows I couldn’t make out any details or features. Darkness flickered around it, almost as if alight. It reminded me exactly of how a flame might appear burning around a human body, but this fire crackled with darkness, a pyre blacker than the most lonesome and empty night.
That malefic shadow had touched me.
The thing held no weapon. No, the creature used that dark fire as its weapon. It had dissolved my quasi-steel sleeve with a touch.
Creature.
For, yes, while a human shape lurked within, the darkness surrounding it had never been human. The gaunt figure stood three meters tall and wore the horns of an elk. Its eyes screamed with t
hat same darkness, bleeding away everything I’d ever known which might be good or true.
“Shit!” I scuttled backward, fleeing frantically. I had no doubt little more than a touch would open my chest or dissolve my skull.
WHUF. WHUF. Wyatt’s gear chuffed in the background as he swore prolifically.
The entity before me whispered. No words, just blasphemous shadows, things which poisoned the mind.
Bishop! The Adjunct, still holding the aspect of Cap’n Stern, barked in my mind. Watch your shit, son!
With that, the Adjunct threw down a crosshair marker on my visual array. Then another. And a third. Each showed another Irrat moving closer as I scrambled in the shadows.
“Michael Bishop,” chirped a young woman to my left. She leaned against one of the room’s columns. “I can’t believe you don’t understand.”
“What?” I pushed myself to a standing position, my lone katana quavering in one hand.
“We can’t see you.” She turned toward me, her head an umbra of angry shadows. “The Unity can. You can’t hide your thoughts like you hide your body.”
CHHHHhsssSsssshhh… I heard them then, just as before. Those sharp, sibilant whispers echoed and gamboled behind my mind. They sounded every bit as clear as the first time I’d heard them, back when we’d wrecked the Legacy.
“Ah, you grasp the truth.” A grandfatherly figure spoke with a rich baritone from behind the elk-horned entity.
But his face. Those eyes spoke of knowledge, discordant and incomprehensible. His mouth stretched into a rictus grin, the smile of a man who had gazed into the eyes of eternity and found himself broken on its shadowed shores.
“The Unity isn’t something the mind of man can run from. We hear the rambling chaos you call thought. We feel the impressions you feel, your simple emotions. Your mind is like a child playing with clay,” he rumbled low in his throat.
Michael? Anya’s link came like quicksilver in my mind. Do you require assistance?
“You believe we wish you harm,” the man continued, “that we are adversaries.”
“Aren’t we?” I spat at him.
“Naturally not.” He clucked. “If we wanted to kill you, we’d already have done so.”
I couldn’t help but hear Firenzei in my mind as the man spoke.
“They wanted your pathetic asses alive,” he crowed. “All of you. Why do you think I haven’t slaughtered you yet?”
The horned figure whispered again, sharp, undying sounds. They made shapes in my mind, visions that haunted and hunted.
“So what is it you want?” I clung tighter to my katana, knowing the answer in my heart.
“We want to take you home, Michael.” This from the young woman, the dark aurora over her burning and beguiling. “It’s time. You know it’s time.”
Kid! Stern growled in my mind but too late.
I’d been so surprised, so overwhelmed by the calm certainty in their demeanor, I hadn’t realized the truth.
They’d flanked me.
I yelped as hands took me from behind, hands so strong they lifted me off my feet. I hadn’t even known they were there. Three sets of hands—no, four. One grabbed my wrist and twisted. My katana fell to the ground.
They dragged me backward.
“This, then, is the inevitable outcome.” The older man walked behind us as they dragged me, kicking and cursing. “Some things are meant to be, Michael Bishop.”
The p-pool. The fuc-king lag-goon. Wyatt’s link came scattered, broken. I felt his heart pounding.
Asset Guthrie? Anya’s link cut into my mind. What is happening?
Exquisite, the large man linked back, the thought filled with reverence. It’s beautiful.
What’s going on over there, Guthrie? I flicked off the Wraith and squirmed madly, attempting to fight off the pack of Irrats dragging me backward. For a moment, I thought I might pull free…
But no. Fingers like iron cords wrapped around my arms. One squat figure held my right leg and stared at me with eyes that glinted like knives.
I snarled up at the gentleman walking behind us, dignified and calm. His skin glistened from the goop in the incubator. Beside and behind him, the horned beast loped along, shrouded in shadow. To his other side—
“Hello to you, cowboy.” The Russian man gave a small, fierce smile. “Hoping you loving coming home.”
“Are you serious?” I glared at the older man. “Please don’t kill me while making me listen to Petrov here butcher English.”
“We aren’t killing you. We’ve explained that.” The man’s rictus grin formed a tight little line. “Look. Look and see what the future holds, Michael.”
They pushed me forward a few more steps, and a veil parted in my mind. Sweetness burned there, a kind of infinite joy and belonging I hadn’t understood before.
Kid? A voice I thought I should recognize cracked like a whip in my skull. You need to focus here.
They turned me, roughly. The nude young woman, the one with a halo of amber fire, wrested me around while the squat figure pushed down on my shoulder.
I fell to my knees.
“Look,” the woman hissed. “See.”
I looked. I gasped at the magnificence. Grasped it.
In an instant, I understood.
The Vyriim floated above the cerulean and radiant pool, swimming serenely. In the center, the largest knot of them contained strands as thick as tree trunks that danced and swirled fluidly through the air. Their every motion described beauty, etched an image of glory and wonder in my mind.
Impossible. My eyes grew wide.
The immense age of these creatures rolled over me in a sensation of yawning eternity, like a psychic weight. The infinity of their grace left me in stunned awe.
I felt impossibly small before them, an insignificant ember before a roaring and timeless fire.
Dozens of them gamboled there, perfect and peaceful. The psychic pressure of them drenched me in a syrupy warmth, the way a flower gives off scent.
Across the way, I saw Wyatt gape at the fluid motion of them, the terrible beauty. He’d fallen to his knees in broken amazement. His eye shone like a mirror, and the Tangler hung loose in his fingers.
Others knelt with him. Shambling shapes and graceful figures, men, women, and strangeling mixes. As one, they gazed up at the gyrating beauty; as one, they worshipped.
We couldn’t have known, not really. But these were our brothers and sisters, part of the Unity.
“It’s time to come home, Michael.” The haloed woman gazed down on me, smiling with something like affection. “You belong with us. You have always belonged.”
A gnarled knot of the angelic forms split off from the main pod, a graceful dance. They took one turn around the pool and then swam toward me, all slick tendril and writhing hook.
This made sense. My life fell into place around me, perfect symmetry.
Without any volition of my own, I tilted my head up. I opened my mouth in wonder, in supplication, in desire.
From behind, automatic fire. Cries of pain.
“She’s immune!” This cry echoed from kilometers away. “We had no way to—!”
“I told you we needed to handle the witch!” someone snarled, but I didn’t bother to see whom.
My entire focus, everything I’d been born for, loomed before me.
It drifted closer, welcoming.
More automatic fire thundered behind me.
The woman to my side shrieked and fell, a splash of sanguine scarlet on the ground. The little squat man turned and sprinted away from me, growling.
None of those things mattered.
You little shit-stain! Stand up! The angry voice hammered in my mind. Bishop, you really need to man the fuck up here!
Michael, a soft voice, a voice like a river’s song, whispered in my mind. Please respond.
The Vyriim drifted closer, and I smelled the sweetness that wafted off them. True joy bubbled in my heart.
I remembered the Unity, tha
t bliss Firenzei held. Soon, I knew, it would belong to me.
Bullets sang over my head, slicing into the undulating mass. Violet and gray ichor splattered from the creatures, and I felt them scream, horror and agony devouring my mind.
“No,” I gasped. I stood and took a single step forward, unconsciously reaching out to them.
The Vyriim hissed, malformed little mouths opening and closing where strands met, mutating into a maw. It lurched back from me, fleeing the pain of the bullets.
With it, that syrupy sweetness receded from my mind, pulling back like an ancient and inevitable tide. It left me feeling hollow, incomplete.
Unwhole.
Bishop? a confused drawl whispered in my mind. What in the hell was that?
“Michael.” A hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me back. I turned and saw a blonde woman th—
Anya. I saw Anya there.
She leaned against one of the columns, obviously not applying all her weight to both legs. She held an automatic pistol in each hand.
I wept and shuddered, yet I couldn’t say why.
“Here.” She held one out to me. It is nearly empty, but it is better than nothing.
An automatic reflex, I took the pistol. I couldn’t stop staring at her eyes.
“There!” The cry came from behind us.
Anya turned, raising her weapon.
The crack of gunfire echoed in the room as she slaughtered one of the Irrats.
I wanted… Wyatt linked, still disconnected and lost. Oh, God. He pushed himself up, securing his hat on his head.
The figures of several Irrats turned toward him.
Wyatt backed away, realizing our situation. Initiating spikes. Stand clear.
Seconds later, I heard the hissing bursts as he set them off. Around him, like frozen sculptures, nearly a score of figures stood frozen solid. Wyatt had managed to put his spikes to a terrible function.
I almost felt guilty.
“It is not being over yet,” the mad Russian snarled from behind me.
I turned, raising the pistol Anya gave me, and fired.
The man ducked behind whirring machinery and cackled.
Bullets sang and pinged off the metal.