by J M Guillen
“What?” I hated how tiny my voice sounded. “I mean, how—?”
“I believe you, if it matters.” The Designate cocked his head at me, peering through the eyes of his mask. “When you say you saw how Isabella was broken, how she was brought upon the Road.” I heard the mocking leer in his tone.
“Yeah?” I took a step backward and tried to toggle the Adept in my Crown.
Desired packet is offline.
“Because I lived through my own Becoming, you see.” He took another step. “They brought the Noctiis to bear, forced me to read the Names of Lamentation.”
Bishop? Rachel linked frantically.
Louder than the link, came, “Grooooak! GROOak!” The call echoed through the passageway.
He can hear your links, I sent to my cadre. Don’t worry about me. Fight for your fucking lives!
WHUF! and gunfire were my only answers.
“I know agony, Michael Bishop.” If Davis did hear that link, he didn’t acknowledge it. “They broke this false body, they savagely raped my mind. They took everything I was, and then, when I had nothing left…” That capering lilt returned to his voice. “Why, then, I found that which was Unfathomable.”
I gripped my blades, panic in my throat. For my entire career, I’d relied upon my packets, become the graceful shadow of death with the Adept. If the Designate could just disengage my neuralware, I didn’t know if—
I stopped, and my gaze dropped, for just a moment, to the weapons I held. These weren’t just any old katana. These were Shogun-class weapons. Hell, I had viral mecha in my system linking me to them, but I’d never really leaned on them. I’d had the Adept, after all.
Those viral mecha weren’t part of any neuralware packets. I didn’t know if the Designate could affect them at all.
“You’re the perfect ending to it all.” He took another step and almost faltered. “It’s perfect, don’t you see? You, here? When you were one of those who abandoned me?”
“I don’t understand.” I brought up my mecha dialogues, even as I stepped back again. Could the Designate even see the Shogun? The weaponry hadn’t existed all those years ago, and I doubted he’d had a firmware update.
“You will.” The joy had left the Designate’s voice, as he lurched ever closer. “I will show you, all too soon—!”
I tapped the Shogun mecha and initialized the burn protocols. As they ignited, I felt oneness with the weapons, as if they were extensions of myself.
I leapt.
I did not leap with the grace of a shadow, nor with elegance and speed. This leap simply had Michael Bishop behind it, attempting to mimic the things I’d done in the past.
Poorly.
But the Shogun? The blades felt solid in my hands, extensions of my will.
I spun, moving far more quickly than the shuffling Designate could ever hope to. My blade slid into his chest and cracked through his breastbone. He gasped, froze in place, and shuddered with agony and ecstasy.
“Oh, Michael.” He trembled, and blood came from the mouth of his mask. “Neither regret nor forethought. Not in your nature.” Davis laughed—or tried to. With a length of electresium through his lung, all he could do was froth blood as he gasped.
The Designate fell dead.
“AROOOOOOOOOccck!” the three meter tall, sallow horror roared as the Designate fell, a cry that echoed above and through the dozens of Groooaaks I heard from the other side of the hallway.
Like a freight train, it lumbered toward me as those white eyes glared through me. Those hooks rose.
“Fuck this.” I dove to one side and toggled the Wraith. I didn’t have a lot of interest in fighting Hooky at all, much less by myself and down a packet.
Yet he still came. I scrambled toward the crystalline window, terrified that, like Amir, he could somehow see through—
Realization dawned upon me. It felt like an anvil, right between the eyes. Ever since we’d agreed to star in this little shit show, Amir and his asshole friends had been dismissing our packets as if they meant nothing at all. We’d bitched about it, and even Rachel, the single smartest Caduceus I’d ever met, had no clue how it’d been done.
But I fucking knew now, didn’t I? Of course long-range telemetry was down; of course the cult could meddle with our tech.
And, of course, they’d understood enough of our natures to trick me into delivering the Noctiis straight to Facility Prime.
They’d had a Designate on the team for over five years.
Fuck, Amir might know more about our tech than I did.
As I watched the sallow-skinned giant slow to a lumber, I pressed myself against the cool crystal.
It didn’t seem to search for me, not really. Instead, it crept toward the Designate, as if sorrowful.
Again, as I had earlier, I thought I could discern some intellect there, even if an intellect vastly different from human.
The monstrous thing bent over him and gazed down upon the corpse. Delicately, it grasped the mask and pulled it free.
Unlike the copper masks the Darkened Road placed upon their half-dead fodder, this one hadn’t been seared to Davis’ flesh.
The creature pulled it free and peered at it. Its motions seemed quite specific, purposeful. With something that bordered upon reverence, it pulled the mask to its own face.
“No.” I couldn’t help but shake my head.
Bishop! Wyatt roared in my mind. I’ve got them held at bay, Hoss, but we need to pull back.
Do it! I linked. But—
The shadows of a thousand horrors burst from that mask. They screamed, wailing with a pain and triumph I couldn’t comprehend.
I dropped to one knee at the power of it, knocked back by a furor like a dark and terrible wind.
The eyes within that mask eyes shone, a dismal dirge. They gazed upon me, upon all things, with disdain.
“No…” I didn’t know what I witnessed, not really, but that light capered and screamed terrible delight. The shadows cast forth from it were unclean things.
I froze in mid-stride, unable to look away.
Death is but a doorway, Michael Bishop. The monstrosity stared straight at me as Davis’ words burned into my mind. One I shall escort you through.
4
Patch incoming, I linked as I frantically cobbled together the events of the past few moments along with ideas, old memories, and concepts that I hadn’t quite paid attention to yet. It was a broken patch, an amalgam of bizarre ideas.
But damn it, things finally made sense.
I had no true understanding of how the Designate hadn’t died in the Yucatán, and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t explain how he retained the ability to alter our Facility tech while adrift from the Lattice, or how the thing had linked without a Crown, but there it was.
This asshole’s existence explained everything.
I’m sending this one directly to memory, I informed them. I’m fairly certain you all have the room. If you don’t, make the room. This matters.
Understood, Michael. Anya’s response sounded clear in my mind, even among the gunshots I knew must be hers.
Stay alive. I’ll be there when I can. I sent the patch.
I wish you could see the expression on your puling face. The creature lumbered toward me and that inhuman mask still bore the slightest hint of eldritch light. You see what I mean now. You and yours were slaughtered the moment you stepped into the city.
“The city?” I slid along the crystalline wall, backing away as best I could. I disengaged the Wraith, recognizing that the packet was effectively useless.
It rises. I felt the savage mockery in that link. From beneath its prison of salt and water, the temple city of M’elphodor slumbers no more.
“M’elphodor?” I shook my head in confusion.
The temple city holds many secrets, 108. They Who Coil in Shadow dwell there. They have schemed for its rebirth for thousands of years.
“That…” I backed further away, shifting toward the darkness. “That
’s impossible. You can’t expect that you’re, what, raising a city from the floor of the ocean?”
Not I, Asset. The monstrosity paused, one foot raised, and tilted its head at me. The one you call a Variance is powerful beyond comprehension. He is the Road, and I merely walk upon it.
“GROAAK!” The sound came from directly behind me, gurgling from the shadows.
I whirled, almost too late.
The smaller toad-strocity leapt upon me, hurling itself from the darkness.
In just another moment, it would have borne me to the ground. Instead, I managed to get one of my katana up and frantically swung at the thing in panic and desperation.
I missed and dropped the sword.
The nightmarish composite grappled me and opened that wide, fetid mouth. Within, hundreds of serrated teeth gleamed in the faint light, and the scent all but overwhelmed me.
It hissed, all fury and inhuman desire.
Even now, the next generation of the Dwellers in the Brine sleep within their hosts. The Designate-toad linked as I struggled with its dark-skinned brethren. Rome, Istanbul, Athens. Tunis, Algiers. The thing chuckled in my mind, a low, guttural sound. Did you truly believe that you had found all of the vessels?
The thought horrified me, yet I had other difficulties in the moment. The frog-aberration had grasped me around the neck and was attempting to choke the life from me.
It lunged its head forward in a bid to bite me at every opportunity.
“Fuck!” I squirmed sideways and knocked the grotesque mutation off balance. As it stumbled, I sidestepped and drew one of my kinetic disruptors.
Without the Adept, I didn’t have nearly my typical speed. Yet I had enough to spin the weapon toward the freak and fire a kinetic pulse straight through its stomach.
Like a marble traveling at Mach ten, the burst exploded through the creature and out its back.
It gave a guttural cry, one of rage and wrath, and fell to the floor, twitching. Immediately, I saw the slimy beast’s horrific young as they began to squirm on the corpse’s back.
This is the fate of hundreds, Michael. Those words were woven with sadistic glee. As the moon crests the Shattered Gate, the dark passages of time open yet again.
Even as the Designate spoke from a giant, haunted toad that stood there as if we simply shared a conversation about weather or the politics, the wriggling young worked their way free from their parent. They shone black, covered in ichor as they burst forth.
I toggled the focus on my disruptor wide and aimed down at them. Two bursts, then a third, and the wormlike tendrils writhed no more, having been reduced to a pulpy goo.
“We may not have found them all.” I glanced up at the body the Designate inhabited. “But we aren’t the only ones on the job, I can promise you that,” I growled to buy the few precious seconds I required.
Pulling up the patch I’d just sent, I added this tiny tidbit and sent it off to the Crown of one Demetrius Stone.
I didn’t even ask. If he found it rude, so be it.
Alpha? His link came, satiny smooth and smoky, like the voice of a lounge singer.
Not now! Deal with that! I spun the disruptor toward the Designate’s hostbody, with the hope of blowing it apart.
Will comply. Stone vanished from my Crown.
Arrogance. The mask couldn’t smile, but I heard it in the miscreation’s link. Some things are a certainty, Michael Bishop. It lurched and leaped forward with savage abandon.
So far, the Davis-strocity had proven his willingness to simply stand there and yammer on. When he crouched down and leapt, propelling himself with those massive, saggy legs, I hadn’t expected that he might be able to move four meters in a single leap.
I fired in surprise but clumsily. The shot went wide.
As it landed, the sallow thing struck me full across the face with the backside of those hook-blades.
Sharp agony and crimson pain bloomed into being as I fell backward and landed on the corpse of the smaller toad-licious horror and its slaughtered young. The stench roiled my stomach. My disruptor fell and skittered into the darkness.
I think you shall live, for now. The amalgamation tilted its head, as if listening. Can you hear what’s happening to your friends?
I couldn’t, not exactly. The nigh constant GROOOAKs were accentuated by a series of WHUF!s, WHOMPs, and the barks of Anya’s automatics.
I can tell you. Its tone oozed smug satisfaction. They’re dying. Not this moment, perhaps, but there’s far too many of Throdlum’s Children. Each one that dies is the vessel for a dozen, dozen more, swarming about your fellow Assets. He paused, and I heard Rachel cry out, some wordless wail of fury.
He was right.
I pushed myself up. If I sprinted, I could get to them. Perhaps—
No. The great, sallow thing swung one of its wicked hooks, that single word a mocking sneer. The weapon bit into my thigh, tore deeply into the muscle, and scraped against the bone.
Red, red agony pulsed in my body, throbbing with my terrified heartbeat.
I screamed.
Alpha? Rachel panicked.
You will live, and you will hear them die. You will not be able to abandon them, not as you abandoned me.
Mecha… It was all I had the strength to link to Rachel.
You will watch as they twitch and writhe in agony; as the Dwellers’ spawn take their bodies. They shall be rewrought, cast anew.
I scrambled and reached for my other disruptor.
Realizing my play, the Designate-toad bore down upon its hook and pushed it deeper, twisting.
That blade sliced through the back of my leg and wetly tore at muscle and sinew.
Again I screamed, the entire world a red haze.
I’m tasking mecha for pain management, Rachel linked. We’re fine for the moment. Wyatt has us behind stasis fields, and—
The link cut off.
Pain management? Davis’s cheery madness chortled in my mind. We can overcome that.
With that, the aberration pulled on the wicked weapon embedded in my leg and lifted me aloft.
I screamed again as agony shattered through my body.
The weapon tore deeper into me, my body weight ripping the wound further.
Madly, I scrambled for my other disruptor, yet between the agony and the Designate jostling me sadistically about, I fumbled it to the ground.
Your friends are in no way ‘fine,’ he sneered over the link. Tens of thousands of Throdlum’s spawn remain within the sunken city. If they aren’t being slaughtered in this moment, it is only a matter of time.
Rachel’s mecha began to kick in, and I actually seemed capable of holding onto a coherent thought. I twisted, hoping to reach my one remaining katana…
But no. The Designate, perhaps because he sensed my plan, jiggled his weapon again.
I couldn’t quite reach my blade and fell back down. My jacket fell halfway over my head and, along with it, the pack of viral mecha.
My eyes went wide.
I could win this.
When I yanked at the strap on the pack, injectors spilled into my hand. Once I had a couple of them, I twisted again, despite the burning stab of agony in my leg.
This time, I twisted toward the Designate’s possessed toad-body rather than up or away. I twisted closer.
I jammed those injectors straight into the side of its neck.
What? Davis’ voice held wonder, incredulity. What have you done?!
You need a Crown to modulate those, big guy, I sneered through the link. Otherwise, you deal with the mecha’s defense variables.
No! You can’t—!
I might not be a creature of regret and I don’t make wise use of forethought. But when I have an idea…
Foolish little wretch! In a fit of impotent fury, the Designate swung his weapon incredibly hard.
I heard a loud POP followed by a shearing, tearing sound.
My world exploded into agony. I sailed through the air, and everything thundered into
pulsing, flaming anguish. After slamming against the wall, right next to one of those ebony statues, I fell to the floor.
I landed on the wrong leg and screeched.
Almost immediately, consciousness began to ebb.
Mike! Paige felt panicky in my mind. Now initiating type III emergency resuscitation protocols.
“Good,” I sobbed in agony. “Oh fuck…”
Rerouting viral mecha operating parameters.
What? I felt Rachel gasp, felt her abject horror. Oh, God, Bishop! What happened?
The pain faded to only some burning agony. My mind sharpened, as if I’d just been injected with adrenaline and sunshine.
“Ohh…” I groaned.
Oh! Oh, Throdlum, spare this servant—! Davis’ link was cut off when the toad screamed, using its actual throat instead of the link. That guttural cry became a roar and then a screech of terror as a few hundred thousand viral mecha came online within the behemoth’s body.
Without a Crown sync, they initiated their defense variables. The viral mecha began to rabidly devour the organic material of the toad abberation.
In seconds, they would easily double their numbers. In minutes, they would consume the entire being, then self-terminate.
Grey mist surrounded Davis, a veritable cloud of mecha. He screeched again but I scarcely noticed it.
I was too busy trying not to bleed out.
Your femoral artery is intact. That’s good, Rachel linked as if she spoke to herself, and I felt her frantically working in my Crown.
The lumbering frog behemoth turned toward me, as if to launch one final attack. It blundered a step, viral mecha misting from its eyes and mouth as it howled its rage.
Yet it couldn’t maintain. It twitched and thrashed in sheer agony. Part of the creature’s back had entirely been eaten away as the mecha tortured the beast with defense variables.
You’ll fucking pay, Michael Bishop, the Designate spat over the link. For some things, death is but—
The hulking thing fell, only a few strides away, and its cries quieted. The iron mask fell from its face and clattered upon the floor.
The world spun.
In that moment, despite Rachel’s augmentation, despite the shearing agony in my leg, I came to a decision.