by J M Guillen
Yes, we hunted a Variance.
But we also hunted a kid.
Interestingly enough, the idea had been given to me by the Screi, while he taunted me.
“Isabella was the only person besides Amir the Harbinger would heed.” R’tae clicked his serpentine tongue. “I wonder if Amir will use the mask to find her another body at all. I think not.”
Diego might be crazy-powerful. He might be the Harbinger. He might burn with the mark of one of the Names of Lamentation.
He was also a preteen who had just lost his mother.
And now, right in front of him, I’d shot Amir.
That darkness boiled over Amir, filling him. It tore away from of its source of power as it reached toward the fallen man. Within that fading darkness, I saw a youth’s silhouette, a shadow within a shadow.
His eyes burned with sorrow. With pain.
With wrath.
He raised one arm.
Amir stirred. That shadowed flame burned, and the violet light upon his brow burst into brilliance.
No fucking way! I seethed. I mean, I know that death is a fucking doorway, but this asshole could at least step through!
In that moment, Anya stood up.
She took a dainty step forward and held the furious luminosity forth. Her eyes were black with terrible vehemence, and she walked slowly, snarling.
Thunder cracked in my mind as Hyper-Rationality stormed against the darkness and drove it back.
The darkness nearest her faded. No longer did it struggle against Anya but boiled into Amir.
I saw the kid more clearly now as his shadows drifted away. He stood as shirtless as I did, his narrow chest covered in swirling tattoos.
Those marks moved upon his skin, writhing.
(A scarlet behemoth. It’s a gigantic, winged monstrosity. It drifts on the winds between worlds…)
“[Uncle!]” The youth poured dark power into Amir, frantic.
Did that kid just cry Uncle? Wyatt linked.
Quit playing fuck around. How are we?
Almost there. Wyatt’s link felt exhausted. The oculus says I’ve placed all required spikes. We’re near Rationality zero over here.
“Well.” A sibilant voice spoke from behind us. “It looks as if you’re all together. Good. Convenient.”
I whirled, recognizing the sharp, cruel voice.
A slender figure stepped out of the shadows. He wore a tattered and scorched cloak. His scaled skin had been burned and showed pink within the charred black.
I met his eyes and R’Tae met mine. Behind him, shamble-hopping their way into the large room, came an enormous number of the Phothu-nacyi.
The Screi smiled, a chilling pronouncement of death.
3
“Your betrayal was most creative,” R’tae continued. “And you succeeded. It seems the Unfathomable will not rise.” The creature shrugged. “Today. We are patient.”
“You don’t…” Amir pushed himself upright, weakly. That brand of violet power screamed from his forehead, and his body burned with Irrational darkness. “We are allies,” he gurgled.
“Are we.” R’tae did not seem convinced.
“It was these who stopped the rite.” He coughed and gestured at us. “Slaughter them. Or, better, take them so the Brine-Lords may use them to spawn.”
“No,” R’tae seethed. “You don’t escape this time, mammal. I see through your lies. This place shall be your tomb.”
Hoss. Wyatt’s link felt heavy with dread. Don’t be obvious, man, but glance up.
I did and, in that moment, understood.
The ritual chamber was gargantuan, as I’d noted while on my back, strapped to a table. At the top, several crystalline windows looked out into the Mediterranean, surrounded by glowing fronds.
Now, I saw the Phothu-nacyi as they swam outside those windows and placed large boxes upon them.
I couldn’t imagine those boxes would lead to our health.
Fuck. My mind raced. We were close, so close. Even as Amir and R’tae bantered, Anya bore down on the boy, and his power weakened, faded. That glimmering shadow broke and faltered…
And the darkness buckled. It fell in upon the boy, burning before Anya’s light.
Diego screamed.
The kid collapsed. A sigil of scarlet and shadow burned upon his brow.
Suddenly, the light from Anya’s palm vanished with a loud crack. She slumped to the ground, exhausted.
Sovereign prerogative disengaged.
Rationality fifteen, Michael. She gazed up at me, exhausted. A smile teased at the edge of her lips.
That kid’s an Irrat now, Hoss. Just an Irrat. I felt Wyatt’s manic grin.
We kill Irrats all the time, I agreed.
Incoming.
WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!
“No!” Amir strode forward and screamed. “Not now!”
Delacruz, I linked. I require an aperture.
I love the way you flirt, Mike. What can I do?
Quick as thought, I sent her a patch. I showed her where I needed the aperture, what had to happen.
“Kill them,” R’tae commanded. “Every one.”
Behind us, a sea of murderous GROOAKs poured toward us.
“You filthy, ignorant—!” Amir strode forward, although I couldn’t tell if he seethed at me or R’tae. “You just don’t know when to die, do you Asset?”
Oh. I guess he meant me.
Amir snarled as he raised one hand into a viscous claw. The tips of those fingers burned silver and red, a stark light that all but blinded me.
Sofia’s aperture opened between Amir and myself. It had been oriented at a slight slant, aimed upward at him.
It connected to the first quarrel Sofia had shot from the Corvus, the one that landed in the Mediterranean Sea.
Ocean water poured forth, its gargantuan pressure and momentum increased by a factor of five hundred. It slammed into Amir, hurled him off his feet, and carried him into the stone wall beyond in an instant.
The Magister’s body was wracked against that stone until it frothed into a slurry of blood and water.
When the pressure of Delacruz’s waterspout began to wear into the stone wall, she disconnected the apertures.
There. I smiled in smug satisfaction. With him taken care of—
R’tae tilted his head and gestured above us all. A signal.
The entire ceiling exploded.
4
Delacruz! I screamed across the link. Extraction! Me last! Now!
Get back, Hoss! Wyatt hurled a token across my vision, showing me where I couldn’t stand. Though I’d already triggered the Adept, I scarcely leapt back in time.
Three of Wyatt’s spikes burst into activity all at once. Each had struck the ground within a meter of the screaming Diego and formed a triangle.
Each sparkled with torrents of furious electricity.
Engaging! Wyatt frantically linked.
Brilliant arcs tore into the youth. He wailed and thrashed wildly. His hair began to burn, and smoke poured from his eyes and nose. He screeched like an animal as the galvanic fire cooked him alive.
Those spikes pummeled him with electricity, continually pouring it into him long after he’d died.
Poor kid, I linked. He never had a chance to have a life that wasn’t—
Behind me, chaos and cacophony crashed down upon the center of the ritual room. Seawater poured down upon us, certain death.
“Slaughter them! Slaughter every one of them!” R’tae screamed, and the Phothu-nacyi fell upon us, GROOOAKing with inhuman glee.
Got Anya. Got Rachel, Delacruz linked desperately. I don’t see Alabama Slim. I don’t see you.
“Fuck you!” Wyatt cried. “And you. And you in particular!”
WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!
Guthrie! Delacruz snarled. I saw an aperture open up across the room, crimson fire unfurling. Get in, asshole. I can’t drive this thing!
I spun to see a veritable horde of Phothu-nacyi creeping up behind me.
I brought up my Stilettos and—
A tide of seawater slammed into me, washing me tail over teakettle. It spun me, and I gasped and scrambled. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t find the surface.
I couldn’t breathe.
The room roared as seawater filled it, and I frantically tried to remember how to swim. I toggled my optics as every brazier in the room went out.
Michael! Anya burst into my Crown. I have your telemetric resonator approximately three meters from the surface. Swim this direction.
A token appeared on my Crown. I kicked toward it, frantically. Yet the water pouring into the room slammed into me with a current I couldn’t overcome. No matter how I struggled, I just couldn’t break the surface.
I can’t create an aperture beneath the surface, Delacruz linked. I need to be able to see the location, unless there’s a quarrel.
An underwater quarrel would flood the ship, Asset, I linked.
Oh, She paused, flustered. Right.
Creating oxygen, Alpha. Rachel’s link felt worried. Without it, you’ll get too exhausted to swim.
For the scarcest moment, I broke the surface.
The aperture hung in midair, not far away. The cadre peered out of it, obviously settled within the Corvus.
“Hey!” I waved an arm but felt a clawed grip on my ankle. It began to drag me under, even as I kicked. “Fullllb yooooub!” I cried.
It yanked me under.
I kicked at the creature again, desperate, catching it right in the eye.
Its grasp relented.
I’m coming up again Delacruz. I lurched upward, breaking the surface. I reached my hand as high as I could.
Again, some devil-toad grabbed at my leg. I sank back into the water, thrashing frantically.
Searing pain lanced through my outstretched hand.
In less than an instant, I lay on the floor of the Corvus, clutching the hand Delacruz had shot.
“Ow! Damnit!”
“Direct hit!” She pumped her fist.
“That’s a hell of a shot, sports bra.”
“No.” She glared at Wyatt. “Never gonna happen.”
I just stared at them and bled. I’d never been offensively ported before.
I didn’t care for it.
I’ll kill your pain process, Alpha, Rachel linked me apologetically, as if it were her fault I’d been shot.
“Closing all apertures,” Delacruz said. In less time than it took for her to speak, the crimson light blinked out. She sank back against the wall of the Corvus and slid to the ground.
“God. I still reek.” I sniffed my shirt— a definite mistake.
Anya sat next to me. She leaned against me, ragdoll limp.
We shared a long moment of silence together.
“That’s the gang.” Wyatt raised one eyebrow at me.
“Yeah.” I lay back on the floor, exhausted. “We all made it back.” I smiled at Rachel.
“We did,” she responded. “No one is missing an eye or needs a new spine.”
“That’s a win.” I gave a weak grin.
“We got the Variance,” Guthrie noted.
“Definitely,” I agreed. “At least as far as our Sovereign Prerogatives were concerned.”
My Prerogatives showed the Variance eliminated, Anya linked. With 99.87% certainty.
“We stopped the froggy invasion.” Rachel pointed at me.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I kind of messed up their last two sacrifices.” I closed my eyes. “The temple city will not rise. Not today.”
“And we killed Amir,” Delacruz said.
“Fuck yeah, we did.” I chuckled. “Broke his mask. Beat him senseless and killed him a few times.” I relished in that. I felt some part of my heart relax at the thought, a tension I’d held for years.
“Those were the goals.” Wyatt held out three fingers.
“They were.” I opened my eyes and looked at my battered, beaten up cadre. “We didn’t leave anything on the table.”
We contemplated that.
Rachel leaned back against the side of the Corvus. Anya nodded at me, a whisper of a smile on her face.
“That’s excellent.” Guthrie leaned forward. “I just have one more question, Alpha”
“What now, Guthrie?”
“Can we go home?” He shrugged. “My stock cars are on in a few hours.”
I broke into laughter. I couldn’t help it. Apparently the sentiment wasn’t mine alone as Delacruz and Rachel both followed.
Wyatt simply looked at us, waiting.
“I don’t see why not.” I glanced at Rachel, a lazy smile on my face. “Make it so.”
“Yes!” she practically squealed. “You did it! You did it right!”
“Well, you know.” I shrugged. “I mean, what kind of Alpha would I be if I didn’t know ‘Star Wars’?”
Assets of the Citadel
12 January, 2001
The Citadel
It wasn’t until three days later that the Assets of the Citadel received our debriefing.
Even though we’d heroically halted the rising of the ancient and terrible city of M’elphodor and intervened in the rites of the Unfathomable, the danger hadn’t been quite quelled.
Typical.
As it turned out, Stone’s initial instincts had been good ones. The Preceptors of Facility 8 had discovered the means to detect the vessels and, with that knowledge, swept the Mediterranean.
Cities from Jerusalem to Tangier were found to have amphorae hidden within them, typically in wells, cisterns, and sewers.
In the past, I might’ve been irritated with Stone, as he often seemed so smug about his successes. This time, however, Stone behaved like a true team player, making certain Catalyst Valis understood where he’d received his intel.
In the days after M’elphodor, we worked very closely with Stone and Valis, as we’d been immediately reinserted to assist with the ensorcelled vessels.
The Facility found over three thousand amphorae.
A cataclysmic number of vessels, each one formed a gateway to beckon a dozen of the Phothu-nacyi or more. Some of them rested within locations that were incredibly difficult to access, often sealed away for a number of years.
Had the rites progressed and the city risen, I had no doubt they would have opened. The groooaking things would have shuffled into the night and infected millions with their spawn.
The world would have fallen into chaos.
The immense scale of those plans loomed in my mind.
That’s the problem, right there, Wyatt grumbled as we waded through yet another cistern in Istanbul. We don’t know how long these motherfuckers had been planning this shit. I don’t like knowing there are bad guys within Rationality following some horseshit timetables for years. Decades.
There aren’t. I smiled at him. I’m fairly certain we murdered them to death.
Yet in my heart I wondered.
Amir and Diego were dead, certainly. Isabella had died without her mask, so we had no true intel whether or not she would remain righteously slaughtered.
But, of course, there was another.
“Designate Davis? You drove him mad.”
“Not I.” He turned back toward the window. “That distinction belongs to a man named Ignacio, a noble man you will likely never meet.”
Ignacio, according to Isabella’s memories, had fathered Diego. He set this entire catastrophe into motion. If he knew the location of Isabella’s mask, she would certainly find herself in a new body. He had other resources, other cultists.
If that were true, then in a few years, perhaps sometime around 18 September, 2015…
This could all begin again.
2
When we finished our last sweep of Cyprus, Designate Ling called us in. We returned to the Citadel, changed out of our Facility wear, and met in the War Room.
That name wasn’t my idea. I suspected Rachel but couldn’t prove anything.
“Here’s how I see it.” Wyatt leaned across t
he table and ran his fingers through his beard thoughtfully. “I think we’ve got a good thing started here.”
“What you mean?” Rachel scrunched up her nose.
“No.” Delacruz pointed to Rachel. “No.” She pointed more fiercely at Wyatt. “You do not have any good ideas. You have never had any good ideas. And we do not have a good thing started here.”
“What’s going on?” I stepped fully into the room. “What did I miss?”
“You absolutely have not missed anything.” Delacruz arched one eyebrow at me. “Only ridiculous foolishness from the same mind that brought you Jesuit Reptilians.”
“Are you wearing a second pair of overalls?” I shook my head. “Did you buy them both at the same time?”
Wyatt ignored me. “Rache, you’re the one who said we were effectively a superhero team.”
“Okay.” Rachel lounged in her seat. “I can see that.”
“I mean, we have the superhero base.” He gestured around us. “And we definitely have all manner of cool powers.”
“I’m still with you, Guthrie.”
“All we need is uniforms.” He raised his eyebrows. “Now, I was rocking the short shorts. Delacruz here looks fantastic running around lost cities in her sports bra.”
“[I’m going to send you to the moon,] Guthrie,” Delacruz muttered.
“My main man here kicked seven colors of ass while running around rockin’ the shirtless look. I’m fairly certain some of the bad guys got distracted and then killed while staring at those washboard abs.”
“I do have washboard ads,” I mused. “He’s right.”
“So why not complete the look?” Wyatt leered. “I can imagine all manner of uniforms for you and Petrova—”
“Nope.” Rachel held up one hand in Wyatt’s face. “Delacruz was right.”
Good afternoon, Anya walked into the chamber.
“After… noon?” Wyatt nodded appreciatively.
I knew Preceptors had an entirely different activity cycle than a typical Asset, but I’d never truly thought about it. I’d also never seen her in anything but a Preceptor uniform. Some of those pantsuits had been all white while others were black and gray.