Hell's Gifts - Complete Series Boxset

by Mark Russo

“I have a plan. You said you would help me. Remember?”

  “I did, but you still didn’t thank me for saving you, Maria.” God, he was crazy. Totally.

  “Dude, you dragged me to this neverland. It feels like I’ve been here for months, yet you say it’s been a few days. And I have thanked you, a million times.”

  Besides him being very edgy, he also remembered nothing I told him. “Okay, okay.” Another quirky expression appeared on his blue face. “This is Aeg, not neverland. You’re lucky to be here and not a proxy, believe me.”

  Sure, he was right.

  This Aeg place, as he called it many times, appeared like a TL fairytale world. Not my favorite, if you ask me, but not that bad. The soil was soft and flaky and walking on it felt like stomping on a very thick layer of crumbled chips. The colors of everything were unrealistic and poorly rendered. For example, I had never seen a tree trunk as purple as the one before me. Or this green squirrel. I mean, it is green.

  “Did you do your homework?” That little monster grunted again. He was very noisy despite being not even a meter tall, stocky, and blue skinned.

  “You mean jumping on those stones in the pond?”

  His froglike face confirmed that would be my homework.

  “Why do I have to jump on those things, while Emma is invisible and James surfs on rocks? I mean, it’s not fair.”

  He staggered toward the pond, grumbling gibberish I didn’t even try to comprehend. When he reached the pond, he slowly faced face me. “This is the pond. You are a Novice on the Path of Time. You jump on these stones. Got it?”

  I chortled. “Okay, but may I know why, at least?”

  He looked at me sideways. “If you are asking, it means you really got nothing. Keep jumping.”

  That little monster.

  I approached the pond’s edge and looked at the first rock.

  “Given that you really don’t want to learn, I’ll show you a little something. Follow me,” he said.

  There we were again. Him being rude and way too direct for my taste. He had saved me; I had to admit that, but he was weird and poor mannered. According to what he had told me, he had been alone for a very long time, and it showed every moment.

  “You’ll see the most important part of the entire Aeg,” he said.

  “I look forward to it.”

  He traversed that bright yellow sand path, and I tagged along. I avoided walking too close to him, since I didn’t want to squabble further. We just couldn’t stop arguing.

  “While we go down this path, pay attention to what surrounds us. You might find yourself surprised.”

  Another of his riddles.

  “Will do.”

  Bueno. No more fighting the little one.

  I looked around, studying every tiny detail of that surreal ambience. Then he grabbed a doorknob above his head—nothing weird with that, other than it hung midair, and no doors stood behind it. None I could see, at least. Once he had it opened, and we walked through the invisible threshold, we found ourselves in an enclosed space with very high ceilings. Unlike the colorful spaces I had seen up to that point in Aeg, this one appeared much different. Everything was way darker and dour, and I was about to ask Akko where he had brought me, but I bit my tongue.

  What appeared before my eyes, I would never forget.

  “What the heck is this?”

  He giggled like a child. “This is the engine of time. It’s nice, isn’t it?” His gaze lowered.

  I stared at the biggest tree I had ever seen, even in TL. Its trunk was at least ten meters wide, and I couldn’t say how tall it was.

  “I don’t get it. Why are the branches moving?”

  “This is the Tree of All-Streams. This makes time flow in all directions.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s cool. What do we do with it?”

  He shook his head. “We do nothing with it. We just know it exists. You really don’t want to understand!”

  “Yes. I’m struggling not to. I put all my effort into it.” Sheesh.

  He laughed again.

  “It’s your explanations. I’m not as smart as you, so please start over.”

  “Time moves, and we can see it doing so. This tree is the living proof.”

  I frowned, but something clicked in my mind. “Can we return to the pond? I might have realized something.”

  His colored face brightened.

  Once we reached my training place, he stood beside me and regarded me with a tangible amount of expectations.

  I examined the pond, and my eyes tricked me. Something was defying my perception, but I still didn’t get it. I had to look away from the stones as my head rode a roller coaster. I searched for Akko’s holes in his skull, but he wouldn’t help. I looked at the pond again, and the pebbles were gone, for the most part. Only one remained, right at the center, surfacing the water.

  “Madre de Dios. What the fuck is that?” I doubt my arm could have stretched more in the water's direction.

  “I told you, time moves. Now you see it.”

  “How does it move?”

  “It’s time for the next phase of your training.” His voice held a hint of pride.

  Okay, let’s move on to the next thing.

  “Do you think Emma and James will make it here to Plane K?”

  He faced me. “You should concentrate now. Okay?”

  I nodded. If he wanted to reassure me, well, he had failed badly.

  I was at the pond again. Before moving to the next exercise, I needed to dissipate the doubts clouding my thoughts. I saw that piece of rock just below the water’s surface, filled my lungs with oxygen and leaped onto it. While airborne, something moved below me, then I landed unsteadily on my left foot. It resembled all the other stones before me. It appeared for a moment, then disappeared again once I reached the center of the pond.

  I didn’t get what was exactly happening.

  Hard work and more incomprehensible riddles would have helped. Maybe.

  11

  Emma

  I was finally awake after another terrible night. Those recurring nightmares haunted my sleep again—me being at the mercy of that faceless monster. My muscles ached as if I had been running to escape a terrible threat while asleep. The skin on my forehead was soaking wet. I really had been better.

  “Emma, get up. Your teacher is already here,” My mom said, always bossing me around. It looked like she enjoyed it.

  I got up and lazily slipped on my puffy slippers. Avoiding my reflection in the mirror would be the second thing I do every morning. I rapidly washed my face and wore some appropriate clothes—something better than my pajamas but still comfortable.

  It had been a few weeks since we started this homeschooling thing, and it was working out somehow. It was a change regarding all the other education I’d ever had, which had happened mostly online, meaning in TL. I needed someone in person with me, knowledgeable about shit. He looked like so, as per those words coming from his mouth.

  “Good morning, Emma. How are you doing today?” He had a gentle voice and wore too much cologne.

  “Good morning to you, Jonas. I’m great. How are you?”

  I had no idea how to continue the small talk. I had to remember how that is done by heart.

  He had shaved, I noticed.

  “I’m okay, thanks. Did you go through the studying material I provided you?”

  “Yes, I did, Jonas. I read all those articles and papers you gave me. Most of those I found online as well. Do I need to remember all this stuff?”

  I usually faced all tests by using search engines as I took them. I mean, that’s what they are for.

  “It may prove useful. I doubt other students will have this skill at EIBM. You might be a rare thing.”

  I couldn’t say if he was right, but I wanted to avoid discussions. I didn’t actually study any of those papers.

  “You’ll want to learn more skills,” he continued.

  I sat next to him. “Go on.”

  �
�We should work on your social capabilities. When was the last time you had a face-to-face chat with someone other than your parents?”

  I had to think for quite a while to recall. “I was once at Tess’s. She needed help, and I rushed to her place.”

  “Do you recollect any other occasions?”

  “You mean, interacting in person?”

  He nodded.

  “How do we work on my social skills?”

  He looked at me. “We talk. I’ll pause when I find something you might improve, giving you an immediate feedback.” These home teachers were true pieces of work. “Would you like to review some papers I’ve assigned you?” He opened an articles library and shared it with me through our haptic lenses.

  “Yes, just give me a minute.” I ran into the kitchen, opened the fridge and gulped some orange juice. I grabbed some cake; I didn’t check what it was or whether I liked it. My body craved sweets. I had a bite, then another—I wanted more, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to go down that road. Not now. I returned to my parents’ living room and gave a toothy smile to Jonas.

  He smiled back. “You needed a break, didn’t you?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, struggling to answer.

  “You must understand this will be challenging, Emma. There is a bright side to it though. You’ll be one step ahead of your colleagues at EIBM.” He smiled again.

  “Do you have many other students?”

  “I do not. My company’s service is quite exclusive.” He kept staring at me. What the heck was he expecting? “Let’s revisit the moment you stood up and left. Please tell me what happened.”

  “Well, I … I …” I got stuck already, and we hadn’t even tackled any of my issues yet. I looked away and took a deep breath. “You know what? I don’t feel well. Can we please reschedule this?”

  “Sure, let me grab my agenda.”

  I guess that was a joke. No one has a paper agenda.

  As soon as he left, I returned to my room and logged into TL. My rig’s terrible quality bothered me particularly today. Those Velcro stripes wouldn’t tighten around my wrists. The platform main interface delayed my immersion. I was sure it was another update.

  I waited one minute before it fully loaded my commands and I could move to a specific location. A banner asked me if I wanted to partake in one of the Crusades. I specified once again I was not interested in war worlds and PVP action that much. Their ads had always been very invasive, for as far as I could remember.

  I opened TrainMe instead—that new interactive learning thing they had launched. I wanted to have the home court advantage if they were to challenge me, and TL represented that to me. My hand moved to a random soft-skills training program, and everything around me blackened. I tried to force an emergency logout, but it wouldn’t work.

  “You do have shitty memories, don’t you?” A voice emerged from the surrounding nothingness as my head started hurting. “It will be painful, yes. If I were you, I’d get used to it though, since you are staying here as long as we need you to. Or forever, as you humans like to say.”

  I had no idea who was speaking. I was levitating, and darkness surrounded me, and my brain was trying to squeeze from my skull.

  “What is this? I demand to talk to the TL support immediately.”

  “Emma, this is not TL. We just tapped into your memory, so we could make the transition smoother.”

  My head kept slowly killing me. “I’m very confused. What’s happening?” Did I say or think those words?

  The surrounding space changed. I found myself in a circular cage, maybe three meters wide—floor and ceiling painted in a dark black. My memory finally returned, and I realized nothing good had happened ever since I jumped in the rift to Plane K. No locks or doors were on those scratchy metal bars, and that made me think. Probably nothing surrounding me was even real.

  “Exactly. You can’t tell what’s real from what’s not. Nice stuff, uh?”

  “Who are you? You’re not Aaragul.”

  “Would you think we’d waste a member of the Communion on you?” I expected my captor to laugh, but he didn’t seem to know how a human would react to me saying stupid things. “Enjoy your time being a prisoner. It’s what you’ll be doing for the rest of your pointless existence.”

  That didn’t sound exactly encouraging. For sure, I hadn’t come to this side of the barricade to be held prisoner.

  12

  James

  “James, you should at least try to address this question,” Frank Sneider said as he noisily sipped his tea.

  “I did.” My answer sounded like a question.

  “You replied with one word. I expect more. You should learn how to talk about yourself. You’ll work for some important company and, trust me, there it will matter.” He paused. “Let me try this one more time, okay?” Then he asked me again to present myself.

  “I’m James. I’m twenty-one and Scottish.”

  He chuckled. “Listen, James. Review the training programs about effective presentations. You really need to work on that. There are plenty of interactive trainings you can use. Do that, and we’ll try this again later. Okay?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Fantastic. That is the attitude I’m looking for.” He opened a holographic list of professional profiles and asked me to look at them. “There are plenty of possibilities. It’s up to you now. Scroll through this list and tell me which one you’d like to be.”

  I scrutinized the list, as if I had to choose the rest of my life on the spot. “I would say I see myself as reliable and persistent.”

  Frank Sneider’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh, God. Finally, you’ve told me something about yourself. Now we have a beginning, a piece of your history.”

  “I see.”

  He cleared his throat. “I think you should figure out something, a feature only you have, something people would distinguish you among others because of it, something peculiar. A little magic, let’s say.”

  I remained stoic. “Please share any piece of advice in this regard.”

  “Well, as I already said, you could do plenty of stuff. Go through the list. Try to match your skills with something.” He bashed his fists against the table, spreading an overwhelming noise across the room. “Why do you humans not get that this is not real?”

  I cackled in a way I wanted to be offensive. “Is Emma here as well?”

  “So, you understood, human. I assumed you were dumber than that.” He seemed pleased by my proof of wit, as it would make any actual difference to him.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” I got up; I’d been sitting for too long.

  “And I will not. Enjoy your time here. This is the last place you will see in your life. The bad part is you’ve already been here once.”

  Threats and intimidation—sounds like nothing new from them.

  Then the nameless creature asked, “How did you get this … you know?”

  “The real Frank Sneider was way funnier than you.”

  The guy exhaled and pointed at the door.

  The only thing I could do was to explore the building, hoping to find a way out of that place.

  I walked down the stairs and looked around. Everything was exactly as I remembered. It was surprising how accurate my memories were—even the position of the paintings on the walls, I remembered everything by heart.

  I walked to the hall and tried to open the main door leading to the front yard. It wouldn’t open. Upon closer inspection, the mass of black wood and finely wrought metal was not a door, just a window looking into nothingness.

  I went back, heading toward the stairs that lead to the apartments area. Just before landing my left foot on the first step, a chain rattled by my side. Despite trying to tap into my energy reserve, the effort proved useless. They had deprived me of my skills. I followed the noise in the corridor toward its source. If they had wanted me dead, I’d already be, so I assumed I had no reason to fear what was there.

  Trus
sed to a sanded wall at the far end of a poorly lit room lay a person I knew quite well.

  “Florian, is that really you?”

  His mouth remained still at first. He stared at my feet.

  I said his name again, while trying to establish eye contact.

  “You come from the past,” he muttered.

  I could barely hear him.

  “Yes. We studied here together. Remember?”

  He remained silent again.

  “We were friends. Do you remember our chess games?”

  He nodded.

  I opted for not getting any closer to him; his eyes held a sinister look.

  He faced the wall. The long chains that circled his wrists and ankles rattled and clanked.

  “How long are you here?”

  “There is a way out. For you, not for me. For you.” He repeated the sentence a few other times.

  “You mean, like, back to Plane R?”

  “For you, not for me.”

  Trying to talk to him proved complicated.

  “You will need help,” he added when I was almost out of the room.

  “What do you mean help?”

  “The game of chess. We played chess in the evenings.”

  “We did. What kind of help will I need?” I asked, softening my voice.

  He lowered his head and stared into space again.

  I left the room, looking for the help he had suggested I look for. When I reached the main hall again, it didn’t look like the same room I had been in a few minutes before. A circular space delimited by metal walls took its place. Three closed doors covered in rust loomed in front of me.

  I hesitated. It was another trick, and my mood was not exactly matching that type of entertainment.

  “Come on, human. I want to play a little game,” a disembodied voice said.

  “What game?”

  “Just try not to die, human.”

  “We both know that if I die here, I will pop up again at the Creation Ponds. So, I should just do that.”

  My jailor didn’t reply to that undeniable truth. I was a part of Plane K, whether he liked it or not.

  I moved to the left-side door for no other reason than I always go left if I can choose.

  The creature who orchestrating this charade kept his mouth shut.