“He is to me.” Derek grinned in Leaf’s direction. After a decade of fighting for each other’s lives, with death and unnatural suspension of animation in their wake, this was the only ending that made sense.
Cyrus Manson took on a cold look. He pulled a small folding cane from his belt and extended it, revealing that it was made of magnetic materials.
“Then the Poseidon Gates are swinging open and banging against the walls of Hell for you. Pity, too. See, son, I am a man of material mindset. You would have been beneficial to me and my eternity.” Cyrus swung the staff baton style in cycles over his head.
Blood and paint descended in splattering sheets, like ink blotting out the portraits on the ceiling. The bodies of countless priests that had once attended to the Cathedral came clattering to the floor, corpses strapped to strange electromagnetic straight jacket devices.
They thrashed, dead, but jolted by the devices into gyrating motions. They spun like windup toys and were forced to their feet. Their eyes hung open. Their faces were mutilated. Arms swung from side to side like a nutcracker’s limbs and they drew weapons from their vests. These were a revolution in EMP technology, collapsible rifle models that wouldn’t be ready for the market even with this technological revolution until as late as 2024.
The back wall of the Cathedral blew out and a lightning bolt sized electronic volt split from side to side rotating the room in a tight arc. The Commodore came striding in, a Taser-cannon mounted on her shoulder. She tossed her head, blood effusing from the deep gash across her throat that Leona had permanently branded her with. She tossed the cannon against the wall and reached and drew her Indian crescent moon knives from her beltline.
“Hello, boys. Remember me? It’s especially good to see you, sugar.” Commodore winked at Derek. Behind her the crew of the Geryon submarine came striding in, suspended in life once more although still sporting the wounds from the brutal execution they’d received at Boss-Lady’s hands.
“How could I forget you? You were so charming before?” Derek tried to smile but it came across as a wince. The Pirates that were pouring in were laughing with hyena jubilation.
“Looks like we’ve finally found your hideaway, Pirate-Lady! Guess it’s time for the party to get started.” Leaf clapped his hands together. With a unanimous shriek that called up rats from Florence sewers, dogs from the streets that raved rapidly, and crows and pigeons from the power lines descended upon the enhanced soldiers. The roof blew straight out of the Florence Cathedral. They shot into the city like falling stars. People screamed and ran.
Now the nightmares begin. Leaf closed his eyes for a second. This might be the last second in history he had to claim a peaceful thought before he was propelled into an eternity of chaos.
*****
Chapter 14
Jane’s translation had landed them all in a circle of bikes and a defensive wall of Kingsley’s doubles surrounding the White House. Taylor had even been introduced into the scene seated on an Indian Scout rendition of Leaf’s supersonic motorcycles. Croc was beside him on his own. Harrison and Joseph had been dropped onto the scene with one of the Shreveport’s guards Humvees that Leaf’s technology had reassembled into a supersonic vehicle with an extension in the back for a miniature portable lab. Joseph called it a “hot plate” because of its size.
“Yo! Hey, room service! Remember me, skipper?” Reilly grabbed one of the fences that surrounded the White Houses’ garden lawn and shook it with all of her might.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” Ivy had joined in on Reilly’s heckling.
Lindsey strode over to Joseph and Harrison’s side. She looked up at them with a steady expression on her face.
“Jane isn’t coming back.” It wasn’t a question. They all knew it, but she needed them to confirm it for the record.
“No, she’s not.” Joseph looked at his hands. He would have done anything to keep that innocent kid from the serious ending she’d collided with, if only he could have.
Lindsey took Harrison by the wrist. Her teeth were set. She nodded, cautious at first, but her mind was made up.
“Then, there won’t be anyone here to act as the civilian’s decoy unless...” She swallowed. This was frightening.
Harrison looked at Joseph.
“Are you serious?” Harrison was shaking his head. After all the chaos that his medical advancements had caused, he hated to think about bringing more trouble to another innocent kid.
“Jane wouldn’t want you to pick up her slack.” Joseph’s lips were turning blue.
“You guys know more now than you did then. A counter drug has to be tested. Somebody has to be able to take Jane’s place without actually becoming another out of control experiment like her. I can do this. She might not have liked it, but she’s not here.” Lindsey swallowed. It was hard to admit that in a technical sense her friend was dead.
It was true. Over the last three months of experiments and intelligence breakthroughs under torture’s pressure, Harrison and Joseph had found a way to stabilize the serum. They’d recognized the basic nuclear properties of it and started trying to balance it with thorium and potassium-based products. Wonder of wonders—if they dissolved a few chopped bananas in the mixture along with a blue clay thorium solution they called Mayan paint and had made out of the dirt in Cuba, and let the serum replicas breathe, it began to self-stabilize.
“We have a new method of administration we were going to try on the synthetic samples we made from the Andromeda extract we were testing back in New Orleans. Things happened and we’ve never actually test applied it for side-effects.” Harrison looked out at the White House. He shook his head.
“Lindsey, let me atone for my own mistakes this way. I will test the serum first. If I pull through with no alarming side-effects, then we’ll try it out on you.” Harrison licked his lips.
“Wait a minute! You’ve already passed through the fires of the whole serum-induced wonder show, Harry! Besides, I’ve got things to atone for too. I haven’t had a taste yet. Let me do it!” Joseph folded his arms.
“We’ll both do it. We both have to pay for what we’ve done somehow. Two tests are better than one. We can perform them rapidly now that we’ve got the mixture formulated to a salve rather than an injection. If we pass through it with flying colors then we’ll set up a second Andromeda decoy to throw Medusa and the Fultons off their game.” Harrison nodded.
Reilly tugged on Harrison’s sleeve then. He gasped, not realizing that she’d been there.
“Whatever you guys do, you might want to act soon. It looks like his majesty is having some kind of mid-life crisis.” Reilly pointed toward the White House. It was glowing from the inside out. An opaque dust had fallen across the lawn, like a dusting of snake-skins had been shaken out of the tree line.
There was a rushing sound like the wind coming through bagpipes. The roof of the oval office blew out and President Matthews was standing there, screaming, trying to rip off his coat that was stained with a blood red fluorescence. A series of red lights were accosting him from all sides as if someone had stepped through the walls of the space and time and was trying to break him into a thousand pieces, to carry him away.
Professor Lucia rose up above the White House, suspended by his own magnetic powers and an aura of refracted light.
“Let all the earth be wary of insurrection! I am the morning and the evening star to you, America. I am an abomination, and yet all at once I am also the solution to your continued malady!” Even as he stood, arms stretched out, shouting at the sky, a gray blot darkened the scene. The Geryon tore through one of the white holes in the atmosphere. As soon as his arms tore through the Professor, he dissipated, revealing that this shape was only a double of the true person.
The Geryon scooped up the Professor and landed on his heels atop the White House.
“Andromeda Act’s emergency clause, commencing D-minus 15:00 hours local time. Escape to the nearest building exit and move in single fi
le to the city’s limits.” The Geryon’s voice became a loud speaker, repeating this phrase over and over.
“He’s putting the civilians on lockdown, gang. Get ready for the heatwave. The Professor and my sister’s doppelganger forces are about to cross teeth.” Taylor revved his bike, heading toward the White House. It was time to bring the President in for a reforming debriefing.
Agent Timlin stepped away from the line-up.
“Hi. So, I’m aware that you guys don’t know me. Let me recap quickly. I was one of the original soldiers for campaign Stop She Hitler. I have a plan. One that showcases the breakthrough you’ve made in medicine and cures the outbreak all at once, Mr. Kelley.” Timlin nodded Harrison, Joseph, Lydia and Reilly toward a long black Corvette-chassis modeled sonic car.
Reilly’s jaw dropped. She then turned back toward the gate and whistled to Ivy.
“Yo, gangsta! We’ve got a ride to catch. Time to hand it to these clowns. Gonna be off the chain!” She tucked her head down and filed toward the car, practically skipping with battlefield glee.
*****
Chapter 15
“You got me! Congratulations…” The Professor hissed. His skin was smoking, steaming as a slice from Dexter’s knife shattered the illusion.
Jane gasped as she came out from under the Professor’s affliction. Seeing that his daughter was free to breathe once more, Vincent spun in tight semi-circles, slashing in frenzied jabbing side cuts like he was preparing a tossed salad. Dexter took a long step back out of his way.
Their deathly dance lasted for a suspended moment before having enough, enraged, the Professor split himself into multiple forms. Dexter charged in, throwing himself too much so in the way of the blades.
It was a split second of faltering struggle before he realized that Jane had revived in time to throw herself on the end of one of the knives. The Professor stared at her with a sickened look as if this had foiled one of his genius plans.
“Jane! No!” Dexter cupped Jane’s head in his hands. She collapsed to the pavement, mouth dripping blood, knife buried in the deep recesses of her inwards. She shook herself and forced a smile.
“Not letting go of this body that easily, Dex.” She plucked the knife free and licked the blood clean, spitting it in the Professor’s eyes. He reeled as Jane stood up. To the grateful horror of her father and her boyfriend, the wound suctioned closed almost as instantaneously as it had been made. Jane tossed her head, energized.
“Come on, Teach, that all you got? This was about slowing me up so you could use the Andromeda as a puppet, yeah?” Jane spat an excess of blood and barred her teeth. Dexter felt the blood revived into a new vigor deep within him. Even dead, she was more alive than he had ever known himself to be. He shrank to her side, balling up his fists because he had nothing else to fight with. The Professor stood stunned as Vincent stepped up between them, posing his one knife over Jane’s head.
“Humanity. How you honestly think that you can defend one another like you belong to each other! How pathetic that truly is. Novelties are only for weaker fools. I would have destroyed you all a long time ago. I believed in Leona. I believed that she could proselytize you.” The Professor swung his arm out, scattering seven doubles of himself in the air surrounding them.
“Infidelity! The legacy of mankind will be its lack of faithfulness!” The Professor gathered a massive ball of dark energy, hovering in a cylindrical cloud over their heads. The amethyst light emitting from Jane’s forehead held it back. She shook herself as colors broke from her, driving back the darkness. Her hands rose, wafting the blackness away.
“All the power that you exercise, whether it moves the heavens or the worlds or Hell below them won’t matter at all if heaven and earth pass away in my fervent heat.” Jane drew in a deep breath. The amethyst light was only growing brighter as if the sudden intake of breath had oxidized it. It focused into a cone-shaped pinnacle at her forehead, rising from hence like the flame out of a welder’s torch. Jane screamed as her whole body pulsated with an intense amethyst substance that rolled over her like a lava lamps contents, recirculating, focusing on that same torch.
Lucia screamed like he might know what was coming next. Jane rose up, gnashing her teeth. Blood dripped from her bottom lip and onto Dexter’s face like tears. He cried out, horrified to see her always in more pain per every second.
Jane shrieked, ripping into her chest and exposing her beating heart. The fiery torch from her forehead shot into the sky and came streaking back down in missile projections. It shot into her heart and was refracted by each of the forceful atriums. A blast shot in a cannonade at Lucia. Despite all his speed, he couldn’t escape. It was hot enough to cut through the material that divided all dimensions if only for a split second.
The blast hit him and froze him. He stood hands spread in a crucifix shape, twitching like a malfunctioning robot. Blood effused from his lips and smoke made his hair curl under, burning and bubbling his scalp.
“You think of us all mindless drones, stumbling along life like it were a train rail that’s straightforward track can be influenced by the flick of a gear. You have your own ends and you plot your own diversions. What you fail to realize it the orbit in which we dance around each other. All the worlds move on wheels, and no one is any further ahead of the curve when it comes to understanding the greater mystery.” Jane grinned, gritting her teeth as she shot the torch into a shape that formed a DNA-resembling chain. It was made of a plasma substance. She bound it to Lucia’s wrists.
“You’re not the enemy I should be fighting today, but I had to remove you from the picture, didn’t I? You’re trying to use the Andromeda as your puppet? Something you have failed to realize. Arrogant as you are, it’s a wonder you’ve made it this far before someone bigger and stronger out there in the worlds whacked you out of it all. In light of that, I have to repeat myself until you get it. I am the Andromeda and she is me. There’s no manipulating her into your hostile take-over scheme when I am holding the chains.” Jane turned to face her father and Dexter. Smiling, she snapped her fingers again.
Dexter felt his breath catch. It seemed that they were moving painfully slow and yet he knew that they had jumped yet another light hole through the sky and were heading to a new destination Jane had foreseen as the right one to play against.
He was following her literally through the Cosmos. Closing his eyes, he decided to enjoy it for just a moment. It was an adventure, after all, despite the blood and horror that had propelled him into the thick of it.
*****
Chapter 16
Curse you. But you’re swallowing my soul! My soul which is the nucleus and off-shoot of all my power, the well-spring for my psychoactive thought. How dare you! Leona covered her ears, trying to block out the sound of Andromeda’s hovering presence.
You created me. All of us. We are the sun, the moon, and all the stars. You are Venus and we bow to you. Andromeda flashed her face and her sick smile. Quickly she dialed through the shapes of all the people that Leona had murdered again.
“Who are you to tell me who I am?” Leona turned to face the sky and all those faces of all those people. She had devoured them. Now they would haunt her. Andromeda was by far crueler than any dragon Leona could have nursed. Was this punishment? Did she deserve it?
“Who are you to even have an opinion? I made you, mindless puppet. I was the one that gave life back to your dead and drained body. I ripped the spirit of that girl straight from you. Gave you the chance to act from your own untrained ambitions. Proved that body and soul are more than religious sentiments!” Leona kicked a burning tree root, sending sparks floating to Centralia’s skyline.
Andromeda snapped her fingers. The carousel of phantoms stopped spinning for a moment.
“You were the one, mother! The one that brought me here. This was the plan all along, wasn’t it? To wield me. To bring them under your feet like little lost sheep that we could count to keep our demons out. Now here you are trying to make
order out of the chaos you unleashed. You sowed this in anger, jealousy, and a flare for the dramatic. What you sow in darkness must be reaped in light. I’ve brought you the light, mother! I’ve brought you the truth. Cold, ugly. Like your demons and mine and all of theirs.” Andromeda smiled, showing her flashing teeth.
Leona turned back to the pyre she had built for herself. She swallowed, clutching her hands into fists.
“My plans have never failed me before…Well, I should say before you. Now you approach me with a plan that risks everything I have ever fought for and all those things which I have worked for. Notwithstanding what Professor Lucia would have them all believe, the control of this world is mine. Did he do the sweat-labor? Was it his diligence or mine that gave shape to your beauty? You are right, I made you…How can I destroy you?” Leona looked at Andromeda with a twisted love in her eyes that only a mother could have.
“You won’t. Look at all those impossible things you’ve done over time, transcending even the spaces between the spaces! Aha, Leona Kelley afraid of her own darkness!” Andromeda threw back her head, laughing at the pale moon that was rising now. Night had fallen at last upon Pennsylvania. There would be no other time to do this.
“Our power will overcome it. We won’t be able to sustain the fire long enough to end therein.” Leona stared at her own funeral pyre, calculating. Just how far had she fallen in disgrace? There was once no hold that could bar back her daring. She once ruled the world from the center of the sun where no one could see her or know she was draining the life from them, like carbon monoxide seeping into the atmosphere. That was before Jane Lewis.
This perfect prodigy that had become her greatest creation and now the source of her own transforming strength had been the crux that led to her downfall. Was she really foolish enough to believe that she held any of the answers? This was chess, pure and simple. A table that Lucia set. She could feel it.
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