by Matt Turner
“LONG! LIVE! GOD!” the ocean below sang—its energy could be contained no longer, and the front ranks broke into a dead sprint for the river’s shore. “LONG! LIVE! GOD! LONG! LIVE! GOD!” Their exultation alone was enough to make the very foundations of Hell vibrate in tune with their song.
Eve closed her eyes for a moment, allowing herself just the tiniest second of solace in their blind adulation.
“John, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world,” Seth said calmly. He drew the sword at his hip. Red-hot flames burst from the edge of the divine weapon, and even though he was on the very edge of the dock, the heavenly ambassador took a step forward. And another, then another. The blood of the Phlegethon churned and rolled as thousands upon thousands of the damned rushed into it, but it was as firm as a rock beneath Seth’s feet. “On the contrary—”
John stretched his hands outward. In response, a thousand razor-sharp branches and vines began to emerge from the depths, stretching around him. He stretched one of his hands out to the river and grinned when a great oak suddenly crested from the waves. “They have divine power to demolish strongholds,” he finished. “Second Corinthians. I was a reverend, you know.”
“Then let us send forth lightning and scatter the enemy,” Seth thundered. The fire from his sword cast half his face in a menacing shadow, and quite suddenly John realized he was not fighting alongside a mere ambassador from some soft utopia—he was fighting alongside a mighty warrior sent from the Creator of the universe. “Shoot your arrows and ROUT THEM!”
The endless horde screamed for their blood, but this time John did not fear. He smashed his palms together and screamed back.
40
As soon as they entered the First Blockade, their little party had split. There had been no time to say good-bye or even cast more than a glance at the blood-strewn walls; the howls of the Master’s army were much too close. Simon had shouted orders to Salome’s soldiers and made a beeline for the cannons mounted in the small fortress’s walls, while Vera led Amaury down into the empty corridors beneath the First Blockade’s floors.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Amaury panted as the two of them rounded a corner and came across another darkened hallway, lit only by a handful of dying lightbulbs. A few of them flickered in time with the clouds of dust that drifted down from the ceiling.
Doom, doom, doom.
Is that from their footsteps? Vera wondered. Jesus, how many of them are there? “Yes,” she grunted. “And stop asking me that. Salome said this is the way.” There was going to be an elevator soon that would take them to the deepest section of the fortress—and there, just above the great tectonic crack that scarred the very foundation of Hell, there should be a control panel. They’d just need to detonate the mines and hope to God that the earth didn’t swallow them up too. Not the shittiest plan I’ve ever been a part of, but pretty damn close.
“Hold up,” Amaury hissed. The two of them stopped dead in their tracks as he tilted his head to the side and frowned in concentration. “You hear that?”
Vera was about to snidely respond that she heard nothing other than the millions of people coming to kill them, when she heard the noise too. It was a grim, wheezing rasp that sounded all too familiar—and just as she realized what it was, one of the lightbulbs flickered, revealing the gasping body sprawled at the end of the hall.
“Shit,” Amaury grumbled. He raised both of his machine-pistols, but there was no one else; only a thick slime of blood that led farther into the complex’s depths. “They’re ahead of us.”
Vera knelt down by the crumpled soldier. “Who did this?” she quietly asked. “How many?”
The body slightly twitched in response, but she could see that some great force had torn away most of the soldier’s chest. Pieces of lung and rib lay scattered at his feet—it was impossible for him to breathe, let alone speak. Even the muscles of his face were tightly clamped down in pain, making it impossible to read the soldier’s expression.
“Shotgun blast,” Amaury decided. He laid his foot on the cast-aside weapon and kicked it into the flickering pool of light. “They did it with his own gun. Poor bastard.”
Vera gently pressed one of her fingers against the soldier’s temple and reached into his mind. Even reliving his wound as a memory was painful enough for her to grit her teeth in discomfort, but she was able to gather the information she needed. “Sleep,” she ordered. The soldier’s face relaxed as he slumped back against the wall, completely unconscious.
“That’s new,” Amaury wondered. “What’d you do to him?”
Vera picked up the shotgun and stretched back up. “Put him in a coma for the next few weeks,” she said. “Trust me, it’s better this way.” She checked that the weapon was loaded and cocked a fresh slug into the chamber. The two of them continued to rush down the hallway, but more warily this time. “But we’ve got a problem. There’s about a dozen of them that came through here an hour ago. Most of them didn’t have any weapons, looked like doctors of some sort.”
“Don’t tell me. They had company.”
“That Prophet thing. The one with the iron mask.” The memory of trying to probe through that thing’s unnatural mind made an involuntary shudder pass down Vera’s spine. At least demons, even that hideous Beast they had faced earlier, had the same basic wants and desires as humans. But the machine that called itself ELIE had nothing even resembling a soul.
“Creepy as hell, isn’t she?” Amaury chuckled. “She—wait…” They passed an unmarked iron door caked with blood and entrails. A faint moaning came from within it; Amaury briefly poked his head into the room and waved Vera back when she tried to enter it. “Just some test subjects,” he said tersely. “Christ, even by the Kingdom’s standards…”
“We’ll free them when this is all over,” Vera muttered halfheartedly. It was what Seth would want, and who knew? Maybe the heaven-man had a point after all…
Amaury jerked his head out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him. “You don’t want to free those,” he said fiercely. He unconsciously tugged at his collar, revealing a brief glimpse of the scars that crisscrossed his pale chest. “Not even the Master is the worst thing in Hell, Vera.”
Vera nearly demanded to see what was in that strange room, but the look on Amaury’s face told her that she was better off not knowing. “We need to hurry,” she decided. “If they—”
The faint piercing scream interrupted her words. It echoed through the hallways, bouncing from wall to wall, as it built into a guttural wail. From all sides, a whispering choir seemed to join it; a thousand voices, calling out from the cracks in the walls and the gaps underneath the triple-locked doors, as the so-called test subjects gleefully joined in the choir. Not even the marching of the endless army could drown out their hideous, muffled cries.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Amaury said drily.
“Does it ever?” Vera snapped. “Come on.”
They rushed through the darkened hallways, now nearly in a dead sprint. They passed more bodies, some dressed in the garb of soldiers, some in the laboratory coats of Kingdom scientists, all in various states of mutilation and disarray. The doors they passed—each one seemed to have more locks and bolts and bars than the one before—began to shake in their hinges as the excited inhabitants within gibbered and slammed themselves against them. And through it all, the scream ceaselessly continued. As they drew closer to the source, a new sound joined it: the hysterical laughter of an utter madman. The lights above them flickered insanely, and the smell of ozone and electricity filled the air.
At last, the two of them stopped, for another door lay ahead of them, just slightly ajar. A fierce pale-blue light glimmered from within it, casting strange shadows onto the blood-spattered floor of the hallway. Mercifully, the screams from inside had died away, but the exultant laughter continued.
I’ll give you something to laugh about, Vera thought as she tightened her grip on the shotgun.
“We’re almost there,” Amaury hissed. “Whatever the fuck they’re doing, we’re going to stop it. Shoot first, ask questions later. Got it?” His scarlet hair twisted and curled in response to the thick cloud of static electricity that filled the air, making him look even more comically unhinged than usual.
Vera had to suppress a nervous giggle. “You read my mind,” she quipped.
Amaury rolled his eyes. “Hi-larious,” he grumbled, and without any further ado, he slammed his shoulder into the door, exploding it open. Bright light crashed into their eyes, briefly blinding them, but Vera rushed ahead anyway, just behind Amaury. His machine-pistols crackled, spraying a volley of death into the room, and Vera glimpsed a dark silhouette crumple to the ground. A flicker of electricity sprayed down from the ceiling, burning an image into her retinas as she raised her shotgun: a dozen men and women, all gathered around some sort of table. She blindly fired, heard a cry as the pellets made contact with someone, and re-cocked the shotgun.
“Stop them!” someone shouted. “More time! I need more time!”
A figure rushed forward, a sharp blade in its hands as it hurtled toward Amaury.
Vera instinctively fired from the hip, saw the spray of blood as the white-clad man crashed to the ground, and then Amaury’s machine-pistols boomed again. Sparks and shards of metal crashed down from the ceiling, and mercifully the light dimmed, allowing her to better see what was going on.
Of the dozen doctors who had been gathered around the operating table, only one remained standing. All his comrades lay on the floor, groaning and clutching at their shattered arms and legs, yet the balding little man barely paid any attention at all to the bullet-hole that Amaury’s pistol had left in his arm. He reproachfully glared at them from behind his bottlecap glasses. “What is the meaning of this?” he angrily demanded. “I am working, damnit!”
“We saw,” Amaury snapped. He pointed both of his pistols directly at the doctor’s head. “Now back away, or I’ll blow your brains out.”
“Heh.” The man chuckled. He obediently took a step back from the operating table, revealing the blood-soaked apron he wore over his white coat, and slowly raised one of his gloved hands in the air. “Interesting choice of words, Horseman… Neurosurgery is my specialty.”
“We don’t give a shit,” Vera snapped. She strode forward, taking extra care to step on the sprawled doctors as she did so, and surveyed the thing on the operating table. The sight of the sloppily dissected body nearly made her vomit. “What did you—where’s the—”
The doctor’s eyes glimmered. “Most of it is in that bucket behind you. The brainstem, midbrain, hindbrain—at the end of the day, they’re nothing but trash—merely the urges to eat, sleep, and fuck. A more perfect being shouldn’t be burdened with such desires, don’t you think?”
“Vera, who is that on the table?” Amaury asked in a low voice.
“It’s—” The once-beautiful face had been torn to shreds, its eyes taken out, but the glimpse of blonde hair lying amid the pile of cast-off limbs brought up a memory. “It’s her. The Prophet. ELIE.”
“Only one thing matters in this world,” the doctor whispered. He raised his other hand up to the light, paying no attention to the blood that trickled down from the bullet lodged in his arm. A small piece of something meaty and red twisted and curled between his fingers. “There is only one God. The ability to choose. To build or destroy. To kill or create. The one true Savior of mankind.” He raised the scrap of flesh to his lips and gently brushed his lips against it. “The frontal lobe.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re insane,” Amaury said sarcastically. “And stop doing that. You’re making me sick.”
“The clergy said that God made man in His own image,” the doctor continued. He spat out a single bitter laugh. “But we know better than that, don’t we, Horsemen? Our species is vermin, pure and simple. Admittedly, some are closer to that than others…” His eyes flickered over to Vera. “You have the face of a Slav.”
Vera took careful aim with her shotgun. “And you’re about to not have a face at all.”
“And the mind of one, too!” The doctor laughed. “But peace, Horsemen. I want no trouble, no trouble at all.” He took another step away from them, the piece of brain still dangling from his fingers. It was at that moment that Vera noticed the large object hidden by a cloth on the table behind him. “This man wants nothing more than to create a God. But not in my image, oh no…” He reached out for the edge of the cloth.
“Stop moving.” Vera growled. “Last warning, asshole.”
“A better image.” He smiled. “This is my gift to the world. The last operation of Sturmbannführer Fritz Fischer: my deus ex machina.”
He suddenly lunged backward, tearing away at the cloth. Vera instinctively squeezed the trigger. The deafening blast rebounded around the room, and the doctor let out a cry of pain as the entire left side of his head melted away. Yet somehow his fingers continued to frantically fumble at the gleaming structure that had been hidden beneath the cloth, and he opened his mouth to unleash a hysterical hellish laugh of triumph.
Blamblamblamblamblam! Amaury’s shots took the doctor in the back of both of his knees, sending him crashing down to the floor. “No!” he screamed out as his ruptured skull left a thick trail of blood and brains across the glittering steel. “My goddess!”
Amaury crashed his steel-toed boot into the doctor’s face, cracking off more pieces of brain and skull. “Will you shut the hell up,” he snarled. “Goddamn!”
“Wake up!” Dr. Fischer wept, utterly heedless of his injuries. “Wake up, for Christ’s sake! WAKE UP!”
“Amaury…” Vera said uneasily. Something was wrong here; she could sense it in her bones. The hum of electricity vibrating through the air was starting to return, and there was something off about the strange metal object that the mad doctor wept and screamed at. She sidled around the bloody operating table, trying to get a better look at it. Are those… She blinked in surprise. Arms?
“Crazy Nazi fuck,” Amaury spat. He pressed the barrel of one of his pistols directly into the depths of Dr. Fischer’s exposed brain tissue. “Time to go night-night.”
“Amaury, get back,” Vera shouted. “Get back now!”
“What,” he shouted, but he instinctively obeyed, leaping back just as a bolt of electricity tore out from the sprawled machine and singed the air where he had been standing. “What the fuck—”
“OPERATING SYSTEMS AT SEVEN PERCENT. CHARGING DELTA-ONE REACTOR,” a cold, hollow voice announced. Another crackle of electricity sprayed up from the machine, then another, until it was entirely bathed in sparks that hissed and screamed in the flickering light.
“Yes!” Dr. Fischer howled in triumph. “My beauty! My goddess!”
A dozen slots opened up across the being’s torso, and suddenly a fierce wind exploded through the room; Vera’s hair slipped out of its bun and whirled crazily around her face, sucked toward the machine. Somewhere within it, a great roar began, and lines of light began to burst through the minuscule seams in its joints. “OPERATING SYSTEMS AT EIGHTEEN PERCENT.”
“What the fuck is happening?” Amaury screamed over the roar.
“Shoot the goddamn thing!” Vera roared back. She raised the shotgun and emptied the rest of her slugs directly at the thing’s body as Amaury blasted away at it with the pistols. Their bullets ricocheted wildly off the machine’s sleek, gleaming skin, not even leaving so much as a scratch.
“Useless!” Dr. Fischer called out mockingly. “You are nothing against the new master race!”
“OPERATING SYSTEMS AT FORTY-FIVE PERCENT. RUNNING WEAPONS DIAGNOSTICS.”
The howl of the engine within was too much now for them to hear each other. Amaury shouted out something that was lost in the rush of wind, yanked a grenade from his belt, and lobbed it at the operating table—and suddenly a silvery clawed hand reached up and snatched it out of the air. Vera watched in utter horror as two more metallic hands wrapped around the gr
enade, completely enclosing it within a ring of steel. The only sign that the grenade ever detonated was a slight puff of smoke that trickled out from between the delicate fingers.
“NINETY percent.” Halfway through, the voice that emanated from the machine abruptly changed into the crisp, cold tone of ELIE the prophet. No longer was there any trace of mushiness or saliva in its voice. Of course, Vera realized in raw terror. It doesn’t have a tongue anymore. “All weapons one hundred percent operational. Delta-one reactor fully charged. Mission parameters downloaded. Backup files removed.”
“Yes!” Dr. Fischer screamed. The howl of the wind tore his spectacles from his face, forcing him to grope blindly for his creation. “My beauty! Be born!”
“Vera, RUN!” Amaury screamed at her. He wrapped a hand around her arm and dragged her backward, but she was utterly transfixed by the shifting, transforming metallic form on the table. It literally pulsed with electricity and light. Even at this distance, the temperature in the room was rising rapidly, and Dr. Fischer’s greased hair—now free of the combover he had forced it into—began to singe and twist in reaction to the sheer heat that it was throwing off.
“Get to the control panel, you bitch!” Amaury was shouting, but his words were lost in the maelstrom engulfing the room. The operating table beneath the metal body suddenly shattered beneath the object’s weight—it lashed out with four crystalline arms and caught itself in mid-air. One of the razor-thin blades slid into the small of Dr. Fischer’s back, leaving a thin line of blood where it cut him through, as clean as a scalpel, yet he continued to wriggle forward, murmuring prayers and curses under his breath.
“Witness, Horsemen!” he shouted over his back. His intestines left a ropy trail of slime as he desperately crawled forward to kiss the feet of his angel. The machine twisted and uncurled itself, slamming six more legs on the floor. For a moment, it resembled nothing more than a monstrous crystal spider—and then it began to unfurl its wings. “I am the father of the gods! A new Titan, made to reap—”