While appearing to be made of gold, which would have made the blade malleable, the weapon sliced through the creature’s carapace and I began carving it away to the flesh underneath. Orihalcum was a gold-like substance that tore other-dimensional creatures apart like fire and tinder. Black acidic ichor bubbled forth from the wound underneath, melting away my sleeve and revealing the chitin-covered black arm beneath.
I laughed insanely, stabbing my black arm deeper into the creature’s tentacle and pulling out a yellow set of tubes. The creature let forth an ear-piercing multi-pitch wail from a dozen holes that opened across its central stalk. The tubes I held burst when I squeezed them, causing more of the black ichor to pour out onto my mutated hand.
The creature dropped me on the ground, thrashing its tentacles in every direction. Hideous burning scars raked across my chest, but I felt no pain. Were I a normal man, I’d have been dead or screaming in agony, but instead the sensation felt like a baroque echo of pain. I threw up a greenish black substance on the ground.
“Ib’in ack thuhl kargrba zach ign Cthulhu!” I heard Mercury mangle and spit out the guttural language of the Deep Ones. I recognized the spell she was casting, one of the many described in the ritual section of the Necronomicon.
“Mercury!” I shouted, calling for her to stop. The forces the spell harvested were enough to tear most human hosts apart. I’d seen hybrids of the Deep One, regular humans, and ghouls ripped to shreds for attempting to invoke Great Cthulhu’s power.
Much to my surprise, the creature behind me stopped thrashing and began to sweat sulfurous ooze from dozens of holes across its body. The crack it had emerged from began to seal behind it and the creature attempted to flee through it, half of its vile body sinking back down into the alien world from which it had emerged.
“Ib’in ack thuhl kargrba zach ign Hastur!” Mercury screamed, raising her hands high in the air. “Ib’in ack thuhl kargrba zach ign Shub-Niggurath! KATHALL!”
The creature slipped into the last of the crack before it sealed over, disappearing from our world forever. I did not know if it feared the power of Cthulhu being channeled through Mercury’s invocations, the equivalent of a rocket launcher held by mice, or whether it had been forced back into its realm by her will alone.
Either way, she’d saved us.
Rushing to her side, I reached for her with my inhuman clawed hand. Mercury shuddered away from it and I hid it behind my back. Lifting my human hand instead, I said, “You banished it.”
“I did.” Mercury coughed, clearly shaken. “Yay me. Now we just have to deal with a horde of rampaging cultists.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw that all of the fires had gone out and we were surrounded by the dozens of gray-robed cultists who had left their circle to approach us. They’d done so silently. I hadn’t picked up on them—which was impossible.
“Oh, ha ha,” Mercury said. “Very funny, gods I don’t believe in.”
The brown-skinned cultist from earlier stood at the front. He was close enough now that I could get a better look at his features. The man was tall, as tall as me, with a handsome face and short, dark hair. A pair of wire-frame spectacles sat on the bridge of his nose and there was intelligence behind his eyes.
There was also a sense of contempt, as if I was not worth his attention. Then again, from his perspective I was a mutant who’d just gotten into a fistfight with a creature from another world. Not exactly someone you wanted to invite to a dinner party. The figure had a crystal rod aimed at my chest.
The man spoke in a calm, soothing tone. “I am Professor Harvey Armitage. Mister Booth, Ms. Halsey, we need your help.”
Chapter Three
I shot the interlopers death with my eyes, wishing it was more than metaphor. “You could have just asked.”
“You might have said no,” Professor Armitage replied, looking between us. “Our matter is of the utmost urgency and could not be delayed, even for the slightest moment.”
“And that justifies killing thirty-six people?” Mercury said, gazing at the burning corpses around her.
Professor Armitage snorted. “Bandits, degenerates, outlaws, and smugglers. Miskatonic has long done business with Kingsport, but it is an unwelcome and unhappy thing. Either way, you will come with us.”
“Or you’ll kill us, too?” I said, putting my left arm around Mercury.
“Yes.”
Professor Armitage made a good argument for acquiescing—albeit one that did not incline me to help him further than necessary. I was about to respond when I doubled over in pain, all the agony from my wounds struck me as it would a regular human. The pain was searing and my body shuddered from the torture. Mercury was at my side in an instant, but there was nothing she could do.
“Hold still,” Professor Armitage said, pressing the rod against the burn mark on my stomach.
Agonizing pain of a different sort shot through my body, white-hot to the point of driving me mad. Then it was gone, as was the pain I’d felt just before Professor Armitage touched me.
I looked at where the creature had wrapped its burning tentacle around me and saw that my wound had vanished.
“How?” I asked, wondering not just what he’d done, but how he’d done it to a body so riddled with mutation. Could a man capable of healing my arm like that reverse my mutation?
“Science,” Professor Armitage said, lifting the crystal rod. “One so advanced and beyond that of our ancestors it would appear as magic to them. Just as the invocations to Cthulhu that your consort made tapped into a ‘technology of the mind’ the Great Old Ones created and built into the fabric of the universe.”
“Technology of the mind?” I asked, perplexed.
Mercury seemed every bit as interested as I.
“I have studied under the Great Race of Yith for the better part of a century and have acquired only a drop of an ocean of knowledge,” Professor Armitage said, his look of contempt softening. The man looked no more than mid-thirties, at best, so his claim of antiquity surprised me, but not much. I’d seen far stranger things in my time traveling the Wasteland.
“How old are you?” Mercury asked.
“I was born the day of the Rising,” Professor Armitage said. “Given the chaos of that period, it is a miracle I survived at all.”
“What do you want from us?” Mercury said, running her fingertips over my burn mark and casting her gaze towards my right arm.
“That is best revealed at the University.”
“The University.” I repeated the name, wondering what he was referring to. No Old Earth institutions had survived the Rising. The Remnant had a semi-formal college, but it was alone in this.
Professor Armitage nodded. “The University is, to my knowledge, the last decent place of learning in the whole of humanity. There, we educate the next generation of humans in the knowledge of the poor dumb animals that proceeded us and what we might become.”
“Sounds like a cult,” Mercury said, showing her usual lack of restraint. “I’ve heard plenty of rhetoric like this before—usually before someone suggests I offer myself up to something that thinks I’ll taste delicious.”
Several of the robed figures looked less than pleased at her words.
Professor Armitage’s reaction, though, was to be amused. Smiling, he said, “Yes, I suppose that would be how it would appear to you. We do not worship the Great Race. I, myself, believe in no god but reason.”
“Reason is a poor god in this world,” Mercury muttered.
“You speak of Miskatonic,” I said, finally understanding who and what this group was.
“Yes,” Professor Armitage replied. “I’m glad you recognize us.”
When the Rising occurred, the citizens of Arkham, Massachusetts, fled to their local air force base for protection. The descendants of said place had gone on to found New Arkham. A small number, though, had gathered around Miskatonic University’s academics. Forming the Miskatonic settlement, they’d become a weird and exclusive ba
nd of scientists.
New Arkham had tried to annex it several times, but the citizens were elusive and dangerous. In the end, New Arkham had simply agreed to trade technology and supplies with them. Given their actions here today, it was perhaps a good thing we had not sought a closer alliance.
“All right, take us to this University,” I said, grunting through labored breaths. My insides felt like they were on fire. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling, though, more like I was breathing through new lungs and the oxygen was being carried down to a fresh set of organs.
Mercury looked at me and I felt a twinge of guilt for answering for us both. I didn’t know what other options we had, though. The Yithian cultists had proven immune to gunfire and made mincemeat out of our fellow soldiers. While they wanted us alive, I had no doubt they’d be able to kill us in seconds if they changed their minds.
And I wasn’t sure we’d be able to say no to their demands, even then.
“Follow me.” Professor Armitage beckoned us with his crystal rod in hand.
Reluctantly, I stood up and followed him. Mercury trailed behind, keeping her eyes on the cultists beside us and watching them until we passed out of a circle.
“How did you and your followers move so quickly?” I asked, looking at Professor Armitage. “Was it through technology, magic, or something else?”
“Space and time are relative,” Professor Armitage replied. “As that poor insane man was able to bend both to bring that creature here, so is it possible for those who perceive the world differently to do the same.”
“How—” I started to ask.
The three of us were no longer in the middle of the desert but in the middle of a large dusty courtyard. A faded, featureless statue of an aged scholar stood in the center of it and old, dilapidated buildings formed a square around us. There was no plant life, just cracked dead earth, with a terrible sense of wrongness. It was the feeling I got when I walked through a graveyard at night as if I was being watched by a thousand dead things peering out from their abandoned tombs.
The sun was rising and it looked like several hours had passed. Over the doors of one of the buildings, larger than most I’d seen outside of cities, was the name “Miskatnic” with the “o” missing between the “t” and the “n.” No one was around the campus. For a supposed vast center of learning, it appeared like much of the rest of the Wasteland—a remnant of a society that had once been grand but was now reduced to nothing more than echoes. The only thing out of place was a loud humming noise I heard in the back of my mind, coming from every direction at once.
“—so?” I finished.
“OK, that was a neat trick,” Mercury said, looking around. She was trying to hide how uncomfortable she was with snark. “I will say, though, your university has seen better days.”
“Yes, where are all the citizens?” I asked, looking for the source of the noise.
“Underground.” Professor Armitage made a slight gesture of his head. “The steam tunnels from the Pre-Rising wars are a far more formidable refuge for the world’s last bastion of knowledge than these poor irradiated buildings.”
Ah, of course. No wonder New Arkham had failed to take this place. “Will my—”
I stopped when I saw my hideous black appendage. The spider-like chitin was now merged with a carapace similar to that of the creature I’d just killed, as dark as midnight and looking like organic tank armor. The ends of my fingertips were clawed but seemed sharper now, and I felt like there was a new sort of blood running through my veins. Even more shocking, it hurt to look at my arm now, as if it no longer entirely existed in three dimensions.
I shuddered and forced it behind me.
I felt sick.
The change was getting worse.
“Condition?” Professor Armitage asked, looking amused at my reaction to my arm.
“Yes, my condition.” I gritted my teeth at his description. “Will it be a problem?”
“I think not,” Professor Armitage said. “The University takes all kinds. Those who are not open to alternative forms of life are the only ones who are not welcome. It takes a steady mind and strong will to study here.”
“Can you help him?” Mercury looked at Professor Armitage with pleading eyes. I’d not seen her give those to anyone, not even when the Marshes had kidnapped her.
“Is something wrong with him?” Professor Armitage asked, raising an eyebrow. He turned and started walking to the side of a building to our east.
“What an asshole,” Mercury said, watching him depart.
“Mercury, don’t irritate the teleporting wizard.”
“He’s not …” Mercury paused. “OK, he’s a wizard, but we’ve killed those before.”
I flexed my right hand behind my back, feeling the immense power within. I had an urge to rip off my own flesh and reveal the creature beneath. “You saw what he did. He might be able to help me, even if he doesn’t seem too keen on it. Plus, I’d rather not be thrown out into space or into the middle of a rock.”
“He murdered all those people.” Mercury’s voice was a low hiss.
“We’re all murderers here.”
Mercury was silent to that accusation, looking at the ground. “At least we know you’re still human, Booth. No other race could produce such a dick.”
I tried to ignore my shame at not going after Armitage. Once, I had been willing to cross the entirety of the Wasteland to hunt down and kill a man for hurting those I cared about. Killing Doctor Alan Ward hadn’t brought me any peace, though—quite the opposite. Instead, I found myself mourning my dead friends while caring little that their murderer was still walking around. It was another sign of my dwindling humanity, and I couldn’t blame Mercury for being disgusted by it.
I tore off the remains of my shirt and wrapped it around my right arm. It was a poor cover-up and added to the horror in a way, as if something terrible and unnatural were hidden by the most paper-thin disguise. Mercury did her best to look away, but I saw the disgust in her eyes. The revulsion. A part of me was furious with her for that look. It made me want to—
Kill them all.
I shook my head, shaking away that errant thought. Violent imagery was becoming increasingly a part of my daily life. I’d always lived with one hand dipped in blood, but when I killed now, there was something different.
Something glorious.
“Booth?”
I blinked and started walking toward Professor Armitage. I needed to get some fresh air and stop thinking about everything.
You are a god among men.
Feed.
As I quickened my pace, the voices in the back of my head receded to a loud hum. Soon, I arrived at a set of concrete steps leading down to an innocuous metal door built into the side of some sort of bunker.
There was a keypad to the side of it, looking like the same broken technology you might find everywhere in the Wasteland. Professor Armitage, however, entered an eight-digit code consisting entirely of the number four.
“Someone was lazy in making their code,” I said, giving a fake half-smile.
“Some numbers have significance.”
The door creaked open with a hiss and icy cold air washed across my body, causing me to shiver. Mercury followed, and looked past me into the long corridors behind the metal door.
“Forgive the cold,” Professor Armitage said. “Some of our most important members are preserved here through methods less effective than my own immortality.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, uninterested in his allusions.
The three of us stepped into the ice-cold confines of the University’s tunnels illuminated by fluorescent lights. The air flickered and a dozen or more gray-robed figures appeared out of nowhere around us. Just looking at them caused me to feel sick. The rest of Professor Armitage’s group had arrived.
“Follow me,” Professor Armitage said, advancing past them. “I will answer whatever questions are not better covered by speaking to the Great One.”
“The Great One?” I asked, wondering if he was a human with delusions of grandeur or something worse.
“A title of respect,” Professor Armitage said. “They are the architect of our triumph.”
“They?” The word choice was curious.
Professor Armitage didn’t answer, looking back with an enigmatic smile. “You will see what I mean.”
Well, that wasn’t ominous.
The three of us passed by numerous open doorways, ones that revealed sights that both intrigued and disturbed. There were classrooms where children of all ages were listening to lectures on a variety of subjects.
They were not all human, including children of ghoul and Deep One ancestry, plus several obvious mutants. It was to my shame and regret my initial reaction to this sight was to be disgusted as well as fearful for the children’s safety. It seemed I was not so far from my New Arkham roots as I realized.
“How many people do you have here?” Mercury asked, distracting me from my ponderings.
“Several thousand,” Professor Armitage said, passing by a pair of human scholars holding piles of books. “We draw from the population of Miskatonic’s outlying communities for most of our new recruits, but our own descendants work here as well. Our facilities are small but self-sufficient. We are not so in need of population growth as other outposts.”
“Population is the least thing to concern oneself with when the world is dying and we can’t feed the humans we have.”
I wondered what other surprises awaited us.
“It seems to be a very interesting place,” Mercury said, looking into a room where corpses were being autopsied and some sort of lecture was going on about the human body.
“You might find the research here to be to your liking, Doctor Halsey,” Professor Armitage said. “Your knowledge of science and medicine, however incomplete, would be a welcome addition to our research staff.”
“Incomplete?” Mercury asked, frowning.
We turned a corner and found ourselves passing a series of laboratories where the experiments were getting stranger. The first room contained experiments with electricity involving glowing silver orbs, the next held something involving a human body floating in midair, and the third had a man sitting down holding his own brain while a trio of gigantic wasps encircled him.
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