Promise: Caulborn #2

by Nicholas Olivo

  “I don’t understand,” I said as I tried to push my frustration aside. “Going to the Bright Side always fixes anything that’s wrong with me. I felt great while I was there. I regrew a tooth for crying out loud.”

  “If that poison is as smart as I think it is, it’s possible it altered itself at the molecular level when it sensed your power increasing. Think of it like when a bacterium goes inert in cold weather; it doesn’t die, but instead goes into a sort of hibernation. Your temperature has gradually been increasing over the last twenty minutes, so I think the poison’s run its course. I’ll need to run some more tests to know for sure, which means I’ll need to keep you here for further observation.” He fixed me with a stern glare, and when I didn’t argue, he gave a little nod. “Now then, I’m going to get a carton of cigs. You stay put.”

  “Yes sir,” I said. I counted to sixty and got out of bed. I was still woozy, but the world didn’t spin too much as I pulled my clothes on. That the poison had remained in my system after going to and from the Bright Side was bad, but it must be just about done. Doc had even said so.

  I got into the elevator, leaned against the wall, and stabbed at the button for my office’s floor. As the doors closed, I pulled out my phone and dialed Cather. “How you feeling?” I asked him when he picked up.

  “I loathe complaining, old friend, but I must say that I have been better. The kobolds say that there was some rather nasty poison on that blade, and it’s taking them a bit to concoct an antidote. That said, they have been most helpful with their ministrations.”

  “I bet,” I said, happy that Cather wasn’t seeing the kobolds as an inconvenience anymore. “Are they teleporting beautiful women to your bedside?”

  There was a pause. “Teleport?” He chuckled. “Ah, I suppose I can see how it would look like that. They can turn invisible, Vincent. Then they move around while they can’t be seen. It’s something they learn to avoid predators.”

  “That makes sense. What about their telepathy? Do you find it strange to have voices pop into your head?”

  A longer pause this time. “Kobolds can’t communicate telepathically, old friend. I think you might have them mixed up with some other fairy creature. They can turn invisible, perform minor magical healing, and can control fire. I’ve heard some of the more talented ones can even turn into small dragons, but I don’t believe any of the lot you brought here can do that.”

  Had I inadvertently opened telepathic contact with Kleep? It didn’t seem likely. Just the same, I chose not to speculate any further with Cather. “Hmm. Maybe I am confusing them with something else. Anyway, do you need anything?”

  “You just find the bastard who did this to me and kill him,” Cather said, his voice dropping an octave. “You do it before I heal, because no matter how you kill him, Vincent Corinthos, it will be a hundred thousand times more merciful than I will be.”

  After hanging up with Cather, I tottered upstairs to Gearstripper’s workshop and found the gremlin putting screws into a metal cylinder just bigger than a roll of paper towels. “Hey, Gears,” I called. “How goes it?”

  “It’s done,” he said, setting the screwdriver down. Gears reached into a drawer, pulled out a Whatchamacallit bar, peeled its wrapper like a banana, and snarfed half of it in a single bite. While he chewed, I took in what he was working on. The cylinder was made of a dull, smooth metal. Tiny LEDs flickered along the top, while dark bands of a different metal wove around the edge in a spiral pattern.

  Gears swallowed. “You can touch it; it’s not powered up yet.” He stuffed the rest of the candy into his mouth.

  I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe for the cylinder to be ice cold or blazing hot, but it was just like touching a giant can of warm soda. I gently lifted it and was surprised at how light it was. I resisted the urge to rattle it and instead set it down gently.

  Gears finished his second mouthful of Whatchamacallit. “The ion accelerator is good to go in my other workshop,” he said as he tore open another candy bar. “It’s ready when you are, Vinnie.”

  “Great. Let’s go. Now.” I couldn’t waste any more time. The Keepers had taken liberties with our agreement, so who knew what else they might pull. For all I knew, they had some alien technology that would pull Caulborn secrets right out of Megan’s head that they could then sell to the highest bidder. There was no time for anything but immediate action. Plus, I needed to get out of here before the good doctor realized I was gone. I pulled out my phone. Herb answered a moment later. “We’re ready, Herb.” I gave him the address to meet us.

  “Antonio and I will be there in fifteen minutes,” the necromancer said.

  “Who’s Antonio?”

  “The spirit attached to that skull,” Herb replied. “He’s very anxious to find these coordinates, says he hasn’t had a decent challenge in centuries.”

  “Is Herb ready?” Gears asked as I hung up.

  “Yep. The skull’s name is Antonio.”

  Gears pursed his lips. “Riiiight. Okay, then,” he said as he climbed into the backpack. “My secondary workshop is just down the street. It’s got an old-style metal mesh fence around it. You can’t miss it.”

  “I thought you said there was a tunnel to the other building.”

  “It’s twelve inches wide and eighteen inches high, Vinnie.”

  Wow, that was like Shawshank Redemption small. “Down the street we go, then.”

  With Gears’s portable Taj Mahal slung over one shoulder, I snuck out the back door and walked down the street. As I got to the building with the metal mesh fence, Herb’s Taurus pulled up to the curb alongside me. Herb got out with a backpack of his own, and we wordlessly descended a set of concrete stairs to a heavy metal door marked with a faded bomb shelter placard. A pair of padlocks held the doors shut with a shiny steel chain. I moved to Open them when Gearstripper began thrashing around in the backpack.

  “No, Vinnie, don’t do that!” He scrambled out of the pack onto my shoulder and perched there for a moment like some demented pirate’s parrot. I withdrew my hand, stuffed it into my bomber’s pocket, and raised an eyebrow at the gremlin.

  Gearstripper looked at me with wide eyes. “Do you really think I’d trust my workshop’s security to padlocks?”

  I pursed my lips. “Actually, now that I think about it, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Gears rolled his eyes. “You need to think first, Vinnie.” He scrambled down my leg and pried open a small panel toward the base of the door. This one had a numeric keypad and a keyhole. Gears withdrew a small brass key from his coveralls and slipped it into the keyhole. He tapped out a series of numbers on the pad so fast that I couldn’t follow them, then turned the key right. He entered a second sequence of numbers and then turned the key left. Another sequence, another turn of the key, and the entire door slid up. The locks I’d been about to open were just for show.

  “What would’ve happened if he’d opened the locks?” Herb asked. In reply, Gears pointed up at a machine gun that was mounted on a rail above the door, aimed right at us. Herb nodded. “Got it.”

  Gears flipped a switch and the door slid shut behind us. A second switch flip, and bare bulbs covered in dust flickered on. The room was huge and smelled like a damp basement.

  “Wow,” Herb said. “Two mad scientist labs in one week. Is this normal for you?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied as I set the backpack down. “At least this place is cleaner than Gears’s other shop.” Instead of the haphazard collection of electronic knickknacks strewn about the room, this workshop was immaculate. Metal racks lined one wall, each one filled with meticulously labeled jars and canisters of various chemical and electrical components. A large workbench dominated the center of the room. Sitting atop it was a large glass and metal cylinder about five feet long, lying on its side. A pair of complex-looking electronic devices bookended the cylinder.

  Gears headed for the racks. He grabbed two canisters and scampered over to the workbench. He emptied one
canister into the first bookend, the second into the other. “All right, Vinnie,” Gears said. “I’m going to use this accelerator,” he gestured at the cylinder, “to bombard the lead with the zinc. When the reaction is successful, we should get enough copernicum to power Hammond’s device.”

  “That’s all there is to it?” Herb asked.

  “Heck no,” Gearstripper replied. “I’m keeping this high level because Vinnie’s an underachiever.”

  “Love you, too, Gears,” I said.

  Gears smiled and pressed a button on the accelerator. It hummed so loudly that it vibrated in my chest. The lights dimmed a bit, and Herb and I both took a step back. Gears looked at us and raised his voice to be heard over the machinery. “Remember, we’ll only have twenty-nine seconds before the copernicum winks out.” He looked at both of us. “Are you ready?”

  Herb and I both nodded. Gears set Hammond’s device on the bench near the accelerator. “Here we go.”

  We stood there in a tense silence for I don’t know how long. Finally, Gears yelled, “It’s happening. Houston, we have copernicum. Clock’s ticking, Vinnie, go!”

  “Herb,” I hustled over to the table and gestured for the necromancer to follow me.

  Herb held the skull in the crook of his left arm. His eyes glowed orange. “Wow. Antonio here is a feisty one. He’ll show you where those coordinates lead, and believe me, he’s absolutely raring to go.”

  I put one sweaty hand on the device, the other on Antonio’s skull and closed my eyes. Something barely noticeable brushed the corner of my mind. “Antonio’s going to guide your thoughts, Vincent,” Herb said. “Just relax.” I nodded as images flickered through my mind. Stars. No, constellations. Dozens of them, many of which were unfamiliar to me. A distant part of my mind realized these were the stars of a different dimension, someplace beyond Earth, beyond the Bright Side, beyond anything I knew.

  Someplace Outside.

  I saw a set of stars that looked like a shot glass if you connected them right. “Antonio says he’s found the place,” Herb said. His voice was very far away. “Let ’er rip.”

  I drew on my power and Opened a portal. The canister grew warm beneath my hand, bright green light shooting from several of the gaps in the metal. The portal felt different than the other ones I’d created. Where those had felt clumsy and jagged, this one felt smooth, like I was tracing my hand across the surface of a pond. The portal opened onto a landscape of dark red grass and a pink sky.

  “Ten seconds,” Gears called. “Hurry!”

  Herb and Gears walked through. I scooped up the canister and followed. “It smells like popcorn,” Gears said, his nose crinkling.

  “There are worse things,” I said. “Herb, what’s the word from Antonio? This the right place?”

  Herb’s eyes flickered a faint orange. “Yes.”

  “All righty then.” The portal abruptly sparked and flickered out of existence of its own volition.

  “The copernicum expired,” Gears said as he stowed the device in the backpack.

  Herb looked at me pointedly. “So how do we get back?”

  “The Keepers have devices that let them jump back and forth between dimensions,” I said. At least, that’s how the Chroniclers did it, so it stood to reason the Keepers did, too. “We’ll steal one of those and hop home.”

  “Planning ahead isn’t exactly your strong suit, is it?” Herb asked.

  I ignored the question. “Can Antonio get a fix on Megan? No, wait,” I said, pointing to the right. “This way.”

  “How do you know?” Gears asked.

  I looked at my outstretched hand. How had I known? It felt right, but I couldn’t articulate it much more than that. “Call it a hunch,” I said.

  “Well, Antonio agrees with your hunch,” Herb said. He regarded the skull for a moment. “He’s done his job, so it’s time to release his spirit. It’s only fair.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’m thinking it’ll be just over the next hill.” Sure enough, there was a series of buildings surrounded by a giant chain-link fence. Covered guard towers stood at the four corners, giving the place the look and feel of the set of Hogan’s Heroes. Herb murmured something in his strange language and nodded to himself before stuffing Antonio’s skull into his pack. He must’ve dismissed the spirit.

  Gears rooted around in his bag until he came out with a pair of binoculars that were nearly as big as he was. “Okay, we’ve got two sentries in each tower. They’ve got sidearms and some sort of big gun mounted in each one. Searchlights, too, by the look of things.” He panned to the left. “No foot sentries between the towers. Pff. That’s just sloppy. Although I suppose that could mean they’ve got land mines.”

  “Or that the fence is electrified,” I said, wincing at the memory.

  “Good thought, Vinnie. Hang on while I shift spectrums.” There was a clicking as Gears turned a wheel on top of the binoculars. “Well would you look at that. Not just electricity, but some sort of low level radiation, too.”

  “So they’d electrocute us and give us cancer?” I asked.

  “Not sure. I’m not familiar with this particular form of radiation.” He panned back and forth. “Let’s see, where’s your power source…” A good fifteen seconds went by as Gears searched. “Ah, there you are. See that little building over on the right with the peaked roof?”

  “The blue one that looks like a toolshed?” Herb asked.

  “Yep, that’s the one. The generators powering that fence are in there. I can see their energy signatures.” Gears lowered the binoculars. “I can get in there and disable them, Vinnie. Then you and Herb can scale the fence.”

  “Gears, the Keepers have access to technology that doesn’t exist in our universe. You’ve probably never seen anything like it before.”

  Gearstripper gave me a wicked smile. “Then I’ll get to break something new,” he said, his voice taking on a sinister tone. “Come on, Vinnie, launch me over the fence and let’s get Megan back.”

  “Hang on,” Herb said. “The guards in the towers will see you. Give me a second to see if I can get you a distraction.” His eyes went orange and he gasped. His face paled and he swooned.

  I caught him by the shoulders. “Herb, stay with me, man. What’s wrong?”

  “There are so many dead here,” he whispered. “Thousands upon thousands of them. And they’re all so angry,” his orange eyes were wide in horror. “I’ve never felt this level of hatred for the living before. It’s staggering.”

  “Why didn’t you feel this when we came through the portal?”

  Herb shook his head. “They weren’t there. They’re all inside that fence. None of these spirits will help us willingly.” His eyes abruptly shifted back to brown and he sat down hard.

  “Okay, that’s good to know,” I said. “All right, plan B. Gears, let me borrow your binoculars.” I scanned the watchtowers. Each of the towers had canvas camp chairs. One of the guards was standing, presumably surveying the area, while the other sat in the chair. The seated guards were making notes in a ledger. Maybe logging all-clears? I glanced at the fence. It was maybe ten feet high.

  I let out a breath. Holy shit, I was going to have to be fast to pull this off. “All right, Gears, are you ready?”

  “Wait,” Herb said. “Shouldn’t we wait for nightfall?”

  I looked around. “Do you know when that might happen? This isn’t our universe. For all we know, this is night. There aren’t any suns in the sky, and I have no idea how time works here. Our best bet is to get in and get out so fast that the Keepers don’t know what hit them.”

  Herb nodded reluctantly. “I was hoping for more of a plan than this. We’re just making this up as we go.”

  “It’s not a perfect world,” I said, a little harder than I’d intended. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll create a distraction and launch Gears over the fence. We’ll use the binoculars to see when the generators are down. Then you and I will sneak in.”

  “They’l
l see us scaling the fence,” Herb said. “They might miss Gearstripper, but you and I are a lot bigger than he is.”

  “Let me worry about that. You just keep your spectral senses going and let me know if we’re risking an undead attack.” I could tell Herb wasn’t happy about it. Hell, I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t see any other way.

  “Let’s do it, Vinnie,” Gears said, tensing his little body.

  “Good luck, Gears.” I took a good hard look at the two watchtowers closest to us and let out a slow breath. Then I shut my eyes, pictured the cloth chairs in my mind, and sent the tiniest thread of fire out into them. The flames bored through the bottoms of the watchtowers like a laser beam and seared the cloth of the chairs, cutting the seats neatly in half in less than a second. Both of the seated guards fell to the floor with a thud, and their standing partners turned to see what had happened. Before they could react any further, I sent Gears over the fence and telekinetically cushioned his landing on the other side. He took off at a run toward the generator building.

  I sat down on the red grass next to Herb and raised the binoculars. The guards in the towers were looking at the neatly broken canvas, but my threads of fire had been so fine, they had left only pinprick-sized holes in the floors. There was no way they’d find them.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to do it?” Herb asked.

  “Gearstripper was one of the best saboteurs in World War II,” I replied. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he’ll be able to do it.” Of course, doubts started creeping in after ten minutes had gone by. Through the binoculars, the fence glowed with electricity and radiation. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed when the fence suddenly went dark. “He did it,” I grinned.

  “Great,” Herb said. “Now how do we get past the guards?”

  Focusing on the first watchtower, I reached out telekinetically and latched onto the head of the guard facing our direction, slamming it into the side of the watchtower. As the guard slumped, his partner popped up into view, and I repeated the attack. I did that to the guards in the second tower on our side and held my breath. No alarms. I then reached out to the towers on the two far corners and did the same.