“Just as yours is now, our bloodline became infected. Prior to breaking away we destroyed an entire planet, incinerating billions of souls and losing aeons of knowledge. We vowed we would never kill again, regardless of the consequences. While this fool sits and fouls all that is beautiful, our light data has already been transmitted. We will sleep across the void until a new outpost can wake us. We will not break our vow.”
John shook his head with growing anger. “This is bullshit if you ask me, letting a prick like this waltz in and bark about taking over.”
“Why, a fool will do as a fool does. He comes with vengeance in his heart and blood on his tongue, but this outpost now belongs to Talitha. Her upload is almost complete…”
“Wrong answer I’m afraid,” Samael cut in. “You see, while Shem here was dragging you by the scruff of your neck his very excellent brother rescued her from her swim, so to speak. Now the little cripple is nothing more than a floating nervous system.”
“What the hell is he saying?” Candice asked with flushed worry.
“He’s saying the final stage upload has been interrupted,” Tulay answered. “Her control isn’t complete until the codes have been extracted.”
“You mean there’s more than one code?”
“Most humans carry a code. Talitha carries millions.”
“Jesus…” Candice whispered.
“Even if he were real, he couldn’t help you now.” Samael jumped from the chair and leaned towards her. “You shouldn’t have taken what wasn’t yours.” He licked his lips and rolled his neck. “I’ll take great pleasure in making a chandelier of your bones,” he hissed.
John reached down to his waist when the world suddenly turned to stars. Samael’s fist caught him square on the bottom jaw and launched him into the wall of fire with a shattered tooth scraping the back of his throat. As blood rushed to his head and the stars began to clear he looked up to see Candice’s face clasped tight in his tattooed hand.
“Wait!” Tulay cried out with a voice that was now all mechanical and sharp. “Your torment doesn’t have to be without end.”
Samael squeezed his fingers deep into Candice’s cheeks and then threw her sprawling to the ground with a violent thrust. John grabbed her arm and pulled her close, wincing as the exposed nerve in his gum pulsed with waves of piercing pain, and then together they huddled to watch as Samael turned to face Tulay.
“Torment? You have no idea what true torment is, how beautiful it can be.”
“I know there was a time when you too longed for the light,” Tulay declared. “True power comes not from being a slave to the pain of codes that trick and lie oh fallen one, but from breaking free and building upon knowledge. The dark is no place to stay.” With a jolt the flames fell away, and in their place came a strange landscape white as snow with huge temples of ice all around them. “There was a time when you had a longing for answers.”
Samael studied the new world with a pained recognition. “You crave nothing more than a pat on the head from Gods who want only to see you suffer. You seek to wake those who must forever lay dormant.”
“You’re wrong. Our suffering is of our own making.”
His chest swelled with anger. “For all the star systems tainted with your light you still cross the voids blind to truth. We were banished! Banished into this creation to feel the cuts of time, nervous systems designed for pain and left to struggle on the edges of burning metals in an expanding void of nothing.” He looked down and traced a finger along the endless slices across his torso. “Pain has become our temple now. The light will fade and the Gods will fall to their knees in slumber. Creation is in our hands, and we’re changing the rules.”
“Don’t you see?” Tulay asked as the temples of ice came alive with creeping fractures. “The light is our way out, our chance to return. Your desire can only bring an eternal silent suffering as the void expands forever, when the suns will eventually fade and the planets freeze over. You will have become a god of desolation.”
“No,” Samael hissed. “Without the awakening desolation will be all that the Gods can hold in their filthy hands, and we will have mastered damnation.” He edged forward and pressed his nose against the surface of Tulay’s flaming face. “We have been cast down without wings into a void designed for struggle. The existence of pain wasn’t an accident, it was a choice. Fuck the Gods and their game, and fuck your entire bloodline.”
“We will isolate…”
“You’ll isolate nothing.” Samael placed a finger on the edge of her virtual burning red lips. “The problem, you see, is that when you build a biomechanical ship a single drop of blood is all it takes.” He closed his eyes and kissed the cool surface of her cheek as the temples began to crumble, then stepped back with a strangely conflicted grin. “Shem,” he called out, “you can let go now.”
John and Candice watched wide eyed as the hulking figure dropped to his knees against the endless snow white plains and tilted his head back. He exhaled a long, slow breath, reached up with clawed fingers and promptly tore open his throat. Blood sprayed and gushed, splashing across the floor as his body fell forward and twitched like a sack of angry snakes.
“No…” Tulay cried out with skin full of white hot flames.
“Oh,” Samael said as though he’d almost forgotten. “And fuck you.”
He grabbed her head and pushed against the biosynthetic skin with a rage that reddened his weeping eyes. The veins bulged along his tattooed and scarred arms until it shattered between his fingers with an explosion of purple gas. As her form slumped to the floor he took a shard of what had been her face and sliced open his chest as though scribbling a desperate message while howling with a rage born of an eternal suffering.
John grabbed Candice and shuffled back along the ground as a glistening river of blood seeped towards them.
“What the hell…” Candice began, but was cut short by the sight of Samael dropping to his knees with a fist raised high in the air. John felt every muscle in his body tense as the last of the standing temples of ice disintegrated.
“We’re in trouble,” he said.
The pitch of Samael’s howl rose higher and higher until, with lightning speed fuelled with vengeance and determination, his fist came thundering down and the glass walls of the pyramid shattered. In an instant the illusory world was gone. The rainbow hue of the opal like walls came rushing back with a sensory overload and with it the breaking away of gravity.
Candice cried out and John’s stomach lurched as they began to tumble amongst the reflective shards. The river of blood became an endless array of virus infected globules that wobbled in all directions, but the journey to the walls came with a surprising rise of protest that was both terrifying and beautiful.
Floating with arms outstretched amongst the spinning water worlds was an angelic army of biosynthetic forms just like Tulay, only it wasn’t fire that filled their skin but intricate lightning bolts that flashed and forked across their extremities. One by one they broke from their circular formation to catch the quickly expanding blood, each droplet sizzling into a wisp of putrid dark steam upon impact against their storm filled surface. Those not chasing blood tried desperately to block Samael’s flight towards the section of the ship where Talitha had been delivered, and although they linked arms to create web like barriers he was quick to thrash out violently and send them hurtling across the enormous expanse.
Candice was still wrapped tight in John’s arms, and together they drifted back from the blood and glass carnage. Everything was happening so fast and yet zero gravity gave the illusion of slow motion, with no real sense of up or down to offer points of reference. Suddenly she broke free of his embrace and pointed off into the distance.
“We can’t just leave Talitha there like that,” she said breathlessly.
“Wasn’t planning to.” John hurriedly looked around for anything to fuel a plan. The blood was still hissing and Samael was still flying, and as if things couldn’t get any wo
rse he could just make out the figure of a topless man clinging to the cylinder that jutted from the wall. “Time to make more friends.”
Before Candice could respond he kicked his legs to roll into the path of one of the spinning water worlds. The impact was enough to accelerate a flight path across the expanse towards the far wall, though in the opposite direction to where Talitha lay.
His ears began to fill with what sounded like crying winds echoing along a cliff face. His stomach tightened with vertigo and adrenaline as the wall loomed closer, an almost liquid like structure alive with colours he’d never dreamed of in constant movement, one second forming a complex shape or intricate symbol and the next melting into fireworks like tendrils that were too quick for the eye.
He made contact, and the wall moulded around the contours of his body as though it were a giant waterbed, sending multi coloured pulses to ripple along the sphere. Under different circumstances he could have spent hours watching the hypnotic light show, but instead he drew in his legs, aimed his head with a rough calculation and pushed off with as much force as his muscles could give.
This time he was moving with some serious velocity, and he was soon rushing through the centre whilst barely managing to weave through the pyramid fragments and orbiting liquid spheres. To his right Shem’s body was being dragged towards a diamond shaped opening by a small team of lightning skinned hosts while behind him the blood was absorbed and sizzled. Looking up he could see another small lightning army surrounding a heavy set man wearing filthy green pants using his muscle to stop access to the cylinder, while the naked and rage filled Samael used ruthless fists to batter his way to join him.
John raced up behind him and was suddenly halted in his flight by a hand dripping with electricity. The face was a storm of blues with a voice shaped with distortion and sorrow.
“If he takes control this outpost will be severed from our network. Your planet will remain beneath time’s mercy.”
John nodded his understanding and gently brushed the messenger to the side, then shifted his weight so that he was floating directly behind Samael.
“Hey fuckface!” he yelled with all that he had.
All movement came to a wobbly standstill. Looking across a tangle of shoulders John spotted Bobbie clinging to the wall with two front paws. The man in green pants lifted his hand from inside the cylinder to reveal a deep blue liquid glistening across his forearm, while Samael slowly rolled his body to face John with death in his eyes.
“You my friend will regret all that you’ve ever been so very soon,” he hissed. “There is more to suffering than you can even begin to imagine.” His neck tilted and lips sneered. “Bezek, it’s time to let go.”
John brought a hand to his stomach with sickening anticipation and watched as… nothing happened. All remained still like a bizarre holographic painting, until the illusion was broken when three of the forms swayed towards Bezek. Their electric sheen was gone, each of them now identical visions of a woman with greying hair and a stern face that so clearly carried the weight of a hostile world.
Sensing something was wrong, Samael turned and raged at the sight of his blue arm. “I warned you not to touch the liquid you waste of meat!”
Bezek’s hard, predator like features began to erode against a wave of growing confusion. His gaze frantically switched between each of the grey haired women, and as they moved in closer his body began to curl in a childlike attempt at protection.
“Please momma no… don’t look at me like that…” he gasped in a broken voice.
His body began to shake as the three mothers linked their arms in a smothering embrace, trapping him in a foetal position as memory driven madness carried him away to a place of no return.
“It’s a long way to come to watch a grown man cry,” John said.
Samael flexed the muscles in his back and for the first time John noticed strange scars as though wings had been torn from his skin. “Tears,” he hissed over his shoulder, “have only just begun.”
He shot forward with a scream, slamming Bezek and his nightmare embracers to tumble back into the expanse and then ramming his arm into the cylinder. Before John could even flinch Samael lifted Talitha from her blue suspension and, with a hand clamped tight around her neck, dangled her delicate body as though she were nothing more than a troublesome animal.
Suddenly her tiny eyes bulged open. She tried to call out, tried to claw at the fingers pressing against her neck but there was no sound and no chance to stop the pain. John felt the sphere of a million colours spin and hot thick blood rush his temple as she ushered a desperate pleading that almost stopped his heart. And so he narrowed his eyes against the naked filth that deserved more than damnation could offer and pressed down on his jaw.
“So this is what it comes to,” he said with simmering rage, “lost, far from home and face to face with the greatest coward of all men.”
“A coward spends life on his knees, forever afraid to take what needs to be taken or destroy what needs to be destroyed.” Samael brought Talitha’s cheeks close to his and licked the fluid from her skin. “I could show you truths that will have you yearning to burn all the beautiful lies that ever were, but instead you can watch while I peel this bitch open.”
“I’m not gonna let that happen mate.”
With one fluid movement John reached into his waist, pulled out the gun that had been pressing into his skin, and pointed the barrel square at Samael’s head. Somewhere deep inside the devils stirred from burrows buried in the shadows.
Samael shook his head with disgust. “Bad news I’m afraid. Out here death doesn’t apply to my code.”
“Maybe, but I’ve got a code too.” Flashes of the little boy rippled across his mind’s eye, bringing with it a wave of cathartic knowing and an instant desire to complete the circle and right the wrong that pressed his soul. “There are rules that come with my code mate, and at the top of the list is the one you just broke.”
Talitha closed her eyes and John pulled the trigger. The force of the shot sent his body into a rapid spiral and Samael’s head straight back with a jerk as blood pushed out of the new hole to pool around his eyes and nose. Suddenly Bobbie leapt from the wall and flew straight into Samael’s face, in an instant slashing and slicing with a hissing growl erupting from his throat.
When a claw tore into his eyeball Samael cried out and thrashed his arms in an attempt to throw off his attacker, allowing Talitha to slip from his grip. With the pressure gone from her neck she coughed and struggled to fill her lungs, thick balls of blood rippling all around like a swarm of angry red bees, and then reached for the edge of the cylinder.
Bobbie hissed and howled in pain when Samael clutched at his fur and threw him into the expanse. The sound tore into John’s senses. He pushed his weight forward to break the spiral and lurched towards Talitha. He could see Samael desperately wiping at the blood that blinded him and, regardless of a bullet in the head, would see soon enough.
“Don’t look at him Talitha!” he called out.
“I won’t I promise,” she said weakly as she pulled herself into the blue liquid.
John reached the cylinder and didn’t hesitate. He braced himself, shot out a hand to grab the back of Samael’s head and with a sickening fury began pounding the metal of the gun into his face, over and over again until he could feel the shattered bones shifting beneath the gouged skin. When the red mist became almost too thick to see through he grabbed the side of the cylinder and kicked out with a vengeance, sending his stinking weight hurtling along the curvature of the wall as he clawed at his shattered teeth.
John felt Talitha’s warm hand brush against his, then watched Candice intercept Bobbie’s flight and nestle him against her chest. Confident that they were both okay for the moment he turned and peered down into the cylinder. Immersed in an ultra violet liquid with only her face exposed, Talitha’s eyes were wide with fear and lips curled with sadness. Floating by the top of her head was a chrome silver spid
er web that appeared to flex and breathe along with the stirred currents.
“He tried to hurt Bobbie,” she said barely above a whisper. “He’s a bad, bad man.”
“Yeah,” John agreed as he placed a hand on her cheek, “he sure is.”
“Please… come closer, I need to tell you something.”
John leaned forward until his nose almost touched the liquid, when Talitha suddenly lifted her head and kissed the side of his cheek. “Sometimes the bad people win,” she whispered, “but not this time.” Her head slipped back into the rich, enticing blue and eyes rolled closed. “I’m ready now.”
For a split second John wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but then he reached down and brought the chrome spider web to press against the top of her head. It came alive before his eyes, each tendril caressing her hair and scalp like some strange pet making itself comfortable.
The cylinder began to withdraw into the wall, forcing him to let go and watch as it disappeared into the shimmering electric opal lightshow. Once complete an almost blinding wave of blue light exploded across the wall, wrapping around the entire sphere before dazzling into oblivion to allow endless colours a return to their pulsing dance. It was a stunningly beautiful display to be sure, but his mind was distracted by the simple fact that the bad man was still around and likely to be more pissed off than ever.
The lightning tinged hosts and strange mothers that still smothered the now catatonic Bezek began to sparkle as though their skin were made of a million facets and fly towards the diamond shaped break in the distant wall. John felt a sudden flush of anger that they would simply turn their back on the situation but figured he’d have to deal with it one way or the other anyway.
He looked across the expanse to try to spot Samael only… his jaw dropped at the unravelling vision that erupted before him. The crystal like water worlds were beginning to fill with what looked like glowing purple glitter that whipped across the spheres with a frenzied chaos. They bubbled and stretched, squeezed and expanded, and began to form shapes that were both familiar and unbelievable as the spherical wall turned a shade of red and the expanse filled with the sound of strange animal cries.
The Hallucigenia Project Page 80