“Yes, yes!” Aleksi cried, striding proudly forwards. “I see,” he said, coming up against the floating structure, quickly understanding the significance of the curling thrones. “No throne for a god would tarnish itself with touching mortal ground. I understand. Which one is mine?”
“All of them,” the dead replied, the whispering words sweeping left to right, many voices at once.
“I choose this one,” Aleksi said, eagerly clambering into one of the thrones and lying back. “It’s finally happening. All my good work, all my effort. You will see me crowned,” he said, his chest swelling with pride, looking down on his subjects.
He grasped the arm rests and wriggled to find comfort. The cushioning was lumpy in all the wrong places. One lump in particular was pressing into his right kidney, but he realized it was yet another test. He understood that if he was to become a god, he had to banish mortal discomfort from his mind.
“Tell me what to do.”
He felt a strange force overcome him, creeping through his muscles, warm and stinging ever so gently, like nettle soup. His left hand rose up, guided by a power outside his control. Shocked, he realized his hand was aiming towards his face. He tried to resist, then gagged and screamed as his fingers pressed into his mouth and forced their way to the back of his throat. He wriggled helplessly and tried to cry out for mercy, his tongue flapping against his clawing fingertips, unkempt nails scratching his soft tissue.
“Wha… what… please…” he panted as his hand withdrew from his mouth and moved back to the armrest.
Against his will, Aleksi’s wet forefinger slid into a slot on the armrest and light sprung from the table beyond his feet. He relaxed and stopped resisting, allowing the force to control his fingers freely. It wasn’t trying to injure him, he had to believe that. This was all part of the ceremony. His fingertips darted across raised lobes on the armrest, like points of braille, the light in the temple growing deep purple. There was a loud crack and Aleksi bolted upright, through no force of his own, his line of sight being directed towards a section of flooring. The crowd of onlooking apparitions vanished in puffs of smoke and a portion of the glassy floor slid aside, revealing a descending staircase constructed of volcanic glass.
“Come,” a voice boomed. “I am waiting.”
Regaining control, Aleksi scrambled from his throne and darted for the stairwell. He tried to contain his excitement as he carefully descended, readying himself to meet the divine entity below. The stairs were glassy, meaning he could see right through, all the way down, hundreds of meters and there was no handrail for support. The rippling light from the electricity flitting across the domed structure below was also playing havoc with his vision. He frequently had to stop and blink madly, to shake off waves of dizziness. The hiss and crack of electric current was becoming dangerously exciting, the sound amplified in the hollow cavern below the temple, which lingered with the metallic scent of ozone gas.
The final stretch of stairway stretched above the electrified structure. Aleksi peered down, captivated by the awesome spectacle. It was the size of a cathedral dome, like the Duomo in Florence, made entirely of gold. There appeared to be viewing portholes at intervals running at floor level. Rushing water and steam moved through glass pipes on the walls. They dripped with moisture, making the chamber look like the insides of a great mythological creature’s ribs, the golden dome being its pulsing heart, crackling with purple electricity. The piping came to a head above the metal dome, where it joined and fed into the golden heart.
“You’re feeding off the planet’s lifeforce, geothermal energy,” Aleksi said, chuckling. “Nothing but the finest cuisine for a god. I see, yes… it makes sense...”
He hastened down the last twenty meters and dashed close to the towering mountain of electric gold, marvelling at its raw power, its sound so penetrating it made the jelly of his heart and lungs vibrate.
“I feel you…” Aleksi said, holding a hand to his chest. “I feel you inside!”
Aleksi noticed a pile of rags to his left, a short distance from one of the portholes. He squinted and peered closer, thinking the rags might be a suit for a human sized being, though its dimensions seemed off. He then spotted a fragment of jawbone. The teeth were sharp, not human. Reptilian perhaps. It was likely the body of an unfit suitor who’d failed their initiation. Aleksi imagined beings from all over the universe had come here to test their worthiness.
Whilst pondering the possibility, he suddenly took an involuntary step forward.
“Sorry,” he apologized, realizing now was not the time for feeble human guessing games, allowing the entity to control him freely once more. “I am ready. Show me what to do, guide me… teach me…”
The divine being compelled Aleksi to hobble forwards. Aleksi giggled.
“It tickles. It feels funny in tummy.”
His hand reached up towards the violently arcing bolts of purple energy, the golden dome shimmering beyond.
“Wait, I… I can’t touch that.”
He tried to plant his feet, but they continued to slide forwards, his heels dragging across the ground.
“No, no wait, you don’t understand…”
An electric arc shot from the dome and connected with Aleksi’s outstretched fingertips. A wall of white light filled his vision and he blasted backwards, slamming into the chamber’s ribbed wall, everything turning dark.
Oh, Brother!
T trying to sleep in the fuel tank’s cab was a torturous experience, like flying cattle class on the world’s worst airline, long-haul. The legroom was cramped, the seats didn’t have any recline and the inflight meal was hideous, dried pasta with vegetable pieces, which Becca and Molotov had been forced to crunch down with handfuls of snow. They’d not complained as they’d both known they needed the energy. The wind had howled all night, mighty gusts bowling across the ice field, thumping blasts that had pounded their isolated shelter, causing it to shudder and rattle.
Snow flurried in the exterior lights, which had switched on automatically when light levels fell to near dark. They illuminated only a short distance into the eerie emerald twilight. Becca wasn’t sure how long her and Molotov had been in the cab. It could have been three hours or fifteen. She wasn’t even sure if she’d managed to catch any sleep. Now, all she wanted to do was get up, get outside and begin working on locating Reece and the others. Her legs ached, she desperately wanted to stretch out. Also, with the creeping darkness, she was increasingly mourning sunset.
She’d positioned herself on the side of the fuel tank facing the temple, where Razak’s body was covered with snow. Molotov didn’t seem to be handling the loss of his friend at all well and she knew it wouldn’t do him good to have a constant reminder just outside the window. The vipers had tried to scavenge the corpse at one point in the night, but the warhorses had frightened them up the temple steps, where they’d sniffed around the entrance before scurrying off, screeching like banshees.
Becca was curled up with her head rested against the window of the gull-wing door. Behind her, Molotov was sobbing again. The cab shook gently as the hulking man shuddered with sadness, his whimpering breaths puffing her hair. She didn’t want to turn around and console the man as she thought it might embarrass him. Sometimes people simply needed space to grieve. She’d lend a shoulder later, after he’d released some of his pain. Suddenly, a loud banging outside the cab made her prickle with fright.
“There’s something outside,” she whispered harshly, reaching behind and swatting for Molotov. “I think the vipers are back.”
She peered through the frosted glass, heart racing, searching for the creatures. Instead, she saw Molotov peering in on her, his hair white with flakes of snow, his lips blue.
The whimpering behind Becca morphed into a growl. She screamed and whirled around, raising her hands defensively. The gull-wing door popped open and frozen air tumbled in, turning her panting breaths to steam.
“Who is it, who did you see?” Molotov demand
ed.
“How, wait, but you were…” Becca looked between Molotov and the empty seat. “What… how are you… you were just…”
“What did you see?” Molotov demanded again. “I gotta know.”
“I heard you crying. I could feel your… shit, I could feel its breath. It was breathing on me! Move, get out the way, I need to get out,” Becca said, desperate to put distance between her and the phantom that had been manifesting behind her.
“Thank god it’s not just me,” Molotov said when she was on the ice, his anguished features softening slightly. It looked like tears were frozen to his cheeks. He threw his voice over the blasting wind. “There’s something seriously effed going on here, Becca. I dunno what, but it’s bad, real bad. This place is all sorts’a wrong.”
“You saw something too?” Becca said, squinting through the snowstorm, rubbing her hands and tucking them under her armpits. “I thought it was just me, that I was going mad.”
“Yeah, no,” Molotov said, shaking his head and glancing fearfully across the ice.
“This is my second time,” Becca said. “No, third. There was also something on the Jura island when I was trapped in the bunker, something in the corner, terrifying, saying the scariest stuff. In the temple I saw people reflected in the glass, human looking, but they weren’t actually there, just their reflections.”
“They’ve spoken to you?”
“Uh-huh, in the bunker. I thought it was stress, isolation and stress. It was terrifying. It kept telling me to kill myself. I was all alone with no hope of rescue, you know, something like that goes deep, makes you think about… it… it was hard to hold it together. It all feels like a dream now.”
“Shit. If you’re going mad, we both are, come,” Molotov said, leading her round the front of the fuel tank and out of the worst of the wind. “I just saw my brother. He was right fricking there. I was trying to locate Scarlet using her horse and he walked out of the storm, grinning, totally casual. I knew it couldn’t have been him, obviously, he died when I was nineteen, but he looked so real, just like him, same clothes from that day and everything. He tried to lead me across the ice… I…”
“And you followed?”
“I had to, like, I had to know. I saw one of those things, those manta things under the ice. Damn thing rolled over and flashed its chompers at me. It had a grin like the Joker from Batman, like a… uh, like a Frankenstein stingray, sharp teeth, clownish. Scariest thing ever, except for… jeez, my brother was… I mean… whatever I just saw was trying to lead me out across the ice. Just like you, I think it was tryin’a kill me. I think whatever’s doing this is intelligent, sentient. There’s something bad happening here, Becca. We’ve walked into something real bad. I think we were wrong about that temple.”
“Sentient…” Becca muttered to herself, looking through gaps in the white wind towards the temple door. “There are diagrams up there, one of them plutonium. Next to it was a symbol that looked like a fish skeleton. We guessed it was their radiation symbol. The symbol on the door next to it was the same, just it looked more dangerous, electric. If plutonium is deadly because it’s radioactive, I think we’re experiencing some kind of radiation, something similar, worse than radiation, a kind of radioactive malevolence. There were warnings and we ignored them. You’re right, we got it all wrong, we should never have come here.”
“We’d be dead or dying if this was radiation. We’d be sick as all hell. Like Nori said, there were no readings.”
“I’m not saying it’s exactly the same as radiation. It’s something similar, different, something that radiates madness, delusions, whatever you want to call it. It messes with your mind. This place was built to keep something inside, buried forever. It’s a fricking containment facility, made by beings that got as far away from it as they could, across the galaxy, star systems away. If it was affecting me on the Jura Island then its influence reaches across the planet, and that’s whilst contained. It caused an entire civilization to evacuate the planet and search for a new home… oh, god no,” she said, looking towards the temple, becoming heavy with terror. “Aleksi’s in there…”
“You think he can do something, make this worse?”
“He’s the single worse person in the world to be in there. I don’t even wanna think about the damage he might do. This is getting worse by the minute. We need to stop this. Did you manage to locate the others?”
Confusion crossed Molotov’s face. He looked into the sky.
“What does that mean?”
“They went that way,” Molotov said, motioning upwards with a flick of his head.
“What d’you mean, like, into space?”
“I know how it sounds. When I tracked Scarlet’s nano transponders the horse had her last position at over a thousand miles away, that way,” he said, nodding into the sky again. “The horse only tracks up to a thousand miles, she could be further. If that’s true… I don’t… I don’t think any of us are getting out of this. We need to call home, we gotta warn people. No one else can come back here. It’s too dangerous.”
“The others might still find their way back,” Becca said, her voice cracking with fear. “Reece… Schweighofer…”
“They might,” Molotov said, smiling half-heartedly, his eyes deep with melancholy, his voice becoming soft. “I hope so, but we gotta call home. We gotta tell them to destroy the star portal. If this radiation can reach across the planet it might infect Earth. We can’t let that happen. Believe me, I don’t wanna do this either…”
“No,” Becca breathed, the energy draining from her body. “No, this can’t be it…”
“We gotta do this before we lose our minds. The horses’ transmitters are too weak to broadcast a message, the same with the fuel tank. We need to retrieve that starjet from the bottom of the ocean. That’s our mission now.”
“It’s too deep, too cold, we don’t even know if it’ll power up!”
“We got no other choice. All I need to do is get down there, turn on the thrusters and yank back on the yoke, aim up and level out. How hard can it be?” He said, snorting a weak laugh. “I can manhandle one of the doors off the fuel tank, use it as ballast so I sink faster, it should be heavy enough. I’ll have two, maybe three minutes. If I don’t make it,” Molotov said, unholstering his pistol and handing it to Becca. “It’s set to stun right now. Just toggle the switch to set it to…”
“No,” Becca said, pushing the weapon back at Molotov, the icy wind slicing her to the bone. “I… I can’t do that…”
“We don’t have any choice,” Molotov said gently, pushing the weapon back at her. “You don’t wanna be here on your own… not with these things messing with your mind.”
“He’s trying to kill you, Becca,” a voice to her right said. “You gotta run, girl.”
Becca and Molotov stared towards Razak, who was walking out of the snowy maelstrom.
“That ain’t Raz,” Molotov said, his warhorse charging over, weapons bristling. “You know that’s not him. He’s on the steps over there, look, his body’s right there!”
“You can see him too?”
“Yeah, whatever that is, it ain’t Raz.”
Molotov connected with his horse and used the machine’s optics to gaze down on the spot where Razak was standing. There was nothing there. He looked back on the same spot with his own eyes and saw Razak grinning devilishly. His smile inhumanly wide, his eyes black as doll’s eyes.
“He’s right, pumpkin, listen to him,” another voice chimed. “He’s trying to kill you.”
Becca’s knees weakened as her father walked out of the raging snowstorm, her heart aching with longing pain.
“Daddy?”
“Don’t trust him, pumpkin” her father said, smiling affectionately. “Reece and the others are safe and warm only a few miles away. This brute is trying to destroy the starjet and maroon you all. You’ll never get home if you listen to him. He’ll damn you all to die here.”
“Dad…”
> “Whoever you’re talking to, that’s not your dad,” Molotov shouted. “Becca, crap, listen to me!”
“I’ve been allowed to come back, so I can save you,” her father said. “It’s complicated over here, you’ll understand one day,” he said, chuckling a warm husky laugh. “I’ve missed you so much, darling.”
“I missed you too,” Becca said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Use the gun, Becca,” her father urged, “before it’s too late. He’s trying to kill you. Listen to me, focus on my voice. Aim the weapon and shoot, just lift your hands. Close your eyes if you need to.”
Becca turned to Molotov, who was frantically rummaging inside a shoulder compartment of the warhorses. He seemed to be searching for something.
“You can’t be my dad,” Becca said. “It’s not possible.”
“You remember our house on the Airforce base? My squadron used to do flybys, low and fast, so you and your brothers could recite the alphabet in the garden, trying to get to the end before we were gone, voices vibrating.” Her father chuckled again. “Those were good times. Your mother on the sun porch, writing those adventures. It’s me, trust me. I’m here to save you, pumpkin.”
Becca turned. Molotov was charging at her, wielding a knife, a murderous look in his eyes. She raised the javelin and depressed the trigger. Molotov slapped the weapon aside. A shot cracked loud.
“Fight, honey,” her father roared. “Fight like never before. He’s killing us.”
“He’s too strong,” Becca cried as Molotov fought her to the ground, straddling her and pinning her arms with his knees.
She watched in terror as the hulking giant brought down the knife, towards her eyeball.
“Fight!” Her father screamed.
“Stop struggling!” Molotov gurned, his face twisting with hateful menace.
Becca screamed as Molotov’s blade pierced her eyeball. Fire erupted through her skull. Through her other eye she saw her father’s features melt like wax, skin turning to raw flesh, bare meat, eyeballs flushing away in streams of puss-filled blood.
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 51