Withdrawing her arms from the sleeves, she wrapped the jacket about her like a blanket and let her legs curl about her chest. Trying not to disturb Mark, she lay down halfway on him, resting her head on his chest. She pulled the jacket tight around her and closed her eyes, listening to the rhythm of his heart. Each throb sent a shiver through her curled legs, and the stench of his blood in the air receded to the periphery of her awareness. She sighed, absorbed in the warmth, and her mind began to drift. What it was that had enabled her to bring them both through to this barren world—and how they were going to find their way back—could wait until tomorrow. Mark would surely have an answer for her. If there was a bright side to be found in this forsaken place, it was that they were together. You’re not alone, she heard herself saying. She scoffed at the memory, ridiculing herself for saying something so cheesy and cliched.
As her mind slipped further toward the precipice of sleep, she imagined a queer buzzing. It was a resonance, a humming that ran through the air and the ground and the world beneath her. Spreading outward, that buzzing took on the shape of a thousand tendrils of fine wire woven into an intricate cosmic pattern. On the other side of that buzzing pattern, she imagined a scratching, as of myriad legs scraping against the wall between her mind and dreams.
She ignored it. She was a world away.
Coda
“I’m afraid we lost them,” the voice on the phone said.
Simon coughed, and his broken rib punished him for it. “You lost them? Every inch of Site Nineteen is covered with surveillance cameras. Every. Damned. Inch.”
“Yes. I’m aware of that sir.”
“And you lost them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Simon laughed, and it felt like it would break him. “You have to be joking. How useless can you morons be? Where did they even go!?”
“Mr. Clearwater, we don’t know where—”
“Where did you lose them!?” The pain in his chest was a fair price for the release of fury.
“Sector Three, sir. They disappeared at excavation forty-four seven.”
He paused, lips trembling. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight: you lost them. In a dead end.”
“They vanished, sir. We did what we could.”
His fingers closed tighter around the edges of his phone. It could have snapped at any moment. “God, this is rich! What the hell do you mean they disappeared?”
“We followed them into the third terminus at forty-four seven. When we got there, we found them gone, and a pale mist filling the excavation pit.”
Simon opened his mouth to berate the man again, but his tongue stopped mid-lash. Mist?
“On closer inspection, Carter found an odd glyph carved into one of the excavated reliefs. He confirmed that it was freshly made.”
“A glyph?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Simon let his mouth sit half-open, his tongue wrapping around that word. Could he dare to believe it? From beneath the foaming anger in his heart, a glint of hope emerged and beat back the snarling beast he’d become. “You’re lucky. I believe you. That means you get to keep your life for now. So rejoice. Tell Carter to send me prints of the carving. Get it to me in the next hour or I’ll revoke my mercy.” He cut the connection before the man could respond.
It shouldn’t have been possible. If the memory engraving technique was truly successful, then Nexara, the third child of the Fifth Project, could surely have accomplished such a feat. But the one they called Arachne had been born when the memory fabrication project was still in its infancy. It should have been impossible for her to invoke passage to the Web. That she had been able to do so filled Simon with a crazed excitement. If Arachne, too, had such an ability, then that opened the door to a world of unconsidered possibilities. Possibilities of blood and genetic memory, and of the magical potential of even the prototype projects.
Consumed by an insane laughter, Simon hobbled into the elevator. Nayor was with him; there was a silver lining to this repugnant night of failure. Though Arachne had escaped, though the Warren had been a red herring, though he’d lost another Vant’therax—to that Bordon woman no fucking less—there was yet a silver lining. There was planning to do, but little time. He could not waste a single moment.
By the time he reached the door to his spacious office, his laughter had subsided; the pain splintering his torso was too great to allow it to continue. As he opened the door, a dirty yellow light filled the office. The blood ran from his face. There, standing behind his desk, his back to the full-wall window peering into the pitch black night, stood a spindly man in a purple pinstripe suit and matching bowler. His faded, sand-colored hair, subdued compared to his gaudy attire, framed a mischievous grin. His eyes, liquid amber, trapped Simon like a fly in aeon-old sap. This was the man. This was the fucking man.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Dwyre!” the fucking man said. “You’re looking a few degrees south of perfect, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Simon jolted a step back, and his aching right hand gravitated toward the concealed pistol he never had a chance to pull on Mark. “Just the man I wanted to see,” he said, heart pounding between his tonsils. “I want some answers.”
The man gave him a forlorn look. “That’s no way to greet a guest, now is it? Demanding answers when we haven’t even had a chance to discuss the trivialities of recent weather patterns.”
Simon ground his teeth together. He wanted revenge, damned be the consequences. Ignoring the savage pain in his arm, he drew his pistol with a fluid speed. Before his brain had time to talk his furious muscles out of it, the gun rang. The sound of thunder came eight times in a panicked allegro. The full glass window erupted into a chorus of crystalline voices falling away into the night. The spray of glass shone brightly in the office lighting, and then faded like a storm of fireflies beneath a cloud of pesticides.
The man in the purple suit, however, was untouched by the hot lead of vengeance. He still stood in the same place, laughing in silent mockery. Eight shots that should have pierced his purple garb and splattered the contents of his traitorous chest. They’d all passed through him as if he were a mere illusion. Trembling, now in fear as well as pain, Simon’s right arm gave up its fight against gravity and slumped back to his side. His pistol fell to the carpet.
The man in the purple suit cocked his head to the side, a sharp smile cutting across his face. “Calm down, Mr. Dwyre. There’s no reason for hostilities. As mature individuals, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss our grievances without damaging company property, is there?”
Simon could say nothing—his mouth would not yield to his brain’s demands. The purple man, seeing his dumbfounded expression, spoke without him.
“I guess there will be no discussion of the rain, then, will there? Very well, if you are so desperate for answers that you would attempt to kill me for denying you, then I suppose I have little choice but to indulge you. Come, Simon.” With an evil glint in his eye, he gestured toward the chair on the other side of the desk. “Sit.”
Simon swallowed hard, shaking. What choice did he have? He stumbled to the leather chair in front of his desk and lowered himself into it, his left arm clutching his ribs as he eased himself against the cushioning. The purple man, in turn, sat back into Simon’s own luxurious chair.
“I’ve been watching you for quite a while, Simon,” the man said. “I’ve seen your ambitions, your allegiances, your failings . . . ” With an exaggerated stretch, the man reclined and made a footrest of Simon’s impressive desk. “Let me ask you something. Your position—be it Conduit or Helixweaver—is quite special, isn’t it? That power that you wield . . . It must be quite a burden to shoulder the sole psychic link of those loathsome insects and all the souls they connect.” A malign chuckle emanated, and Simon thought he felt it rumble through his innards. “All things considered, you were pretty reckless tonight. What would have happened to the plans of NIDUS and the King if Mark Warren had killed you to
night as he intended? Without that psychic link, there would have been no advancing the King’s agenda, no final realization of the hybridization directive, and thus no heir to the throne.”
“There’s no way of knowing what would have happened,” Simon said, sure that the damned purple man already knew the answer. “The Nothem—the insects, as you call them—have a link. It’s possible that they’d have evolved to fill the role themselves. If it was Nayor’s will.”
The purple-suited man smiled an evil grin. “You’ve often considered that possibility. Considered what would happen should you die. A non-remote possibility, given the savage nature of the Vant’therax.”
Simon said nothing.
“You know that the Vant’therax all loathe your weakness. They envy you. If they were able to, I’m certain one would have killed you by now.”
“And just what is that to you?” Simon snapped, growing uneasy. “And what the fuck are you, anyway? How do you know so much about us?”
The man sighed. “Very well, I’ll indulge you.” The gleam of silver flashed along the edge of the desk as the man drew a thin-bladed knife from somewhere. The man held the polished blade in the air and gazed into the reflective steel in admiration. “I am the audience.”
“Excuse me?”
The man began to laugh. “I am the audience, and you are all unknowing actors upon my stage. You go on with your lives thinking yourselves supreme masters of your reality. The truth of the matter is that even you, so enlightened in the wisdom and glory of Nayor though you may be, know nothing about this world.” He lowered the knife and ran a finger along the length of its honed edge. “Dramatic irony, as they call it. I see many things, Simon. More than entire species have seen in their entire spans of existence. I alone am gifted with the vantage point to see everything as it occurs, and I enjoy that more than you could possibly comprehend. You humans are just so interesting.” He abruptly scowled. “From a cosmic perspective, anyway.”
Simon swallowed hard, a thin crown of sweat beginning to form. “The audience . . . ”
The man cackled. “Oh, how I can’t wait to see where the plot in this play of yours leads next! The suspense will surely slay me! You can’t imagine how exquisitely entertaining Act One of this drama has been.”
“Act One?” Simon found his temper rising. “This is all just a big game to you, isn’t it?”
“You’re not very good at listening, are you, Simon? Game implies that I play an active role in the festivities, which is not the case. Usually. Although when I see an opportunity to make the production a greater success, it’s hard to hold back the creative spirit.”
Hatred billowed out from the collapsed core of agony in Simon’s heart. “You see fit to interfere with Nayor’s plans if it suits your twisted fancy? What gives you the right to stand against the Yellow King?”
“Oh, make no mistake, my friend. Your King, too, is little more than an actor. A big-name actor, perhaps, but still no more than a cog in the machine. The God Machine.” His eyes flashed. “My machine.” The man then leaned across the desk, and his glowing amber eyes caught Simon’s. “Do you know why I appeared to you? Why I contacted you?” A mouthful of razors emerged from behind his pale lips. “It’s all been in preparation for this night. But in the end, Simon, now that the grand opening has come and gone, I must say I’m rather disappointed in you. After all that you did correctly, all you accomplished before this evening, you faltered at the very finish line, the climax. You see, Simon, you carried out the Second Project. You carried out the Fifth Project. You carried out the Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Projects. You and I were secret partners; our scenarios, unknown to you, advanced together step by step. But tonight, you failed me for the first time. Tonight, you failed to do the one thing that I truly needed of you.”
Simon’s mouth went dry. “And that is . . . ?”
The man’s eyes flared, and his razor grin sharpened. “I needed you to die.”
Simon’s heart stopped, and ice spread through his veins. The purple man began to cackle once more. His malicious grin was a sign of madness made all the more terrifying by the supreme, selfish indifference in his eyes.
“I was much too ambitious, you must understand. I had hoped and wished that perhaps you may avoid your fate by proving valuable to me. And yet, in the end, it seems Mark Warren needs a far more powerful opponent to break his oath. And so your powers, impressive though they may be to you and your science-cult, are of no value. Oh, how I loathe having to play my hand like this. But as you all seem so fond of saying: if you want something done right, you must do it yourself. So, this is it, Simon. This is your final bow. This is what you call deus ex machina.”
The map swiped his arm. The knife left his hand and, with a grotesque thwacking sound, embedded itself in Simon’s neck. Propelled by the force of that projectile, he fell backward out of the chair, choking on the torrent of blood that now flooded his throat. There was no pain, only the hot, wet flow that had begun to fill his lungs. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a putrid gurgle. The world darkened, but he found the strength to climb to his feet. His hands groped for the knife’s handle. He couldn’t die. There was no way he could die. Nayor would never let him die! But before his hands could find the butt of the knife, the man was upon him. The last thing Simon saw was the man’s leg arcing toward his head, and the last thing he heard was the sound of his own neck snapping.
Witnessed only by the black, moonless night, the man in the purple suit stood over Simon’s body, the amber glow of his eyes reflected in the expanding pool of blood. “The curtain falls on you, my friend. But don’t worry. A new main character shall ascend the stage to take your place. The show must go on, after all.” He laughed a pernicious laugh, turning the bloodied knife between his fingers. “You won’t even have to miss a second of the festivities; in death, you will have the best seat in the house—next to mine, of course. No need to be anxious; Act Two will be starting shortly. And I promise you one thing, Simon: without you, things are about to get very interesting.”
About the Author
Born in 1989, Bartholomew Lander is a programmer, writer, and spider enthusiast. He currently works as a game client developer in Gothenburg. Inspired by such greats as Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King, he began writing The Warren Brood in early 2012, shortly before the world ended. Bartholomew is enthralled by technology, coffee, languages, and all manner of folklore and Forteana. With a style described as both dark and absurd, he seeks to share his unique vision of weird fiction with the world.
Visit Bartholomew Lander’s website at: BartholomewLander.com
Or, follow him on Twitter at: @BartLander
The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1) Page 48