Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  Underworld Earth

  The Book of Death: Volume II

  Nicholas Gagnier

  Copyright © 2019 Nicholas Gagnier

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN 9781708947453

  For my friend, Zach.

  Author’s note

  Underworld Earth introduces readers to elements of the supreme realm Atlas-- expanding on a universe created in past books. While this realm will be explored in further volumes, it has been brought to my attention that those with religious or conventional knowledge of angels will recognize the (very intended) misspelling of "nephilim”.

  The other (once again, quite intentional) severance from conventional angel lore was naming Gabriel as the Nephalim in question (in this context, Nephalim are elite agents of Atlas, which models itself on Biblical ideas but then deviates from them).

  The etymology for nephilim is confused and altogether, a system of guesswork. The word stems from a line in the book of Genesis to describe “sons and daughters of God’; in some Hebrew interpretations, they are evil giants who caused God to flood the Earth in Noah’s time. And still, other books in the Bible suggest they were fallen angels who went against God, and had to be put down by the Archangels.

  Atlas does away with all of these terms and definitions and depictions of Nephalim-- the first part of that is merging the role to an unlikely name (Gabriel being an Archangel in common angelic lore). While Underworld Earth only introduces the single agent of Atlas, it was pointed out to me during editing some readers may notice this contradiction.

  Before I began The Book of Death, I knew liberties would be taken to tell the five-volume story. As will be seen in the forthcoming volumes Nephalim and Behemoth-- actually taking place at Atlas-- its systems and hierarchy are fictional, subversive and weaponized as misinformation in the context of characters first experiencing it (along with the reader).

  I have always sought to challenge storytelling norms and push the envelope. This latest example is only one, and it is a subject I could sit here and go on about. If you are versed in angelic lore, I will only ask that you keep an open mind. It is part of a larger plan that will continue through future volumes.

  Nicholas Gagnier

  November 26th, 2019

  Table of Contents

  Recap

  The World is Your Asylum

  The Path into Darkness

  Paradise Lost

  Something Gained

  Recap

  Underworld Earth is the second volume in The Book of Death series, which is a spin-off of the Olivia & Hale series, making this story the sixth book set in the universe that inspired it.

  This recap will introduce characters, concepts and events in a limited context, which are relevant to the story you are about to read.

  The Olivia & Hale series, as the precursor to BoD (as The Book of Death will henceforth be referred to as), introduced the central protagonists and concepts through four loosely interconnected, standalone novels; Mercy Road, Founding Fathers, Dead’s Haven and Olivia & Hale. During these disparate stories, we met Harper Whitaker and Tim Hawkins, who later become connected through Tim’s sister Grace Hawkins.

  It also introduces the Shroud, a purgatorial realm between life and Death, presided over by a being named Reaper. Out of boredom or for other reasons unknown, Reaper took two souls captive following their worldly deaths. Using a basin-like reincarnation device called the Timestream, he offered Olivia and Hale (surnames unknown) their lives back if they would participate in a game.

  This game consisted of twenty-eight incarnations from birth to death, a target only Hale would later reach. Due to Reaper’s manipulations of time and space, he imprisoned Olivia in the past and told Hale she was dead. After completing the twenty-eighth death, Hale was challenged to stab a dormant Reaper, posing on a stone slab adjacent to the Timestream. When he removed the mask following the deed, the corpse was, in fact, Olivia’s.

  With nothing left to lose, Hale challenged Reaper, but ultimately took his place as Death. Drowning a woman named Ariel whose powers facilitated Reaper’s game against her own will, Hale sought to destroy the world out of bitterness, while Ariel respawned in the real world.

  During Olivia’s time-space imprisonment, she was reincarnated as Nancy Whitaker, and had two children, Harper and Charlie. Following Hale stabbing Olivia, Nancy’s real-world form instinctively killed herself. The novel Mercy Road follows young Harper as she recovers from Nancy’s suicide, unaware of the larger cosmic events at play. It is during this emotional fallout, she and her peers rescue Grace, a sex slave, from her neighbor’s cellar.

  In Olivia & Hale, Harper returns as an adult when she awakens with five others in a purgatorial realm called the Shroud. One of these characters is Tim Hawkins, Grace’s brother. After surviving an outlaw town Hale ultimately destroyed (Dead’s Haven), Tim was forced to enter a portal to the Shroud. As Harper and Tim realize their underlying connection to Grace, the reincarnated Olivia’s final conflict against her old friend manifests, revealing Grace to be Ariel, the woman Hale drowned after becoming Death.

  When the dust settled, Tim Hawkins took Hale’s place, and inheriting the locket that sustained Olivia’s ghost, Harper went home to her love Michaela. But upon returning to the real world, she quickly died of a neurological disease and was claimed by Tim.

  In BoD: Leviathan (Volume I), Tim travelled back in time to discover what happened to those who abducted his sister Grace when she was nine years old. Upon learning of the FBI agent working Grace’s case in its final days, Tim began surveying her life from its beginning, making himself known in her younger years and thereafter becoming a regular presence in adulthood.

  Arriving at her inevitable death, Tim and Ramona Knox learned the child abductions were a hoax concocted by a senior FBI agent, employing a group of former altar boys to do his bidding. Tim reversed Ramona’s death, physically merging with her to grant otherworldly powers, while warning it could produce unintended butterfly effects.

  Following her revenge and the case’s resolution, Tim and Ramona attempted to separate, resulting in the latter’s indefinite incapacitation.

  It is here our story begins, twenty-three years after Ramona Knox rescued Emily Rickard and was rendered unconscious.

  Underworld Earth is a story about consequences. As the second book in a five-book series, it explores the world of Tim and Ramona’s creation, and rejoins us with the immortalized Harper, who must undo that terrible mistake.

  The World is Your Asylum

  Harper

  I am the unhinged.

  Most people would likely find the silver lining in immortality. To them, it would be a gift. You never experience pain, hunger, exhaustion or fear. That last one is the worst of them— it drives people to make irrational decisions, hurt others and cause unspeakable damage in the name of self-preservation. Fear is both a weapon and a motivator because, by all rights, death is a terrifying concept. It goes against the very logic of self-preserving things, and fear is the pumping heart of escaping it.

  Those of us who have skirted death, whether by ne
ar-death experiences or eternal life, couldn’t tell you how much true peace awaits after death.

  All I know is the fear is gone. Afforded powers that conceal me from the world at will, so much has led to this point. In fact, other than the taxi speeding through Manhattan’s streets, the people shouting at the erratic sedan with yellow paint might never know I walk among them.

  A star-shaped locket bounces against my bare collarbone, positioned between the yellow straps of my tank top. It is all that keeps me suspended between obscurity and operative, granting invisibility that spares suggestions I should see unending existence as a boon.

  The yellow cab weaves down Broadway, reckless in its timing, swinging wildly. It grazes cars parked along the busy sidewalks, severing side mirrors. Pedestrians yell out in surprise when momentum nearly volleys my wheels over the curb. Dying sunlight permeates my vision as I bounce back onto the crowded road. The windshield offers an unreliable field of view, obscuring fates of those on foot—at the mercy of the vehicle’s wild maneuvering.

  Half these people running for cover, even if I never came near them, would tell me to buck up and use my powers for good, with the comfort of knowing they can lay down and die at the day’s end. The other half would be trying to figure out a way to kill me.

  There’s fear, at work.

  The taxi revs, veering across lanes onto Canal Street. No glance at my side mirrors, or a thought given to caution in merging prompts other drivers around me to lean on their horns. A Middle Eastern gentleman flips his middle finger at me, and I return the gesture.

  Skyscrapers loom over the cab speeding down toward the Hudson River. They block out light, impeding a peaceful view of the setting sun. Drifting left again out of Soho, and crossing over onto West, I rarely sacrifice speed for safety, earning the scorn of nearby motorists.

  The World Trade Center filters into my peripheral view. In a whole other universe, planes destroyed them on September 11th, 2001, after being hijacked by terrorists. My old friend Tim changed all that, and the world within which those Towers fell no longer exists. Events permitted by their destruction still occurred, but the outcome was very different.

  Fingers tighten around the steering wheel; my anger surfaces toward the people of this planet who get to live in a happy ignorance while I can carry all the terrible weight for them. Working the car at high speeds through the World Trade Exchange, sirens finally rear their ugly heads. The locket’s star shape—ordinarily silver when concealing me from the world, or gold in moments like this, as I choose or am forced to reveal my presence—morphs between shades; a stern reminder it owns my soul.

  Don’t worry, boys, I tell the wailing lights, this won’t last long.

  Pushing my foot down as far as the pedal will accommodate, the taxi swings into the iron gate before the Battery Plaza tunnel, vaulting over the mooring into the water. The vehicle’s impact hurls water against the windshield and every other glass surface. The car sinks into the green abyss, half-heartedly surfacing before gravity pulls its weight down into the depths. The sounds of sirens fade from my realm of hearing, and I am at peace.

  I don’t fight the consequences, because I know they will fail to manifest.

  Sinking to the bottom of the New York City channel, I close my eyes, listening for windows cracking under building water pressure. I listen for death, should he come to claim me.

  It won’t succeed, because that would not please the locket around my neck. The bejeweled star shimmers, knowing I attempt these things without the slightest expectation they will work. I have thrown it from mountains, only to find it on my way down. I have dropped it to the bottom of the ocean, only to watch it wash up on shore.

  None of my suicidal schemes have been worth its sympathy yet, and the moment of fear which should barrel at my nervous center like water rushing in the windows and drowning me never materializes.

  One day, I woke up, and could no longer die. Believe me; I’ve tried everything. Self-inflicted gunshot wounds, jumping from one of the highest cliffs in Pakistan’s Karakoram. I have set myself on fire and stranded a boat in the middle of a storm in the South Pacific, hoping waves would devour me in their embrace.

  I’m not sure how drowning myself in the Hudson River will make a difference. Power windows buckle under water pressure rioting against their maximum strength until they burst and wash glass shards into my lap. Dirty green water rushes into the front seat, ensuring no square inch is untouched by its resentments.

  I understand.

  Piling in the space where a glass window was, the gushing stream appears white, rather than the murky green on the Hudson’s surface. The water may not reply, but I can hear its screams, matching mine as the volumes swallow me whole.

  I am the unhinged, and eternity is my asylum.

  Samantha

  Once upon a time, the future was bright.

  It’s easy to get lost in self-pity these days; with China flaunting their nuclear strength on the news every morning while anchors argue back and forth about the ballooning federal budget and cuts to Medicaid. The same shitty politicians and media representatives have been arguing about it since time immemorial, so it is nearly guaranteed.

  Some things never change.

  Morning light pours over the sink where my hands delve in soapy water, fishing out utensils to be washed. This is the easy part of my day, before the boredom of stay-at-home parenthood takes hold, and I am left staring at a wall until my family returns home from their adventures in the world.

  Glare through dual pane windows over the basin of warm suds prompts wet hands to pull their curtains closed. Sinking them back into the bubbles, I try not to think about the flurry of texts I received late last night or at four o’ clock this morning.

  I was never a person who expected to find someone to love me. That said, hostile characters appearing in my cell phone notifications, rousing me from light sleep, are not how I remember familial relationships of my youth.

  Finished with the dishes, I dry my hands, gravitating to the island counter behind me. My lips blow over the rim of a raised coffee cup, proceeding to sip dark liquid in the kitchen of my Stamford home. Washington State is a long way from here, both on a map and in my thoughts.

  Never mind that my bitch of a little sister texted three pictures of Mom, non-responsive in a hospital bed for Mother’s Day. In another life, I might have stayed to watch her die from a hospital bedside, like my sister Stephanie does. I don’t know how we came from the same woman, but we’re more alike than I want to believe.

  Thanks for that, Steph. Powering off the screen of my cell phone, I place it on the counter as my husband appears in the doorway, buttoning cuffs of his shirt.

  “Morning.”

  He ignores me, walks to the Keurig machine on a parallel marble counter, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “You’re leaving early.”

  Derek chooses a pod from the black wire basket full of them, inserting it in the slot. The machine groans as he pulls its grey handle down, piercing the small container. Within seconds, a stream of liquid poured from the spout cultivates steam rising off its collected surface.

  “Want to beat traffic,” Derek groans. “Have to be in New York by eight.”

  “Are you nervous?” I ask. “It’s a big opportunity.”

  “Yeah. It is. Wouldn’t say nervous, so much as excited. If the firm gets this contract, it could propel our little start-up into major investment territory.”

  Before I can offer him encouragement, Nathan appears in the doorway. Dressed only in pajama bottoms, my eleven-year-old son has none of the attitude problems my neighbour Sandy’s children possess. Why she calls herself Sandy instead of Sandra, I will never know. The woman is a witch, which probably explains the hellspawn.

  “Hey kiddo. You’re up early.”

  Much like my husband, Nathan returns only grunts, opening the narrow pantry to his left, pulling down a box of sugar-laced cereal. Leaving it slightly ajar, he drags his feet t
o the circular dining table, where his personal blue bowl is already set.

  Derek, rejuvenated by two gulps of black coffee, watches him a moment, frowning.

  “Not gonna wish her Happy Mother’s Day, Nate?”

  “I was going to Dad. After I ate.”

  “Not really the point of Mother’s Day, though,” Derek says, “is it?”

  Nathan rolls his eyes.

  “Fine, I’ll just do it now.” Pushing back his chair, he bestows the briefest, most begrudging embrace of all time before returning to his spot. I barely have time to wrap my arms around him before he’s pulled away, gone back to his cereal.

  “Nice,” Derek quips, after another mouthful of coffee. “Really showing your appreciation there, kid.”

  He sets the black mug down on our counter—a travesty I pledge to make him rip out and replace if this thing goes well for his firm—and hugs me. My hair falls over his shoulder, and I am so glad to have left our Washington hometown, once upon a time.

  “I hope you have a wonderful day,” Derek whispers in my ear, pulling back to kiss me. “You deserve it.”

  I scoff.

  “Yeah, Mom of the Year, if that hug was any indication.”

  Derek glances at Nathan; staring into space, lifting a spoon to his mouth, he has little interest in this conversation. Grains on the silverware are drowned in milk, turned blue by the sugar in them.

  “Yep. We have a winner.”

  “Stop that,” I chuckle. “He’s just going through a phase.”

  “I am not,” Nathan says. He shoves the bowl forward, pushes his chair back and leaves the room. The spoon sags against the bowl’s rim, reflecting turquoise hues the milk’s assumed.

  Derek closes his eyes, looking back down into the space between us.

  “Just a phase, huh?” he asks.

  “Need I remind you, sir, you were no picnic for Vanessa, either.” My husband winces at the mention of his late mother. “Sorry. Today must be hard for you.”