“What is that thing?”
“I call them portal people. Much depends on the nature of the portal itself. There are doorways to different dimensions and hell worlds. Just like no two keys unlock the same door, no two portals draw the same kind of creature. But whatever the nature of Victor’s portal magic, it’s beyond me, for now.”
He glanced away from the face in the sky to take Naomi in again. Her presence felt soothing for some unfathomable reason, being as neither knew yet if either of their powers were going to be any good against whatever was taking shape up there. “You say you come here when you’re scared?”
“Some nights, like tonight, I’m drawn to it without really knowing why. Tonight I wasn’t scared.”
His eyebrows furrowed as his curiosity deepened. “Way past that,” she confessed. “I shut down emotionally several blocks back, the closer to that thing I got. I might be shivering from the cold, but trust me, I’m quite numb inside.”
“Yes, I know all about the numbness. Sometimes it’s the only shield we can put up against the dark emotions that would otherwise consume us. Smart. Adaptive.” He let the innuendo evaporate on the night air along with the steam from his breath.
“Not so sure about that. Or if the force that drew me here is all that benign,” she said. “If anything, I feel more exposed than ever.”
The smack of thunder was so loud it caused them both to jump out of their skins temporarily. The disturbance was followed by a bolt of lightning that cleaved the sky in two. From that tiniest of blinding white cracks, the ethereal entity took form. The cloud-like face had congealed into an all-too physical presence. The courtyard Soren and Naomi were facing was circular; all paths led to it like the hub of a four-spoked wheel. The figure had materialized right at the center of the stone courtyard.
The pigeons, squirrels, rats, stray dogs and cats that were wont to come out at night fleeing the scene, as disturbed by nature’s fury as any human would be, didn’t get far. They collapsed in mid-stride, as if the life had been sucked out of them so forcefully it was enough to nullify Newton’s laws governing inertia.
Soren pulled Naomi back into the shadows. He could tell from the way she reacted she didn’t appreciate being touched without her permission, even to save her life. Maybe she was too busy taking in what she was seeing to think much about its implications. Thinking was coming damn hard to him too. He’d lost control of his mind about the same time he’d lost control of his body. His nanites were jolting his nervous system with the electrical signals they needed to pull him to safety.
The thing that crawled out of the crater that it had made was naked and appeared to be made of smoky quartz—at least from a distance. Flecks inside the crystal sparkled like suns burning out in the eternity of space-time. The figure’s outline was human enough. It got more human as it took additional steps, shedding the cruder form in favor of a more sculpted form, as if an invisible Michelangelo was putting the finishing touches on his latest incarnation of David.
The crystal entity seemed to sense the eyes that were on him. His shifted to the second story window, where he caught sight of a man staring down, too drunk to be all that perturbed. He must have taken the figure for his latest hallucination. The voyeur huffed, swigged his gin, and went back to his bottle. By which time the newly incarnate being looked just like the man that had lain eyes on him. The head was shaved and pronounced in size relative to the rest of the face. Love was tattooed over one eye and honor over the other. The crooked nose descended to the dirty blond moustache and goatee. The neck was tattooed as well; an eagle in flight, the wings spread up along either side of the neck. The pale, icy blue eyes that looked more haunted than anything before looked far more menacing now. From that moment on, the crystal creature was masked, and he ran from the area, toward the crowds gathering but for now still too fearful to encroach on the crash site further, where he could blend. It wasn’t much of a countenance for blending, but when you considered this crowd…. He quickly got lost among the other faces.
“Hurry,” Soren said, pulling at Naomi in case she still wasn’t doing much better connecting with her mind and body again. Situations, sufficiently extreme, had a way of forcing people out of their bodies, turning them into astral travelers, whether they had much experience with that kind of thing or not. This was one of those moments.
His grip seemed to pull her back into her body. Her eyes focused again, first on the mob, then on him. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she urged, “before that mob focuses its wrath on us, thinks we’re the cause of this.”
He picked up a piece of the crystal that had chipped off the creature. “That’s okay. I got what I needed. Come on.” Again he ran, refusing to let go of her wrist. So she was running, too, though whether the signals were coming from her brain to power her body or not, or just from his arm, was left to be determined.
“Wait.” She stopped and with such force, he was suddenly anchored to where he was standing and he wasn’t going anywhere so long as he was holding on to her. He let go. Found he still wasn’t going anywhere. She wanted answers, and apparently her telekinetic powers were connected to her need to know. “How come it didn’t detect us staring straight at him, just that guy?”
“Probably because our minds had shut down from shock. He needed the mental activity, even that of a drunken mind, to draw his attention.”
“Why did it materialize here, of all the places it could have picked in the entire city?”
“It’s a power spot,” Soren explained. “Two very strong-flowing energy veins intersect there, creating a funneling of chi that anyone given to meditation, prayer, or just a desire to feel at peace is drawn to. A Gothic cathedral was sited here once for the same reason; that much chi energy flowing through you makes it very easy to feel at one with God. But the fools who built this city lost all knowledge of such things long ago, and so how to build accordingly.”
“But hardly anyone comes here.”
“Yeah, that’s because not too many folks married to their misery want to feel all that good. If this unclaimed, downtrodden area ever does decide to get with the role-playing of the other sectors, look out. That power spot could end up empowering most any enterprise. Ironic, when you consider that the reason this area is so rundown is no one thinks they have anything to offer, not even as actors.”
“That’s why you’re running, isn’t it? If that portal person used chi to make himself, if he sucked the very same life force out of those creatures, your powers are useless against him. And the lightning was part of the recipe. So even your electrical cyber-systems you use to reinforce your chi would be quickly overwhelmed coming up against him.”
Soren realized then that grabbing hold of her might have been a mistake. She was a Sponger, all right. He hadn’t exactly made her into a scientist with one touch, but she’d absorbed enough to…. “Yes, he said. That’s exactly right.”
“I should tell you, my group has decided to accept your offer to join us.”
“I should tell you that it is probably way too late for that to matter. Come on, our only hope now is my lab. We have to get back to it so I can analyze the properties of this crystal.”
“How did it…?”
He could tell she wasn’t done asking questions. He was getting treated to a good dose of how annoying he could be when he slipped into scientific mode. He overcame his own resistance to touching her again, grabbed her wrist and pulled. “Come on. We better both learn to think on the run if we want to stay alive.”
She pulled her hand free so she could run faster beside him rather than slow him down. “How did it conjure such a realistic human figure when it’s made of crystal?” Her words came in panting breaths now, as she sprinted alongside him.
“A holographic projection of some kind, a very good one. Most holographic projectors use similar crystals, both for projecting and storing of vast amounts of data. That thing could store all the knowledge of the multiverse in that crystal body, conceivab
ly. Depending on the the crystal’s properties.”
“Let’s hope it’s not quite that advanced.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.” He realized he sounded more sarcastic than hopeful. And they could both use a little hope right now. So that was just plain cruel of him. Cruel to both of them; he didn’t need the tongue lashing any more than she did.
“And how does something made of crystal move exactly, far less run?”
Soren groaned. His voice spiked in volume, “God, I’m annoying!”
She smiled. “Sorry. I suppose by now you’ve figured out I’m a Sponger.”
“That might be a good thing, considering all the help I’m going to need to stay one step ahead of this guy. But for right now I could really use some space up in my head to think, without you crowding me.”
“Sorry,” she said, forcing herself to hold her tongue with a Herculean will that was becoming rather comical in quick order. They both started laughing, when he did. “Maybe, you know, if you answered the question, you could clear your head.”
“I should warn you I’m as well versed in rhetoric as I am in logic.” He sighed. “Fine. And just so we’re clear, I’m talking out my ass here. I don’t have any hard and fast answers for any of this just yet, just theories and more theories. But there is such a thing as liquid crystal. Technically, the molecules in a glass never stop moving. It’s a very slow-moving liquid, not a solid. There’s more to it in his case, of course. The amount of power used to create him could have altered his alchemy, giving the crystals he pulled out of the ground from the granite-rich earth new properties. I’m rather well versed in the altered alchemy of rebirths.” Thank God they were both still quite young and very in shape or talking while running might require a fucking respirator. It was all he could do to get the words out without panting like a racehorse crossing the finish line at the Kentucky Derby. As it was, he sounded more like he was coming around the first quarter-mile stretch.
A short while later, after a short, blissfully quiet interval, where she spared him the haranguing of ever more questions, they were at his “castle.”
Curious as to why they’d stopped running in front of an abandoned building, which she was eying like a giant ox had dropped a colossal turd in front of her, she said, “Why are we…? Oh, that’s right. This is the shithole that you live in. I didn’t have the benefit of a full-moon before to guide me.”
“It has its redeeming qualities.”
“Such as?”
“Death traps galore. Keeps out unwanted visitors.”
She planted her fists on her hips defiantly, stared at the building as if she could get it to collapse just with a scathing look, save her the trouble of pondering her presence here another moment. Her being such a powerful telekinetic, she probably could bring the whole place down. “You should consider being less of a hermit.”
“You should consider being less of a social butterfly.”
“People help you to get over yourself.”
“People distract you from anything that truly matters. Don’t you wonder why priests and nuns take vows of silence? It’s so they can retreat inwards to more quickly find God, the cosmic consciousness, call it whatever you like.”
“And then they have to come out into the world to do their work again, without losing that center,” she countered. “Maybe you’re just not as evolved as me.”
If the verbal sparring continued like this for much longer, he’d have nothing left to throw at The Masked Man. “I’ll take it under advisement, when I’m not fighting the urge to snap your neck.”
She smiled a half-hearted smile at him without showing teeth. He opened the gate for her. “After you.”
“Am I to get the guided tour past the pitfalls? Or are you just hoping for me to trigger them?”
“I’ll take the Fifth on that, and no, no guided tour. You found your way in and out before without bringing the place down on our heads. You can do it again.”
“You can’t remember yourself, can you?”
“To be honest with you, other than noting the really unstable areas of the structure, which I learned to navigate around, which are all by the obvious entrances and exits, by the way, I didn’t have to do much.”
“How about you lead then? I’m not sure I’m up for showing off my abilities tonight.”
He knew what she meant. The Masked Man had really taken it out of him, too, and he hadn’t even fired off a shot. “Fair warning. The path I use in and out is heavily booby-trapped. More so than the rest of the place. Just in case I’m being followed. So just step where I step.”
He was tempted to ask how she’d gotten around the deadfalls before, especially as she was possibly covering for not knowing where any of them were, and only blaming her shaky memory on the shock of The Masked Man. Teleportation? She could keep her secrets for now.
He led the way around in back of the building, grabbed hold of the rusted lock that was designed to look as if no one had touched it in decades, twisted it a certain way to keep it from blowing up in his face, then pulled up the double doors to the basement before pulling them closed behind him and Naomi. This time he replaced the lock on the inside. If someone tried to pull up the ‘unlocked doors’ from the other side, they wouldn’t budge. If they tried real hard, it might blow up in their faces, though. The limited-AI knew enough to scan the interlopers first, make sure they weren’t just teens looking to get into trouble, but far more nefarious characters, before igniting. If they were teens, they weren’t going to get far, anyway, not without breaking a leg or getting trapped, and he had alerts set up for that so they could be rescued and dragged out—once rendered unconscious with a drug so they wouldn’t remember him.
Soren steered her around the booby-traps, like playing a peculiar game of hopscotch where the tiles were not clearly marked. A minute or so later, they were in his lab.
He flicked the central circuit breaker which turned on all the ‘mood’ lighting at once. The warm amber pools of light were just enough to play a peek-a-boo game with the splotches of darkness, enhance the woodsy-charm he’d endeavored to give the warehouse, and highlight the Victorian atmosphere.
Soren headed up the fire-escape ladder he’d appropriated as his second story access, where he had a loft area set up with his books mostly. But he also had a long lab table with microscopes which he needed to get to in order to study the crystal.
When he felt her on his heels, the first thing to occur to him should have occurred to him a lot sooner. “I can’t believe you didn’t invite her to climb up first, Soren. Now you missed yet another opportunity to stare at her ass. I’ll never forgive The Masked Man for throwing me off my game to this degree.”
Once upstairs, she eyed his queen-size mattress on the floor inside the room behind the walls with the books. The walls around the bed were lined with books, as well, from inside the room, and the books themselves climbed up the walls all the way to the arched roof, where they were held in place either by being wedged in or by having an elastic strap spread across the rows of books.
“Did you bring me up here to play with your microscope, or your telescope?”
He whispered in her ear. “That might be really funny and really sexy if, you know, the whole world weren’t in jeopardy.” The titillation of her presence was one thing, acting on it, something else entirely; that felt far too indulgent.
He pulled out the chunk of crystal from his zippered jacket pocket and held it in his hands. The rock felt alive somehow as he brought it closer to his eyes. And so all-consuming, he’d lost consciousness of her presence when she said, “I should tell you that sex allows me to absorb more of your abilities, faster.”
“Like a succubus, then?”
“Not quite. You can keep your psychic energy. And I can’t sponge all of your powers up at once. Just a little bit at a time.”
“So, lots of sex, then, yeah, got it.” He answered her absently without taking his eyes off the crystal. He saw her making a sour face at
him in the reflection of the crystal.
“Try and contain your excitement.”
“I really don’t think I can.”
“Really?” She sounded excited, a bit emotionally needy.
“This thing is really quite remarkable.” He rushed to his microscope.
He heard a sigh behind him, but by then couldn’t connect it to anything; he was just too lost in his studies.
***
Naomi started flipping through Soren’s books, idly at first. “You and Lar have a lot in common, you know that? The books should definitely help the two of you bond. Though,” she leafed through more pages, “these are different kinds of books entirely.” She turned some more pages. “Maybe not entirely. What is this?”
She was getting as lost in the books as he was in the crystal. After pulling a few more titles off the shelves, she realized, they weren’t just scientific treatises with countless diagrams, illustrations, pictures, blow-ups, and everything from charcoal drawings to lithographs to Kodachrome pictures. On the surface, they looked like medical texts, like any med student would study. It quickly became clear, however, these were transhumans, not humans, depicted on the pages.
Every picture referred to some kind of integration of man and machine. Some so primitive, they looked like they belonged in a steampunk era. Had he dug up scientists from hundreds of years ago as into what he was into? Contrastingly, some of the books looked as if yanked out of the future by way of a time machine. It was just impossible that what was depicted could possibly be from their time, even when she factored in for the far more futuristic districts in Syracuse and cities around the world, relative to theirs.
Reborn (Frankenstein Book 1) Page 6