DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

by Andrew Seiple

  Oh. Right. The monster could still see me. I should probably do something about that.

  I darted over a Fastee-Mart, and the creature went through the building, thin drywall, plexiglass and weathered girders collapsing under its bulk and sinewy vines. Screams from inside, and I winced as I turned, speeding along the street instead of continuing across the city block as planned. Damn it! I sped west, keeping to the streets. At least there the thing wouldn’t cause as much collateral— though I didn’t envy the drivers, right about now.

  Couldn’t dive into the ocean to lose it; the thing was aquatic. Couldn’t outrun it, my armor just didn’t have the speed. Particle beams? Too soft. Anything that would hurt it would blow through, and cause collateral damage behind the thing. And that would only slow it down for a bit anyway. It didn’t like fire. Could I use that? Maybe.

  Cars honked horns behind me as I fled, and blended with crashing, galloping, wanton destruction as the thing trampled after me. It wasn’t crushing all of them, it was actually fairly loosely put together, and the legs were thin. But they had terrible strength behind them, so when they came down, whatever was between them and the asphalt was pretty well smashed.

  I tried to aim for the less-occupied streets. It was post-midnight so the traffic was light, thankfully, but it couldn’t stay this way forever.

  Maybe I could go up? That seemed good. I started angling upward, and for a few seconds, I thought I’d escaped it.

  I turned and looked, and a hurled car missed me by a matter of meters.

  The thing was keeping pace under me, and as I watched, it scooped up a mini-van as it went, and started to wind up. I kept going up, and another car shot toward me, dropped out of sight.

  And then, to my left, a flicker of light caught my eye to the west.

  Speedlines. Fast approaching the creature.

  I whirled in broad circles, keeping the kaiju moving below me, moving quickly so that it couldn’t draw a good bead with its hurled cars. I kept its attention focused on me, right up until the point that the speedlines blurred out a few hundred feet from the thing. The Torchbearers were here, and as I watched, the thing flinched and roared, as someone tore up a lightpost, ran down the street, and started beating the hell out of it with the long metal pole. Serpent Tina most likely. I was glad she hadn’t gotten her hands around me for more than a few moments.

  I watched for a minute, debated blasting it, but decided against it. At this range I couldn’t rule out friendly fire against the heroes, and besides, the kaiju was no longer my priority. Now that the heroes were here to beat the thing, and minimize further property damage and risk to civilians, I had no further stake in fighting it.

  I flew east, glancing behind me as I went. The creature’s attention seemed fully occupied by the junior heroes, and no speed lines pursued, so I figured I was clear.

  Four minutes later, I dropped down into the parking lot behind Slappy Pizza, to find Martin waiting with the van. We loaded the crates, and I slid out of the armor. I had a layer of sweat on me, and fatigue filled every portion of my body. Now that the adrenaline was gone, I had nothing left to run on. I pulled myself into the front seat of the van, pulled my mask off, and let the back of my head hit the seat with an audible ‘thump’.

  “Dire?”

  “There’s more than one kaiju.” I replied.

  “Uh. What?”

  “The vines at the lake when we Chaingang and the armor hit the decoy convoy, those were part of a kaiju. It just kept the bulk of itself below the water, that’s all. And it was too close to when we arrived at the rendezvous point, to find the thing occupying the power station. So there are at least two of them, probably more.”

  “How many you think are out there?”

  “Don’t know. It’s amorphous so it can fit in hard-to-find places, and looks like a mass of plant material to the unwary. But there have to be several out there. It was tracking the radiation from the crates, and the crates were only open a matter of minutes. So the one Dire fought tonight had to be fairly close.” I rubbed my eyes. “Vector. Professor Vector has to be their master. He’s seeded these things through the city.”

  “Hold up. The crates got opened?”

  “Kriegers. They’re taken care of.”

  “You kill them?”

  “No. The cops have probably found them in the lair by now, rendered helpless by their own teargas and all the beating that Dire could give them before she had to depart. The kaiju killed a few.”

  “Alright, that ain’t so bad. But, uh... where are we gonna go now?”

  I tried to clear my mind, to think. But I was just so tired. We needed some place that could be secured with a minimum of effort, something out of the way, with a decent security system. Some place Professor Vector wouldn’t look.

  “The power station. The planned site of the rendezvous.”

  Martin considered it, as he pulled onto the highway. “You’re thinking he won’t look there, since he already looked there once.”

  “The cameras on the warehouses around it are easily hacked. We can use them to watch the place. And the facility on the end rarely sees use. We can slip the van in there, for a day or two anyway.”

  “And if he’s still got a kaiju waiting there?”

  I shrugged. “Dire’s still got thermal sight. The thing will show up if it’s still there. If it is, we go get a cheap hotel room somewhere.”

  Martin nodded. “Sounds legit.”

  I shut my eyes, and sagged back into the seat. Didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep, until Martin was shaking me awake.

  “Dire? We got a situation.”

  I opened my eyes, blinked the fog away. The power station was ahead of us, and there, illuminated by the headlights, was Vorpal. She was wearing the same clothes I’d loaned her when Timetripper nabbed her, and looked no worse the wear for her jaunt. She was standing next to the open gate to the station, gesturing us in.

  I slid my mask on, and activated her channel on the sub-vocal network. I’d never deactivated the thing, after the job was done, and now I was glad of it.

  “Vorpal?”

  “Yah. You coming in or not?”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Complicated. Look, there’s someone here you need to meet.”

  I frowned, and paranoia stirred within me. Her words struck me as ominous.

  “Who?”

  “Timetripper.”

  I snorted. “And she should do this why?”

  “A different Timetripper from a different time. Less-inclined to murder you. Says he needs to talk with you.”

  I sighed, and rubbed the back of my neck. Thinking logically, the fact that he hadn’t tried to attack us already was a good sign. By now he surely knew that we were in this van, but he hadn’t tried anything. At least, anything I could see.

  “Drive in,” I told Martin. “We’ll see what the man wants.”

  “What?” Oh, right. He had removed his subvocal rig a while ago.

  “Long story. Just be prepared to run.”

  “Shit. That’s my life now, ain’t it?” He muttered.

  We drove through the fence, parked next to the building. Weary as I was, I hauled myself into my armor, powered it up, and emerged from the van to face Vorpal. Though we were alone out here I dialed my volume down, just in case.

  “IF THIS IS A TRAP...”

  Vorpal opened her mouth—

  “It’s not,” the man in the doorway said.

  A stooped, ancient figure stood in the doorway. Stark-white hair gleamed in the dim electric emergency lights shining through from the inside. A tie-dyed t-shirt hung baggy and worn over a scrawny frame, and a pair of round-lensed glasses covered glittering eyes. He wore a pair of Bermuda shorts over his non-existent hips, and his legs were flabby. He leaned hard on a simple cane, and his other hand was holding the door open, arm shaking with even that minor effort.

  “TIMETRIPPER.”

  “In the flesh, what’s left of it. You g
onna come in and be civilized?”

  “WHY SHOULD SHE?”

  “It’s time for me to die. I need your help.”

  “YOU WANT DIRE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE?”

  “Hell no. I need you to kill me.”

  CHAPTER 12: CHRONOLOGICAL SHENANIGANS

  “STATEMENT? YES, DIRE HAS A STATEMENT. AND THAT STATMENT IS FUCK TIME TRAVEL.”

  --Doctor Dire, recorded after her fifteenth public confrontation with Timetripper.

  I stared at him for a long moment. “YOU’RE JOKING.” Had Timetripper just asked me to kill him?

  “I’m serious.”

  “DO IT YOURSELF. DIRE’S BEEN BLAMED FOR ENOUGH DEATHS ALREADY.”

  “Look, just come in and hear me out. Please?”

  I really, really wanted to turn around and stomp away. But I had nowhere else to go, that wasn’t a bigger risk. I shot a look at Vorpal, who was quietly talking with Martin. He looked up at me, caught my gaze, and nodded.

  Well. What did I have to lose, at this point?

  I moved inside, scanning with regular and thermal vision. No kaijus burst out at me, no mobsters tried to shoot me, and no laser-toting mercenaries tried to burn me down so already it was a cut above my last few days. The room was bare, just a few walls full of old fuse boxes and monitoring equipment, half-stripped copper wires and coils from non-functional Van Der Graaf Mk IV generators, and a few pieces of smashed furniture. Yellow emergency lighting illuminated the place, and high windows inset with bars provided ventilation through their glassless frames. A sewer lid in the center of the floor was bent in its socket, warped by incredible force.

  And in the back of the room, next to a grungy stairwell, sat a dull, black metal frame. It looked like a series of wires, twisted into a vaguely humanoid shape. It was tall, eight feet all told, and studded with twinkling lights.

  As I studied it, I felt my back stiffen. I knew that design, I knew those aesthetics.

  Whatever that thing might do, I had built it.

  “Groovy, huh?” Timetripper’s cane tapped the floor, as he moved up next to me. “Your own personal time machine.”

  I sagged back, going limp inside the armor. Had he just— had I just handed myself the power to...

  “WAIT. SERIOUSLY?”

  “Don’t get too excited. Future you gimped it. It’s got like three trips in it. After that it shorts out or something.”

  “AH.” But my mind was racing ahead. I’d built it after all, I could deconstruct it, reverse-engineer it. All I’d need was time and my factory. The factory that had just been stormed by gangers, located by police, and mostly-destroyed by a kaiju.

  Well crap.

  “WELL-PLAYED, FUTURE DIRE. WELL-PLAYED.”

  “Huh? You high or something, Dire?”

  “HARDLY.”

  “You wanna be? It’s gonna be a rough night. Sorry about this. I know you’re busy.”

  Vorpal wandered in, shut the door behind her. “Martin’s hiding the van. Did you tell her?”

  “TELL HER WHAT?”

  “Shit, man, don’t rush me.”

  Vorpal scowled. “I’m no man, Timetripper.”

  “Just like, a figure of speech. Okay, sure.” He eased himself onto the stairs, dug out a joint, and lit it up. I watched him puff, sunken cheeks drawing the smoke back into his throat like a child sucking on a bottle.

  After two minutes, I put my hands on my hips. “WELL?”

  “Huh?”

  “OUT WITH IT.”

  “Gimme a few.” He finished the joint, ground it out, and let blue smoke escape his lungs with a long sigh. “Aw yeah. This century’s got the best green. Uh. So...you know you conquer the world, right? What’s left of it, anyway.”

  “NO. NO SHE DIDN’T KNOW THAT.” Conquer the world? How would that fix anything? The last thing this world needed was a dictator.

  “Well. I mean nothing’s certain. Future’s what you make of it. But every time I go far enough forward, you’re at the end of it.”

  “THE END?” That didn’t sound good.

  “Yeah. You figured out time machines and stuff. You put up some chrono jammers or something and I can’t go past you. So you’re like the end. Which really makes young me worried the first couple times I go to your era, and see what you’re doing.”

  “WHICH IS?”

  “Bad,” he said. “Just... bad.”

  “YOU’RE AFRAID TO ELABORATE FOR FEAR THAT IT WILL CAUSE THE FUTURE YOU DO NOT WANT.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve seen it,” Vorpal said. “From the part I saw, it looked pretty grim. Whether or not it is your fault, or that of others, I could not say.”

  “So young me, dumb me, drunk with his new powers and full of piss and vinegar decides to go after you. Stop you before you get started. Only things go weird. See, back then I didn’t know shit.” He snorted. “I still don’t know a lot of shit. But him? He’s just trying to grok it as he goes.”

  “ROCK IT AS HE GOES?” I asked, confused.

  “No. Grok. Like... get. You ever read Heinlein?”

  “NO.”

  “You’d like it.”

  “SO YOUNGER YOU IS THE ONE WHO CAME BACK HERE AND SHOWED UP IN THE COURTHOUSE, AND THE CHURCH. SO WHY GRAB VORPAL?”

  “Future you’s blonde.”

  “WHAT?”

  “And kind of a hottie.”

  “BLONDE’S YOUR THING, HM?” I asked him, shooting a glance at Vorpal.

  “Heh, well.” Timetripper leered at her.

  Vorpal glared at him. “I told you already, I am not into men. Nor do I owe you a fuck for rescuing me from a problem you caused.”

  He lifted his hands. “Hey, I had to ask. No harm done, lady.”

  “No, you did not have to ask. You really, really did not.”

  “BLONDE...” A thought struck me. “JUST HOW FAR IN THE FUTURE IS DIRE’S CONQUEST?”

  He coughed. “Uh. I better not say.”

  “She looked young,” Vorpal said, studying me out of the corner of her eye. “Her face was different. Her build was more muscular. But she was you. The way she moved, the way she talked, the things she knew— It could have been a trick, I suppose. Damned good one if so.”

  I gnawed my lip. “STARTING TO DISLIKE THIS WHOLE TIME-TRAVEL THING.”

  “You and me alike.” Timetripper said. “Which is why it’s time to end it.”

  “YOU REALLY WANT TO DIE?” I asked. “WHY?”

  He sighed, and stared at the wall. His once glittering eyes were bleary and glazed now. The weed was kicking in. “Man. I didn’t know shit about my powers when I got them. No instruction manual, you know?” His voice trailed off, but he managed to regain focus and continue. “I made mistake after mistake. See... the amount of shit I can do? It’s finite. That multiple dudes thing he’s doing right now? Drains power like a motherfucker. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of stuff back in the day, but... well, it runs out. I can’t even spare the stuff to stop me from aging anymore. Which is why I’m geriatric and fucked up. But... more importantly... it’s a paradox if I don’t.”

  “A PARADOX.”

  “Yeah. See, the very first thing I do, is hop randomly and end up in some weird ass place. And guess who’s there?”

  A picture was starting to form. “DIRE. KILLING YOU.”

  “Yep. Brains blown out with that colt of yours. Execution style.”

  I shook my head. “NO.”

  “Dire... listen. This has to happen. If it doesn’t, then it’s gonna be a big paradox, and random shit I’ve done will start coming undone. My powers will go out of control.”

  “DIRE THOUGHT THEY WERE FINITE AND NEARLY EXPENDED.”

  “No! Yes! Sort of. The amount I can control is finite. But if the timestream gets too warped, it’s like a breaking dam. Things get weird. Like, extinction event weird. Game over. Don’t put a quarter in, ’cause there ain’t no extra lives.”

  He was throwing this at me now, when I was tired and aching and dealing with so much oth
er crap. I glowered at him, and saw no reason to hide my displeasure. “YOU HAVE BEEN NOTHING BUT TROUBLE TO DIRE.”

  He grinned, showing cracked, gray teeth. “So hey, you get to kill me at least. Work off some angst, huh?”

  “DON’T TEMPT HER.”

  He laughed, in that high-pitched, monotone way that long-term marijuana smokers had. “Dude, what do you think I’ve been doing?”

  He had me there.

  I pointed at the wireframe. “SO LET DIRE GUESS. FUTURE HER PROVIDED THAT SO DIRE WOULDN’T BE STRANDED AFTER YOU’RE DEAD?”

  “Got it in one. Don’t know why she put extra trips on there.” His face smoothed into a solemn frown. “Take it from me, it’s not a blessing. It’s really fucking dangerous.”

  To a moron like him, perhaps. To me, it was possibilities opening up. A world of possibilities, more so if I could hang onto the thing until I could get it to a sufficiently-equipped lab I could use to reverse-engineer its secrets.

  I opened my mouth to accept... and thought it over. Really thought it over.

  “NOT ENOUGH.”

  “What?”

  “YOU HEARD HER.”

  “Dude, I just saved your friend.”

  “FROM A SITUATION YOU CREATED.”

  “A free time machine isn’t enough?”

  “NO. TELL HER HOW TO BEAT YOU.”

  He laughed. “Man, you can’t be serious.”

  “OH, SHE IS.” I leaned down until my mask was level with his face. “DEADLY SERIOUS. YOU WANT AN EXECUTION? TELL HER HOW TO KEEP YOUR YOUNGER SELF OFF HER BACK.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Man. Uh. Shit. Look, if I say the wrong thing it changes things. Paradoxes them. We are like literally a few steps away from the dam bursting and time shit going all over the place. You really wanna risk it all because you got greedy?”

  Sense in that. Still...

  “A HINT, THEN? PRESUMABLY SHE DOES BEAT YOU. THINK ON THAT.”

  His eyes got even more unfocused for a bit, then he grinned. “Alright. Yeah, sure. Fuck that young asshole anyway. He’s got this coming. Paradoxes. You need to paradox him.”

  “YOU JUST SAID PARADOXES WERE BAD.”

  “For me, yeah! For him, nah. He’s full of power. But he doesn’t know how to ride them out yet, so forcing him into a paradox is like giving him a nine-alarm tequila hangover. You do that, you’ll force him out, hit him so hard he’ll lose focus. He won’t be able to come back for a while.”