The Bearer's Burden (Phantom Pact Book 1)

by Chad Queen

  Cade heard the barrels begin to grind and whir. “Hells,” he said under his breath, his curse now being a statement of fact. Skex could build things impossibly fast, since they could work together as a single mind.

  He leaned out, leveled his shotcaster, and eliminated the group that had set up the weapon with a focused blast. Cade ducked back into cover to reload. He would only have moments before the next group got into position.

  The Skex reminded Cade of ants. It didn’t matter how many you took out; the others would fill the holes as if nothing had happened.

  The grinding sound began again, and a hail of bullets tore through the room. They kept the machine running, erring on the side of wasted ammunition. If they couldn’t match his reflexes, they would overwhelm him with brute force.

  “You have to run out of ammo sometime.” He heard a familiar clink that made his heart sink.

  Cade, encode—

  He didn’t need the warning. He knew a Bearer-Class frag grenade when he saw it. Cade remembered what had happened to Commander Jord during the final battle.

  He felt his tungsten ring pull tight against his hand. A second grenade rolled into view, along with a third, and a fourth. He pushed his phantoms to their breaking point and rushed out from behind the pylon.

  They were ready for him. He was hit full-on with the blast of the autocannon, which sent him crashing against the wall. He tried to move, but the constant fire kept him pinned.

  Bearer-Class weapons served two distinct purposes. Their primary purpose, of course, was to kill Bearers. Failing that, they worked to ensure the Bearer exhausted their phantoms. It was working. He groaned as he turned over, pain radiating through his body. He wouldn’t be able to survive another one.

  Focus. He knew there would be another grenade coming in to finish him off. He had to keep moving so he would not be outflanked.

  Cade could detect a marked change in the Skex’s behavior. They were far more aggressive now, and not just with the weaponry. They were favoring losses to catch him off balance, as evidenced by the bodies of the Skex that lay dead from their own grenades.

  Cade encoded with lead and used the increased weight to move out of the autocannon’s line of fire. He fired a shot into the next group that rushed him. More poured forth, this time from the opposite direction, not giving him an opportunity to reload. There were too many, and their tactics continued to improve faster than he would have expected.

  His casters out of ammo, he swung open a nearby door. Cade flared diamond just as he took three energy blasts to the chest. The shot propelled him back into the interior of the room. Still on his back, he managed to kick the door shut.

  The panel, Eos instructed.

  Cade threw Eos toward the panel, and Eos snapped tight against it. He heard a mechanism engage, securing the door.

  I’m afraid it will buy us little time.

  Out of breath, Cade turned and reeled back.

  “What…what is this place?”

  Seraph Analysis.

  Seraph? He had not heard that name before.

  Metal tables lined the room. Bodies, human bodies, lay atop each one, most mutilated beyond recognition. The smell was almost unbearable. He covered his nose with his palm and fought back the urge to gag. So this is where it all ends, he thought.

  Cade’s face fell as he stepped away from the grisly scene. “What do they want with us?”

  The Wraith is drawing closer. Be on your guard.

  His face twisted into a sneer as he cracked open the barrel of his shotcaster. “Doesn’t matter.” He heard a high-pitched whine sounding from the door. Cade wheeled around, caster leveled.

  The door exploded, sending Cade skidding across the floor and broken glass and twisted metal spraying through the room like a shotgun blast. The wind knocked out of him, he dragged himself over to the wall. His hands shook from the concussive force of the blast, and he struggled with bloodied fingers to put a shell into his caster.

  Encoding with his tungsten ring again, he fired a shell into the Skex pouring through the entrance. More filed in, scrambling over their fallen. The chipcoins, Cade thought. He tried to use them, but nothing happened. What had he done on the train earlier to get them to work?

  This is it, he thought as he crawled behind an upturned table.

  He reloaded his casters with his dwindling supply of shells and waited for them to come to him. He laughed, delirious. It was not nearly enough for what was to come. He had failed.

  Even so, he would still fight.

  They came. He fired a barrage of bullets into the horde as they flanked him from both sides. There were more left than he remembered. Reinforcements? Not fair.

  His casters emptied, he encoded diamond, opting for strength over armor in close combat. He moved with the discipline of a trained soldier and the tenacity of a man possessed.

  He didn’t remember how many Skex he took down in the room. He did remember how hard it became for his feet to find solid purchase as the fallen Skex piled up around him. The slits of light inset into the steel helmets bolted on over their heads died out when they fell. One helmet had been torn from the head of one the Skex. Cade could not make out the features of the elongated head, because it was covered in dark red blood. He could, however, see two large black eyes staring at him. He had never seen the face of a Skex. It held no malice or emotion, but instead it seemed curious, as if it had just been awakened.

  The Skex continued to fight better and with more tenacity than he had ever witnessed in the Corps. One Skex clawed at his back, ripping Eos from her sheath and silencing the voice within his mind.

  When the last of his phantoms fell quiet, he turned to face the next wave of attackers, ready to accept his fate. Behind the gathering Skex, a solitary Wraith entered the room. The Wraith appeared to glide through the room, despite the carnage. The Wraiths he had seen moved with an eerie smoothness, as though their bodies were not grounded to the world around them. He seemed wholly unconcerned with Cade’s presence as he opened a metal cabinet in the back of the room. A steam-like gas tumbled out of the cabinet as the Wraith pulled out a large glass vial of black liquid.

  Nocturne. Even at a distance, Cade knew what it was. He hated how much he wanted it. Every cell in his body seemed to scream for it. The Wraith began filling a syringe with the pitch-black liquid. There was more Nocturne there than he had ever taken before. That dose would surely kill him. But why would they do it this way?

  The Skex had now flanked him and grabbed his arms and legs, pinning him down. The Wraith hovered over Cade for a moment before plunging the large syringe into his chest.

  A failed father, a failed husband, a failed brother, and a failed friend.

  The familiar black tendrils clutched at his vision until the veil of darkness fell upon him.

  36

  Wraith

  The use of Nocturne was a boon to the war effort for the Bearer Corps. Many Bearers’ minds were ill-suited to hosting phantoms, but Nocturne eliminated those problems with no short-term side-effects. Its ingredients and manufacture have remained a closely guarded military secret.

  —From First Contact to First Combat: The One-Month War

  A man screamed as a blast of energy hit him square in the chest.

  Cade was on the front lines. It was a sight he had seen countless times. He relived this memory every night that sleep had been merciful enough to take him.

  The Skex were surrounding their position. His unit was deep within enemy territory, and they were outnumbered. This was the day. The day the Wraith War ended on Gigan’s Hill.

  One more day, he thought. That was what he had told himself on that last day of the war. He believed that day would end it. But it hadn’t ended there, not really. So Cade had made the same promise every day since. Live for one more day. Put one foot in front of the other. As long as it takes to make whoever killed my family pay.

  He watched once again as the Skex flanked their position.

  “What
are you waiting around for? Move!” His leader, Commander Jord Black told him. Cade nodded again, as he had on that day, and rushed toward the enemy line.

  He watched as Jord took the grenade to protect his team. No matter how many times Cade was forced to witness it, it was still horrifying.

  Cade sealed the Pact with Jord’s phantom, which had stayed behind.

  “Incoming!” a corporal wailed.

  “Hells,” the dream Cade spat.

  He felt his phantoms tire as he fought the massive Skex on the battlefield, the type they now referred to as a Skex brigandine. The creature lunged at Cade, who tried to block the attack, but it connected and knocked Cade to the ground.

  He remembered nothing more after that, and this was where the nightmare would end.

  Except this time.

  Cade’s body rose, but it was not Cade who was in control. Catching the brigandine off-guard, he rolled to the side of the brigandine and shot a caster shell into the unarmored spot behind its head. Brigandine bodies were tough, and for some reason even caster shells couldn’t penetrate through their irregular armored exoskeletons.

  The brigandine’s body disintegrated on impact of the shell. It was then Cade noticed the Wraith.

  It was smiling as it leveled its weapon. Cade was the faster of the two, and he fired a shell that struck the Wraith right between its eyes. The Wraith crumpled to the ground.

  The sound of a horn trumpeted from the distance. Cade looked to see the banner of the King’s Guard. Reinforcements.

  The Wraith was dead. They had won the day.

  Cade felt his body sag, and all went dark once more.

  “He’s awake?” a voice said, surprised.

  Footsteps.

  Cade’s head was in splitting pain, his vision fuzzy, but he could just make out a form hovering over him.

  “Curious.” The voice was uneven and laborious.

  Reality came crashing down upon him, and he found himself lying on a long metal table. His arms felt heavy, as if they had just carried a tremendous weight to exhaustion. With some difficulty, he pulled himself up. He could taste blood in his mouth. The thought of standing felt beyond him, so he remained seated as the figure approached.

  His eyes focused on his surroundings, and he noticed the man before him was not a man at all. It had a sickly skin of dark glass. It was a simulacrum of a man. A Wraith. Behind the Wraith stood two men, guards, robed in red. Acolytes.

  He looked down to see that not only were his arms not bound but his rings were still on his hands. His phantoms were still worn out from the fight, but he could sense some time had passed, and they would be rested soon. He had to buy some more time.

  The Wraith smiled at him, though the effort was unnatural. Why bother to pantomime a semblance of humanity? Cade had seen enough to know the Wraiths had none.

  “The dose of Nocturne we gave you should have put you into a coma,” the Wraith continued, unblinking. “Increase the dosage and accelerate the reconditioning. I will not be interrupted again.”

  “Who are you?” Cade demanded, though his voice was only a whisper.

  The Wraith picked up Eos, examining the unique artifact, and set her lengthwise on the table beside Cade, nodding. The Wraith smiled once more, his lips curling like the string of a bow strung too tight. “You don’t remember?”

  Cade shook his head.

  “You are quite famous…for killing me.”

  His heart sank as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “You’re not dead.”

  The Wraith laughed, though it sounded more like a guttural hiss. Though the Wraith did not smile again, Cade could tell it was enjoying his discomfort.

  “Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

  “You will be more useful to me alive. Besides, you and I have a…bond. While misplaced, you are heralded as a hero among your kind. Myself, I am also seen as a hero by my people.”

  “We are nothing alike.”

  The Wraith slowly shook its head. “It is appalling to me how you don’t recognize the gifts you have been given.”

  Cade furrowed his brow, but even that took more effort than he would have imagined.

  “Can you comprehend immortality? What if you were destined to spend eternity trapped between the Veris and the Firmere?”

  Cade sat silent as the Wraith took another step and hovered over Cade. “No. You don’t have to. But we do. I am of the greatest species that has ever lived in this universe, but I am trapped here, with no possibility of ascension.”

  The Wraith headed toward the door. “Your entire existence is a failed experiment. But you hold a potential within you, Seraph. You will realize that power with my help.”

  Seraph. That word again.

  Cade shook his head.

  The Wraith motioned to one of the men guarding the door, and the man brought out what looked like a dark gray river stone and set it next to Cade. He could see that it wasn’t stone, however, but metal. Its shape was irregular. Was this what Wraith technology looked like? It was in stark contrast to the clean lines and angular shapes of the Ancients. “Don’t mistake me. I am not asking your permission.” The Wraith leaned forward and pressed a small indentation on the front of the device. The box slowly pulsed with a harsh yellow light.

  Cade reached for the box, but he could not move. No matter how he tried, he was frozen into place. “Nocturne is a fascinating substance. We cannot really take credit for it, of course; the ones you call the Ancients were the ones who first began synthesizing it.”

  Cade tried to speak, but his body ignored him. Panic set in. He tried encoding with his rings, but they would not respond.

  “Use of Nocturne weakens the connection between the Veris and the Firmere; stretches it…thin…like a thread. This machine cuts the thread. It greatly simplifies reconditioning.” The Wraith flashed its hollow smile.

  “Goodbye, Elegy.” It picked up Eos, muttered something to one of the guards, and left.

  The guards walked up to the table, hoisted Cade up, and placed him on a metal gurney, along with the strange glowing box.

  Cade struggled against his invisible bonds. He focused his phantoms into his hands, to the point at which they should have overencoded.

  Move, damn you! he screamed to himself.

  They wheeled him out of the room and into the main hall. He remembered his dream once more. He had been here before. He felt the dread he had felt during the dream. He was helpless as they wheeled him down the hall. Reconditioning, he thought. This must be how they made Acolytes. What they had done to Karessa, to Rast, and to the other soldiers who had fought alongside him.

  What had the Wraith said earlier? Nocturne weakens the connection between the Veris and the Firmere. He needed to amplify the connection somehow. Amplify. The chipcoins.

  The pouch he had carried was still on his body as they rolled into a small room. Could he activate them in his current state?

  Cade tried to encode with them, but again, nothing happened. Dammit, what do I need to do?

  If the phantoms can reach into our world, can’t we reach into theirs? The words of his doppelgänger echoed in his mind. Cade cleared his mind. He reached. He didn’t try to encode this time. Instead, he imagined he had hands that existed within the Firmere itself. The hands were infinite, reaching on forever and holding everything within their grasp. He reached to his coin pouch; he could feel the power within them. He could sense the latent energy, asking to be freed. He held them in his hands, and he let its energy bind with his own.

  Nothing happened, but he continued to reach and hold onto the coins. Connection established, an unfamiliar voice sounded within his mind.

  The pouch on his belt began to smoke, drawing the attention of the guards. They started to argue about what to do, and within moments the pouch erupted into flame. The guard pushing the gurney tripped, and the gurney fell over. The room filled with a bright orange light from the coins that had spilled across the ground.

  Cade blinked an
d found himself kneeling. He moved his hand to look at it. He was in control again. The guards turned their attention to him, having been distracted by the burning pouch.

  Cade rose, smashed the device next to him with an encoded fist, and turned to face his opponents.

  “Let’s try this again.”

  The first guard rushed him, encoding diamond. Diamond encoders tended to overcommit their bodies with the additional strength, making it easy for them to fall off balance. Cade guided the man into the wall beside him, flared tungsten and elbowed the back of his head. But instead of knocking him out, the strike shattered the man’s skull and sent him careening into the metal wall, leaving a crater where he had impacted.

  The other man, incredulous, looked at Cade but rushed him anyway. The Acolyte threw a well-placed jab, and Cade noticed the man had overencoded his fist with the steel on the floor. Cade, with his own encoding, punched the man’s fist, smashing it despite the encoding, and then struck the man’s neck, incapacitating him.

  Cade looked at the coins scattered on the floor. He would have to be cautious of the amplification. He touched the coins, which were still hot to the touch, and put them away.

  He looked across the room and saw a row of what looked like silver coffins with rectangular view ports. He was relieved to see that there appeared to be no one inside them. Still, the sight of them made him uncomfortable.

  I’ve got to find Eos, he thought as he ran out of the room and into the depths of the Forgotten Hells.

  37

  Transport

  The Nexus, a great metal tower that reaches high above the Rynth skyline, has no known entrance on the surface. But underground, more and more passages are being uncovered by intrepid archaeologists. It is believed one of these routes will lead to the base of the Nexus and to the greatest treasure of the Ancients.

  —From Chipcoins to Levitating Trains: Artifacts of the Ancients

  Ashlyn didn’t like being underground. Most of the underground sites around Ancient cities were off-limits, and for good reason. They were difficult to police and as such were a fertile breeding ground for smugglers. Of course, she was now technically a smuggler herself.