“Right,” I say, and I watch as the soil monster plucks Fiona from its shoulder and deposits her gently on the ground. “We need your help.”
“How did you find us?” Fiona asks.
“Kind of hard to explain,” I say, but I point at the Bell behind them.
Fiona and the man turn around, looking at the Bell and the crushed gazebo beneath it. “Bish is going to go regen when he sees what you did to his gazebo.”
I have no idea who he’s talking about, and I have no intention of spending any more time in this dimension than I have to, so I let the comment go. “We’re looking for Fiona, and a man called King.”
That gets their attention, and I can tell the man is restraining himself. If Fiona wasn’t here, the ‘Girls’ would likely be pointed in my direction again.
“How do you know that name?” Fiona asks. “And mine? And your answer needs to be better than pointing at a giant bell.”
“We’re from another dimension,” David says, plain as day, like these people will just accept something that insane.
Fiona squints at us. “Did Alexander send you?”
“Do we know someone named Alexander?” David asks me.
“No,” I say.
“No,” he says. “We’ve traveled between worlds and five years into your future because we need your help.”
“We’re not exactly in the world-saving business anymore,” the man says.
Fiona rolls her eyes at him. “Rook.”
“Not full time, anyway,” he says.
Rook, I think. King. ‘Bish’ must be Bishop. “You’re named after chess pieces.”
“And if you make a chess club joke,” Rook says. “I’ll give you a .50 caliber suppository.”
“You both have filthy minds,” David says. “You know that, right?”
We both just smile, kindred spirits, though I suspect Rook, with his special ops background, has a deeper reservoir of crass words picked up, or maybe coined, during his stint in the military.
“Focus, boys,” Fiona says. “You’re from another dimension?”
“You don’t seem fazed by that,” I say.
“Ain’t our first rodeo, pal.” Rook motions to the living dirt men.
Good point.
“Hudson,” I say. “Jon Hudson. In our dimension, I’m the director of Fusion Center-P.”
“DHS,” Rook says. “What’s the P for?”
“Paranormal,” I say, expecting a joke, but none comes.
“Okay,” Rook says. “And you need our help with? A monster? A mastermind trying to take over the world? Fitting Kim Kardashian into a pair of skinny jeans?”
“She does have a large rear end,” David says, chuckling.
“Rear end?” Rook looks at David like he’s just sprouted horns. “What are you here for, Captain Wet Blanket?”
David adjusts his glasses. “Time travel.”
“Right, from the past, and another dimension. So what is it? What are we up against?”
“Alien invasion,” Cowboy says, stepping closer, still wary. “With army of four-hundred-foot-tall kaiju. They have already destroyed one Earth.”
“And now they’re at ours,” David says.
“And eventually, they’ll come here,” I say. “And not you, or the missus, or even Fiona, will be able to stop them.”
“But you can?” Fiona asks.
“With your help, among others.” I look at the houses surrounding us. “Where is King?”
“I can see why you’d want King,” Rook says. “He’s been around. But right now, he’s not here, and I am. If Fi’s going with, I am, too.”
“Not a kid anymore,” Fiona says.
“Doesn’t mean your old man won’t throttle me for letting you go solo.” He turns to me. “If she’s going, I’m going. We’re a package deal.”
I look at Fiona, waiting for an answer.
“Can you prove anything you’ve told us?” she asks. They might not be surprised by the idea of other dimensions and even time travel, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
“I can show you,” I say. “You just need to put your hand on that.” I point to the Bell.
Fiona whispers something in a language I can’t understand. The two soil men turn and walk away, heading for the holes in the yard from whence they came. They crumble apart, refilling the gaps. The grass layer slides down, meshing with the lawn until there’s no sign they ever existed.
“They’re golems,” David says, surprising Fiona with his knowledge. “That language you spoke, I’ve heard it before. A long time ago.”
“The mother tongue,” Fiona says.
“The language of God,” David says, eyes wide. “You speak it?”
Fiona smiles. “Also a long story.”
“Is time,” Cowboy says, heading for the Bell. “Let me show you.”
As we walk, I know that Cowboy’s ‘showing’ is closer to ‘abducting’, but we don’t exactly have time for debate. As we cross the street, Cowboy whispers to David, who makes some adjustments to his watch. Thirty seconds later, when everyone has a hand on the Bell, Cowboy says, “Next stop, the future.”
“Now hold on a—” Rook’s complaint is silenced when we’re pulled through space and time and deposited in a world completely foreign to all of us.
11
NEMESIS
The world was a complicated place. She understood that now. It had taken months of solitude to make sense of it, but her new Voice, Katsu Endo, had patiently revealed this truth to her. The part that had been Prime, tortured and conditioned to see every living thing in black and white, hating the black and disregarding the white, was no longer driving her actions. Raw emotion had its place, Endo believed, but it didn’t have to control her. There were other things more important than simple vengeance.
Loyalty. Nobility. Sacrifice.
Nemesis understood the last of those virtues. She’d first witnessed it when the man named Jon Hudson had sacrificed her first Voice’s father to her wrath. It was an external sacrifice, and she understood that; she and her Voice had bonded with Hudson as a result, but Endo revealed that Hudson’s choice was also a personal sacrifice. The man had gone against his core beliefs to appease her wrath. It was a choice that had pained Hudson for years.
She still felt him. Out there in the world. In the sea of emotionally charged voices, screaming for justice, vengeance and freedom, there were two that always reached her with unusual clarity. Endo believed it was because he shared a similar connection with the pair: Jon Hudson and Maigo Tilly, who was now known as Maigo Hudson. Father and daughter.
Nemesis understood joy, but was incapable of feeling it. But knowing her former Voice had found what she had always wanted—a family—allowed her to feel something that was partly welcome, and partly disturbing: contentment.
And it was this new emotion that Endo helped her focus on while they recuperated, and while he opened her eyes to the ways of the world that she had been sent to judge, but now found herself protecting.
Good and evil could be seen as black and white, but the truth most often existed in shades of gray.
Directed by Endo, Nemesis understood this about herself. Vengeance was a holy and pure state of being. Those she condemned to destruction truly deserved her Divine Retribution. The blackness that consumed them was unquestionable. But the countless people—existing in shades of gray, and sometimes white—that she trampled, burned or consumed on her path to squelch out the black, darkened her...what?
Endo believed she had a soul.
Nemesis didn’t believe or not believe. She primarily felt. And his thoughts on the subject merely confused her. To live after dying...the concept vexed her, especially when applied to those upon whom she had rained down vengeance. They did not deserve to exist in any state of being.
The image of Alexander Tilly flitted through her thoughts. His naked body. His pleading face. Looking at her from the rooftop where he’d been brought.
The pitiful man.<
br />
A murderer of children.
Of mothers.
How could a human such as him have a soul? How could a man like that deserve to exist?
Heat churned inside of her. Thoughts gave way to emotions. Silenced voices from beyond the ocean where Nemesis lay snuck past the barriers raised by Endo.
He is dead, the Voice named Endo said. There is nothing more you can do to him.
But he exists.
After a brief silence, the Voice replied. Some believe the spiritual existence of people like Alexander Tilly continues in a place of perpetual torture.
The heat continued to build inside her. An outside voice cried for help. For vengeance. Nemesis stirred, the desire to stamp out the guilty, urging her toward action.
You’re projecting, Endo said. Focus on the voice. Who are you hearing?
Nemesis listened to the Voice. She had grown to trust him. Where her symbiosis with Maigo had been forced, and coiled by a burning need for vengeance, and then by a desire to protect the man who had delivered that to her, Endo had willingly given himself to her. Had made all of himself available to her. His knowledge. His understanding. Perhaps even his soul. She knew, without doubt, that Endo would not harm her. So she abided by his request, as she had done many times over the past months.
The sea of voices assailing her narrowed. She focused on the voice that had pricked her need for vengeance.
A child, she thought, and she nearly sprang from the deep.
No! Endo chided. Look closer.
The child was hurt. Weeping. Desperate. For just a moment, she saw the boy’s attacker through his eyes.
Another child. A toy clutched in his hands. And then, a mother. The children separated. Calming words. Soothed hearts. Peace restored.
This wasn’t even an example of the gray. The children were innocent. Imperfect, but pure.
The burning fire in her chest died down. The Voice was wise, proving his value once more. He had shown her that there were greater evils in the world, and beyond it. Instead of darkness destroying darkness, they could represent the light. It’s what you were made for, he had said, showing her images of her pure white form, light reflecting from her luminous wings. We can crush demons, he liked to say, as an angel.
Nemesis tolerated these thoughts, but did not accept them. Despite his hopes for her, for them both, she knew what she was—a creature of the darkness. She was no longer directly connected to her first Voice, but she remembered the revulsion experienced when they had consumed the flesh of humans. At best, Nemesis existed in the gray. At worst, she was the darkness, reaching out to consume those most like her.
They’re here, Endo said, pulling her focus from the broad world to the watery realm surrounding them.
New voices filtered into her consciousness and she was relieved when none of them cried out in pain or for blood. Many of them were fearful, not because of other people, but because of her.
She sensed their vessel in the water, its engines humming, the pressure of its large hull pushing on her fungal skin. She had destroyed man-made vehicles similar to this in the past. Consumed the men inside. Memories of her satisfaction and Maigo’s revulsion fought for dominance.
Let’s see who it is, Endo said.
Nemesis opened an eye, keeping it squinted in the bright light cast by the vehicle.
It’s small for a submarine, the Voice said. Modern. And red. Why is it red?
Images flickered through Nemesis’s thoughts. A red truck. A red helicopter.
She felt Endo smile, but she failed to share his emotion. She knew what happiness was now, but she wasn’t yet capable of experiencing it.
As the beam of light shifted away from her open eye, the red vehicle was easier to see, as was the name on the side of its sail, painted in bold white letters: BETTY.
Nemesis did not understand the significance of the name, but felt the humor experienced by Endo, and knew to whom this vehicle belonged. Jon Hudson. Despite the man’s mixed feelings for Nemesis and Endo, they both held him in high regard, knowing that despite their differing approaches, their goals, their missions, were aligned.
The submarine’s propellers churned the water, pulling it backward, speeding up as though retreating.
Why are they here? Endo wondered, the question for himself more than for Nemesis. But she responded by allowing the world in. Voices, billions of them, threatened to overwhelm them, all crying out at once. As rage built to a crescendo, a few very specific voices cut through the red haze. Their fear wasn’t directed at another person, but at something in the sky.
Something huge.
Something alien.
Her masters had returned.
It’s time, Endo thought, to rise again.
Before Nemesis could move, a massive pressure wave struck her body head on, as millions of tons of water were suddenly displaced. The blow stunned her for just a moment, but it was enough for the newcomer to grasp her wrists.
A voice boomed through the water around her, familiar, yet distorted. “Be a good girl and don’t try to kill me, okay?”
Then the ocean was gone, replaced by open air, scorching heat and the face of her ancient enemy: Hyperion.
12
HUDSON
“Okay,” Rook says, as we appear at the center of an intersection surrounded by tall black buildings. “Two questions. One. Where in Satan’s flaming taint are we? Two. Are those zombies?”
“Fifteen years in the future,” David says, “In an alternate reality, I presume. As for the zombies, the only men I’ve seen returned from the dead looked much better.”
“ixNay ethay alkingtay,” I whisper. I’m not sure why I use the Pig Latin. If Rook’s assessment of the gnarly looking forms ahead of us is accurate, I don’t think the undead will make much sense of my words.
But they do hear us.
Heads swivel in our direction, the grinding of their vertebrae audible. The nearest of them, a fellow whose flesh hangs from his bones in sheets, snaps open his mouth. There’s something off about these people, and not just the fact that they’re shredded and still alive. The dead man’s eyes glow red. A howl rises from his non-existent throat.
How the hell is this thing making any sound at all?
The howl jitters and skips, turning into something like an old-school dial-up internet connection.
“Not zombies,” Cowboy says. “Robots.”
As soon as he says the word, I have no trouble seeing these things for what they are—or were. Cowboy told me that this guy was a cyborg, but left out the part about his world being a post-robopocalypse.
“Robot zombies,” Rook corrects, drawing the Girls and taking aim. “How ’bout we see if a bullet to the head still does the trick?”
“Rook,” David says. “Wait—”
“Have any of you dealt with zombies before?” Rook asks. “Are any of you named Joe Ledger? No? Didn’t think so.”
He pulls a trigger.
A .50 caliber bullet exits one of the handguns, cutting through the air and punching through not one, but three undead robot heads. It’s a masterful shot, impressive to me, and judging by Cowboy’s raised eyebrows, to him, too. But the cacophonous report echoes throughout the city, amplified by the solid metal street and the buildings surrounding us.
Shrieking digital screams tear through the city.
“Huh,” Rook says, lowering his weapons and offering a lopsided grin. “Would it help if I said sorry?”
Before anyone can reply, one of the ‘zombies’ leaps onto the side of a building and then bounds off of it. It’s headed for Rook, arms outstretched, metal jaws wide. Rook lifts his weapons again, but the gunshot that saves his life comes from Cowboy. The single shot plows through the side of the zombie’s shiny dome and out the other side. Rook dives to the side, avoiding being crushed by several hundred pounds of metal, but he’s now separated from the group, and from the Bell that would let us retreat.
In the following seconds, it becomes clear that
retreat might not be an option. Metal zombies approach from all directions.
“Where is this guy?” I ask Cowboy, drawing my sidearm. The 9mm weapon does the trick against people, maybe even a Ferox, but against robots? I suspect it lacks the required punch.
“Is where I last saw him,” Cowboy says. “Clearing the zombies.”
“Well, he’s not here now.”
Cowboy tracks two incoming zombies, one hobbling, the other sprint-limping, one leg barely functioning, the other thrusting out forward. “If he is in city, he will come.”
Cowboy pulls the trigger on both weapons, dropping both zombies. But they’re quickly replaced by more.
Gunfire increases in frequency until we’re firing and reloading as fast as we can. I only brought three spare magazines. Rook seems to have a wholesale supply of magazines tucked into every fold of his combat gear, but he’ll run out eventually. Cowboy’s pistols only hold six rounds each, but he’s got handfuls of quick-loads stuffed in his pockets, which he can swap out in seconds. Still, there aren’t enough bullets among us to stop a city full of robot zombies. If Cowboy’s man doesn’t show up in the next sixty seconds, I’m going to call it.
“Fiona,” Rook says while swapping out magazines, “Any time you’re ready.”
“I know,” Fiona says. Of all of us, she’s the most calm. “Just looking for the right— There we go.”
I follow her line of sight down the street. A massive robotic form lies in a heap upon a pile of dead-again undead. There’s a big hole in its chest, and another in its head, but despite the clearly fatal damage, the behemoth begins to stir.
The words coming from Fiona’s mouth tickle my ears. There’s power in them, and I feel them in my chest. In my heart. But they don’t affect me like they do the inanimate object upon which she’s focused, though. The robotic body groans as it stands, clouds of rust bursting from its joints. From what I know of the Golem legend, a rabbi would write the word emet, meaning ‘truth’, on a statue’s forehead, magically imbuing it with life. To take that life away, the rabbi need only erase the ‘e’, transforming the word to ‘met’, which means ‘death’. Based on what I’m seeing here, Fiona has learned how to take that ancient language and direct the inanimate the way Mozart did music.
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 7