by JM Guillen
“Something is behind us.” Rachel’s eyes went wide.
“Well, I suppose we should all be glad for Alabama Slim’s stasis fields.” I nodded to Wyatt. “If I remember correctly, those things only last a few hours at most.”
“Heh.” Wyatt gave me a shit-eating grin. “As it so happens, I’ve been looking into that. Figured out how to power the damn things on gravity.” He waved a hand dismissively in my direction. “You wouldn’t understand. Too much math.”
“So it’s permanent?” I chuckled. “Does that also mean that our way back is blocked?”
“Fallback position is your responsibility.” Wyatt sighed as if bored. “I am an artist.”
“Asset Guthrie can easily untangle the field’s underlying—”
“Easily! See?” I gestured toward the Preceptor. “Anya can do your job better than you can.”
“You two need to shut it. Honestly.” Rachel glared at us. “If I had known that rescuing Bishop meant I was going to have to listen—”
“Assets.” Gideon stopped. “We’re at Locale One.”
The hatch looked nothing like I had expected, but Gideon had to be right. It was a hexagonal depression in the wall, surrounded by bands of obsidian and crimson. There were misshapen stones set around the design, with no apparent pattern or purpose.
When I touched the center of the design, the stones pulsed a soft, multicolored light. In my mind, I heard the barest edges of whispered words. They were dark, bent things that I had never heard before.
“It’s a complex device.” Anya peered at the design, but I was certain she was actually studying the axiomatic weave around it. “Alpha, there’s no mechanism to physically open it.”
“What?” Wyatt was running his own diagnostics. They were slower than Anya’s, less exact, but I knew that his oculus gave him more data than I had. “Oh hell. She’s right.”
“It may be designed to open to certain psionic frequencies, but hundreds of axiomatic bonds stretch from the hatch, connecting somewhere on the other side.” She arched one hand out to her side, plucking at axiom strands that I couldn’t see. “Yes. I would posit that this is a door specifically for the Vyriim.”
“Damn it,” I swore but then had a thought. “Couldn’t Wyatt replicate the frequencies with spikes? Some kind of fancy mathematical fakery?”
“Possibly.” She peered more intently. “However, the device has several small nodes within it that bear significant energy of an unknown type.” Anya traced her fingers along one of the stones. “It seems reasonable that there is some kind of offensive payload contained within the hatch, perhaps intended to fire if the hatch is opened incorrectly.”
“We can’t exactly go back, either.” Wyatt ran his fingers through his hair. “I mean, I can take the field down, but we don’t know what kind of nasty we have on the line back there. It’d be a fight, either way.”
“I feel as if I must apologize,” Anya’s soft voice dropped even softer. “It was my error to assume that this path—”
“That’s foolish, Anya. No second guessing yourself.” Gideon studied the mechanism. “How much of this is the hatch?”
“What do you mean?” She blinked at the device.
“I assume that if you can see the payload, then you can see the axiomatic workings of the device. At what point is it just a wall?”
“I don’t understand.” She canted her head, just a touch. “What significance—?”
“We can still get in.” Gideon ignited the Seraph, bathing us all in its golden glow.
“Fuck yeah, we can.” Wyatt grinned widely.
“You intend to incise a new doorway.” Anya almost smiled and set to work. In a few moments, she had identified where the hatch’s defensive mechanisms stopped and the wall of the tunnel began. Once she had, it was time.
“Well?” As the Seraph sang softly, Gideon looked around at us. “Are we ready for this?”
The question was larger than it seemed.
At that moment, my cadre was tech adrift in a horrific, alien realm. Every single step took us deeper into hostile territory, and it was imminently possible that, like Liam, we were about to die beneath strange and drifting stars.
“Ready, Alpha.” Rachel nodded, adjusting the stinger.
“Ready.” Wyatt and Anya spoke at the same time.
“Let’s go, Gideon.” I nodded at him. “Whenever you say.”
That was the strength of Gideon Du’Marque. We knew absolutely that the man would crawl through Irrational Hell for any one of us.
Here we were, about to assault a Vyriim Broodwell with little to no plan.
Still, it felt impossible that we could fail. It seemed as if Gideon could lead us anywhere, and he would always get us home.
“Good.” He turned to Anya. “Give me some telemetry, Preceptor.” He smiled wickedly. “Show me where to cut.”
22
It only took the Seraph a few minutes to slice hole through the wall.
There was no poetry, no stealth, to this manner of entrance, unfortunately. The moment Gideon slid the blade against the surface, it created the sound of ceramic shattering as the metal crumbled to a fine, oxidized ash. Though it was satisfying to watch, the more he cut away, the more we could see of the organic horror in the room beyond.
The lurid red light was dim, but not dark. As a result, the optics settings on our Crowns let us see a touch more than we had earlier.
But sight was not the first sense to check in.
The room smelled worse than rancid pork. The place stank like rotten, inhuman afterbirth left to cook in the summer sun. The moment Gideon opened the room, we felt the humid fumes, greasy on our skin.
“Humidity is over 97% within that chamber.” Anya’s quiet voice choked. “Both chlorine and formaldehyde gasses permeate the atmosphere.”
“That sounds unhealthy.” Wyatt began tying a Confederate flag handkerchief over his mouth.
“Deadly.” Rachel adjusted the settings on her device. “I’m tasking available mecha to produce oxygen so you won’t need to breathe. They will also protect your eyes and mucus membranes and target toxic gasses for elimination.” She gave us each a sharp look. “Even though it’s instinctual, avoid breathing while inside.”
“If we’re not breathing, we’re not talking.” Wyatt cocked his head. “And not linking. I’m starting to think this is an elaborate scheme to get Bishop here to shut up.”
“Just take it easy. If you need to speak, don’t breathe deeply. No inane chatter.” Rachel looked directly at Wyatt and then to me. “Your mecha will be under heavy use every moment you have contact with those gasses.”
“The atmosphere is just part of the problem.” Gideon stepped back. “Cycle the optics of your Crown down a wavelength or two, then take a gander inside.”
It was a symphony of horrors.
The hatch wasn’t the only entrance of its kind; there were actually a few of them, the only spots of bare metal in the room. The walls and ceilings were presumably created from the same material, but we couldn’t see a bit of it. The entire room was damp with sticky vapors, and tendrils of mist clung to the corroded floor. Red, sourceless light shifted and thrummed in the room, like a diseased heartbeat.
Vyriim clung to the walls and ceiling, thousands of shining black tentacles, writhing and knotting together. A thick, yellow mucous dripped from them, leaving a crust on the floor beneath.
I couldn’t tell where one Vyriim began and another ended.
“Fuck. Me.” Wyatt breathed the obscenity, his eyes wide. “We can’t. There’s no way—”
“They don’t know we’re here.” Gideon’s voice held steady but quiet. “We were certainly loud enough about entering, but they haven’t responded at all.”
“The hatch.” Anya hadn’t stepped inside, but she peered in around the corner. “The hatch is connected directly to them. That’s what those axiomatic bonds were.”
“Like a psionic alarm.” Wyatt mused. “If we’d walked through
the door, we’d be dead.” he swallowed.
“So because we just sliced our way through, they haven’t responded?” The whole thing seemed very odd to me.
“They have to know we’re here, Hoss. They’re aberrations; they’re not stupid.”
“Specifics aside, the mission remains the same. If we could see the Broodwell from here, then Bishop would have it in hand. But we can’t. We have to go in,” Gideon growled.
“Well, now, let me take a look.” I swallowed and glanced at Gideon. “I can still use the Corona to peek around, even from right here.”
“Well, yes.” He nodded, seeming uncertain. “I’d considered that myself, but we don’t know if flaming apertures will alert them.”
“I’ll probably need them sooner or later.” I shrugged. “I was just suggesting we poke around a bit before heading in.”
“I like that.” Wyatt nodded. “Maybe the well is closer than we think, but we just can’t see it from here.”
“Do it, Bishop.” Gideon nodded, seeming more certain. “Anya, I want to know the moment anything changes.”
I stepped back from the chamber, pleased that I didn’t have to breathe those awful vapors. Rachel may have mecha on the job, but the atmosphere of the Broodwell still made my eyes burn.
I set the first aperture flush with the wall, about two meters from the place Gideon had sliced into the chamber. Then, regretting the loss of the gatekeeper bow, I stepped back to the chamber’s opening, and placed another one as far into the mists as I could see, only about twenty-five feet. From our current vantage point, I couldn’t see any further into the room.
“OK. I’m igniting the secondary aperture.” I gave my cadre my full attention. “With only two, they’ll automatically link. We’ll have an immediate view.”
Gideon nodded, and I ignited the sphere.
“Is that…?” Wyatt’s voice trailed off as he leaned closer to the aperture.
“Oh, God.” Rachel’s hand went over her mouth.
The aperture hung in the thickness of the mist.
Which had obscured the hanging corpses.
Over a dozen naked Drażeri hung suspended, held in place only by the Vyriim that slithered inside them. The thick tentacles hung from knots on the ceiling and squirmed into the bodies of the dead. Sometimes, the tendrils dug in at the skin of the neck or back, slicing neatly through. With others, the Vyriim had pushed through the eyes or into the mouth. In more than one instance, tentacles hung from the bodies as well, writhing and dangling from much more private orifices.
“Just fucking kill me.” Wyatt turned to Rachel. “I choose the Primary Protocol if it even looks like that’s only possibly about to happen to me. Shut my shit down, fry my remains, nice and quick.”
“Agreed.” Rachel trembled and forcibly looked away
“Let’s reposition the aperture.” Gideon’s voice ground out the words tightly.
The moment he spoke, I closed the distant fissure and went about setting another.
It wasn’t much better.
Though fewer bodies hung in this direction, the view was no less visceral. If anything, it was more so. No more than half a meter from the aperture hung a young Drażeri woman, her corpse slowly spinning. A thick, violet-black tendril slid wetly into her mouth while her eyes stared, vacant and dead.
Even above the thrumming song of the aperture, we could hear the wet, squishing sound of the Vyriim as it slid through the body.
“I don’t think we’re getting past this.” Gideon sounded vaguely angry. “Set another and scope around, but unless you see the Broodwell itself, we’re walking through that nightmare.” He stepped away, apparently leaving the pleasure of looking around to me.
“Will comply.” I took a deep breath.
Two apertures later confirmed our Alpha’s concerns: dozens of Drażeri dead within the room, all inhabited by Vyriim, all hanging from the ceiling. They were in various grotesque positions and most had Vyriim extruding from their lower orifices, the tendrils twitching hypnotically.
“What could they possibly get out of it?” Wyatt seemed as angry as I felt. “The Drażeri are dead. What’s the point?”
“This is unlike any intel we have on Aberration 45171R.” I thought that Anya sounded over-analytical and wondered for a moment if that was how she coped. “We have no answer to the why. It is valuable intel, one way or another,”
“It’s nauseating.” Rachel couldn’t bring herself to even look into the apertures. “I knew they were aberrations. I knew they were inhuman. But this—!”
“My optics seemed to pick up a bit more light from aperture three.” I was reviewing the phaneric record of my Crown, trying to identify anything that would let us pick our way forward and get away from this fresh, new hell. “Other than that, I’ve got nothing.”
“Reposition aperture three and prepare for entry.” Gideon cleared his throat. “Then, when you step through, you can make another, further in.”
Step through? Into that? For a moment, I recoiled, but then I realized his plan.
“Then, I return here and link the last two.” I nodded slowly. “Get as much of a feel as possible while remaining here.”
“Right.” Gideon gave me a tight smile. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in striding through the Vyriim Garden of Drażeri Corpses.”
“I’m more interested in setting the whole thing on fire.” Wyatt paused. “You sure we can’t just blow it up somehow?”
I looked down to my right hand, where I still held the squirming larvae. In that moment, no matter what Zephyr wanted, I was on board with Wyatt.
This entire place needed to be put to the torch and the earth salted afterward.
Because my system saved the most recent settings of the Crown augment, it only took me a moment to realign the Temporal Corona with the original location of the third aperture. Once I had, I took a breath, holding my head as far away from the fumes of the chamber as I could.
Then I stepped through.
Aperture three had been positioned in a small cluster of the Drażeri, but that wasn’t what had interested me. My record had shown a small shift in the light in this direction. It was still a visceral red glow, like light filtered through a living membrane, but it seemed to be a bit brighter this way, as if nearer the source or perhaps a stronger source.
As I stepped through, the rotten, fertile scent of the mist overwhelmed me. I bent over, retching, before I remembered that I didn’t exactly need to breathe.
I forcibly calmed myself.
On the ceiling above me hung one of the convoluted knots, wriggling together and making soft, moist sounds. Easily two dozen of the Vyriim squirmed against one another, coated with a yellow ichor the drooled onto the floor.
I was under a small gathering of them, most having Drażeri hanging limply beneath them.
If the Vyriim noted my presence, they gave no indication.
As I watched them, my mind snagged on something odd: these were different than the Vyriim I had seen.
As a species, an individual Vyriim comprised a simple strand. It was a creature whose size could be almost anything—from the length of a flatworm all the way up to the monstrous, anaconda-length strands we had seen earlier that day. They twined together into larger entities, each strand often having different adaptations, such as small hooks for combat, maws for consumption, or even rudimentary eyes.
Not one of these Vyriim strands had any adaptations.
I peered closer, wondering if the ichor simply constituted an adaptation I hadn’t seen before, when I caught movement from the corner of my eye.
I froze in place and then slowly turned.
One of the Drażeri corpses gazed at me with eyes that sang of the unending vista beyond death. Its head moved slowly, as if in slow, dawning comprehension.
Fuck.
I took a step back, preparing to hurl myself through the aperture. With less than a thought I ignited another in the distance, in the direction of the s
lightly increased light.
PLEASE LINK FISSURES IN DESIRED ORDER
“Okay.” I quickly juggled the fissures together, all the while remaining alert to those lost, mad Drażeri eyes. I looked around, making certain none of the Vyriim had broken loose from one of the knots and begun swimming grotesquely toward me.
They hadn’t. But as I watched, another of the Drażeri bodies slowly turned its head toward me, jerkily, as if it were a marionette.
Her black, empty eyes contained a vast void that couldn’t be filled by whatever visions were seen by the mad and the damned.
Then, her lips scarcely moving, she spoke. The words appeared only in my mind, but they felt like a cascade of warm, almost congealed blood sliding down the back of my throat.
MICHAEL BISHOP
“Oh.” I looked into those eyes, those lost, terrible eyes.
The voice in my head wasn’t cruel or haunting. It was something far more horrifying than that.
It was familiar. Intimate.
Sexual.
“Bishop?” I could hear Gideon’s concern through the fissure. “You’ve set the aperture, son. Come on back.”
But I couldn’t. As I looked into those endless, weeping eyes, some distant part of my mind screamed and snapped. These Drażeri weren’t dead; I knew that now. I should have known just from looking, should have remembered—
Warmth drizzled like molten desire down the back of my neck.
“I missed you Michael.” Caprice pushed her dark hair back, cradling herself against my body. She smelled like lavender and musk, and her smile was positively devious.
“We—” I looked at her, unable to comprehend. “We killed you.”
“No.” Her laugh was musical. “You can’t kill me, Michael, you know that.” Her lips found the edge of my neck, and she nibbled my skin. Her fingers pushed beneath my shirt, and she lightly raked me with her nails. “Dying isn’t for us, not anymore. We’re all together.”
She was right. I did know that.
“We were together.” I gasped at the insistence of her mouth and listened to the thrum of sibilant whispers behind my mind. “While I was adrift. It was you and me.”