The Primary Protocol: A Cyberpunk Espionage Tale of Eldritch Horror (The Dossiers of Asset 108 Book 2)

by JM Guillen

  “Part of you will always be with me, Michael.” She kissed me, her mouth soft and sweet. “We never forget our own.”

  She kissed me for a long moment then, and I wrapped my arms around her. Her curves were dangerous, her every motion seductive. I couldn’t help but smile as I felt my body respond to hers.

  “I knew you’d come back.” Her words fell breathy and dangerous, low with desire. “I’ve ached for you.”

  That sweet warmth drizzled down my back, a languid numbness that brought a low, buzzing pleasure. I blinked as I looked around, not quite certain where I was.

  “Hoss!” The word didn’t mean anything but seemed quite insistent.

  “No more of that.” Caprice pouted and ran her fingers through my hair. She seemed to find something at the side of my head. Frowning slightly, she plucked the side of my temple, as if grooming me.

  I felt a small twitch of sensation. Somewhere, crimson light faded into nothingness. In the distance a man screamed my name.

  “Mine.” Her hands slipped beneath my shirt, and she ran her nails along my skin again.

  I could not help but gasp at the sensation. My hands reached around her, grasping the curve of her backside and pulling her close to me.

  “I won’t share anymore.”

  “No.” I looked up at her, tracing my fingers along the side of her face.

  “You’ve missed me.” She wriggled her hips against me, chuckling earthily at what she felt beneath her.

  My breath caught at the sensation, and I couldn’t help but grin at her eagerness.

  This was where I belonged.

  “Yes. I’ve missed you.” I kissed her then, delighted at the taste of her mouth. My hands trailed along her naked back, and she trembled with pleasure.

  “This is our happily-ever-after, Michael.” She gasped as my mouth explored the hollow of her neck. “Never has to—”

  My mind lit up then, as if a cascade of multi-colored fireworks had ignited inside me. It was electric and dazzling. I blinked and shook my head.

  Where was I?

  “—now!” A woman yelled, speaking to someone else, but I did not know who they were.

  I turned to look but was distracted by the liquid warmth. It soothed as it drizzled pleasurably over the back of my head and down my back.

  “Michael!” A grizzled man that I felt I should know stood in front of me and looked at me with cobalt eyes.

  I opened my mouth, trying to respond, but I couldn’t.

  “Snap to, son!” He struck me across the face, knocking me to the ground.

  That was when I saw the Vyriim.

  They twisted above Gideon, writhing themselves loose from their knot. A long strand of ichor had drizzled down from the group, and that was what was running over my head and back. It was numbing, like opium and velvet on my skin.

  What had been happening?

  “Gideon!” I gestured.

  Behind him and Rachel, three of the strands had worked themselves loose from their clutch. They stretched away from the cluster, almost lazily.

  Gideon turned, and the Seraph ignited, a golden shine against the lurid red of the room.

  “You’ve done well, Michael.” Caprice’s voice tickled, a decadent whisper in my ear, and I could feel her writhing against me. “You’ve brought them, just as you promised you would.”

  Then dark tendrils exploded in a swarm of horror around us.

  23

  I pushed myself to my feet, trying to feel for the apertures in the chamber, but there were none, as if they had closed of their own accord.

  I knew better, of course. Caprice had closed them.

  That was bad.

  Frantically, I searched around for Wyatt or Anya but didn’t see them.

  Gideon stood over me, Rachel behind him.

  The Vyriim swirled like a small cyclone around us, a storm of horrific, serpentine grace.

  The Seraph shone a warm, sunny gold, but that light glistened malevolently against the wet flesh of the creatures.

  “I didn’t promise anything.” I pushed myself to my feet and gritted my teeth.

  “But you did. We needed more of your kind, so we could understand you.” The taste of Caprice suddenly cloyed in my mouth. “You also needed your own kind. Michael. You needed them more than we did.”

  One of the tentacles lunged toward Gideon, and he deftly swung the Seraph, catching the monstrosity in its midsection. The pieces hadn’t even struck the ground before another looped around from his other side.

  There were too many of them. Too many and only Gideon had a weapon.

  Still he fought and struck down two more. And another. I couldn’t help but think that, at any moment, they could swarm him though. It would be simple.

  What were they waiting on?

  As I stood and looked warily around us, I felt Caprice capering in the shadows of my mind.

  “You must have truly been far afield to forget me, Michael.” A wisp of her musk teased my nose. “You should come home. We were together, Michael. One. One being.”

  That—

  That wasn’t exactly true, was it? The Vyriim weren’t the same thing at all. It had felt as if they were, but in reality…

  “Say the word, my love. You were so lonely without them. You needed more of your own. Are you ready now? Shall we take them and go home together?”

  Fuck no.

  I needed to get us out of here.

  I ran through the phaneric record of my Crown, flipping through data as quickly as one might fan a pack of cards. In moments, I had very rough coordinates of the apertures that Caprice had so thoughtfully closed for me.

  I crouched, my hand grasping the crystalline cylinder where I had apparently dropped it while lost in dreamy phantasms. It practically vibrated from the ravenous fury of the creature within it, banging against its prison.

  As I grasped it, I ignited an aperture in the direction I thought was back where we had been. I figured that even If I was wrong by a few meters, it was unlikely that I was taking us anywhere worse than right here.

  However, the moment I ignited the aperture, my head blossomed in burning, chaotic pain.

  It was the first time I had ever used the Corona to create an aperture in a location I couldn’t directly see without a quarrel, and the result was a brief stab of razored agony, slicing through my skull. I stumbled backward, crying out.

  “My darling sweet. It shall be simple.” Caprice paused, and I could almost feel the brush of her lips against my earlobe. “Let me show you.”

  “Gideon!” Rachel cried out as two of the tendrils lunged for her arms, striking in concert. One wrapped around her left forearm, and the other grasped her right and then wrapped the rest of its length around her leg.

  Three others swarmed her. One forced itself down her throat as she gagged and choked, trying to pull her head away. Her eyes ran with tears.

  Then her cries fell silent.

  “Rachel!” Gideon spun and sliced one of the tendrils grasping her, then the one choking her. Behind him, I could see others rearing up, a tidal wave of horror preparing to crash upon them.

  If I didn’t do something, we weren’t going to make it.

  As the crushing horror of aberrations rose up behind Gideon and Rachel, I ignited a second aperture beneath them, and they tumbled through. Gideon glanced toward me as they fell, and I saw confusion and fury on his face. I knew what he thought.

  I wasn’t with them. Gideon thought I was sacrificing myself to get them away.

  As the tide of serpentine malevolence crashed, I slammed my aperture shut. The cascade of Vyriim smashed futilely against the stone floor.

  Gideon and Rachel were safe. Safer, at least.

  “What are you doing, my love?” Caprice’s words felt whisper soft.

  “Letting them leave.” I spun in a slow circle and looked at the swarm as it rippled around me. “I don’t know what you intended…”

  “Of course you do! You are the one who brought
them. You taught us that they would come for you.” I could feel her arms around me, her lips on my skin. “We will be one—”

  She paused then, almost as if confused, as if realizing something truly grotesque was happening. Then she was buzzingly angry, like a rattlesnake in my mind.

  “What is that Michael? What filth did you bring here?” The softness drained from her tone, replaced by trembling fury.

  “Would you like a closer look?” I held the container toward them.

  As if it were the icon of an ancient and forgotten god, the tide of writhing darkness actually recoiled as I held it forth. A scream of fury and hatred erupted in my mind, something so sharp, so deep that it physically hurt.

  Interesting.

  “Why would you bring that abomination to this place?” Her tone held a blend of offended fury and fear. The Vyriim in the air stormed around me even faster.

  “I thought I should surprise you for a change, Caprice.” My smile turned grim. “If I remember correctly, you were usually the one who brought a guest to our evenings.”

  “No!” Caprice’s tone shifted and melted in my mind, becoming something far deeper, warbling and dark as the dreams of some lost and rambling madman. “You will not be allowed Unity, not after this.”

  “You’ve never been the jealous type before.” I tinkered with the Temporal Corona, preparing. I wanted to give Gideon time to make certain Rachel was safe, and that involved keeping the Vyriim focused on me.

  “Are you saying we should break up?”

  You will still serve the Brooding, Michael. Your body will be used by our fertile ones; your fluids will be nothing more than living sustenance for the clutch. You will not die, not ever.” She paused. “But you will wish for death.”

  Around me, the Vyriim swarm shifted again, their movements angry and sharp. A couple of them made lunges at me, forcing me to dodge sideways.

  “I need some space, Caprice.” I shook my head. “I’m not ready to move in together.”

  I ignited an aperture beneath me.

  It immediately linked to the one that Gideon and Rachel had fallen through. I followed them. My momentum spat me out of the aperture sideways since the one I fell through was horizontal while this one was vertical. I rolled, coming to a standing position.

  My cadre was not waiting there for me.

  “The fuck?” I looked around, alternatively irritated and terrified. I had felt certain I was reuniting us. I scanned the misty chamber, trying to get a fix on my allies.

  Off to the far left was a tight knot of the Vyriim, the angry wave I had just escaped from. Gideon had engaged them, the singing shine from the Seraph glowing before him. Rachel, I was pleased to see, was well enough that she crept behind him.

  They were trying to rescue me.

  Gideon screamed in fury and sliced at the horrific mass, frantic.

  Rachel, on the other hand, had me on her holotecture. The moment I was out of the swarm, she saw my location update. She turned from the small cyclone of aberrations, and for a moment her eyes touched mine.

  Then the Vyriim burst from their formation into a furious swarm.

  Gideon held an arm back against Rachel as he sliced through them again and again. Around him, tentacles fell wriggling to the ground as that shattered-pottery sound cracked and barked, again and again.

  The Vyriim squirmed through the air toward me, ignoring Gideon and Rachel as if they were inconsequential children. Instead of attacking, the Vyriim flowed around them in a serpentine wave.

  The tentacles at the edge of the mass wriggled outward, in a probing, seeking motion.

  I was certain I knew exactly what they were looking for. I couldn’t help but tremble as the gargantuan mass of them squiggled in my direction.

  “Hey! Right here!” I issued my challenge loud and deep. Then I strode toward them as if I had no fear. As I did, I waved the container in the air, jostling the larvae about.

  They came for me. Just as I had planned.

  Fuck.

  I set an aperture in the vague direction where I had first peered into the chamber, slightly north of that faint glow I had seen. As it blossomed into existence, I killed aperture three, allowing the one behind me to link naturally.

  Like a hurricane of malice, the Vyriim swarmed toward me. They were still at least twenty meters away when I felt the warm, wet gurgle of their consciousness touch mine. It was a slow, calming warmth that spread from the back of my neck and head like the dawning of some black and terrible star, touching my mind.

  As I felt their mental presence, I had a flash of insight. They were reaching out to me through the same nerves that had been affected by their putrid, viscous ichor.

  Ew. At the thought, I couldn’t help but wipe at the back of my neck, as if I could brush them away.

  “Not yet.” I gritted my teeth, fighting against the instinct to bolt.

  The Vyriim dove gracefully toward me, their form as graceful, as beautiful as a flock of birds or a school of fish. I could almost imagine the soothing tones of a nature documentary, discussing the beautiful symmetry of these magnificent creatures.

  Except that they were actually psionic horrors from another dimension.

  “Michael…” It was Caprice’s beguiling tone again, soft and sweet. “Let’s talk. You’re making a mistake.”

  “I really don’t think so.” I observed the wriggling mass, still tamping down that instinct to bolt. At the last moment, when they were close enough for me to smell their delightful rot of low tide, I dove sideways through the aperture and rolled thirty-five meters away.

  I glanced back at the aperture and saw they weren’t slowing. Before they could follow me through, I slammed it closed and opened another in the distance. Then I leapt through to that one, closing the one behind me as I landed.

  Then I stopped and took a look back.

  Even though Gideon still stood and fought against the individual strands, the Vyriim didn’t react as if they had any concern for him at all.

  I took this as further proof that Zephyr had given us something truly dangerous.

  I, or more precisely what I held, remained their only concern.

  In the misty luridness of the chamber, I saw the swarm split up, individual strands melting apart from the whole and rejoining as smaller, more agile groups.

  Their undulating dance seemed oddly mesmerizing.

  In some instances strands from the ceiling joined the packs, but in others they did not. In an instant, one large swarm had become a dozen smaller ones, each of those splitting up a dozen times more.

  The sight fascinated me in a horrifying, terror-fueled nightmare kind of way.

  I ran further in, deciding that I should stay on foot for a few moments, lest I port into more trouble than I could handle. The chamber opened up as I progressed, the ceiling rising quite a bit further.

  However, the scores of silent, hanging Drażeri watched me, their eyes neither living nor dead. As the scarlet, sourceless light pulsed around me, their silhouettes cast long, bent shadows around them.

  I peered about, and my gaze rested on one of them. She was no more than a child really, her skin glazed with the thick ichor of the Vyriim. As I watched, her face turned fully toward me. Her lips moved just a bit.

  MICHAEL BISHOP

  “The fuck you say.” I took a couple of steps back and glanced quickly around. Already another knot of the tendrils had squirmed loose from the ceiling, the outermost tentacles writhing eagerly.

  Mobilization had taken them far less time than I had hoped.

  As they wriggled loose, I set a horizontal aperture twelve meters to my left, half a meter off the ground. Reaching out in front of me, I gave my tactical interface an adjustment and then, upon contemplation, several sharp turns more.

  “Come on now.” I taunted the creature. “I’m right here.”

  The Vyriim hissed with a maw that ran along more than one of its strands. It stalked slowly through the air, its every movement a dance of
malice and anger.

  Then it darted in my direction, sleek as a shark.

  I ignited another aperture in front of it, less than a meter from my body. It hurled through and then out the other side. After my adjustments to physics took hold, the Vyriim slammed into the corroded metal floor. It struck with roughly the force that it would fall into a massive star and exploded into a spray of gore and viscera.

  It was wonderfully satisfying.

  “Any other takers?” I terminated the vertical aperture as I looked around. More of the sleek creatures swam toward me, but they stayed further away, back the direction I had come.

  I could escape them easily enough. I killed the other aperture and created two more, getting ready to flee. I literally had a foot off the ground before realizing I had almost forgot to reset the settings.

  I broke out in a cold sweat.

  I had almost splattered myself across the Broodwell, a liquefied mist of Facility-augmented goo.

  I doubted Rachel could have done much about that.

  Reining in my nerves, I killed those fissures, then adjusted everything to default before creating another aperture as distant in front of me as I could muster. I had begun to step through when I heard the sound.

  WHUF.

  It came from far to my left, which was not the direction I had been heading.

  WHUF. WHUF.

  I scrutinized the lurid mists in that direction but couldn’t see anything. Then I heard a loud string of swearing, and a slow grin spread across my face.

  I adjusted my apertures and moved in that direction. It only took a single port before I saw the ugliest hillbilly in Dhire Lith.

  “Hoss!” Wyatt ran toward me. “Anya was just here! There are elevated readings in this area, but—!”

  One of the faceless flying horrors loomed up from the mist behind him, screaming in my mind. I stumbled from the sheer force of its cry and thought my heart would stop.

  “Oh, fuck me!” My heart sank.

  Wyatt began bleeding profusely through his shirt. Some of the gore on the creature’s claws belonged to him.