by Jack Conner
Avery patted Janx’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said.
“I won’t leave her.”
“I can’t do anything for her—here.”
Janx thought about that, then nodded. With a heave, he rose to his feet, and Hildra looked like a child nestled against him, clutching feebly at his chest. Hildebrand scampered up Janx’s legs and climbed to his shoulder. Avery recovered Janx’s pistol and shoved it through the waistband at his back.
They were already moving toward the rear of the chamber, to the exit Sheridan had taken, and Layanna and Avery were pulling aside the bodies when a great rumbling, grinding roar filled the chamber, a sound that came from the front. All gazes turned in that direction, but slower this time, dreading what they would see. The strange sound echoed off the walls, louder and louder, like radio static merged with the pounding of waves on a black shore. Avery knew without being told whom it was that descended. By the look of horror and fear all around, it was plain the people of the Black Sect did, too.
Uthua emerged from the hallway, oozing from it, a great, gelatinous mass of darkness and thrusting limbs and rearing bulwarks. He had slithered through the halls like some great worm, his sides shoving up against and even through the walls, which were too narrow to contain him, but now, entering the lab, he spread out, filling it with his briny, acrid reek and chittering, roaring noises. His mortal form, if he was mortal, could just vaguely be seen far back behind walls of phantasmagorical substances and greedy organelles. Strange, horrid lights pulsed from his interior but did not seem to illuminate it, though they rippled on the walls and machinery of the room.
Without thinking, Avery reached for Hildra’s extradimensional gun jutting out of her waistband and fired at the shape of Muirblaag. He fired and fired until the gun snapped on an empty chamber, and though he knew he had aimed true at least some of the time, Uthua did not even twitch, nor was the trail of the bullets visible past his amoebic wall. He had Ascended, Avery remembered. He was nearly an Elder. The guns designed for use against the Black Sect must not work on him.
Such was the noise Uthua emitted that the gunshots hardly made an impact on the hearing of those gathered. None flinched or cried out. Avery hardly heard the shots, either. All attention stayed riveted on Uthua. Avery felt his mind tear, just looking at the awful being, who was now clearly even more powerful than before and more other. Reality seemed to bend and break around him. It hurt to look at him. Hurt to process what one looked at.
Uthua swept his attention among the people of the Black Sect, and Avery could almost feel his contempt.
“KNEEL,” came that awful, grinding voice. “KNEEL AND BE DESTROYED, OR SUFFER A FAR WORSE FATE.”
The members of the Black Sect paled. Some shook. To their credit, none knelt.
“SURRENDER THE MACHINE.”
“No,” said the woman with blue lips. She smashed her hand down on the bomb, triggering a timer. Instantly it beeped and flashed with lights. The air flexed around it, blurring. The air shimmered more intensely second by second, building toward some climax.
The surviving Black Sect members, even the weakest ones, all save Layanna, brought over their other-selves and flew at Uthua in an orgy of tentacles and pseudopods. They would try to hold him until the bomb blew.
When they struck, the ground trembled and walls split. Uthua roared and fought back, tearing and ripping at them, passing strange energies into them. The air flashed into colors Avery had never seen, and his eyes could not make sense of all the flailing, warring god-things as reality fractured around them. His mind reeled. The Black Sect members fought the near-Elder bitterly, but they could not beat him, not even delay him for long. Avery doubted they could even if they’d been at full strength.
“After the thief!” one of the Black Sect shouted at Layanna. “We’ll hold him!”
“Hurry,” Avery told Janx.
Janx kicked open the rear door with one savage blow of his foot. They followed him through to the hallway it led to, leaving the battle behind, though its sounds chased them.
“Where could she go?” Layanna asked as they ran.
“This hallway goes to the trains,” Janx said.
“She obviously means to take the Device somewhere safe,” Avery panted. “To wait out the battle.”
Though shaking in fear, he made a small detour to his room in order to retrieve his medical kit and look for his extradimensional gun—he found it; Sheridan had taken another—then rejoined them as they passed by the cell Sheridan had occupied. The corpses of two guards sprawled outside its open door. Sygrel must have drawn the others away to fight. Sheridan had already worked out how to get the door open and two were no match for her.
“I’ll kill her,” Janx said, even as Uthua and the Black Sect members roared in the background and the walls cracked around them. “With my bare hands I’ll kill her.” With sudden anger, he added, “Doc, you shouldn’t have brought her here.”
No, Avery thought. I should not. But Ani ...
They hit a stairway and rushed down. Narrow walls rocked and cracked to either side. They arrived at the lowest level of the subway system in time to see the first of the two trains that Janx, Hildra and the Sivusts had been restoring tear off down the hall. Avery fired twice at it with Janx’s now-dented pistol, but the train was away, an unseen Sheridan at the controls, and its lights vanished into the darkness.
They boarded the second train, the one meant for the R’loth, and Layanna pulled the gears and stoked the furnace while Janx laid Hildra gently on the oil-stained floor of the second passenger car. Avery staunched Hildra’s bleeding and began work on her. Scowling, Janx stood over him.
“Help Layanna,” Avery said. “You know how to work this thing better than she does.”
Perhaps realizing that Avery wanted him out of the way, Janx nodded and moved forward to the engine compartment. There he took over the controls from Layanna. In moments the train lumbered away from the platform.
There was a terrible boom, and a cloud of smoke shot down the hall they had just left. The other-dimensional bomb had exploded. Avery wanted to believe that Uthua was dead, but somehow he knew better.
Hildra twitched and bled beneath his fingers. With the train creaking around him, he set to work.
THE END
Of VOLUME THREE
OF
THE ATOMIC SEA
FROM THE AUTHOR:
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