Heart of Annihilation

by C. R. Asay

  “Well he should be a lot scared of me, because I swear if I ever get my hands on him again . . . !”

  The taste of metal filled my mouth. A powerful surge of loathing squeezed my brain in a vice.

  CHAPTER 35

  Caz

  5 hours 23 minutes pre-RAGE

  Caz stared at the solid wooden doors behind the commandant’s throne. Her fingers were slick on the handle of the blade. She switched the weapon to her left hand, wiped her hand on her pants, and then returned the weapon before wiping the other. She did this several more times before acknowledging the action would never render her hands clean.

  The surface of the doors were rough and textured to emphasize the exotic nature of the material. Caz ran her fingers along the crack between the doors, leaving a streak of blood, and then touched the elaborately designed golden keyhole at eye level.

  Former Commandant Ben Attikin was the first munitioner. In fact, he was the very reason munitioners became such slags of society. He’d created the weapon the Thirteenth Dimension had used for the last several centuries to routinely destroy entire dimensions.

  He’d built Attikin Dome—a.k.a. the Dimensional Congressional Council building—and the munitioner’s lab which was handed down to Caz’s parents.

  This information came as quite the surprise to Caz, and, what could she say, an unparalleled delight. It was this very information that set her entire plan in motion. It was the key.

  Caz hooked her finger on the chain around her neck and drew out the jingling keys she always kept with her. A half circle silver key, forged from the promise ring Vin gave her. The tiny, magnetized bead hovered inside the curve, containing a precise amount of voltage to keep it in place.

  The second key on the chain got her into the lab. It was a primeval-looking thing, all tarnished black and gold. It opened another door as well.

  She inserted it into the keyhole and turned. It caught for a moment, then creaked into action. Rust-colored dust puffed from the hole. Crack, squeak, groan. A flash of light burst from the keyhole. Caz pushed at the doors, and they ground open. Cold blue light flooded across her skin.

  The portal chamber was as mythical and mysterious as the dome under which it was housed. It was said that Ben Attikin knew the marshals were coming for him. His time was limited, and he’d done what any leader, jealous of his secrets, would do. He’d locked up the most important chamber in all of Retha and secreted the key away. It was over a century before it was discovered by none other than Severnz Fisk, Caz’s grandfather.

  At the time they only thought it got them into the munitioner’s lab. A bit of inspiration and digging on Caz’s part found her the truth.

  Caz’s breath misted before her. Retha in its entirety was a cold place. The chamber made Retha feel like the overheated Ehtar dimension. The hairs on her arms lifted in a shivering wave.

  From the outside, the dome was beyond impressive. It was a monument, comparable only to the shrines of Cadvar, or the pyramids on Earth created by some of the first Rethan settlers. From the inside it was breathtaking. Twenty-six columns of pristine white stone rose upward to create the bones of the dome, crisscrossing at the peak. Plates of metal covered at least seven of the arches, each made of a different metal. Gold for the Thirteenth Dimension. Copper for the eleventh. Silver for Retha’s return archway. The others Caz was unable to name—the tenth might have been bronze, on down to the base dimensions and equally base metals such as steel, brass, and tin.

  A tall stone basin stood in the center of the room, shimmering full of silver coins. Dimensional catapults.

  Once Ben Attikin was exiled, the portal chamber had become unavailable to the council. They’d had to use their existing portals, clunky things with an equally clunky portal in the other dimension. Not that they hadn’t wanted the power to cross dimensions without the need of a matching portal on the other side, and the dimensional catapults to bring them back.

  The portal chamber remained locked. Some other protection or power kept them out beyond the simplicity of the key. And here it stood for centuries, an embarrassing monument to their impotency and empty, devoid of any Rethan contact. No one currently living had ever been inside—until today.

  Steam wafted from Caz’s skin. One would think that on the brink of success, moments away from destroying the Thirteenth Dimension and finally laying Vin to rest, Caz would pause, inhale, and rejoice in the moment.

  She did none of these things. This wasn’t a moment for reflection, this was a moment for action. Caz tucked her bloody knife in the belt at her back and retrieved the Heart of Annihilation from her bag. Its warmth seeped into her cold hands. The golden light cast shadowy claws onto the floor.

  The pillars for the Thirteenth Dimension lay on the far side of the chamber, directly across from the entrance. Bright blue light eked from behind the pillars and all around, pulsing in a faintly hypnotic way. It took Caz far longer to cross the portal chamber than she thought it would. Her anticipation made the distance seem that much farther. Her steps were lonely and hollow against the sterile stone.

  She’d barely reached the stone basin in the center of the room when she heard a crack in the silence. Caz stopped mid-step and spun to face the door. Her shoes squeaked, leaving a circular smear of blood. A figure stood in the doorway.

  “I never thought you’d actually do it.” His voice echoed around the vast chamber, bouncing off the columns and echoing into the far distant dome.

  The visible carnage beyond almost detracted from the figure standing in front of it. He leaned casually against the door, one hand in his pocket. His clothes were plain, earth-toned. His hair had grown long enough to pull back, although a perfect silver curl rested across his forehead and drooped elegantly into his eye.

  “Vincent.” Caz’s lips numbed against his name. His features were so familiar and yet older somehow. “Where in Gauss’s law did you come from?”

  “Ather—”

  “Lost to the void.”

  “Well, yes.”

  Caz switched the Heart of Annihilation to her other hand, realizing for the first time that Vin’s eyes weren’t on her but on the device itself. She curled it close to her body to protect it, as a mother would a babe.

  “So, you’re what? A specter? A ghoul? Come to haunt me for my horrendous deeds?”

  Caz wasn’t sure if this was what she actually thought, or if she was simply making polite conversation with the impossibility posing as Vin. She recognized, somewhere in the anger, bewilderment, betrayal, and selfishness warring inside her, that this wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. Of course, neither could the hundred and twenty-two bodies lying in individual, grotesque heaps behind Vin.

  She’d killed them. It was easy. Too easy. She was a munitioner, after all. Her bag had held enough weaponry to take them all out. Some in large groups, some individually as they ran screaming for the doors. She’d mopped up the rest with the methodical slashing of her knife in an anticlimactic cascade of blood.

  “No specter, Caz,” Vin said. “It’s me. In the flesh.”

  Caz nodded and then shook her head. “Fine, Vin. Close the door, would you? You’re letting the cold out.”

  She rotated and gazed into the basin of catapults. She gathered several coins, squeezing them until her hand hurt. She frowned and turned back around. Vin was still there, standing away from the door. He reached out a groping claw.

  “Give it to me, Caz.”

  “No.” Caz pulled the Heart of Annihilation close.

  “Caz.”

  She saw it now. The frustration under the surface. The irritation, admiration, aggravation, sheer conflict-ridden love/hate Vin always carried in his eyes when he looked at her. It was this, more than what her eyes and ears were telling her, that put aside the rational portion of her brain screaming that this was impossible. This was Vin. Not lost on Ather. Not part of the Thirteenth Dimension as a voiceless form of energy. It was just Vin.

  She was going to kill him this time, n
o question.

  “How are you here?” She narrowed her eyes, barely holding herself in check.

  “I faked my death on Ather so I could fulfill my higher purpose.”

  “Being . . . ?”

  “Give me the weapon, Caz.”

  Caz dropped her shoulders with a little laugh. She shoved one hand in her pocket and raised the Heart of Annihilation to rest on the tips of her fingers of her other. Tempting, taunting.

  “Okay, Vin. Okay, yeah, sure. I made it for you after all using the sweat of my brow, the tears of our son, and the blood of hundreds of Rethans, but I did it. I did it so you can . . .” Caz licked her lips, letting her forehead pucker in overdramatized thought. “Wait, why did you need it again? Not for the council, surely.” Caz waved her hand at the bloody council chamber.

  Vin took a step back, looking uncertain. “Well, no.”

  Caz smirked.

  “For the good of Retha.” Vin rubbed his hands together, glanced behind him and then back at her. He took several hesitant steps in her direction. “The Liberated RAGE Movement is the future of our people.”

  A shiver coursed across Caz’s skin. The LRM? The extremist faction that had clawed at their relationship throughout the years was the one responsible for taking him away entirely? Making her believe he was dead?

  Vin went on. “We are determined to put an end to the two laws and make our people proactive again. I mean think about it.” His voice grew stronger as he mounted his platform. “We don’t need more drones.” He used her word, probably to gain sympathy, and came closer. “We need a dimension who wants to be the top, the leaders. The benevolent power that the lower dimensions will bow to. We need more Rethans like you.”

  “More like me, huh?” Caz jerked her chin toward the door and the massacre beyond.

  Vin did a half-head turn but kept his eyes on her. He was within spitting distance now.

  “We’re on the same side. I mean, look! As much as it pains me to say, you have helped us. You’ve opened the portal chamber! You’ve eliminated the corrupt council.”

  “They’ll reform.”

  “But they can now be molded to something stronger. You may not see it, but we have the same agenda.”

  “You don’t know what I want. What I want to do with this device.” Caz was suddenly not so sure of this herself. What do you do when the very reason for act upon extreme act of violence has been negated?

  “Send it gift-wrapped to the Thirteenth Dimension?” Vin wheedled.

  “That was the plan. Sure. The plan. It was the plan until—”

  “Give me the weapon, Caz.”

  “Do you even have any idea what it does?”

  Vin didn’t respond.

  “I didn’t think so. Now,” Caz huffed, straightening, “if there’s nothing else, I need to get on with my revenge for your murder.”

  Her feet streaked through a tiny puddle of blood that had collected under the knife. She hadn’t gone two steps toward the golden pillars when she felt a touch to her earlobe. Vin’s chilly fingers and thumb caressed the softness of the skin, sending chills down her back. She rotated slowly. A coil of white stone wrapped Vin’s hand. Her discarded IC 4000, the one she’d left by Zell, was aimed at her face.

  “That thing doesn’t kill, you know,” she said.

  Vin adjusted his thumb on the trigger. “I don’t need to kill you to get what I need.”

  “What about Manny?” She hadn’t meant to bring him into this, but there he stood between them, an ethereal monument to their failure.

  “What about him? Isn’t he buried somewhere in your trail of bodies?”

  “How could you even think . . . You left him first!” Her guts wound tight.

  “I left him with you!” Vin jabbed the weapon at her. “Who’d you leave him with?”

  “Don’t stand there in all your self-righteous glory and pretend you deserve—”

  “Enough!” Vin actually stamped his foot. “I’m not playing anymore, Caz.”

  She saw the truth in the lines around his eyes, the pucker of his lips, his thumb against the trigger.

  She saw who he truly was, a mere husk of the Vin she’d fallen for as a child. The one who grew up with her, married her, and gave her a son. This wasn’t the determined Rethan, so unlike any other dead-eyed male, who locked her into an obsession ending here in a trail of blood. This one was annoying and childish, one who abandoned her for the sake of politics. He’d stolen Vin’s face, his soul, his love for her, and shoved it into an extremist she could no longer look at.

  Caz reached behind her back. “I was never playing.”

  Vin opened his mouth to rebound the argument.

  The blade came out of Caz’s belt in a smooth arch and slashed across Vin’s throat in a hissing whistle. A velvet ribbon of blood appeared under his chin.

  The IC 4000 fell to the floor. His hand went to his throat. Blood flowed from between his fingers.

  Vin dropped to his knees, gagging on the blood pouring from his mouth, disbelief and horror on his face. Caz retched, gagged with him, and retched again. Vin collapsed onto his face.

  Emotions scorched through her mind, electrifying, terrifying—completely devoid of satisfaction. She tasted the food she’d eaten that morning, and bile.

  A wail wrenched from her throat. Her cheeks felt wet. She screamed. Vin’s body, his head centered in the growing pool of blood. Everything blurred.

  Caz ran. She didn’t know where. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any more. Her shoulder struck something hard. A soft, earthy light penetrated the blur. She felt the power of the voltage surrounding her, drawing her far, far away.

  CHAPTER 36

  Rose

  My body shook in a violent uncontrollable rattle against cold metal.

  “Devon, she’s seizing! Help me hold her!”

  “Dammit, Rose!”

  My tumultuous mind heard the voices but could not place them. I felt the chaotic lack of control in my body, but it was as though it belonged to someone else.

  Slowly my body quieted. Silence. Maybe seconds. Maybe years. Coherency gradually filled my world. Fingers touched my neck.

  “I think she’s okay.” A hollow voice echoed somewhere nearby.

  “What happened? One minute she’s fine and the next—”

  My body ached. I couldn’t speak or move.

  “It’s not the first time, or something like it anyway.” Thurmond. “The worst was at the portal after the soldiers left. Her heart stopped for a few minutes. I think she’s having memories from Retha. I guess if what everyone says about her is true, those memories have got to be damn near unbearable.”

  “She seems like such a pleasant little thing when she’s not being tormented by Rethans.” Rannen sounded sad. “Sometimes I can hardly believe she’s the same person.”

  “Are you sure she’s—?”

  “Yes. I knew her on Retha. She looks like she did then. A little younger, but it’s her.” Quiet for a moment then, “But she doesn’t act like Caz. I see Caz in her for sure, but Caz wouldn’t have traded anything for the Heart of Annihilation. Especially not the life of a human.”

  “What was she like?”

  Rannen sighed. “It really depended on who you were. She could be funny and charming, or intense and determined, or downright disturbing. She scared the pants off most Rethans. Mostly through her reputation, not only as a munitioner but as someone who couldn’t maintain the two laws.”

  “Which are?”

  “Etiquette and serenity. The standard we live by to keep our society at peace.”

  “Sounds like pacifist bullshit to me.”

  “Perhaps, but it keeps violence and crime to an almost nonexistent level. Not that there aren’t problems with it. There’s a universal sameness to Rethans.” A scoffing sound. “Caz called them drones. There wasn’t anything worse in her book.”

  “I just can’t for the life of me believe Rose was this homicidal maniac.” Thurmond sounded somewhat def
ensive. “Granted, I’ve seen some things in the last week or so that I never could have imagined of her. She was really going to nuke a whole dimension, huh?”

  Rannen exhaled a noisy assent.

  “I mean,” Thurmond went on, “if she weren’t so damned determined to find this Heart thing. To find answers.” Thurmond was quiet for a moment. “Not that I blame her. I’d do the same thing in her boots. But still. How hard to find do you think this Heart is going to be?”

  “I don’t know,” Rannen said. “It’s been missing for over twenty years, so—”

  “I shouldn’t criticize,” Thurmond said. “But she should’ve just let the commander kill me.” His statement was one of supreme logic, devoid of the intense, emotional state I’d been in when I’d made the decision. “We’re talking about putting a nuclear device in the hands of a sociopath. How could our lives possibly be worth that?”

  “It was worth it to her because she loves you, Devon,” Rannen stated. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t have done the same?”

  Thurmond was silent for an uncomfortable moment. “I’d like to think I wouldn’t—”

  “She saved you. She saved me. And that means a lot coming from her, although it’s not very helpful in the grand scheme of things,” Rannen trailed off, and when he went on his voice sounded small and frightened. “What are we going to do?”

  I knew exactly what to do. If I were to be honest with myself, I’d known for quite some time. I’d kept shuffling it off in hopes of a better option. However, something in the vision of Vin and Caz and learning exactly what she . . . what I was capable of, made me grasp the certainty of what needed to happen.

  I took a deep breath, feeling life enter my limbs. Warmth coursed through my torso, drawing electricity from the world around me.

  I rolled my head. Hands ran across my scalp.

  “Rose?”

  “Wh-appened?”

  “Bad dream or somethin’,” Thurmond said. “You okay?”