Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2)

by Julian Rosado-Machain

  As Thomas crossed through the gate, Bolswaithe immediately grabbed him, slipped a harness over his head, and clicked the security lock on his back.

  “Hold on to me,” Bolswaithe said as he grabbed Thomas by the back of his neck. A muffled, rhythmic thumping almost drowned his voice.

  “What's going on?” Thomas said as a cable became taut behind Bolswaithe and they were lifted into the air.

  Ratatosk dug his claws deep into Thomas shoulder.

  The ground was covered with snow, the trees had lost all their leaves, and Thomas saw that the roofs of the houses they had passed on their way to the gate were also covered in snow. They were hanging from a helicopter, and the crew was pulling them up as the helicopter moved forward. “What's going on, Bolswaithe?” Thomas asked again. The cold air and the wind stung his eyes, and Ratatosk dug his claws into his shoulder and neck.

  “Too much magic! The Lancken-Granitz gate has become unstable,” Bolswaithe yelled over the roar of the helicopter. “Most of the minor nodes in small towns are too unstable to use the Mansion's front door. We are going to a stronger node connection in a larger city. Ten miles away!”

  Thomas felt the hands of the chopper crew pulling them up into the cabin. They placed a cable from his harness to a wall and bade them to sit down and put on muffled earphones and a mic.

  “What do you mean too much Magic?” Thomas asked. He was really confused now.

  Bolswaithe gave him a wristpadd, significantly larger than the one he had left at the entrance of the gate. “Put this on,” he said. “We don't have much time.”

  Thomas tied the heavy wristpadd on his arm. “Where's Tony?” he asked as he tied the straps around his arm.

  “Thomas,” Bolswaithe said. “Listen veeeeeeeery, carefully.”

  Thomas looked at Bolswaithe, and for a moment he had seemed to pause in the middle of the sentence, like music playing in slow motion.

  “That is a special wristpadd,” Bolswaithe said. “It's over-clocked and has expanded performance and memory capacity to store my proooooo....”

  The world moved slowly. Bolswaithe words, the sounds of the helicopter, and their movements slowed down, and then they accelerated to normal speed again.

  “….gram. I'm downloading to it right now. Stay close until I finish.” He tapped Thomas’s wristpadd, and the downloading bar showed sixty-eight percent complete.

  “Bolswaithe!” Thomas said. “You slowed down for a second—the whole world did!”

  “I know, there's a file in the wristpadd that explains everything.” Bolswaithe screamed into the cabin, “ETA?”

  “Three minutes, sir,” the Captain answered through the earphone.

  “Tell me when we cross the Mansion’s Event Hoooooo....”

  It happened again, only this time the slow motion lasted longer.

  “....oooorizon,” Bolswaithe said.

  “Bolswaithe!” Thomas grabbed him.

  “Side effect, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said, “from taking the sand from Skuld.” Bolswaithe unbuckled his seatbelt. “We are not slowing down. You are mooooooo...”

  This time the world completely stopped for a second before restarting.

  “....ooooving faster.”

  “You completely stopped moving, Bolswaithe,” Thomas said, frightened.

  “For how long?”

  “About a second.”

  Bolswaithe unbuckled Thomas’s seatbelt. “You are going to have to trussssss....”

  The gap was about three seconds now.

  “……sssssst me.”

  There was a distinct shimmer and change in temperature and scenery as the helicopter crossed the Mansion’s Event Horizon. Suddenly they weren’t flying over a German city covered in snow but over Pervagus Mansion and the forest beyond filled the background.

  “We've crossed the Event Horizon, sir!” the captain yelled. “We are over the Mansion's grounds.”

  “Maintain hover!” Bolswaithe stood up and opened the door to the chopper. The air over the Mansion wasn't as cold as it had been over Germany, and the Mansion's grounds below were as green as always.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked as Bolswaithe pulled him up.

  “We are jumping,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It is the only way,” Bolswaithe said. “If we don't you'll be trapped in the helicopter. Cooooo…..”

  Time slowed down and stopped.

  “Jump?” Ratatosk asked. “Is this for real?”

  Thomas had completely forgotten about the squirrel. “You tell me, you're the guide remember? Has this ever happened to you before?”

  “I just take people back and forth!” Ratatosk said. “I was never stuck with anyone before!”

  Time slowly resumed around them, and Thomas guessed that the pause had lasted at least thirty seconds.

  “…oooome here!” Bolswaithe finished his last sentence.

  Thomas stood up and held onto Bolswaithe, who snapped Thomas’s harness to his own. “You'll have your own inertia,” Bolswaithe said. “Don't wait for me to hit the ground, or you 'll hit at my speed. As soon as you feel you can land safeeeeeee....”

  “Odin’s beard!” Ratatosk yelled, looking down at the ground. The ground was a good three hundred feet below at least, and they were in the northern lawn of the Mansion grounds, above the gated entrance. “It's crazy!”

  “You heard him!” Thomas said. “We'll be trapped here. Come on!” Thomas urged the squirrel to jump over to his arm, but Ratatosk was too scared.

  “..........eeeeeeely, separate from me. Okay?” Bolswaithe asked. As soon as Thomas nodded, Bolswaithe jumped out taking Thomas with him. Ratatosk peeked out from the door.

  Bolswaithe jumped feet first, and Thomas closed his eyes as the weightlessness of freefall hit him. But then time slowed down again, and he was jerked as Bolswaithe slowed down his rate of descent and time stopped again around him, although it took longer for Bolswaithe to stop, as if Thomas's weight had kept pulling him down.

  “Better here than there!” Ratatosk yelled from the cabin.

  Thomas looked down—they had just begun their fall, and the helicopter was just about fifteen feet away. He was sure that once they reached the ground there would be no way for him to rescue the squirrel.

  “You can still jump!” Thomas yelled. Ratatosk scoffed. “Come on, I'll catch you!”

  “And then what?” Ratatosk yelled back. He sat down, his little legs dangled from the edge of the cabin. “I'm good right here!”

  Thomas bit his lip. What could he possibly say to make the squirrel jump? “You'll be alone,” he said.

  “I'm always alone. I like it that way.”

  “Odin will get angry at you.”

  “Cleaning the Halls is better than becoming a splat on the floor!”

  Very slowly, Thomas began to feel and see some movement. Time was beginning to resume. It was now or never for the squirrel.

  “You'll die of hunger!” Thomas yelled and the squirrel’s eyes widened. It seemed that he hadn't contemplated that little detail. “Quick!” Thomas yelled as the time rate accelerated.

  Ratatosk stood at the edge, then jumped.

  Thomas saw the frame of the squirrel, arms and legs outstretched, silhouetted against the moving blades of the helicopter until they became a blur as Thomas and Bolswaithe began to fall freely again.

  Thomas clenched his teeth and managed not to close his eyes. He needed to keep his focus on Ratatosk, who was doing his best to aim himself toward them while screaming his lungs out.

  It was just a couple of seconds before time around them slowed down again, and even less for Ratatosk to close the distance. While Thomas slowed down with Bolswaithe, Ratatosk kept accelerating. The squirrel hit the top of Bolswaithe's head and was knocked out. Thomas frantically tried to grab him, and with sheer luck, he closed his fist around the squirrel’s hairy tail. He pulled him up and placed Ratatosk inside his shirt. When he looked down, he was more than halfway to the ground
, but he couldn't risk a jump just yet.

  He then checked his wristpadd—the download was at eighty-nine percent. Since he didn't feel time resuming, he began to look around.

  It was an eerie scene.

  There was no wind, no sounds, and all things were static around and below him. The helicopter above looked like a model he had once seen hanging from the ceiling of a friend’s room in Ohio.

  Static.

  Like pausing a movie.

  The pause was longer too, and at least five minutes had passed since their mid-air fall.

  After a couple of minutes more, Thomas felt disoriented, just a little wobble, like the first time he had stayed in Carlsbad with his grandfather and yelled for Gramps to come in his room.

  “It was just a little earthquake,” Gramps had explained. “Not strong enough to shake the house or anything, but your inner ear felt it.”

  Thomas felt the movement before it even started, and he braced himself. The last time he had been jerked by Bolswaithe's momentum, he knew that Bolswaithe was still accelerating even though they had stopped in mid air.

  The world began to move again, and Thomas felt the speed in his stomach and the pricks of Ratatosk’s claws piercing his chest. The squirrel screamed in terror as the sudden acceleration woke him. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes. The ground was getting really close really fast.

  After a couple of seconds, they began to decelerate very quickly. As they stopped, Thomas hit his forehead against Bolswaithe’s chest and the harness bit into his armpits.

  Thomas opened his eyes and looked down—the ground was a little more than Fifteen feet away. He needed to jump now or the next time-shift would drag him into the ground with Bolswaithe.

  “Tell me when we are done,” Ratatosk emerged from within his shirt.

  “Not just yet,” Thomas said. He released the lock from Bolswaithe's harness. He tried to hit the ground with both feet and bend his knees in a roll as Killjoy had taught him. Unfortunately, they were over the entrance road to the Mansion, and as he made contact with the ground, a sharp pain ran up his left ankle, and he scraped his arm as he rolled on the pavement.

  Ratatosk, on the other hand, kissed the ground as soon as he left Thomas’s shirt. “Oh thank you, thank you,” he said to the heavens.

  Thomas checked his ankle; it wasn't broken, but it hurt a little. He looked up at Bolswaithe, who was in for a very rough landing and hanging mid-air. Thomas checked the gauge on his wristpadd, the download was ninety-nine percent complete.

  “What do we do now?” Ratatosk asked.

  “We have to wait,” Thomas said, moving away from the place he thought Bolswaithe was going to land.

  “We don’t need to wait together, do we?” Ratatosk was eyeing the pine trees on the far side of the lawn.

  “No, we don’t. But don’t go too far, and come back as soon as you feel the time change.”

  Ratatosk took off, tail waggling as he ran, and Thomas sat down to wait.

  And he waited for about an hour. He was hesitant about using the wristpadd until Bolswaithe’s download had completed. His thoughts wandered to the girl in the Aesir’s Hall and the sting he had on his hand. With all the excitement he had forgotten about it.

  It was a little bit swollen, but the actual sting was healing very fast. A scab had already formed on the puncture, but dark lines that looked like varicose veins had begun to spread from the center of the wound. He touched them, but they didn’t hurt. He hoped they weren’t gangrene or a sign that his skin was rotting inside. The last thing he wanted was to lose a finger or his whole hand because of that sting.

  Why would the girl order the wasp to do that? She had run to him, hugged him, and kissed him on the cheek.

  She had called him Tom.

  He only allowed people very close to him to call him Tom. His parents, his grandfather… his girlfriend. Back in Ohio his first girlfriend had called him Tom.

  But how was it even possible? He had never seen that girl before, and she was beautiful, too. He hadn’t been stricken like he was when he had first met Tasha, but this girl had the liveliest eyes and the warmest smile he’d ever seen.

  As questions formed in his head and he analyzed his visit to the Aesir, and especially what was happening right now with the time jumps, a possibility came to mind.

  Maybe the Norns controlled time somehow.

  Maybe he had met this girl before, and maybe they had something that he didn’t know about.

  Yet.

  Because maybe he hadn’t lived it, but she had already lived it.

  The more he thought about it, the crazier it sounded. He pulled out the rod Lord Odin had given him. The thing wasn’t ugly, just…common. Like a deodorant spray bottle, featureless and gray, a rod of granite with no markings or even a veined surface.

  He sighed. He had gone to the Aesir to ask about Morgan’s sword and how to stop him from tracking him. That, at least, he had accomplished according to Odin.

  Time moved.

  Slowly at first, but then in a flash, Bolswaithe accelerated and closed the gap between him and the ground, and then, as his feet touched the ground, time began to slow down again.

  Thomas was tempted to try and stop Bolswaithe from falling. It seemed logical that, if as Bolswaithe had said, he was moving faster than the world, he could try and do something to stop him. Then he saw the ground under Bolswaithe’s feet bending as it absorbed the impact.

  Thomas reminded himself that Bolswaithe wasn’t just an old man, but a robot, and that he probably weighed way more than what he looked.

  The initial bending gave way, and fissures and cracks appeared on the concrete as a cloud of pulverized material sprang up from around Bolswaithe’s feet. Concentric cracks sprang around the point of impact, and shards and larger pieces of concrete were pushed up by Bolswaithe’s weight.

  As time slowed even more, Thomas was transfixed as a shockwave ran up Bolswaithe’s legs and his knees moved forward. His arms and head moved down as the concrete absorbed his momentum, and for a second Thomas thought that Bolswaithe would be okay, but then the left leg of his pants inflated and popped like a balloon, a shard of metal protruded from the fabric just below the knee followed by an oily, yellow substance, and Bolswaithe’s body buckled forward.

  He hit the ground like a mannequin—his arms moved forward propelled by his momentum, his left hand hit the ground and his fingers snapped back, tearing up his synthetic flesh—his index completely tore and a stream of greenish oil busted from a small tube. Then the shockwave moved up his arm, pushing his forearm against the elbow that buckled and tore away, sending a shaft of gleaming metal through a tear in the fabric.

  Thankfully, time seemed to stop completely before Bolswaithe’s face hit the ground. Thomas gasped, and held his breath as the robot met the pavement.

  A sharp sound startled him, a hum, coming from his wristpadd.

  The download was complete, and a line of text appeared onscreen:

  PLEASE READ ALOUD THE FOLLOWING THREE TIMES:

  BAKE ONE CAKE, TAKE TWO CAKES TO THE LAKE,

  MAKE A STAKE FROM THE RAKE, DON'T MAKE A MISTAKE.

  It was a really stupid paragraph but Thomas read it aloud as ordered and there was a beep. Another message appeared:

  PLEASE READ ALOUD THE FOLLOWING THREE TIMES:

  FABOULOUS FARMERS FREQUENT FEDERAL FRATERNITIES FINDING FAULTS FOR FELLOW FILLIBUSTERS FREEBOOTING FUCHSIA FLOWERS.

  Thomas read it. The wristpadd beeped again.

  PRESS ENTER WHEN YOU CAN HEAR ME CORRECTLY.

  Sounds came from the wristpadd, very low and grave, a sequence that rose in pitch and speed until Thomas could understand a computer-generated voice.

  “Are you all right, Thomas?”

  He made out the words, but they were too slow, so he waited until he could hear the message correctly and pressed enter.

  “Yes,” Thomas said. “I'm all right. Is that you, Bolswaithe?”

  “Yes, Thomas,”
the voice said, but it didn't sound like Bolswaithe. It sounded more like a voice generated from a text-to-speech converter he had heard on the Internet. It was monotone without inflexions.

  “You don't sound like yourself.”

  “You are actually listening to ultrasound generated pulses at a rate that make sense to you,” Bolswaithe said. “You are living at a speed different from ours and moving thousands of times faster.”

  “How?” Thomas asked.

  “Magic,” Bolswaithe answered. “I'll try to tell you as much as I can, but we've also prepared documents for you to read. We need to conserve this wristpadd’s energy and components.”

  Thomas sighed in relief; at least Bolswaithe was safe. “Can we go now?” he asked. He didn't want to look at Bolswaithe's broken body anymore.

  “Head for the Mansion,” Bolswaithe said. “I'll explain everything.”

  Relativities

  “Really?” Thomas asked as they approached the entrance to the Mansion. All the doors were open, the water on the fountains was frozen mid-air, and Babcor was frozen as he pruned a bush. Thomas could make out the individual teeth of his pruner and the gases coming from the exhaust of the machine hanging mid-air around Babcor. The capybara looked comical dressed as a gardener complete with a sun hat, clear glasses, and a twig coming out from between his buckteeth. He really looked like a big, tail-less mouse, and Thomas stopped to see if he could smell the fresh-cut plants. “Has it really been seven months?”

  “Over seven months,” Bolswaithe said. “From the moment Skuld placed the sand in your hand to the moment you walked out from the chamber and I held onto you, it took seven months thirteen days and six hours.”

  Ratatosk had told him the names of the Norns at the beginning of his audience with them—Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld—but he had not pointed out to him who was who. “How do you know it was Skuld?” Thomas asked.

  “Extrapolation,” Bolswaithe said. “I had all that time to access everything I could in regards to the Norns. Their powers are not as defined as those of the Greek or Roman Fates, but if we were to decide which one could create a time effect like the one we are experiencing, it would be Skuld. Most scholars believe that her name means something like: ‘What needs to occur.’”