Tamara fell to her knees. Her pain and anguish so great no sound, no lamentation could express it. She wept, her face a silent visage of agony. Her adopted father dead, her raging mother, lost, she had never felt more vulnerable or alone. Tamara desperately reached out her mind, allowed it to expand and embrace all that was near her, searching for Dante.
Nothing.
The psychic ether was surprisingly clear and silent. She picked up hundreds of sailor's thoughts but continued scanning until she came across a warm aura she recognized. Veronica!
Tamara had never referred to her as anything before. The expression was awkward for her as her mind cried out into the ether. “Grandma?”
Veronica's thoughts were surprised but unconditionally accepting and loving. “Tamara? Where are you?!”
The empty hull of the USS John S. McCain echoed quietly as she teleported away.
* * *
“Commander Leaman. This is Admiral Cooper of the USS Antietam, South Pacific US Navy...”
“There's no time. It's lost. Inaccessible. All is lost. You must fire upon the derelict Yamayuki. I have, I have authority of command upon the March 16, 1993 Synchronicity Mandate,” Leaman's voice was laced with panic.
The Admiral suddenly became quiet and sober. He motioned to another bridge officer with a hand gesture as he spoke to Leaman. “Can you give me the command protocol codes?”
“Yes... yes, sir,” Leaman stuttered and stammered. The officer recorded the codes as Leaman slowly dictated them, but again, Sentinel was quicker than its human counterpart.
“Authority code valid.”
“The code's authentic,” the officer echoed.
“Son,” the Admiral spoke directly to Leaman over the radio link. “You need to get off that ship. Do you have a path of exit? Do you have access to a ship, boat, lifeboat?”
“Ah... yes. Yes, sir,” Leaman mumbled as he lied. He had no intention of vacating the Yamayuki.
“I will delay the launch for twenty minutes-”
Sentinel's voice cut the admiral off as it began issuing command protocols. “Acquiring target. Load BGM-109 Tomahawk and prepare to fire in T minus ten seconds.”
“Negative!” barked Admiral Cooper. “Belay that order. We will not fire a Tomahawk, Sentinel! That's a nuclear weapon!”
“USS Naval Command structure overridden through Centinel Protocol. Ready, arm and fire BGM-109 -”
“Sir!” one of the bridge officers called out, the panic clear in his voice. “Sentinel has locked the weapons systems down. We don't have access to -”
“Sentinel!” Admiral Cooper roared! “You cannot fire a nuke! We have over a thousand men -”
“Casualties inconsequential.”
Admiral Cooper turned to another officer, speaking low. “Disengage or cripple our weapons or targeting systems. I don't care if you have to stuff a cork up the barrels,” then he raised his voice as he continued addressing Sentinel. “Inconsequential?! We have survivors, civilian survivors -”
“Initial casualties estimated at 0.00000143%, escalating to an estimated 0.000144%. Casualties inconsequential.”
Confused, the Admiral whispered to himself, echoing Sentinel, “Oh oh oh oh one four four percent of what...?”
“Global population. Casualties inconsequential... fire.”
* * *
Leaman turned the communication switch off, the static buzz of the radio signal falling silent. Only the drone of the breeze through the broken window shared this silent moment with Leaman. He was completely alone.
As he moved to the aft observation windows of the Yamayuki's bridge the sun caught his bad glass-like eye, reflecting its odd light.
There the USS Antietam sat, over six miles aft of the Yamayuki wreckage, its superstructure and various antenna peaking above the warped ocean's raised cusp.
Leaman was calm, serene and at peace as he watched the white vapor trail of the missile rocket its way towards the Yamayuki.
A tear trickled from his good eye as his emotions rose. He openly wept as he realized, with relief, his ordeal was over. It was finally over.
* * *
The Great Pagan Temple of Shug-Niggurath
Beneath The Hollow Mosque,
1930
As Otto played The Music of the Spheres he was joined by another sound. A bass sound reverberated through the very floor of the cavern, a vibration so deep he could feel it in his bowels. Like a monstrous whale trapped beneath the earth, it sang along with Otto's cello.
Secondary sentient scores of music eerily drifted and meandered within the ancient temple from the tunnels. Subtle idiot flute players, they were the treble to the earth's bass. This piping music wove itself alongside a gentle sinister breeze, the pair weaving and dancing between the antediluvian lintel-stones.
As the black walls of the Gatesphere exploded into existence and rushed past, the music boomed all the louder! The outer spherical walls of the Gatesphere perfectly encompassed the outer stones of this buried Stonehenge.
Donita flinched atop the ancient altar at the drastic increase of volume in the music, the piles of infant bones surrounding the altar jarred by the concussive sound.
But as Donita looked about, she was horrified by what she saw assembling in the bone pit. The countless infant bones stirred. She had hoped it was the sheer volume of the Music that caused the bones to jiggle and dance... but somehow she knew it wasn't.
There was a sense of vague awareness, a sentience about the movement of the infantile bones. Sacrifices to Shub-Niggurath? Countless failed attempts at Symbiosys?
The first skeletal remains stood, fine bone-white chalk dust sifting from its skull. It reached out its tiny delicate hands and held her wrist as others began standing.
As she tried to pull her wrist away, Ezra pointed the revolver at her and shook his head, all the while smiling. Other child-like skeletons tentatively reached for the pregnant woman. They latched onto her wrists, her arms, her legs, and her ankles, pinning Donita; holding her down on the altar!
“No. No! NO!” Panic began flooding through her! There was nothing to hear but the thundering Music, but never-the-less, she heard them!
Their whispers withered and coursed through her mind. She could hear them! She could hear all of them! How many innocent children had perished over the centuries, over the millennia to this cult? “...Mama ...Mommy ..Mammmmma...?”
Donita's baby began kicking in her womb. She couldn't tell if the ghosts were crying out to her or calling her baby.
“Otto!” she tried shouting over the roaring Music. “OTTO!!” The altar was surrounded by the dead. Tiny infantile skeletons seemed to fill the pit!
Chapter 16: Emergence
“But... look what I've done,” Amber whispered, looking into the world outside the dream. The silent landscape image of the massive oceanic crater, cradling the insanely warped corpse-city of R'lyeh, overtook their view. “... look what I've done...” she was barely audible.
“We can't save the world,” Dante said while offering his mother his open hand. “But we can stop it from dying. You don't need to be alone anymore.”
Amber paused for a moment, afraid to even hope. Her lips quivered and her hand trembled as she tentatively reached for Dante's hand.
Silence...
Only stillness disturbed this darkness. A vast ocean of empty Nothingness. Placid, calm, homogeneous, serene. Empty but pregnant with potential.
Then... an ever so faint sound. A single note. Dante and Amber's hands met. Mother and child held hands. Unification. Its vibrations rippled across this slumbering darkness. The sleeper remembered. Reunification.
The veil of sleep fluttered, awareness wafting from its breeze; the fragrance of memory.
A mind separated by reincarnation. The metempsychosis had splintered his mind no more. The Symbiot awoke. Amber – Dante – Lorne. There was no conflict. Soothed, appeased was the rage.
The veil of consciousness blanketed the multimind, smothered the m
ultimind. Birthed was a new Gestalt mind. Amber, Dante, Lorne, equally rose to ascendancy.
Light entered this vast darkness as full consciousness emerged.
* * *
The Amber-symbiot hovered thousands of feet over the corpse-city. Her palms raised, arms extended, the naked woman hung in the sky like a dangling ornament. The high winds tore and whipped her blonde hair about her calm and serene face.
Amber and Dante had reunited. The fractured mind of Lorne S. Gibbons, divided from his reincarnation within mother and child a decade ago, was whole and united again.
When her stunning blue eyes snapped open there was a whole new intelligence. No longer did the Symbiot share a multimind. The three facets had equally risen to ascendancy. A new and god-like Gestalt-mind had awoken.
* * *
The Pagan Temple
beneath La Mosquée vide
(The Hollow Mosque),
la cinquième château,
1930
She was tall and gangly. Long skinny arms and legs; all elbows and knees. As she jumped around the greenhouse corner her blue eyes wide and bright, her mouth a feinted surprised “o”, there was no concealing the smile beneath the teenager's facade.
“Boo!” Alia's excited eyes were smiling, nearly glowing with her joy!
“Eeeeek!!” the three-year old's scream was shrill and ear-piercing! The tiny girl turned laughing, her beautiful brown hair bouncing as she ran.
The teenage Alia chased her, stooping down as she tickled her little sister's ribs. “Gotya!”
The two sisters fell to the garden's manicured grass, rolling in each other's arms, laughing hysterically! As they lay side-by-side in the warm summer sun, their laughter slowly subsided to giggling.
Alia looked at her younger sister Donita and smiled.
“She had such a beautiful smile,” Siad Abdullah thought. “When did she ever stop smiling?” A lone tear streaked down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. It was how he always remembered that moment. It was how he always saw the two girls.
Siad was lost in his own thoughts, somewhere between conflict and meditation and prayer. He had been betrayed by his Mistress, Alia Moubayed. Everything he believed in was a lie. He had vowed to protect the family... but not this family. Not these twisted goals and values.... where did his loyalties lie?
His right hand was beneath his robes, tightly clasped to the handle of his kirpan. He had never seen the six inch iron dagger as anything but ceremonial. Siad also knew he was required to defend those wrongfully oppressed and persecuted.
He had known the girls since they were children. He still saw the two sisters as young children playing in the estate's rose garden, La Roseraie d'Amélie.
He gripped his ceremonial dagger tighter in his hand.
The Sikh reached out and gently took Alia's hand in his. “I'm sorry,” he whispered.
She half turned to face Siad, lost somewhere between sympathy and confusion. “There's no need... it's inevitable...” she whispered back in her misunderstanding. Siad plunged the dagger into her chest.
The impact reverberated out of her mouth, her hollow lungs like a violin's acoustic body, the sound anything but human.
* * *
Ezra, across the Pagan temple, turned, staring his surprise at the turn of events.
Otto didn't miss the opportunity. He quickly pulled the cello violin from his knees, holding it like a club. He had hoped a distraction like this would happen; allowing him to stop playing the Music. But he hadn't expected the Music to continue on its own!
“Scheisse!” he swore in German. He swung and bashed the cello across Ezra's shoulder and arm. The classical instrument made a poor weapon, shattering to splinters. Ezra yelped, dropping the pistol, but immediately reaching for his Bowie knife. Otto tackled him, the pair tumbling into the pit of bones.
“Otto!” Donita screamed.
Otto drove his elbow as hard as he could into Ezra's ribs. Bone crunched, but the half-breed jammed and curled his leg between the two and launched Otto off him.
“Otto!!” Donita screamed again!
He landed hard, the broken infant bones lacerating his skin. Ezra pulled out his Bowie knife, his eyes feral, his toothy smile murderous!
“Otto!!” Donita's voice was hysterical. “The Gate! The Gateway's opening!”
Electric blue bolts of lightning arced across the surface of a purple sphere as it expanded directly above Donita! Something dark and amorphous stirred within.
Chapter 17: The Rupture: Awakening the Dead Dreamer
The American Navy crews, spread out in lifeboats between the two warships had only seconds to watch the nuclear missile arch over the USS Wilbur Curtis and John S. McCain. Traveling at 890 kph, it only was airborne for seconds before it struck the beached Yamayuki.
When the Tomahawk missile detonated it was brighter than the sun. The Yamayuki and its surrounding section of R'lyeh simply disappeared in its blinding white inferno.
There was nothing to do but watch the rising mushroom cloud. But the Risen R'lyeh was anything but a normal city. A warp-bubble hidden beneath our reality; like an exposed blister, the very fabric of reality was spread thin. The Quantisphere's membrane was far too thin in this place. Soft and delicate, like the flesh beneath an exposed and lacerated boil.
The very fabric of reality tore, ripped a hole through our universe into the wild and untamed Outer Chaos.
Within seconds the rising mushroom cloud was greedily sucked into the Rupture, its obsidian blackness spreading like a torn cloth.
Six miles out, as the remnants of the Shoggoth swarm scrambled in its desperate attempt to flee back to the safety of Leaman's Island, those black amoeboid monstrosities too were sucked out of the very air, whisked into that ravenous maw, greedily consumed by an awakening entity within!
Then, from within the Rupture, something stirred. Formless, amorphous, eternally dead, yet somehow sleeping, dreaming, reaching, clawing out. A monstrous metaphysical alien entity billowed forth, somehow dead yet dreaming, clawing out, grasping and taking possession of any quasi-animate substances.
The primordial slime that coated the corpse-city became animated, moved, coalesced with a sentience and purpose all its own. It ran through the ancient alien boulevards like rivers. Dropping and pouring off its Cyclopean masonry; numerous waves and streams converging and pounding like oceanic tides into a colossal central mass!
As more and more of the slime rivers hammered into the rising bulk, its density compounded, fossil-like bones condensing and forming in its gargantuan organic form.
As the Polyphemic monstrosity began to stand, flesh sloughed off what could only be its leviathan head, hanging and forming tentacles, an enormous version of the slain Star-spawn, Krulgh.
Five-hundred, six-hundred, seven-hundred feet, the higher its head rose the more it solidified, dead and half-shuttered eyes forming in its dreaming monster face. And from the boiling and rolling flesh of its back, rudimentary wings or vestigial appendages forgotten by evolution expanded, casting a shadow across the bent city and warped ocean, blotting out the sun in the sky!
It was a juggernaut, even the low lying clouds parting as they drifted around its towering head.
It was a Thing that should not have moved, should not have thought, should not have dreamt.
Necropolis: Book 5: R'lyeh Page 12