Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  At D’s remark, his left hand made a stunned expression. It also sounded like it was laughing.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He needed to be reformed.” “So you sent him out among the stars—but that wasn’t the end of it?”

  “I knew from the start that was a pointless endeavor. He crafted a chip from scratch to guide his ship home and harnessed the energy of the universe. And though I did what I could to prevent it, I still knew it would happen.”

  “None of that concerns me.”

  “There’s nothing in this universe that doesn’t concern everything,” the man told him in a solemn tone. “From the moment of our conception—nay, from long before any of us are bom, we are all bound together, be the bonds deep or shallow. When Valcua returned from space, D, you were fighting Braujou. Do you think that was mere coincidence?”

  In the white light, the young man in black had a soft glow.

  “All of that was in accordance with my will. That was how you and Valcua came to meet, D. That, too, was unavoidable. D, Valcua is your—”

  Valcua is your—

  Just as he was making that bizarre proclamation, an astonished voice exclaimed, “Oh!” The voice didn’t come from within the room. It was a cry from another world—one that only D and this man could perceive.

  Turning his face to the ceiling, the man said, “Hmm, he read the akashic record.”

  “Valcua?” D murmured.

  “Forget about that, D, and prepare to head back,” the man said, looking at the door. “First, move the lever, and then get in the elevator. Part of the akashic record’s vault has been destroyed.”

  A foglike substance began to fill the light. It glittered like the myriad stars of the Milky Way.

  “If the record leaks out, it could warp the very fabric of the universe. I must prevent that. Hurry, D!”

  D gazed at the lever. All around him flowed the dazzling Milky Way.

  “D!” the man was heard to say, his voice calling out from the glittering depths. It flew as if in accompaniment to the action of the blade in D’s right hand.

  “What’s this?”

  This slight indication of surprise was swallowed by the light.

  The lever had broken in half, and the pedestal in which it was set had fallen to the floor after being bisected at an angle.

  “Why?” the voice asked, drifting even further away. “You won’t accept anyone’s help in destroying Valcua? Or are you worried that the Dyalhis children would come to harm if this land were utterly destroyed? Very well. The laws of the universe are immutable. When the two of you meet, you can reach your own destiny. That lever would have taken away all the power I’d provided to this domain. You shall have to deal with both Valcua and me, D!”

  Deciding that it was too late to go after the source of that voice, D headed for the door, the hem of his coat whipping out around him.

  What would the fundamental collapse of the universe entail?

  Eddying hypnotically, the white fog swallowed up the young man in black and went on to lay claim to all of the now-empty room.

  Emerging from the elevator and going to see Sue in her recovery room, D raised one slim eyebrow a bit.

  Sue wasn’t there.

  “Where’d she get off to?” the left hand asked in a wondering tone.

  What had lured Sue away was Matthew’s voice. As long as she was in Valcua’s facility, her whereabouts would be all too clear. Realizing this, the Ultimate Noble had sent her brother’s voice and likeness into the recovery room. The computer that oversaw her room had originally belonged to Valcua, after all. The apparition had come after D had vanished underground. Hearing Matthew and having him there beckoning to her, there was no way Sue could resist. She still wasn’t free of his brainwashing.

  Sue went outside. After she’d gone about a hundred yards, a number of red lights came toward her from across the plaza. It was one of Valcua’s patrols. He must’ve directed a group in the area to head there at the same time he sent her the illusion of Matthew. Their flexible tentacles reached for the girl. Once she went to Valcua, his revenge would be half accomplished.

  The tentacled cylinders zipped along at 120 miles per hour. Exiting the valley two hours later, they began to pass through an area where other buildings towered. Fiery blasts flew from nowhere, causing one of the cylinders to explode as soon as it was hit. The dozen cylinders tried to get in formation to defend themselves from this unexpected attack and strike back, but it was too late.

  The one that held Sue tilted wildly. Pale-blue sparks shot from a hole that had been blown through its head. Before the disabled machine could fall, Sue jumped down onto the road. The bottoms of her feet felt awfully cold. Out of the corner of her eye she saw flames well up, and then a red-hot piece of shrapnel whizzed past her cheek.

  Sue ran like a woman possessed. Ahead, she saw a building, and she could make out a door. She leaped for it. The automatic door opened smoothly to admit her, then closed again.

  This was no time to relax. She couldn’t be sure whoever was responsible for this ambush wouldn’t come after her. She knew their target wasn’t the android patrol unit.

  Sue coughed violently in the thick dust that had been kicked up when she entered. Giving the place a better look, she found a seemingly endless hallway filled with that vague feeling unique to long-abandoned locales. Relying only on the light coming through the windows, Sue ran further inside.

  The sprawling building that spread before her reminded her of the hospital she’d been in earlier.

  The girl came to an intersection of two corridors. All of the electronic displays were drained of energy. As she vacillated, she heard footsteps behind her and knew someone was coming closer. She turned for a look.

  Red points of light were headed toward her. Each was part of a pair, and they were also smaller than those of the cylinders. The shadowy figures to which they belonged were human in shape.

  Could they be servants of Valcua? In that case, she’d be fine.

  It was an instinctive fear that caused Sue to start running away— she didn’t know why she did so. And though she ran on and on in complete abandon, the footfalls were steadily closing on her. She began to get winded. Spying a door nearby, Sue practically threw herself against it to get it open.

  The room was both spacious and cramped at the same time. Rows of transparent cases reminiscent of incubators were lined up in front of a dais that was several dozen yards wide. Sue ran between the cases. Although most of them remained intact, a number of the cases had been destroyed, their pieces scattered across the floor. Every time she felt the shards beneath the soles of her shoes, she wanted to thank Matthew for allowing her to put on footwear before they escaped from the hospital.

  To her right, she saw a gargantuan glass cylinder. Filled with liquid, it had a humanoid figure floating in it. A faint blue light hung in the room—undoubtedly a power source remained functional somewhere in here. Though Sue was about to pass it by, a strange curiosity took hold of her, and she kept her gaze trained on the object. She halted. It was unbelievable. She stared so hard, her eyes seemed to bore into it. Several seconds later Sue’s terrific scream echoed through the room.

  This was it. It was the same thing Matthew had showed her back in Count Braujou’s car. The thing he’d proudly described as part of Valcua’s plan. However, seeing it before her very eyes, she found it repulsive.

  There was no mistaking that it was a combination of a human being and some other creature. Soaking in a liquid that was probably a nutrient solution, the figure’s upper body was human, while its lower half looked like a lump-covered arthropod, and though it was taller than a full-grown adult, the human portion resembled an enormous fetus. But that wasn’t what prompted Sue’s scream. The figure had suddenly twitched.

  Her screams didn’t stop. Still crying out, Sue backed away. Something cold and clammy latched onto her wrist.

  Could this thing be alive?

  The fetus was ro
ughly a foot and a half in length, its entire body covered with tumorlike bumps. It also had three eyes and six arms. Slowly, it was emerging from its cylinder.

  Sue’s screams died away.

  “Wh—what... are ... you ...” the girl murmured, but she made no attempt to extricate her wrist from its grip. There was no telling what it would do if she made a move. The teeth that protruded from those swollen lips were the fangs of a carnivore. Its lips moved slowly.

  “Hungry . . . I’m ... so hungry ..

  “What?”

  The tension swiftly drained from Sue’s body. The voice was that of a human child. There was no mistaking it. And it complained because its belly was empty.

  “You .. . you can talk?”

  “Yes ... I can talk .. . But I’m ... so hungry!”

  “This is unbelievable—what are you doing in a place like this?” “He said ... it was an experiment... Talked about making ... a new form of life ...”

  “An experiment? Whose experiment? Who made you like this?” The infant shook its head weakly. Due to its disproportionate size, its head wobbled to one side and then the other.

  Sue was on edge.

  “I... don’t know ... It was a . .. big person.”

  Footsteps could be heard from the same direction Sue had come. “Are you all alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Sue held the child to her chest.

  The infant continued, mumbling, “All the others ... died ... All of them.”

  As she ran, Sue shot glances to either side. The cases and cylinders held the products of bizarre experiments. Shriveled like mummies, melted into slime, rotted away to dust—each of them was a combination of a monster and a gigantic fetus.

  Who on earth had done such a thing, and when? What had they hoped to ultimately produce with such experiments?

  Dust rose around her feet—these were the remnants of demonic experiments undertaken many ages ago.

  Suddenly, the infant’s arm wrapped around her neck.

  “You’re warm. And soft.”

  The second Sue heard that satisfied tone, tears welled in her eyes. The infant pulled its face closer to the nape of her neck. Its arms were unexpectedly strong.

  Just then, the little body jerked to the right without warning.

  Sue’s eyes bulged in their sockets. She hadn’t seen one of her pursuers running right alongside her.

  “What are you doing?”

  As she tried to pull the infant close again, her left arm was jerked back. Was there another one of them? With both hands now pinned, the infant was wrested from her.

  “Stop it!”

  The one who’d taken it away halted, and then bit the tiny figure. A wail rose from it, but it soon became quiet again.

  “Stop it!” the girl exclaimed, struggling madly, but a pair of cold hands on her shoulders pinned her in place.

  “Give it up, already,” a man’s voice said. “There’s nothing else we can do. We’ll drive a stake through its heart right away.”

  “You’ll what!”

  “Put your hand to the right side of your neck,” another said.

  That was where the infant had nuzzled against her. She had a hunch now. A cold and black foreboding.

  When Sue didn’t move her arms, someone grabbed her right wrist and pressed her index finger to her neck. A slight pain shot through her, and she found minor protuberances there. Two of them.

  “That child was modified by the Nobility,” the first voice said.

  “Modified?”

  “This lab was used for experiments in combining Nobles and human beings. So was the rest of this facility.”

  “Combining them?” Sue said, the man’s blunt delivery leaving her mind in a state of turbulence. What kind of new life form had they created? She hoped whoever had conceived of this would be cursed for all eternity.

  Off in the distance, where they’d taken the infant, there was a loud thud. Sue closed her eyes. Several seconds later, she opened them. Her head hurt terribly. She felt as if she’d awakened from a dream.

  Sue said, “Weren’t you guys.. .”

  “You remember us? We hated you because you were with a Noble, and now we’re in with them too.” “We were with that survey party.”

  As Sue turned in their direction, the keen fangs poking from their lips burned into the girl’s eyes.

  Ill

  “So, Lord Valcua ... He made you guys into . . .” Sue began in a hoarse voice, as she indeed recognized the men.

  The men exchanged glances.

  “No, we serve the great Miranda.”

  Damn! she thought, but she questioned the men no further, and it was decided that they would bring her back to Braujou and Miranda. That was a problem. Though Sue remained hesitant, the men considered Miranda’s instructions absolute. Before she could convince them otherwise, they brought her outside.

  Without a sound, crimson streaks of light flowed toward them from all sides. One man’s head evaporated in a blast, and two others fell to the ground in rapid succession after the upper body of one and the right half of the other were destroyed.

  “It’s a patrol!”

  “Some of them were left?”

  “No, these are reinforcements.”

  As this tangle of shouts rang in Sue’s ears, powerful arms wrapped around her waist, and someone ran down the corridor carrying her. The rest remained behind. They intended to buy Sue some time.

  Fiery blasts came after her. The edges of her field of view were tinged with crimson.

  After following the corridor through several turns, the man’s body trembled a bit.

  Sue felt herself sailing through the air. Landing on her shoulder but continuing to move forward, she felt an acute pain. She was knifing through the wind at an incredible speed on a moving sidewalk. It was rolling at sixty miles per hour.

  Sue turned around.

  The man had dropped just in front of the sidewalk. His head was missing.

  Picking up speed, the sidewalk whisked the girl into the darkness.

  A car raced by the light of the moon. The stench of blood filled the vehicle. It was as if each and every molecule of air was stained with gore, and just wringing your fist would cause blood to seep from between your fingers.

  “It won’t stop, Braujou,” Miranda said in the blue darkness. She was naked. Tied around her face, her neck, her ample breasts, and her shapely waist were red scarves. On the floor where she sprawled there were piled dozens more scarves in the same hue.

  From the huge bed beside her, the prone Braujou replied, “It would seem we underestimated him.”

  Bandages wrapped around him from the neck to the waist. They were the same color as Miranda’s accouterments—because the Noblewoman’s scarves were actually white strips of cloth used to stop the bleeding. She’d redone them dozens of times, and each time she was powerless to keep the fresh blood from seeping in and dyeing them red.

  Valcua’s blade had sliced Braujou apart from the right side of his neck down to his left hip, while Miranda had been bisected from the groin to the top of her head. Both of them were Nobles. As long as they weren’t stabbed through their one vital point, their cells’ impressive regenerative abilities normally would come into play, closing wounds in the blink of an eye and stanching the bleeding. But this time that wasn’t possible. If the wounds were kept covered, the internal organs would somehow continue to function, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Though their Nobles’ bodies could withstand enough blood loss to kill scores of humans, if this situation continued, their bodies would fail.

  “Soon we won’t be able to move. What do you say, Miranda?”

  “They’re not grave wounds. Certainly not cause for complaint,” the seductress replied curtly, but her countenance appeared bloodless in the blue light. “Actually—I have a proposal.” Braujou’s expression showed that he found Miranda’s remark quite unexpected.

  “Is that so? And what might that be?”

  “We must pre
pare to call on our last piece of insurance.” “Insurance? No!” Braujou called out sharply.

  “If we were to combine our energies, it might be possible.”

  “We can’t do that!” Braujou exclaimed, his voice quaking with stem determination. “We swore to that human we would protect those children. And by my Noble soul, we shall not break that oath.” “If we’re destroyed, there’s no sense speaking of how we’ll keep them safe. Given our situation, slaying Valcua is the only course to take.”

  “The only course to take is that which will save the Dyalhis children.”

  Saying nothing, the paraffin beauty smiled. Between the strips of cloth, a vermilion line ran from her face to her belly, and blood quickly bubbled out of it.

  “What a splendid Noble you are. Very well. I shall execute my plan alone.”

  “Won’t you reconsider this, Miranda?”

  From beneath the bloody and discarded dress by her side, the duchess produced a bejeweled dagger and drew it from its sheath. “Hey!”

  Disregarding Braujou’s disgusted cries, Duchess Miranda put the golden blade over her heart and thrust it in deep ... and then she slashed herself. Opening a crescent-shaped gash eight inches long, she shifted the dagger to her left hand and thrust her right one into the wound. Blood spilled out—not only from the wound, but from the vermilion lips the beauty kept pursed as well. Yet there was no change in her expression, her lovely features resplendent in the blue light as she watched her own crazed actions with detachment.

  Giving a slight sigh, she pulled her right hand out. Her fingers clenched a bloody heart. There were rubbery snaps as her veins tore. Blood went flying. Nevertheless, her heart continued beating.

  “My sentiments, my power—everything is in my heart of hearts. It’s up to you to draw the curtain of fate.”

  As he watched the seductress talking with a gleam of madness in her eye, Count Braujou heaved a long sigh.

  “We’ve got no transportation!” the left hand said, pointing out the brutal truth as they were about to leave the valley. “At this rate, if we don’t hook up with Braujou, it’ll take days to reach Valcua’s castle. Ah, how I wish that Kima guy was here!”