by Mike Wild
“Nothing in my diary for tomorrow.”
Shen paused, before addressing everyone. “There is one more thing you should know. Trix should be able to reach the rift again before detonation, be able to return, but after detonation the rift will cease to exist. Anyone on your side will be staying there. There’ll be no coming home.”
Trix looked at the others. Yuri. Ralph. Ian. Jackson and the rest of the DOME personnel. The decision was never in doubt—and made instantly.
“Say goodbye to home for me, Patricia.”
“Good luck, Major.”
“Mother Russia salutes you, English.”
Trix nodded. “Shen, bring me through.”
“Okay, Trix. It’ll take about a minute for the surge to build.”
A minute, she thought. Christ. Thankfully, Ian was there to fill the gap.
“You never give up, do you?” her brother said, smiling. “Not changed at all.”
“Nope. Still a pain in the arse.”
“Supposing Kh’Borian has something to say about this, what do you intend to do? Kick him in the nuts?”
“Between you and me, our kid, I haven’t a clue.”
Ian turned to where Jentiss was waiting for him to help begin the evacuation. She gave Trix a nod. Ian gave Trix a last look, last words.
“Come back, sis.”
“How about you don’t disappear again?”
“Consider that a deal.”
Trix drew a deep breath, and it happened. She was vaguely aware that the magic mirror shattered on its mount—flinched instinctively—but in a second its remains were distant, scintillating shards, and she was plunging into blackness and agony. All orientation gone, she felt as if she were being pulled into the floor, compressed, every bone in her body crunching, until all that was left was her upraised arm pressed tight against the side of her head. She felt her skull crack, then implode—bringing a thousand images of her life flooding in at once—and through a darkening and ever-thinning tunnel the last things she saw were her fingers clutching at a final spot of light. She was in a dream, then—a dream, of all things, of being whirled by her tooth—a wisdom tooth clamped in a great big wheel with space for a thousand more, that flung her inverted form around and around and around. It was a dream she’d had under gas at a dentist, and she hadn’t had it since she was eight. She screamed like the child she’d been then. But then, going through what she was going through, anyone would have done the same. The scream, and the pain that came with it, went on and on and on.
It ended suddenly.
The first thing that struck her senses was the klaxons. The second, the shouts and screaming; the sounds, the smell, of destruction, of burning. She opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh light of DOME, and knew that, miraculously, she’d made it. Lying in the pit, not far from the rift, she’d not been brought directly to Shen as—perhaps naively—she’d expected, but close enough. Picking herself up, she felt every joint in her body pop back into its socket; she staggered, threw up, then took in her surroundings.
DOME was barely recognisable. The whole place was merging with its phantom alternative, as in Deephold, but now those alternatives were becoming physical. The front third of the Grimrock Café was gone, as was half the wall of the pit, replaced by chunks of Deephold, skewing the internal landscape. Higher, on the mezz and above, Trix saw otherworldy extrusions compromising electrics and power lines, resulting in great sparking showers and sudden booms. Staccato bursts of gunfire and the odd scream signalled where people were fighting off creatures that had come through with the changes, and Trix had no doubt that the number of bursts and screams would soon increase. Surprisingly, there were people in the midst of it all, fighting the fires, attempting to shift debris, helping the injured as the safe world around them warped into something different and ceased to be. She pictured the same chaos in London, Los Angeles, Beijing, as the infrastructure of another world jostled for a place in our own.
She plucked a TSR-73, spare ammo, and a radio headset from the body of one of a number of master teamers who’d been cut to ribbons by malfunctioning boom guns, thankfully now shorted and dormant. She adjusted the frequency of the headset and rammed the earpiece in.
“Shen, I’m here.”
“You are? No missing limbs—arm here, leg there? Brain not turned to goo?”
“I’m fine. Where are you?”
“Just reached DOME auxiliary control. Thankfully, Garrison and his people seem to have other things on their mind.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“I’m checking the circuits now. Okay, every direct connection to the bombs has been locked down, and many of the alternatives fried. So we need to find a few unorthodox back doors and rejoin the dots. Trip some switches that will reroute the firing sequence for each bomb.”
“Where?”
“The first, southwest subsector 1-b. Second, northeast quadrant, sector 7.”
“The maintenance crawlways and the armoury, got it. What about the third?”
“Well, that’s going to involve a bit of a climb …”
“Climb?”
“Roof, section 14.”
Trix looked straight up. “You couldn’t find anywhere more convenient?”
“Sorry, it’s all we have. I guess this isn’t a good time to add you’ll also need to trip each switch within fifteen minutes of the previous?”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“I wish I were. If you don’t, their inbuilt redundancies will shut them down.”
“Christ on a bike.” Trix sighed. “Okay, I’m on my way.”
That, at least, was the theory. But no sooner had Trix emerged from the pit than a hail of bullets rattled off the metal rail next to her. She ducked, sought out the source, and returned a burst of fire, taking out a dark-uniformed form. Another hail came from her right, a ricochet taking a nick out of her trousers, burning her thigh. It wasn’t hard to deduce that Garrison’s people had spotted her and that, if she stayed in the open, they’d cut her down. She knew she had to get out of there; she ran, keeping low as bullets zinged around her, making for the closest hatch to the crawlways she could find. Thankfully, it was behind cover, so she just had time to flip the hatch before the goons descended upon her.
Which was the good news. The bad news was that the hatch was about as far as it could be from southwest subsector 1-b. She spent what seemed to be an age scuttling through the narrow confines, wincing as boots clanged, shadows loomed, and bullets clattered on the grille above her. This time, she dared not return fire—the grille would only bounce bullets back in her face.
It also kept her alive. She made it. Tripped the switch. Then headed for the next. The crawlways wouldn’t get her there, so she had to go to floor level. She emptied three clips in reaching the northeast quadrant, all she had, then discarded the TSR-73, battling her way through with staff and crossbow instead. It didn’t concern her overmuch—she was heading for the armoury, after all.
Shen disengaged the armoury’s locks, and, second switch tripped, Trix armed herself with everything she could carry, taking a certain satisfaction from the fact none of the weapons would blow up in her face. She’d never been a fan of heavy ordnance but needs must. Especially when she had only fifteen minutes to reach Roof, section 14.
Boots were already thumping along the corridor outside, and Trix dissuaded them from coming closer with a couple of lobbed smoke grenades and a few hundred rounds from a railgun that punched holes in the walls all around. While the heads of the boots’ owners were down, she darted for the cover of a facing corridor and up ladders onto a service gantry. Now, as she ran its length, bullets clattered beneath instead of above her, shooting sparks around her heels. To add to her problems, something from Deephold manifested on the gantry ahead—a frost giant, she thought—which, clearly confused by its transition, turned its gaze on her and roared. Trix had neither time nor patience for such interruption; she chipped away at its armour with her railgun, t
hen switched weapons to blow its head off with a shotgun as she raced on by.
Roof, section 14 was now plainly in sight, although it was still some considerable way above. Also plainly in sight were at least six master teamers coming at her, up ladders from below. The railgun chugged to empty as she strafed the lower walkways, and discarding it, she raced for another up, only to see a lengthy section of the walkway she needed vanish into Deephold as she climbed. In this case, Deephold didn’t reciprocate, replacing it with nothing but yawning gap. She cursed, carried on, working out her options as she moved.
An exonexus-pod ram chute, itself half vanished, was it. Rising roughly a third of the way across the walkway gap, it was her only chance, and Trix ran, leapt. Grabbing on by fingertips, she swung herself inside its frame just as guns came in range. Bullets zinged off beams around her, and gasping, she climbed, knowing the only way to make the second half of the gap was via the roof.
She emerged at the base of an exonexus track and clambered up its oily slope; this afforded her full view of the desert. In the distance she could see the receding silver glints of the maglev and a fleet of evacuee helicopters, as well as the dust trails of a good number of motorbikes and battered pick-up trucks out of Diablo, carrying those who didn’t have access to the more sophisticated means of evacuation.
Most of all she saw for the first time the full extent of what was happening. Great patches of the desert were no longer desert but something Yillarnyan, with more interchanging all the time. The patchwork landscape seemed to throb in her vision, unstable, dangerous, and the sky above was dark, rent with lightning that left holes where it flashed. Trix knew there and then that no matter how fast or far the evacuees or her friends from Diablo fled, there’d be no escape for them anywhere unless she got where she needed to go.
She dropped back into DOME through an access hatch. With scant seconds to spare, she found the third switch, flipped it.
“Shen, I’m done.”
“Not quite, Trix. There’s one more thing. Disengage the primary power node and engage the secondary.”
“Who, what, where?”
“Basically, turn DOME off and turn it on again. Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds—not when I’ve already hacked the access codes, anyway. You should be able to see the nodes from where you are. Look south.”
Trix did. She saw two stainless steel columns, like automatic bollards, rising from a power point in a service cage near the remains of the Grimrock Café.
“Got ’em.”
“Okay. What you’ll need to do is turn the primary node anticlockwise to disengage it from the power matrix, then rotate the secondary node clockwise and press it into its housing.”
“Then what?”
“Then you get the hell out of there. Make for the rift. And then as far beyond it as you can.”
“Oh ho, no, I don’t think so. Not without you.”
“Trix, listen to me. There’s no way I can set the countdown until Kh’Borian phases in, and only then when I know how fast he accelerates the dimensional degradation. The timing has to be precise, do you understand?”
“No, Shen, what I understand is—”
Trix trailed off, having only just realised that she was near Citadel’s boardroom. Within she could see Garrison, Sheila Uong, and Oswald Scarret Star. She guessed Garrison had been telling the truth about Star’s innocence because Garrison’s hands were clamped about Star’s head, squeezing, and Trix recoiled as it suddenly imploded, splattering Garrison with brains, bones, and blood. Garrison smiled as the all-but-headless body slumped to the floor. Sheila Uong smiled, too. She seemed to have found the murder quite orgasmic, in fact.
She was licking her lips when she spotted Trix. Alerted Garrison.
Such astonishment quickly followed by such rage as she’d never seen twisted Garrison’s features, and he stomped to the boardroom’s window. Punched at the glass. The glazing was strong enough to stop a minotaur’s charge, but cracked beneath the very first blow. Another two and it was a fractured mess. The fourth blow took it out completely.
A second later, Trix knew how this was possible. Garrison was wearing the artefacts—all of them—the complete Glow of Deephold. Clearly, the set of armour had imbued him with more than strength. The most obvious indication of this was that he was floating through the air beyond the shattered window towards her.
“Shen, I’ll have to get back to you.”
Trix moved in front of the trip switch, blocking it from view. She couldn’t let Garrison guess what they were up to. The Dungeonmaster hovered, gloated.
“How do I look?”
“Like you’ve dressed up in daddy’s clothes.”
The gloat faded.
“I mean, seriously, Garrison, you look a complete prick.” But a powerful prick, she added to herself, one it wouldn’t do to underestimate. “So, how does it feel, being a cold-blooded killer? How does it feel, seeing your world dissolve around you?”
Garrison stared at Star’s blood and brain fluid, still dripping from his hands. For a moment, Trix thought he was remembering when he’d simply been a wanker, rather than, well, a possessed wanker. But this wasn’t the case.
“Good. It feels good. How does it feel, knowing you’re about to die?”
Garrison slapped Trix so hard she flipped from the walkway. She fell towards another, almost missed, managed to snag its guardrail in the crook of her arm. Yowled as the arm was almost wrenched from its socket.
“I’d feel a damn sight better,” she bellowed, “if you didn’t spout such shite.”
Garrison responded with a lightning bolt. The walkway sparked and smoked, forcing Trix to drop again, this time all the way to the mezzanine. She landed heavily, winded, and groaned. Groaned some more as she heard the bootfalls of master teamers approaching. At least twelve laser sights danced over her body.
“No!” Garrison ordered. “She’s mine.”
He thudded down to her as she tried to rise. The impact was deliberate, a show of strength, and Trix staggered as the floor fractured into a spiderweb. Garrison’s hands crackled with electricity once more, and she had no choice but to run. A gust of wind passed her, and suddenly Garrison was standing in her path. So, he had super speed as well. Oh, joy.
Trix loosed both barrels of her shotgun in his face at point-blank range. It did little, if any, harm, but it made her feel better, so fuck it. It also bought a couple of seconds, as the smoke cleared, in which she was able to run for cover. She made for a maze of reinforced junction boxes, intending to work her way in the direction of the power point, but this tactic proved ineffective as Garrison, with a simple gesture, swept each and every box into the air.
Trix yelped as tons of metal slammed about like a child’s building blocks, and even through the clamour, she could hear Garrison’s laughter. And then she knew why he laughed. Two junction boxes had impacted with water storage tanks, and gallons and gallons of their contents were spilling onto the floor. Toying with her, Garrison launched a lightning bolt into the flood; it landed in water that was near, but not yet touching, her feet, sparking, hissing, and spitting. The merest contact with the water and she’d be dead.
Dodging lightning bolts and water, Trix got out of there as fast as she could. She almost made it, but then she made a misstep—one lousy misstep—and lightning met water met the sole of her boot. Even its insulation wasn’t enough to stop the charge penetrating—the sole melted away and sharp teeth bit the side of her leg, sending a filigree of blue tendrils through her thigh and up into her hip. It jolted her, and clothes smoking, she crashed awkwardly to the floor.
Then Garrison was straddling her. Grabbing her by the throat. The eyes that flared with anger belonged as much to Kh’Borian as they did Garrison, and in seeing that, Trix knew where lay her chance to stay alive. This idiot had no concept of what was happening, and while the truth of his situation had just hit her, it still completely eluded him. All she needed to do was play for time. She reckoned s
he wouldn’t need to play for long.
“So, tell me again,” she said, “just what Kh’Borian promised you.”
“A new world,” Garrison said. “Our domain.”
“And what will this domain consist of, moron? Sucking grapes in your palace while your thugs patrol the streets? While Sheila Uong patrols your sheets? Oh, yeah, I caught you ogling her tits in the boardroom. But it ain’t gonna happen. You’re only going to be the first of billions of dead.”
“I was thinking that would be you.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? The world that’s coming is no world at all. No palaces, no streets, no Sheila, no thugs, and most of all—most of all—no you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“How do you suppose Kh’Borian is arriving? In his evil underwear? Well, I don’t think it’s going to work that way. And you know why? Do you want me to tell you, Garrison?”
“Tell me what?”
“That armour you’re wearing—it doesn’t belong to you.”
Garrison looked puzzled, and then realisation hit him. At about the same time Kh’Borian did. The flesh of Garrison’s face began to ripple; he raised his hands to feel it, only to find his hands were rippling, too.
“Yep,” Trix said, pulling herself from under his arching form. “The seven suppressors are focals for Kh’Borian, but they wouldn’t have done him much good scattered all over the place, would they? He needed someone stupid enough to gather them for him—to create, if you like, an eighth focal. And the eighth focal is you.”
Garrison lurched towards her, but all she had to do was step out of the way.
“Did you really think a demigod needs a corrupt, venal, power-hungry piece of shit to rule a hell dimension by his side? Get over yourself, you stupid twat.”
Garrison roared, staggered, tried to strike. His legs went out from under him, and he dropped to his knees. His flesh rippled further, and he stared with bulging eyes whose veins were already beginning to implode.
“No, no, no … he promised.”