No Darker Fate

by John Corwin

  For some reason, that idea revolted her. Normal humans were barbaric, crude, and mostly unredeemable. Despite Andre's harsh words for the Statists' point of view, the idea of enforcing strong government rule from superior beings seemed like a good idea. Just great. She wasn't even a "superior being" yet and already she had plans for world domination. Power corrupts. Be careful.

  "I'm in."

  Andre exhaled. Marissa's face regained some color.

  "Can you attune me now?" Alexia asked. "I want to get started."

  Chapter 24

  Tollee smelled dust and aged leather. She pried open her eyelids and saw black laced with white cracks. She pushed herself up and looked around. An old leather couch with overstuffed cushions supported her. She was in an apartment. A tiny one. A bed sat a few feet away. Behind it was a kitchen sink and cabinets. To the right, the doorway to a bathroom. She got off the couch and swayed then knuckled her forehead as pain lanced through it.

  Being on the roof was the last thing she remembered.

  "Hello?"

  Silence greeted her. She entered the bathroom and cringed at her appearance. Her hair was matted. A streak of roofing tar decorated one cheek. A folded towel and washcloth sat on the closed toilet. Atop them sat a note from Jason telling her to shower if she wanted and to lock up if she left. He was at work. The phone number and address were written at the bottom.

  Tollee disrobed and hopped in the tiny shower stall. After a thorough scrubbing, she felt much better. Her headache dissipated. The events of the day wandered through her mind and she felt like a fool. Or had that been yesterday? She didn't know what time it was.

  Something suddenly groped at her mind. She went on full alert. The presence wormed past her defenses and hammered them to nothing.

  Where are you, girl?

  It was Arbiter Martin. His anger clouded her emotions like raw sewage in a pristine lake.

  I had an accident. I'm better now.

  Come to me. Now.

  His presence jerked away. She gasped and fell to the shower floor, stunned. When she recovered, rage overpowered the hurt. He couldn't treat her this way. But he had and he would unless she did something about it. Running away obviously wouldn't work. His reach was infinite, or so it seemed. She would go to him and do what he wanted for now. She had to plan her next moves well to trick him, but her solution was obvious.

  Arbiter Martin had to die.

  Tollee plopped down on Jason's couch and stared at the peeling paint on the wall for several minutes, her mind churning through the possibilities. The easiest way involved exiting the Blight right behind him and shooting him. She could steal a gun easily enough, but could she pull the trigger? Probably not. What about Lucas Fowler? He might be very interested to discover who his tormentor was. He might be interested to learn the terrible things Martin had done to him. She'd have to omit her involvement or Lucas would kill her on the spot.

  On the way out, Tollee took note of Jason's address. She hesitated for a moment then wrote down her cell phone number on a scrap of paper and put it on his fridge. He was chum, but she could probably trust him. After all, he'd taken care of her after a mind-blowing failure in drug experimentation. Really, how stupid could she be? Drinking after chum, taking their drugs. It was a wonder he hadn't simply raped her while she was unconscious. Terror and disgust took a train ride up her throat. She gagged.

  Tollee entered the Blight and gave herself a quick examination. No blood in her panties. She didn't feel sore. Her hymen didn't feel broken. Then again, she wasn't sure what that would feel like. Martin had neglected sexual education. Not that she wanted a skeezy old man to tell her about the birds and the bees. She'd sneaked into an adult theater some years ago and watched porn to get an idea of the physics involved. Talk about nasty. The fluids and body parts not to mention the impossible positions had convinced her to swear sex off for life. Lately, though, something had changed. Urges and desires had arisen that seemed to make sex less disgusting.

  "Why am I thinking about that now?" she asked herself.

  The smog and dust of the Blight were starting to irritate her nose, and her head began to ache again. Time to get a move on. The Blight would be a miserable place to get trapped in. A sudden idea occurred to her, one that might solve her arbiter problem.

  She arrived at Martin's house a half-hour later. He wore khakis, a button-up shirt, and sneakers.

  "We slumming today?" Tollee asked.

  "Travelling. Lucas Fowler has vanished."

  "Can't find him on your brain-dar?"

  Martin gave her a reproving look. He didn't seem to appreciate her inventive vocabulary. "Someone may have captured him. I imprinted certain safety precautions to prevent him from inadvertently identifying me, but he's grown into a unique tool, too precious to give up at this point."

  "So you still want to capture him."

  "Of course."

  "Where are we going?"

  "To his last location."

  Their first stop was Lucas's apartment complex. Tollee hopped them across town but when they reached the apartment buildings, the sight that awaited shocked them.

  "Looks like a tornado came through here," she said.

  Martin looked at a man who was shouting orders to others. Tollee viewed him in the Blight and saw a narrow tendril snake into the man's head. The man continued to jabber on without taking notice of the pulsing probe spying on his thoughts. After a few minutes, Martin unplugged his probe and it flickered out of existence.

  "Detective Evans was most helpful. Lucas was attacked by a ghoul. That's the term they've coined for the resurrected Scions. I'm amazed chum are willing to admit to such a thing. Usually they're quite reticent when it comes to the supernatural." He sighed. "Apparently a rather fierce fight broke out and Lucas left after defeating and chaining an unconscious ghoul to a bike rack. Unfortunately, Evans doesn't have any further details. Two more ghouls showed up and wreaked serious havoc after that. A woman named Alexia Sciouris provided him with further information, but none of it pertinent."

  Hope blossomed in the midst of Tollee's dread at hunting down Lucas. "Dead end?"

  "Not quite. I want you to look for residuals."

  "Um, what're those?"

  "I'm going to send out a pulse. If you view the pulses through the Blight, you should see residual Blight scars where entry occurred."

  "A pulse?"

  "I'm sure you've seen my probes in the Blight. I will radiate a solid burst of them. It's very draining and I can only cover a small area, so find the Blight scars quickly."

  "What about the police? They're going to look at us funny if we starting wandering around the crime scene. Can we do this from inside the Blight?"

  "No, I can't perform this particular feat from within."

  Interesting. Tollee wondered what else couldn't he do from inside. She took them into the Blight so they could get past the police cordon unseen, then phased back to Normal. She kept her sight, however, within the Blight so she could see Martin's pulse. He started in the parking lot. A sphere of white light pulsed from his head but faded within a hundred feet. At the very edge of his second pulse, she noticed something strange. At one point, the light warped like smoke being sucked into a funnel. The pavement was cracked in that area and a large spot of black had blossomed around the crack.

  She directed Martin closer. His next pulse highlighted a massive scar in the air. She described it.

  "That's unlikely. Blight scars are usually very fine. What you're describing sounds like a rupture."

  Usually when Tollee entered the Blight, it was like sliding through an expanding slit that closed once she was through. This one looked like a bus had gone through it. "Whoever made this didn't know what they were doing or what they were capable of."

  "Most disturbing, child. According to the information I gleaned from Evans, this episode happened yesterday. Any Blight scars should be little more than healing slits in the quantum fabric."

  "Do the sca
rs totally heal?"

  "Oh yes. They must or I'm sure this dimension and the Blight would merge."

  Tollee didn't want to think about living in that nightmare. "Why hasn't someone accidentally stumbled inside this one?"

  "A quantum membrane seals scars off a few seconds after use. For all practical purposes, this scar is closed solid objects."

  "Is this what you were looking for then?"

  "According to Evans, the ghouls from this area. I'd wager this was their exit point. The bloody things can enter the Blight. Amazing."

  "But they were executors."

  "Indeed they were. They apparently share some of Lucas Fowler's unique abilities." He laughed like a giddy old geezer. "I suppose his abilities are no longer unique. My, my, what a find this lad has been."

  Tollee wished he didn't look and sound like a kindly old grandfather talking fondly of his favorite grandson. She'd long ago learned he was anything but kind or grandfatherly. She should abandon him in the Blight to die and be done with his insane plans, but she couldn't overcome the guilt that wrenched her guts when she tried to do it. She and Martin continued their search closer to Lucas's apartment. The police seemed to think they were residents and didn't restrict them from looking around so long as they didn't enter the parking lot. Tollee hopped with Martin inside Lucas's apartment. They poked around for a while, discovering two scars inside his apartment, both about the same age. Tollee had almost missed them. Unlike the gap in the parking lot, these were more like wrinkles in the air.

  "What now?" she asked.

  "We track them. I'll channel a pulse inside. You tell me where it comes out."

  His pulse exited from another scar a few feet away.

  "He didn't use this one for translocation," Martin said. "We've looked everywhere in here. Back outside again."

  They finally found a scar in the woods next to the building. Martin's pulse entered it and emerged from another scar on the roof of the building. Tollee took him there. The next hop was several hundred yards. The one after that even further as whoever had done the hopping had used tall buildings for maximum view distance. When they hit the opposite side of the Atlanta skyline, Tollee couldn't find the next exit.

  "It must be really far because I can't see your pulse."

  "You disappoint me, child. Any seeker worth their salt could find it. Trust your instincts. Your eyes should home in on irregularities."

  "How am I supposed to be good at this? You just told me about it today." Tollee fought to keep from screaming and to keep her thoughts from turning murderous.

  Martin took her hand and patted the top of it. "There, there, dear. You'll get it right. Do what I said and you'll find it. Relax. Let your eyes find it for you." He clenched his pipe and inhaled several times before giving her the nod.

  Tollee viewed the Blight and relaxed, keeping her gaze on the horizon. Something snatched her attention to the right. Her eyes glanced that way by reflex, but she didn't see anything. Martin sucked another breath from his pipe and released another wave. This time, Tollee saw the faint exodus of energy from a point nearly a mile away. She had to use two hops to get there, concerned she might hop them fifty feet up in the air by accident. She kept her second hop sixty or so feet shy of the next scar so hers wouldn't interfere with Martin's pulses.

  After several tortuous hours of searching and tracking, Martin called a halt. His face had paled considerably and his knees wobbled. Tollee encouraged him to keep going, thinking he might simply die of exhaustion and spare her the trouble of committing murder. Instead, he booked a hotel room, went inside, and collapsed on the bed. Tollee thought about hopping back to Atlanta but gave up on it. Too far, too much trouble. They were somewhere in Missouri. No telling where Lucas had gone in all this time. He was half insane and on the run. The exercise of finding him, however, was proving very enlightening.

  On the upside, Martin had his limits. He'd let slip earlier that arbiters used each other as relays for very long distance communication. That same technique didn't work when trying to find an unattached Scion, apparently, so if she ran far enough away, he probably couldn't find her. Smoke from his pipe recharged him. She wondered if cigarette smoke had the same effect. Maybe she could steal his tobacco and rob him of his energy. Another important fact she'd discovered was that Martin's abilities were much more limited inside the Blight. If he grew as exhausted tomorrow as he had been today, she could simply abandon him on one of her hops and leave him inside.

  He'd be dead of dehydration within days. Water inside the Blight wasn't drinkable. Like anything else inside the Blight, once it was moved, it would revert back to its original position a short time later. If the food inside the Blight weren't so rancid, it would be a bulimic's dream come true. Binging without purging. An infinite supply of food. Tollee imagined a resort inside the Blight filled with pastries and frighteningly thin women. She laughed at the absurdity.

  She hopped into a closed liquor store to nab a couple fifths of vodka to recharge her energy levels. She found a merry-go-round in a quiet park and sat down on it, watching the world spin slowly past while she drank. Her mind cycled through various ways she could end Martin's life. She steeled her resolve against her guilt. Tomorrow would be Martin's last day among the Normals.

  Tomorrow, he would find the afterlife on his own.

  Chapter 25

  Lucas groped blindly in the pitch black surrounding him and bit back a scream of fury. He didn't know how long he'd been imprisoned, but infinity seemed a short wait in comparison. A bare bulb dangling from a wire in the center of the room flicked on. Lucas squinted against the glare until his eyes adjusted. Dents and warps in the thick bars were now visible where he'd slammed himself against them during the night. The cage doors had seemed the weakest point, but the deadbolt holding it shut was too thick. The rest of the cage was embedded in concrete. He'd already attempted to tear it loose without success.

  Footsteps echoed down the stairwell. Phillip appeared.

  "You liar," Lucas said, unable to keep himself from slamming against the bars again. "I should have known."

  "I didn't lie. We have only your best interests at heart. My arbiter will join us shortly and make a thorough examination. Hopefully, she'll find you redeemable. If not, well, I don't want to ponder that."

  A tall plain-looking woman wearing a brown skirt entered the room. She had browned skin, brown eyes, and matching hair. Her narrow nose ended in a point. She walked up to Lucas's cage, her eyes wandering up and down. Lucas felt a strange sensation, like static electricity working its way through his hair and making it stand on end. It felt sickeningly familiar. He squeezed his eyes shut and his thoughts fragmented.

  The woman drew a sharp breath. "I'm Kate, Phillip's arbiter. You need to relax and let me do my examination. No harm will come to you." Her voice sounded as plain as her clothes.

  "What are you doing to me?"

  "Looking for the link to whoever controls you. Determining just how far gone you are."

  Lucas didn't believe her, not for an instant. But he didn't have a choice. He tried to relax. At first, her probe felt like static electricity. Then she seemed to dig in. It felt like someone was trying to crack open his head from the inside. His memories reeled past like watching a movie in fast forward.

  "Your controller is very far away. I'm having trouble tracing his link."

  Lucas groaned. "You're killing me."

  "No, but it might feel that way."

  The pain increased. Lucas staggered against the bars and squeezed his eyes shut. His brain seemed to throb. This was too much. Something wasn't right. He opened his eyes. A thin crack formed in the air and took his view inside the Blight. A thick pulsating worm of energy linked him to the woman, threading between the bars and flailing atop her head. He couldn't see where it intersected his head, but the sight appalled him. He backed away.

  Intuition told him this woman didn't care if she killed him. She wanted information.

  "What do you w
ant from me?" he asked.

  "Once she discovers who your arbiter is, we can report him to the faction of our choosing and earn favor," Phillip said.

  "You said they'd kill me."

  "They probably will."

  Lucas tried to close his mind off, to take control. He tried butting his head against the bars to no avail.

  "I'm in too deep for your defenses to stop me now," Kate said. "Might as well relax and enjoy the ride."

  "All this to brown nose the factions?" Lucas said between clenched teeth.

  Phillip shrugged. "We're tired of being independent. If we return to the Transcendists, we might as well go back in style. You're rather high on their list of priorities. Even the grand arbiters from both factions are involved."

  A smile played on Kate's lips. "I think I've found the link. Ooh, your arbiter is coming closer, searching. He might be close enough to detect you." She frowned in concentration. "I can almost see him."

  Lucas gripped the bars and screamed as white-hot agony tore into his skull, like someone was threading his ears with barbed wire. His view shifted from the Blight back to Normal. He tried to remember how he'd entered the Blight before. Forcing it didn't work. He had to ignore the pain long enough to relax his body and let it happen. Except he couldn't. The intense pain in his head caused his muscles to involuntarily cramp and tense. More than anything he wanted to escape. He squeezed his eyes shut and envisioned a silvery white line in the air. He felt a subtle change in pressure in his ears. Lucas opened his eyes. Before him, a silver wrinkle hovered. Remembering Phillip's description of hopping, Lucas fixed the bottom of the nearby staircase in his mind and slid inside the scar.

  The air turned musty and foul. Kate screamed and collapsed, her eyes vacant, body twitching. The thick worm of light thrashed atop her head, ending in a frazzled display of sparks. It flailed like a high-pressure water hose on the loose for a few seconds then dwindled. Phillip pushed himself off the wall and ran to her side. Lucas looked up the stairs toward the door at the top and freedom. He looked back at Phillip and thought about killing him and his arbiter. They deserved it.