It wasn’t the literal basement, of course: It was the seventh floor. But it was where IT lived, so Sigmund figured it was going to end up being called the Basement no matter how high it was above sea level.
Not that the seventh floor was very high, particularly not compared to the exec offices, sitting way up above the skyline. LB was not a modest building: a thing of status and towering glass, one that seemed to get rebuilt every few years, get a new look and new floors. Sigmund figured that must cost LB a fortune, but the company was like that. Sigmund could hardly complain. Not when he got to spend most of his day nestled in the enormous expanse of light and glass and green. Lots of green: It was impossible to sneeze in LB without blowing snot all over indoor plants or “living walls.” Or whole actual gardens, trees and all, on the lower levels. Some environmental initiative, staff health or whatever.
LB loved things like that. Break rooms full of hammocks and beanbags and Inferno consoles. A gym. Even a day care in one of the annex buildings. And a chef in the cafeteria, responsible for at least ten percent of Sigmund’s body weight. (Because seriously: Best. Burgers. In town.)
It was a pretty sweet place to work, even for go-nowhere plebes like Sigmund Sussman.
Sigmund, who worked in IT ops. Third-level support stuff, when turning it off and on the first two times wasn’t enough.
It was a job. Not what he’d imagined doing as a kid, maybe, but money was money, and money turned into comic books and video games. Particularly given they were located, like, five seconds’ walk from Torr Mall, right smack bang in the heart of Pandemonium City.
Pandemonium. People got used to the name, growing up there. Some mining accident from the 1920s or whatever, back when there’d actually been a mine. Back before LB had taken over the place, like some enormous silicon cancer, gobbling up council and economy alike. Now everything Panda was LB, and everything LB was Panda. Anyone who wasn’t employed by the company itself was in some kind of support industry, like baristas at the coffee shops, pulling lattes for executives. Or barristers, pulling lawsuits for the same.
And Sigmund, turning things off and on.
—
Mornings were spent talking to Em, and then, when the boss emerged, flicking through the help desk system, looking for easy wins. Tickets Sigmund could send back to first or second level. That the monkeys could do, and should do, and would do, if they weren’t all a bunch of part-time kids who didn’t give a shit. Mailbox restores, profile resets, distribution-list creations, desktop reimages. Jobs that Sigmund would rather send back with a snarky thousand-word how-to guide in the comments field than touch himself.
That was all maybe an hour’s work, and fifteen percent of the overnight queue. The rest of the morning was the ten-minute stuff: anything Sigmund could knock off without a phone call to a customer. Server reboots and process kills. Log checking and clearing. Reporting. Un-fucking fuckups made by the n-minus teams.
Low-hanging fruit. It was Sigmund’s system, and it worked. So long as anything more difficult—anything involving talking to anyone, or thinking about anything—could hold over until after lunch. Or, preferably, tomorrow.
Or, today, after the team meeting. Not one of their usuals, something New and Exciting, which left Sigmund grabbing his phone off the desk when his calendar started chiming. Team meetings always sucked. He figured he could at least get some Minecraft in while pretending to check emails.
The meeting room was down at the other end of the floor, near the kitchen. It was round, and made of glass, and Sigmund supposed the intent was to be “creative” and “hip.” Everyone on the floor called it The Box, said it was where the supervillains were kept after hours. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Darth Vader lived in the room when it wasn’t used.
The half a dozen people of Sigmund’s team were already assembled: Chewie and Boogs, Van and Steph, Michael and Divya. Plus Harrison, their boss.
And, today, someone else.
“Okay, so as you can probably already tell, we’ve got a new starter coming on board,” Harrison, standing in one half of the glass cylinder, said new starter at his side.
The rest of them were sitting on the seats ringing the opposite side of the circumference. From his left, Sigmund heard Van mutter, “I didn’t think we were hiring.”
“This is Lain,” Harrison continued. “Lain, uh—”
“Laufeyjarson,” Lain finished, patient and smiling like he got people stumbling over his name a lot.
Tall, skinny. Coppery hair hanging in loose waves down to his chin. Freckles, attractively understated piercings, bright green eyes, and the edge of a tattoo peeking above his collar. Sigmund heard Steph whistle under her breath.
“Right,” Harrison said. “Lain’s got a background in ops, same as the rest of you, but he’ll need some help getting on his feet in the company. He’s gonna need a buddy.”
Hands shot up, accompanied by giggling. Most of said hands had long slender fingers and brightly manicured nails. Sigmund got it. Lain was hot, this was IT. The women would take what they could get.
He flipped out his phone, checked it was on mute, and launched Minecraft.
Which was about when Harrison said, “Sussman. There’s a free desk next to you, right?”
Sigmund looked up. Everyone was staring at him, new guy included.
Crap.
“Uh…yeah. I guess.”
Crap. That was his desk. Except, well. Obviously not his his desk. Just…the desk between him and anyone else. The Buffer. Window on one side, no one on the other. Meaning no one to see Sigmund playing Minecraft, or watching Let’s Plays on YouTube, or reading comics. Or programming Saga, line by painful line.
Not that Sigmund would be doing that sort of thing. Not on company time.
“That’s settled then,” Harrison said, and it was. “Lain, you’re with Sussman. He’ll show you the ropes. Now, for the rest of you…”
Team meetings. Lain sat himself down on the edge of the circle. Sigmund tried not to make eye contact.
—
“So, um. This is a pretty nice desk.”
Half an hour later, after the too-long, too-boring trip ’round the team, everyone spewing out as much as they could think of to try and impress Harrison with their corporate indispensability.
Lain had a satchel. Some hip distressed thing in army green. That described a lot of Lain, really: hip and distressed, from his skinny jeans to his unseasonal scarf. All he was missing were the nerd glasses.
Sigmund, at least, wore the latter because he had to.
“Yeah. It’s okay.” It overlooked Osko Park, the faintest smudge of lake glimmering just beyond. Then, because silence was awkward and small talk was coming whether he liked it or not: “Where were you before this?”
Lain waved a hand, something halfway between two gestures. “Around,” he said. “I kinda…went traveling for a while after uni, you know how it is.”
No, Sigmund didn’t. And neither did Lain.
Because that was the other thing, Sigmund’s Real Actual Talent. The thing he never got to mention. The one thing that maybe, just maybe, made him special. Just a little.
Sigmund was never fooled by lies, and could pick them, every time. Like now. Nothing in Lain’s voice or in his posture. Just a scratching at the back of Sigmund’s mind. Something prickly. Something wrong.
“Oh. Cool. I never did any of that.” Calling the new guy a liar within moments of meeting him? Probably career limiting. Sigmund decided to lay off.
“Never got the urge to see the world?” There was something loaded in that question, maybe. Something sharp in Lain’s strange green gaze. It was hard to meet that gaze. Like Lain was always focused somewhere two inches behind where he should be, beneath the skin and bone.
Sigmund looked away, throwing himself down into his chair, watching Lain unpack the requisite minimalist hipster office possessions from his bag: a tablet, a phone, a charger, some headphones.
“Nah, not really. I mean
, it’s so fucking far away, you know?” And, yeah. Maybe not so cool to swear in front of the new guy either. But Lain didn’t look like he minded, so: “Some guys from high school did the whole Contiki tour thing. Saw the photos on Facebook, never really appealed.”
“Hm.” Lain spun his headphones around on his finger. “I guess I traveled a lot when I was younger. With my brother, mostly. It does get old.” And that, at least, was true.
Sigmund couldn’t help himself: “Brothers or traveling?”
Lain barked laughter, a single sharp snap. “Both,” he said. When he grinned like that, his canines hung over his bottom lip. Just a little.
“Well…I wouldn’t know about that, either.” Sigmund’s own grin was apologetic. “Only child.”
Lain flicked his eyes up, then back down. Bit his lip then finally said, “Me too, at first. But I, ah. I ran away from home pretty young. My ‘brother’…we weren’t related, you know? He was older, and looked after me.”
“That’s…nice?” said Sigmund. Except it wasn’t. He could tell it wasn’t. Something in Lain’s voice, in his posture. Some awkward stiffness.
“Yeah,” said Lain, running a hand through loose curls. “We had fun. Maybe too much fun. And sometimes, too much fun…We were always gonna end up dead or in jail. And, well. I’m not the one who’s dead, am I?”
“Oh, man,” said Sigmund. “That’s harsh, man.” Because what else were you supposed to say when some guy you’d met only five minutes ago confessed to being an orphaned ex con?
Lain must have picked up on the hesitation, huffing laughter and looking away. “Sorry to dump,” he said. “It’s just this is an office. People talk. I just…wanted someone to know the real story first.”
Sigmund pushed his glasses up his nose, blinking and trying to focus on anything but Lain.
Lain, who added, “But, look. Hey. I did my time, did my cert, got snapped up by LB on the outreach. So”—he grinned, gesturing broadly—“here I am.”
“Yeah,” said Sigmund. “Here you are.”
Oddly, only that last part had been a lie.
TWO
This part I piece together only later, dredged up from the fragments of memories and broken bodies left behind. That means some of it is lies. But, maybe, they’re entertaining lies.
And what are entertaining lies if not a story?
So. It starts within a cave, dark and foul, stinking of piss and shit and hatred. For one thousand years this cave has heard exactly two sounds and two alone. The first, that of an endless liquid drip, is incessant. A clock that marks the countdown till the end of time itself.
The liquid is not water. It’s venom, falling from the ever-open jaws of a snake, hung high up in the cave. Beneath the drips lies the body of a man. He’s rotting and wasted, as dead as any living thing can be, chained to three great rocky slabs by the enchanted entrails of his murdered son. When the venom drips, it falls into his face, and the man screams.
That’s the second sound, and the mortals say his agony is the cause of earthquakes.
It’s lucky, then, that his screaming isn’t endless. Most of the time the venom is caught in a bowl, held up by a woman’s shaking hands. She isn’t much better kept than her near-dead husband, a puppet made from bones and brittle skin, blue eyes faded into dullness and blond hair matted into clumps. Once upon a time, she used to be a goddess. Now she waits.
One day, the dripping stops. And the woman knows her time has come.
—
She leaves her husband in the cave, freed of his chains and from his exile. According to a story written a thousand years before, today is the day he marches off to war. His wife has other plans, starting with whacking him across the head with the bowl she’s holding.
He won’t wake up for a while.
His wife leaves him, walking from the cave, step by painful, shaking step. If she stumbles, no one in the dark is there to see it.
At the mouth of the cave, an army waits. A swarming sea of monsters, all vicious teeth and scything claws, and of the dead, with rotting skin and rusting steel. At the front of the horde is a woman. Standing at least a head higher than her army, she’s dressed in black robes that hide her eyes and hands, leaving only a lipless rictus grin and feet like the talons of a raven.
The woman has wings, small and flightless, and horns, twisted and huge. Her name is Hel, and once upon a time she was banished from the realm of gods, cursed to watch over the dishonored dead. Thieves and murderers, oath-breakers and cowards.
She is their queen, and she’s also the bound god’s daughter.
The woman who stumbles from the dark is not Hel’s mother, but Hel loves her all the same. She gestures, and hollow-eyed serving girls come forth to clean the woman’s skin and peel off her stinking rags. The girls re-dress her in a man’s tunic and trousers. Gray-skinned page boys bring forth food, dead warriors produce a chair. Thus does the woman eat her first meal in an aeon. Her first, and her last.
The dead honor her, for today she honors them.
Today, she dies.
—
There’s a ship called Naglfari, made from the nails of the dead. It sets sail carrying Hel’s forsaken army, the bound god’s wife standing at the helm.
Dressed in heavy armor fit to hide her sunken cheeks, she leads them into battle.
The prophecy says this place is her husband’s, that he should ride the dead ship off to war, should clash with gods until he falls. This is the Wyrd his wife would break. At her side, a huge beast not unlike a wolf sits waiting, blood dripping from its eager jaws. It too knows this is the day they die.
The ship lurches and groans, water spraying on the deck. The seas beneath it roil, churning in an endless, white-capped swell. Every now and then something breaks the cold black surface; a fin, a claw, an enormous, staring eye.
The woman sees this, and she smiles.
She goes to war, and she has monsters at her side.
—
Three armies rise. From the sea, the dead wait upon their ship. From the south, the lands burn black as a roaring fire eats the ground. From the east, ice and snow blanket all in unending, silent cold.
This is the way the world ends. In pestilence, in flame, and in frost. Three great calamities, marching forth to meet the gods.
When they clash, the whole world beneath them bleeds.
—
Everyone has a fate, even the sun and the moon, devoured by the wolves that chase them.
The gods fall too, as their Wyrd would have it. Kings and warriors, broken and torn, until the ground is frozen mud and the sky is black with the ash of burning corpses. Ravens circle overhead, barely waiting for souls to die before beaks like razors tear out guts and eyes.
This is war, and today the only victors are the birds.
—
The woman’s ax drips red with blood. She howls as she faces another foe. He’s one of the chosen dead, a warrior plucked from Hel’s domain and trained by gods to fight this futile war. Shields of living meat their masters throw against the hordes in endless waves, hoping to delay their own ends for moments more.
The woman hates them. She hates all of them. For herself and for her husband. For Hel and for the Wolf and for the Serpent. For her own children, and the dead she fights beside.
The gods will burn for what they’ve done. And the woman?
In death, she will have her victory.
—
Some things the woman changes. Other things she doesn’t. Her husband may not die this day but, to keep her ruse, the woman must fight his final battle for him.
Across the field, she sees her target, standing tall and bright, armor barely dented by the filth and blood around.
The sight of it sends hate burning through her gut and she launches herself toward him. He turns, and, through his armor, the woman sees a smile.
Today, he thinks he slays a foe.
He is wrong, and the knowledge makes the woman grin, hidden behind steel and runes
that let no one see she is not who they think.
Fools. Her husband would never wield an ax to war.
Her foe, meanwhile, wields a sword and wields it well, sharp blade slicing even as he brings his buckler up to stop the woman’s ax.
They both know how this will go. Yet neither wants to be the first to fall.
—
The battle is a necessary lie. Perhaps the woman draws first blood, grinning as she smells it on her blade. Perhaps her foe trips her on the bloodied ground, sending her sprawling even as he hefts his sword. She kicks him and he bends double, hands grabbing between his legs as he curses someone who still dreams beneath the Tree.
The woman howls with laughter and with rage, long since taken by the red mist of the berzerk. She scrambles to her feet, raising her ax once more. This time, her foe is not so fast in the raising of his shield, catching the blade against his shoulder. He cries out, stumbling backward, and the woman lunges forward to finish what was started.
She doesn’t feel the sword when it slips between her ribs.
She does feel the resistance as her weapon kisses bone. It’s not a clean cut, and she raises her arms for a final strike, this time severing sinew and spine alike.
Her foe’s body falls, his head bouncing as it hits the ground a moment later.
The woman gives one final laugh before she feels the pain of steel, feels the hot-slick oozing of her blood.
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