Warden's Vengeance

by Tony James Slater

  Wow! I can’t believe we all made it back here alive.

  Even Loader, whose journey had been the most convoluted, had eventually been reunited with them.

  Just in time, too; Tris had a feeling they were going to need the talos badly.

  “Do we just wait in here?” he asked, gazing around the debris-strewn lobby.

  “No,” Kreon responded. “I’m afraid we do not.”

  Tris’ stomach clenched in sudden trepidation. He’d been putting off thinking about it, but it looked like the time was here. He tried to sound casual. “So, which way do we go?”

  “Up.” Àurea pointed towards the lift cluster, where presumably the dead body they’d encountered last time still languished. “The Portal will be at the top of the temple; nothing would be permitted to sit above it.”

  Kyra shouldered her heavy rifle and set off without asking. Tris instantly felt much better; for some reason he’d assumed he’d be doing this alone. Kyra couldn’t come with him through the Portal of course; if they were right, her powerful psychic abilities would be a death sentence. The same would have been true for him, except he had his dad’s pendant on a chain around his neck. The potent charm would be his only protection, closing down his talent for the Gift so thoroughly that the all-consuming madness beyond the Portal would not affect him.

  Or so he hoped.

  Oh God, he hoped!

  He’d finally achieved something with his life. Despite teetering on the brink of a moral crisis, he felt like he was doing good. The strange sense of destiny he’d always had as a child, that odd inkling that he was somehow different from the other kids — somehow special — had come back in spades. Here he was, on an alien planet, surrounded by the toughest band of adventurers he could imagine.

  And he was one of them.

  Together, they could do great things.

  And would do great things… Providing they weren’t leading him to his death.

  It was this rather depressing possibility that occupied his mind on the way up in the elevator.

  Loader was controlling their car as he had before, wirelessly hacking into a system that was still active despite the planet’s destruction, running on a back-up generator buried deep within the earth.

  All too soon they arrived at their destination.

  Loader had brought them straight to the top of the temple, and they walked out to be greeted by the twinkling of starlight coming in through the shattered roof. The entire top floor was a single massive room, big enough to swallow the warehouse back in Bristol five times over. At the far end, a dais carved from rock sprouted up through the floor, supporting a structure Tris had secretly hoped never to see.

  The Portal…

  It glimmered menacingly in the starlight, the alien markings on the thick stone frame seeming to writhe. Within that frame was a blackness that no light could touch; it was into this patch of insanity and terror that Tris would have to step.

  To be confronted by…

  What?

  He had no idea.

  None of them did.

  Even his father, by all accounts the only man to survive the journey, had been too busy fighting off his enraged comrades to get much of a look around.

  Well, that was the first time he’d gone through the Portal; the second time had killed him.

  No, scratch that — Kreon had killed him, by his own admission. Tris cast a sidelong glance at the Warden, noting the brace of pistols strapped around his environment suit.

  At least he came prepared.

  Tris had his glaive, secured to the waistband of his suit, as well as the heavy pulse rifle. As for how much good either of them would do in the strange, madness-inducing realm that lay beyond the Portal, that was anyone’s guess.

  All three of them mounted the ancient stone steps, coming face to face with the ominous doorway.

  “What if I can’t turn it on?” Tris asked.

  As if in response, the inky blackness inside the Portal began to move. Sluggishly at first, like treacle slowly warming, the surface rippled. Tris swallowed hard; he’d come close to losing his breakfast. The swirling blackness had an oily sheen to it, an unhealthy, unpleasant quality that was impossible to ignore.

  Both Kyra and Kreon wore masks of stone. Whether the Portal was affecting them the same way Tris didn’t know, but the sombre mood that descended drove home how serious this really was.

  There is at least a fifty-fifty chance that I will never come back from there. That this is the last rational act of my life.

  Tris swallowed again, and tried to steady his breathing. He’d never suffered from panic attacks, but he imagined this is what one felt like.

  It’s all good, he told himself. Dad did this. Once. And we’ve cracked it… I know we have.

  He just wished someone would tell his bladder that; all of a sudden he felt a powerful urge to pee.

  Kreon shrugged out of the straps that held his backpack on, and lowered it to the ground in front of him. “I want you to take Loader,” he said, his voice grave. “I have equipped his housing with a variety of sensors; the data he can gather is invaluable.”

  “Is it worth the risk?” Tris asked. He couldn’t help but include himself in that question.

  “I believe so,” Kreon replied. “We must discover the secrets of what lies beyond this doorway. If we are to survive as a species — if any species in the galaxy we know is to survive.”

  “Yeah…” Tris had never been fond of the old man’s pep-talks. “No pressure.”

  Kreon placed a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to know, you have my gratitude for this. If there were any other way…”

  “Ah, Kreon. Cheers and all that, but you’re full of shit! You’d push me through this thing from now till Christmas if you thought it would tell you about the Black Ships.”

  The Warden cracked a grin. “Why Tristan, I do believe you’re developing cynicism. You truly are on the path to becoming a Warden!”

  Tris socked him on the arm, his heavy gloves saving him from bruising his knuckles. “I guess I’d better go, before you start getting all mushy on me.”

  He turned to Kyra. “Look, I really am sorry about the… thing, with Evie.”

  She flapped a nonchalant hand. “Kid, people have been trying to kill me since before you were born. Evie’s nothing special. When you get back, we’ll go hunting.”

  “Great. Then, ah… will you tell Ella? If I don’t make it, I mean—”

  Kyra’s finger swept up, shushing him. “Just stick to the rules, and you can tell her yourself.”

  “There’s rules?” Tris glanced at Kreon. “You were going to tell me this, right?”

  “Just one,” Kyra said, that finger still hovering between them. “Don’t die.”

  Tris groped for a smart-ass comment, but the emotion he saw on Kyra’s face stilled his tongue. She was hiding it well, beneath her usual veneer of callous indifference, but for a second he’d caught a glimpse of something else — and he felt a lump forming in his throat, unbidden.

  Now he really did have to go, before he was the one to get mushy.

  Nothing cramped the style of a hardened warrior embarking on a suicide mission like bursting into tears as he set off.

  Grabbing the rucksack containing Loader, he wriggled into the straps. “Back soon, boss!” He threw Kreon a jaunty salute. Then he winked at Kyra. “Catch you later, Princess.”

  And pulling the straps of his bag tight, he stepped into the Portal.

  22

  The cold that assailed Tristan was absolute.

  Even through his thick vac-suit he felt it; icy tendrils reaching in through the joints, seeking out his tender, living flesh.

  It was unsettling, but nothing new; what was new, however, was that it never left.

  As he stumbled out the other side of the Portal, he half expected to find himself back in his dad’s basement in Bristol, with a silk shirt draped over his head.

  Nothing could be further from the truth
.

  The landscape that met his eyes was a blasted wilderness of barren rock. There was light, but it had an oddly diffuse, filtered quality, as though he was underwater. His arms and legs felt like lead; just moving required a huge amount of effort. And all the time, that terrible cold pierced him right through to the soul.

  “Kreon? Kyra?” he tried. It was a long shot, and he wasn’t surprised when he got no response.

  Then his comm unit crackled. “The range is too great,” Loader intoned. “As I understand it, we have left their universe entirely.”

  “And gone where?” Tris was scanning the environment for any clues, but all he could see was bare rock and a kind of silt-like sediment hanging suspended in the air. Assuming it was air.

  “Unknown,” Loader rumbled. “Our mission is to determine our current location, and to extract as much information about it as possible.”

  “Ha! I thought I’d just completed our mission by not going insane and forcing Kreon to shoot me.”

  “Patience,” the talos reminded him. “There is yet time for that to occur.”

  Tris shook his head in mock despair. “Next time I boldly go where no man has gone before, I’m going to ask for a less sarcastic sidekick.”

  Loader’s only reply was a barely audible bleep.

  Tris forced his legs to move, waddling forward up a small rise in the rock. “Is it supposed to be this hard to walk?” he asked of no-one in particular.

  “You are experiencing the effects of pressure,” Loader enlightened him. “Whilst it appears that we are in vacuum, in fact the space here is filled with a fluid of unknown properties. It is acting to provide force in all directions, which impedes movement through it.”

  “So, what? I should try swimming?” Tris reached the top of the rise and looked around. The ground fell away in front of him, leading to a flat plain that was criss-crossed by cracks and chasms. A slight haze rippled his vision as he looked into the distance; Loader was right. They were underwater. “Are we on a planet? Like on the ocean floor?”

  “Unknown,” Loader provided. Helpfully.

  “Well, I’m not getting any murderous intentions,” Tris pointed out. “Maybe that’s enough? Should we go back?”

  “We must obtain more data. Are there any other structures in the vicinity?”

  “Not that way. Not as far as I can see.” Tris turned on the spot, a slow and cumbersome action. What he saw behind him made his jaw drop inside his helmet.

  Portals…

  Dozens of them.

  Scattered across the landscape in no discernible order, the giant doorways loomed like sentinels from another age. Squinting, Tris thought he could make out something else; a shape to the area, a certain regularity… straight edges here and there, as though platforms had once existed here on different levels.

  It’s like a dock, he suddenly realised, Loader’s description of the liquid surrounding them prompting the leap. An intergalactic shipping hub… so old it’s disintegrated. He was put in mind of the pyramids, and other splendours of Earth’s ancient past. If I go down there and find hieroglyphics, I am totally putting a video up on YouTube.

  He was feeling much calmer now, with the threat of imminent death subsiding. The pervasive cold still chilled him to the bone, but he started to think it made sense, in terms of water. The sea floor would be as cold as it was possible to be, without the water actually freezing solid.

  “I am sensing vibrations,” Loader said, breaking into his reverie.

  Tris turned; the talos was on his back, so he assumed whatever he was sensing was coming from behind him. “I don’t see any—”

  And then he did see something. Or he thought he did. The light seemed to come from everywhere, so it was hard to find shadows, but a flicker of motion in the distance caught his eye. “There’s something there,” he said.

  “I believe this would be an appropriate juncture to return to Oracle,” Loader suggested.

  “Yeah…” Tris kept looking, still not sure he’d seen anything at all. “I think you’re right…”

  And then he saw it. A tendril of deeper darkness, almost impossible to see against the distant gloom. And behind it…

  “The sun’s setting,” he said, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The darkness had suddenly grown, swelling up like a sponge to absorb the light. The pressure on his suit was increasing, buffeting him as though waves were slamming into him. “Definitely time to go!”

  He turned, cursing the sluggishness of the suit, and forced his limbs into motion. The Portal was further away than he remembered; his enthusiasm at not dying straight away had got the better of him.

  He felt it now too; the force around him was less even. Sometimes the empty space ahead of him gave way, like a bubble collapsing; sometimes he hit patches as hard as concrete.

  Move! He told himself, struggling to do just that.

  “The vibrations are caused by movement,” Loader informed him.

  “I have to move!” he yelled at the talos.

  “Not your movement.”

  Tris felt a sudden blanch of fear. The cold that permeated every fibre of his being dropped another five degrees. Still wading forward, he half-turned to get a look over his shoulder.

  What he saw would stay with him forever.

  All light behind him had been blotted out by a shadow of gargantuan proportions. It spread out on all sides, swallowing any hint of shape or form as it blanketed both ground and sky. Tris put his head down and poured strength into his legs, reaching ahead with his arms to scoop at the viscous liquid in his way. It was like fleeing an eclipse; the shape behind him grew instead of moving, able to advance at a rate he couldn’t dream of matching. Already he could see it everywhere he looked; it was overhead as well as behind, casting a veil over the mottled ground at his feet.

  Still Tris ran, a race in slow-motion that he was doomed to lose. He looked back, unable to control the urge to know what was coming for him. He felt the pressure like a hose turned on his back, but still the substance in front held him up, crushing him.

  And then he saw it.

  From inside the blackness, something was reaching for him. It was a tendril — or a tentacle, an appendage, a something. It was grasping for him, he knew; and in the next second, he felt it glance off his suit.

  “NO!” he threw himself forward, thrusting with both hands as well as his legs. He’d gained some momentum, and this move helped; he propelled himself toward the Portal, moving faster as he closed the distance.

  “It comes!” Loader’s voice was loud in his ears, an electronic squeal of terror.

  Must. Get. Through! Tris forced his legs to bend, feeling them impact the hard surface beneath him. He poured every last ounce of effort into straightening them, forcing against the wall of resistance he was swimming through.

  His fingers closed on the primordial stone of the Portal, scrabbling for grip. At the same time, a lance of pure cold slammed into his back, stealing his breath. It was a physical pain like nothing he’d ever felt; like his body burned with cold, consumed by it as it would be by fire.

  But the extra force imparted just enough momentum for his outstretched hands to hit both sides of the doorway; with a final Herculean effort he levered himself between the stones, and through, into the abyss.

  Light assailed him.

  And noise.

  His ears were ringing, driving spikes of pain through his skull. He fell to his knees, a scream tearing out of him beyond his power to control it. Heat and cold pounded him alternately, like waves in the ocean, and he fell, landing on his face hard enough to see stars. Clawing at his helmet, he flung himself over onto his back. His mind shrieked a warning and he recoiled from the invisible shape that reared up to claim him, sucking at him with a force like gravity. He scrabbled backwards, his hands and feet slipping on the smooth floor, and a cry of mingled pain and terror escaped him.

  A blow to his helmet snapped his head sideways.

  “Tris!”
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br />   Suddenly, he could see again. He blinked up, his eyes watering.

  Kyra was standing over him, the barrel of her rifle aimed squarely at his face.

  “N— no!” he managed. Slumping back onto the ground he raised both hands, warding off the blow that he prayed would never come.

  “Tris?” Kyra’s voice was coming through his intercom.

  And a second later, it echoed inside his head.

  Tris? Are you okay?

  I… I am. Not. I don’t know. But Kyra, I’m not crazy!

  Oh yeah? I’ve heard that before. Mostly from crazy people.

  Tears welled up, impossible to stop; Tris let out a giant sob of relief, as he realised he was back in his own little corner of reality. “I’m not crazy!” he yelled, abusing the ears of everyone connected to his intercom. “I’m not crazy!”

  Kyra lowered her rifle. Shit, whatever happened, it must have fixed you. ‘Cause you were crazy as hell when you went in.

  Tris lay on his back, letting the meagre warmth his suit was generating flood into his body. He felt like screaming in pure delight; only the sight of Kyra, her rifle still dangling dangerously close, stopped him.

  He gazed up at her instead. “Hey! Were you going to shoot me?”

  “I was hoping not to.”

  He gave her what he hoped was a strongly accusing stare. “Shouldn’t Kreon be the one to execute his apprentice?”

  Kyra shrugged one shoulder. “Meh. It was my turn. He killed the last one.”

  She offered him a hand and he took it, albeit reluctantly. Aw. I could just lie here for the rest of the day.

  ‘Fraid not, kiddo. We’ve got work to do.

  As she pulled him to his feet, something occurred to him. Uh, Kyra? I can hear you.

  No kidding!

  What does that mean?

  I’d guess it means your little necklace doodah has run out of batteries. You must have given it quite a workout.

  Now he thought about it, Tris could feel a cold spot where the metal fitting of the gem was pressed up against his chest. Always before, it had been warm. He wished he could take the pendant out and have a look at it, but that would have to wait until they were somewhere with air to breathe.