“The First will only see me,” Christine said, confirming my worries. “He, or it, or whatevs, he doesn’t like people. I think he’s been getting information out of my head at night, through those dreams I can’t remember. And I’m getting some stuff from him, too. He wants to see me by myself.”
“Not a good idea. I don’t want you to be alone with that thing.”
“You’re not getting jealous on me, are you?” Christine said. The anxiety behind the words made the joke fall flat.
“If you’re into child-alien hybrids who like living in swamps, who am I to judge?” I replied and was rewarded by a faint smile. “I just want to back you up. Can’t do it if you ditch me, you know.”
“I know, but what are going to do, turn back if he wants to have a private audience? You’re sweet, Mark, but I think I can take care of myself.”
“You can. You have.” I took another swig of crappy orange juice. “Okay. Just be careful, okay?”
“I will.” She ran her hand down the side of my face, the old ordinary face I was still wearing to keep our real identities from Vasyl. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. As I straightened up, her eyes widened, looking at something behind me. I turned around.
A thick white mist was rolling out through the forest, thick billowing clouds of it, heading toward our camp. Vasyl looked at the fog with a frown and muttered what I thought was the Ukrainian equivalent of “What the fuck?”
“That’s him,” Christine said. “He’s calling to me.”
“Fuck.” I didn’t want her to go in there. I didn’t want her to go without me. We hadn’t been separated for long pretty much since we’d been reunited in Chicago, and the idea of her disappearing into the mist left me feeling anxious and scared.
The rolling mist came to a stop about twenty feet away from the campsite, a thick wall of grayish white fog. I wasn’t an expert, but I was pretty sure normal mist didn’t do that.
“I’ve got to go, Mark. And, uh, I’m going to need the red rock of doom.”
“Would you be upset if I told you I left it in my other coat?”
“Mark!”
“Okay, okay, Frodo. I got it right here.” I took the Lurker’s creepy rock and gave it to her. She avoided looking directly at it while she quickly stowed it in a pocket. “Have fun.”
“You know it won’t be any fun until I see you again. And I will come back, soon.”
“I know you will,” I lied. Or maybe it was less of a lie than a wish. I hugged her tightly. “Watch your back. If that creep gives you any trouble, fuck him up quickly and get the hell out.”
“I will.” She turned to Father Aleksander, who was watching us quietly. “Take care, both of you.”
“May God be with you,” Father Alex said.
“Thank you. Uh, and also with you.”
Christine walked into the mist and disappeared from view.
Janus
The Space Between Spaces, March 20, 2013
Cassius Jones fought for his life in the endless dark.
He unleashed terawatts of energy onto his foe, becoming a lone beacon of light in the ink-black emptiness around him. Medved laughed and held on to him. Cassius knew he was hurting the giant, and that he could destroy him, if he had enough time.
He didn’t think he’d be given that time.
They were in the in-between realm, the place he visited while teleporting. He’d never spent more than a few seconds there. They were moving through the darkness, and he felt they were not alone there. Cassius tried to break free, but the Russian was at least as strong as he was.
A looming presence was coming closer, a cold pressure that radiated hatred and malice.
Meet my masters, a malicious mental voice announced gleefully. Meet my masters and join me.
He had to break free. He had to fight. He had to…
Star System 9183, Milky Way Galaxy, Year Nineteen (Personal Frame of Reference)
…win.
He had to win this time.
YOU STILL HAVE NOT LEARNED. I GROW WEARY OF YOUR EXISTENCE.
Go fuck yourself.
IS THAT MEANT TO BE AN INSULT? I WAS BORN A DI-SEXUAL INSEMINATOR AND RECEPTOR. I THEREFORE CAN, AS YOU SAY, FUCK MYSELF, THOUGH ANY OFFSPRING I PRODUCED IN THAT MANNER WOULD BE STERILE AND GENETICALLY FAILURE-PRONE. STILL, YOUR INTENT TO GIVE OFFENSE OFFENDS ME. FIGHT ME, CASSIUS-JONES, AND SUFFER.
The gelatinous cocoon holding Cassius in place dissolved, releasing him. He took to the air and prepared to give battle.
The key lay in the darkness trapped inside the alien’s aura. It had been isolated in an electro-magnetic field; the alien had not been able to excise it, only contain it. The Genocide feared the dark energy. Cassius had to release it somehow.
With a thunderous rumbling sound, the alien attacked.
Fire and lightning pierced Cassius’ defenses and tore at his flesh, just as they had in a hundred previous hopeless duels, but he ignored the pain as he put his plan into motion. His other attempts to release the darkness within the alien had failed, but he had learned from those failures. He bided his time, closed the distance and let the alien batter and burn him while he sought his target: the containment field holding the darkness at bay. Cassius let go of his shields and poured every erg of power he could generate into a narrow, surgical strike.
The containment field flared and died.
The Genocide screamed. His cry of shock and fury generated a shockwave that hurled Cassius across the length of a continent. Even from thousands of miles away, he felt the alien’s mental scream, a cry of terror this time, as the darkness spread through its aura.
Now or never. For a brief moment, he hesitated. Hope was far more terrifying than resignation. If it didn’t work, what then?
Now or never. He tried to open a gate to a point in space ten light minutes away.
The gate opened.
There were tears in his eyes as he entered the realm in-between and emerged in outer space, away from that accursed prison, away from the Genocide. The vacuum felt welcoming, felt laden with the promise of freedom. He leaped again and again, and did not stop until he was parsecs away, far enough that System 9183 was just another point of light in the sky.
He’d had enough. It was time to return to Earth and rest. He’d seen the future of the world, and he no longer cared. He just needed to go…
Charlotte, North Carolina, March 25, 2013
…home.
“Wake up! Wake up, you insufferable super-queen, and get out of my life!”
That plaintive voice was unmistakable. Cassius opened his eyes and found himself face to face with Javier. He was back in Javier’s penthouse, back where his retirement from worldly affairs had ended and this nightmare had begun.
“Javi,” Cassius said affectionately. His former lover froze and recoiled back.
“Don’t Javi me! You scared me half to death, popping up like that, and then you fell like a downed tree, right on top of my antique coffee table. You obliterated it, my priceless coffee table. And then I thought you were dead!”
“Javi…”
“Just don’t, all right? I almost called the cops. I almost did, and you know how much I hate cops in this redneck state, with their smirks and sidelong looks, but I almost called the cops, because I was scared out of my mind! I couldn’t find a pulse. I thought you were dead! What are you doing here anyway? I thought I made myself clear last week. I thought you knew how to respect boundaries!”
Cassius leaned forward and kissed Javier’s forehead, temporarily silencing him. “Thank you for not calling the cops, Javi. I’ll leave now.”
“Wait. I want to know…”
He teleported to the summit of Mount Everest, and arrived in the middle of a blizzard. Cassius let the snow and freezing gusts of wind wash over him. His cochlear implant let him know it was March 25. He’d lost five days, and had no idea what had happened during that time. Had Christine and the others managed to escape? He’d have to return to the US and try t
o contact Condor.
Unseen and unfelt, a tiny seed of darkness deep within him quietly began to grow.
Christine Dark
Pripet Marshes, Dominion of the Ukraine, March 25, 2013/Somewhere Else Altogether
We’re off to see the wizard.
Well, if by ‘we’ she meant her, and if by ‘the wizard’ she meant a creature that had once been a child and had been destroyed and remade into something else. She felt Mark’s worried emotions for several minutes until they finally faded off. Out of range, she guessed. At some point they would have to test her effective empathy range. In this case, the mist might be interfering with her powers.
She couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of her, but she never stumbled or ran into a tree or anything. It was as if she was being guided forward. Nah, scratch the ‘as if;’ she was being guided forward. The First could get into her head; he had already demonstrated that.
So she walked and walked some more, between trees and over frozen rivulets and bogs, up and down shallow hills. Christine lost track of time; she glanced at her wrist-thingy and discovered the screen had gone dark. Either the battery had picked a crappy time to die or this was all part and parcel of the Creepy Cosmic Teacher experience, which sucked. She wished that she could play some stuff off her playlist to cheer herself up during this seemingly endless walk. She tried to whistle a tune, but her lips were too dry and she wasn’t all that great at whistling anyway, so she gave up and kept walking in silence. The frozen forest was also quiet, too quiet. Christine felt like the only living thing in the world. She walked for what felt like hours or maybe days.
Something crunched unpleasantly under her foot. She looked down and saw she’d stepped on a piece of a human skull. Holy crap. But what really shocked her was that the skull piece was lying on a flat surface. A flat surface covered with asphalt, black with yellow lines painted on it. A road, in other words. Christine looked around and realized she wasn’t in a forest anymore; she was walking on a highway. She could see the faint outlines of cars through the surrounding mist.
Great, another vision. It couldn’t be real, since there weren’t supposed to be any highways in this neck of the woods. The First was making her see things. Just effing awesome. At least she wasn’t back in her old room, wearing Hello Kitty pajamas.
She kept walking, and now she could see cars, packed tightly in the mother of all traffic jams, filling the road. Desiccated corpses and skeletons were inside all the vehicles. Christine’s pulse quickened. It’s okay, it’s just a vision, it’s not real, who are you going to trust, your brain or your lying eyes? She wanted to trust her brain, but all her senses told her she was walking down a highway of death. The smell was real enough, a faded stench of long-decayed bodies, not strong enough to make her gag, but overlying everything like a thin slimy film.
A broken road sign lying flat on the road caught her attention. I-95 South. This road was in the US, which confirmed this couldn’t be real, because she hadn’t been walking that long. She kept going and left the sign behind as she made her way past dozens of coffins on wheels. No biggie, it’s all an illusion, just a little gift from the Ghost of Christmas Crappy.
This whole thing was so unnecessary. It had to be a vision of a future where Christine messed things up and the world ended. She already knew all about that. Showing her all this crap was redundant, stupid, and redundant. She was already planning on not letting this future happen, and this vision-thingy sucked as a motivational tool.
She stopped walking. This was ridiculous. “Hey, you!” she called out. “Yeah, I know, the future sucks. I’ve been told, okay? I don’t need to see any more, I get it already, okay?”
“Yeah, I felt exactly the same way, first time around,” somebody said behind her in a voice that was familiar and strange at the same time.
Christine turned around. A glowing woman was floating behind her, shining so brightly that she could barely see the outlines of her body and her face, with long flowing red hair that fluttered in a wind that wasn’t there. The mist retreated before her, leaving a large cleared area that revealed more cars with bodies inside them. Even though she couldn’t see the glowing figure very clearly, it was pretty obvious who she was. Christine had never liked the sound of her own voice when she heard it on tape or video; it always sounded different from when she heard it coming from her own mouth.
She was facing herself.
“It’s déjà vu all over again,” the other Christine said. “I know, lame, but that’s what I told myself when the stupid Ukrainian sprite sent me over here to meet my future self. Which is all kinda weird and meta and incestuous. But I promise, I’m not going to do exactly what the other me did the first time she met me. Just want to see if I can change things a little.”
Christine didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of anything to say, just gaped at her glowing other self.
Future Christine dimmed her aura a little bit. She wasn’t naked, like Christine had first thought when she saw her; she was wearing a skimpy bikini outfit that reminded her of…
“Lightning Stripper,” her alternate self said, completing her thought. “Her real name was Annie Arclight, by the way. She was kind of a b-word, but that’s cool, she’s dead now. Collateral damage from when I broke the Tower of Power. She and the rest of Chicago and a big chunk of the surrounding states. But I liked her wardrobe, so I took it off her dead body. Don’t worry, I washed it before I put it on.”
Oh, God. “You went Dark Side.”
“Yeppers. Sorry, Yoda. At some point, being nice stops being nice, and then it’s time to start getting real.” Glowing Christine giggled. “Crap, that’s what my future self said when I was where you are now. Except right after that, my future self tried to kill me. When she did, I ended up back in the First Neo’s hideout in the frozen swamp.”
“So are you going to try to kill me like the other you did?” Christine asked. This temporal crapola was making her head hurt. Except if this was real it probably wasn’t a temporal thingy, it was an –
“An alternate reality thingy,” Evil Christine said. “This is an alternate reality that’s running a little bit ahead of yours. You got it, Chrissy. I know you don’t like being called Chrissy, just like I don’t, but that way we can tell each other apart.”
“Or I could just call you Dark Christine.”
Dark Christine giggled. “Dark Christine Dark. That’s a little bit redundant, don’t you think? And also redundant.”
She even made the same lame jokes. Christine had always thought that if she turned to the dark side the first thing she would lose would be what passed for her sense of humor. Apparently her crazy evil bitch self could still find things to laugh about. Which, considering she’d just copped to killing millions of people, was totally effed up.
“It’s amazing how convenient a Multiverse is,” Dark Christine went on. “No grandfather paradox, no worries about altering events. My timeline just happens to be a few months, or years, ahead of yours. I forget how long. Not very long after that little trip to the Ukraine, I think. Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“In that case, instead of trying to kill me, you could tell me what happened, and I could change things in my timeline,” Christine said. “And then I could drop by later and we could compare notes.”
“That’d be kinda interesting. And I have to admit things have gotten a little boring after I did the whole Armageddon thing. Killing John and the Chinese guy were pretty much the last fun boss fights, and the endgame content has kinda sucked ever since. If this was an MMO I would have ragequit by now. Boooring. But since I’m stuck with it, I manage to make my own fun, one way or another.”
“So? Do we have a deal?”
“I’m thinking about it, Chrissy. Don’t get pushy on me. I don’t push well nowadays. I’ve kinda gotten used to getting my own way, you know?”
“Are you all alone? Did you kill everyone on Earth like that alien Cassius met?”
“N
o, that wouldn’t be fun, and I’d get lonely. I’ve got a little preserve set up in Kansas. Got about six, seven million people in there, and another one in Australia, maybe two million there. All muggles. They kinda worship me now. I’m their Goddess and stuff. I run a bunch of neat live action games with them. I have them dress up in different period costumes and fight wars and stuff, and the winners get extra canned beans and other valuable prizes. It’s kinda neat. When I run fantasy campaigns, I even give a few of them magical and clerical abilities. Of course, all the clerics are Dark Clerics, just like their patron deity. Namely, moi. Like I said, it gets boring after a while, but as long I don’t run out of muggles, I can keep thinking of new ways of entertaining myself.”
Oh god oh god oh god. This was so bad, so effing bad.
“But that’s not all, Chrissy. I did leave one Neo alive. Want to meet my husband?”
“Not really, no.”
“Come on, don’t be a hater. Come on out, darling!” A figure emerged from the mist and stepped next to Dark Christine. A faceless man in a studded leather outfit.
Mark.
Tears burned in her eyes. She cleared her throat and forced herself not to cry. She wasn’t going to cry in front of her evil bitch self. “Mark?”
“Kinda,” Dark Christine said. “I mean, Mark’s still there somewhere. But he’s not alone.”
Mark made a face. Not his real face, which she’d only glimpsed once when he’d been near death. She recognized the face, however.
Mr. Night smiled at her. His thin, narrow and aged face looked out of place on top of Mark’s solid body, but that was the least of what was wrong with it. “Oh, Christine, my dear, dear Christine, how I love to love you, my darling, my love, my wife.”
The world got gray around the edges in a way that nothing to do with the mist, and Christine felt herself swooning on her feet. I will not faint, I will not faint, I will not effing faint.
“It’s all good in da hood, Chrissy. Don’t take it so hard, kiddo. I had to make some compromises is all. Shit happens, as Mark used to say, back when he was Mark.”
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 35