by JM Guillen
“How’s this for pleasant?” Gideon drew his Maverick, cocked it, and held it steadily at Amir. “Knock off the bullshit, Amir. We’ve got you dead to rights.”
“You do.” The words weren’t a question yet still contained traces of mockery.
“Last I recall, you were dead in the Yucatán.” Gideon growled. “Perhaps we should talk about what you’ve been up to since.”
“Should we?” Amir slowly turned to Gideon, pointedly not raising his hands. “As if children can comprehend the work of a man?”
“Stand down.” I had both disruptors out, aimed directly at the man’s head. “Get against the wall. I killed you once, and I can do it again.” I shrugged. “I’ll do it better this time.”
“[Death is the destiny of the unfaithful], Michael Bishop.” He paused. “Imagine I do not comply with your desires. What then?”
“You do as we ask or get put down, right here.” I couldn’t keep feral sharpness from my voice.
We need him to answer some questions, Bishop, Gideon reminded me.
“Imagine that was so.” He turned back to me, his voice grave. “Imagine you had the power to kill me, as you might an ordinary man.”
Michael, Anya interjected. Note your Rationality readings.
I had, although I appreciated her concern. As I watched, the numbers flickered down another couple of points.
“If you were to do this thing, how do you intend to survive what would follow?”
A sharpened CRACK sounded from somewhere in the shadows. Without so much as a gesture from Amir, a cleft echoed into existence within the space behind him.
I shifted one arm so I could aim at the undulating tear and kept the other disruptor pointed at his face.
“I cautioned him that we prefer you alive,” Gideon growled at Amir, “but I’m willing to change my mind, the moment some horror steps through that foolishness behind you.”
Amir chuckled before he responded to Gideon. The tone in his voice oozed calm smugness, but I didn’t hear what he said.
I was too distracted by the scent of the wind that burst from the tear in space behind Amir.
Bishop? Rachel’s worry pulsed through the link. You’ve been doing fine up until now, but your heart rate’s spiking.
I didn’t answer. Instead I gaped at the burning crevice, struck by the strangeling glow of the sickly moon on the other side. Even from where I stood, I could see the jagged obsidian landscape beyond and smell the foul, infinite wind that howled in that place.
I’d been there before.
Years earlier, as I set out on a dossier to the Mojave Desert, I’d encountered a snare of sorts. At the time, it had been believed to be part of that dossier, but—
Had it? My eyes widened. Had the Darkened Road been involved in my extradimensional airport restroom adventure somehow?
Gideon, this is a problem.
“[You have met the Arachniis before, I think.]” Amir turned to me, eyes glittering behind his mask. “Ictithia [is a creature of elemental yearnings. She is bound to the book I bear and therefore my whim, Asset. Slaughter me if you can; if you succeed, she will ravage your corpse.]”
Hunger and desire bled through that horrific, mind-rending tear in space. I remembered the awful coldness of that wind, a razor of screaming fury that cut to the bone.
“I remember her.” I returned my eyes to him. “She didn’t do as well in our realm, if I remember. I’ll roll the dice.”
Many things happened at once.
Amir ducked to one side, far faster than I would have expected.
Gideon fired, a loud RAAAKK that ripped through the air as the Maverick’s ordinance tore a basketball-sized hole into the brick wall.
Stepping sideways, I brought one disruptor to bear on Amir. I toggled the settings, part of a plan to slam a speeding pickup truck’s worth of force into his abdomen.
Like a river of thorns and spite, an invocation poured from Amir’s lips. It washed over us, a torrent of awful, cosmic complexity.
It… What? I shook my head in incomprehension.
Numbers. Nothing but twisted, horrific numbers.
Yet Amir cast them forth with the fervency of a mad poet, numerics that swirled into an equation of dire, lyrical truths. Reality around us trembled; that equation defined existence itself, shifted it.
I stumbled from the force of it, and my head swam.
Michael? Anya’s link came with a burst of static, and the readings from my Crown’s phaneric node wavered and melted away. We’ve dropped another two points.
I bet. I pushed myself back to my feet as Gideon fired at Amir. RAAAKK. RAAAKK. RAAAKK.
He missed. All three times.
Space itself melted like candlewax, and the Maverick couldn’t find its mark. Everywhere a bullet struck, the null-materia round blasted a hole larger than my head.
Yet I’d paid enough attention to see what Gideon truly intended. He’d turned his left arm to subtly aim the Huntsman wrist module at Amir. I barely heard the slight snick as a miniscule dart shot through the air and caught Amir on the thigh.
The projectile had been designed to dissolve into base elements after it discharged. Our foe didn’t even feel the hit.
“[Fool.]” Amir laughed as he spun to one side, maniacal and lost. He paid no attention to the crevice he’d opened.
Nor the loping, arachnine freaks surging from behind him.
The first one sprang through the tear in space with a feral grace.
On the far side of that transdimensional cleft, the creature was partially unreal, little more than fevered dreamings. Yet within Rationality, the twisted monstrosity took physical form.
An aberrant hybrid of scorpion and spider, the Arachniis moved like a many-legged, hunting jaguar. A wicked tail curled up behind it, covered in shadowed, night-blue hairs and chitin.
Base, chittering whispers echoed through my mind. Broken imaginings and dark urges ravaged me, reflected in the thing’s many, shiny eyes.
I’m more than food. The insidious thought bore a sharpened hunger. It will take me away to mate. I’ll die in the dark as it uses me—
One of the creatures roared aggressively. As it opened its maw, I saw that teeth ran all the way down its throat.
Amir screamed. This time, his cry held no victory. “[What are you doing?]” The misshapen arthropod had stretched one of those monstrous legs to Amir and knocked him flat. “[Where is] Ictithia?”
I had the same question. These creatures were definitely of the same species as that dread I battled in the airport men’s room but much smaller.
Its spawn, perhaps? Had I killed the original?
I grinned. Only I could accidentally kill something so awful and not even realize it.
No answer came to Amir’s query, except for waves of repulsive images and savage hunger. Horrific impressions pounded against my mind, one atop another.
It drags me away to a dark hole, and no one can find m—
It chews my clothing, my skin, my ey—
Its body is less real in this place, can shift and ben—
It somehow mounts itself upon me, straddles me with dozens of horrific, hairy legs. I am powerless; it takes m—
Its tail slices into my abdomen. I watch, powerless, as it deposits its eggs into me, dozens of yellowed blobs that smell like ammonia and bile—
My eyes! She devours my eyes and legs. I cannot leave; I have to wait until they hatc—
The horror lunged toward Amir again, who scrabbled back across the floor, his eyes wide.
Bishop! Gideon’s link hit me like a hammer, and I turned, just in time to see a second Arachniis leap from the rift and lunge for me.
I hurled to the left, the Adept’s grace saving my life.
Another waited for me.
These perversions seemed closer to the size of Irish wolfhounds instead of the pickup truck-sized beast I’d slayed. Yet they hunted in a pack. The combined waves of their dark, lustful intentions overwhelmed me, and panic be
at at the gates of my mind.
Caught! I’m caught! One of the arachnids stalked closer, and its eyes burned with malevolent intention. It’ll lay its eggs inside me, and they’ll hatch. They’ll hatch and burrow out of—
Bishop! Rachel’s link sounded far away. I’m slowing adrenaline production. Get a grip.
I scarcely heard her.
“Not today.” Gideon aimed at the Arachniis closest to him and squeezed the trigger.
RAAAKK. A scent like burnt flesh filled the air, and the freak screamed, a wail of insectine agony as it scrabbled backward.
I turned toward the one closest to me and fired the same disruptor I’d intended for Amir in three successive bursts. The force of a motorcycle at Mach three hit the beast.
It tumbled wildly through the air, screeching until it slammed into the stone wall.
“[Your treachery will be remembered,]” Amir spat as he pushed himself up. He gestured at the one closest to him and formed rigid claws with his fingers. “[The Binder of Light and Heaven remembers.]”
Burning light, just as he’d held before, shone from his hand. He thrust it forward, as if a brand of white-hot magnesium.
The creature recoiled before it.
“[Yes. You see now.]” He stepped closer to the miscreation.
It scrabbled backward, the hairs on its carapace singed, filling the air with a foul, scorched scent.
I also turned away, unable to look upon the light’s terrible beauty. That eldritch glow cast brilliance upon secret parts of myself that I did not wish to know.
He’s running, Bishop.
I heard the RAAAKK of Gideon’s Maverick and glanced up in time to see my Alpha’s null-materia blow a hole in the wall as Amir fled for the door.
Yet as I turned to fire, something struck me from the side, and I landed on the ground. My teeth clacked together, and I barely missed biting my tongue with the impact.
Slender, bristly legs pinned me to the ground and sent my disruptors skittering across the floor.
I stared up at the hairy, insectine horror as—
FUCK! It was less a link and more of a scream in my mind.
—will wail with the pleasure of our mating. Our children will number in the dozens, all hungry, all seeking mates within the realms of men—
RAAAKK!
My foe hissed in fury and agony as it toppled to one side, gravely injured from Gideon’s shot.
I rolled to my feet, grabbed up my weapons, and took stock of the room: three Arachniis, down but twitching, and the rift still gaped open. The two Gideon had shot were horrifically wounded, maybe dying. The one I’d hurled against the wall wobbled as it attempted to push itself up on broken legs.
Amir? I turned to Gideon.
Through the door. He was already on the move. We can still catch him.
Irrational target six meters away, Anya informed us.
Copy that. Gideon smirked as he linked. The Huntsman is active.
That’s good news. I kept my eyes on the predators, while I evaluated the rift. I’m going to leave a gift for our friends here. I pulled one of the Tabula Rasa.
I didn’t often use the silvery disks, except as a final option. The Tabula would utterly obliterate all matter within its radius and leave only a vacuum in its wake.
For a moment I hesitated, uncertain.
After all, it could kill us just as easily.
Keep the field tight, Gideon linked as he opened the door. After he peered into the shadows for a moment, he stepped inside.
I gazed back at the room as I fiddled with the dials on the small device.
The dire amalgam I’d attacked wobbled toward me and hissed.
“Sorry, sweetheart. You aren’t my type.” I tossed the Rasa into the center of the room, near the rift.
As I left, a burst of white brilliance shattered the darkness.
I pulled the door closed and relished the solid click.
Thunder rattled the door as the Rasa obliterated the creatures, the floor, and quite possibly the rift itself.
All fell silent.
Machinations
Gideon linked, Get to the other wall. You’ll need your optics.
Um, okay. I performed the twitch that expanded my visual capabilities but still stumbled a bit as I stepped inside. We aren’t chasing the asshole?
We’ll get him. Gideon paused. I have him marked.
So what are we waiting for?
Get a record of that wall, and I’ll get this one, then we’ll move along.
This room was slightly larger than the first, nearer to six-by-eight meters, with two doors that lead out. An old writing desk had been pushed up against the far wall, and a table dominated the center.
Papers, all yellowed and old, mostly hid the stone walls. Some of them were darkened with water damage or seemed incomplete, but each had been covered with dozens, hundreds, of scrawlings.
Too much information existed there to simply read. However, my Crown formed a phaneric record of everything I saw.
Irrational target has halted, according to the telemetry, Anya reported.
I have that as well. Gideon peered at one of the walls. Approximately fifteen meters in front of us. Let us know when he’s on the move. That way I can focus on my visuals.
Will comply.
Get as much as you can, Bishop—the Designates will interpret this faster than we can. Gideon’s link held a trace of distraction. We’ll still get him.
Understood.
A small lamp shone dimly from the writing desk, the only source of light in the room. It illuminated more than enough, especially with the optics function active, but even so…
There was a lot to see.
Tiny, perfectly rendered numerics, vast equations that used symbols and shapes I had no name for, covered most of the papers. A hypnotic quality wound through those numbers, and more than a few shifted and twitched before my eyes.
The Equation is not complete, I linked to Gideon as I peered at the formulae and traced my finger along the printed words.
Didn’t Amir say that, in Mexico, before you shot him in the face?
I—it did seem familiar, but I didn’t remember Amir saying it. I dunno.
Doesn’t matter. Quit doing the math, Bishop. We don’t have time for you to carry every two here.
Gideon paused and leaned close to one of the pages. Just get the intel. When we catch Amir, he can tell the Designates what it all means.
As I progressed along the wall, something different from the vast, arcane equations leapt out at me. A list of sorts rested upon the writing desk, weighed down beneath the small blue lamp.
Dates. I scanned the list and tried to make sense of what it all might mean: 26 February 1993. 7 August 1998, 17 August 1999. When my eyes fell to the next one, I raised an eyebrow.
9 January 2001. I turned to Gideon. This one is in three days.
What now? Gideon stepped over to me and scanned the paper. He frowned. That’s unnerving.
It continues into the future. I pointed, my finger resting on 11 September 2001. Below that, 23 August 2005 and 8 October 2005 leered at us but had been scratched through. The list ended with 18 September 2015.
That last date felt familiar, somehow.
Look at this. Gideon gestured to another page plastered on the wall, just to the left of the desk. Artistic swirls decorated most of the sheet, circles with odd, looping lines between them. Gideon pointed to the circle at the center. There, in that same small script, were printed a familiar set of numbers.
“Rationality?” I turned to him. The string of numbers couldn’t help but be familiar—every Asset knew the frequencies of Rationality Zero by heart, a fail-safe in case we ever needed to input them manually.
“Right.” He frowned. “So then, what’s this?” He pointed at another circle with a different set of digits within it. “Or this?” He tapped another.
“Other topias, maybe,” I mused. “But even if true, how did the Darkened Road know the frequenc
ies of Rationality?”
The target is on the move, Anya linked.
Rachel, do you still show all Crown functions active? Gideon raised one eyebrow at me.
I don’t know how he shut the Wraith down the first time, she groused, but all seems green on my end, Gideon.
Simultaneously, we both engaged the Wraith and faded from sight.
We have two doors in front of us, Alpha, I linked, my question unasked.
Take the eastern one.
Accustomed to my place as point, I stepped through the door.
2
The pitch blackness made me thankful for my Crown optics. I glanced around. The stone-brick passageway arched at the top and stretched wide enough for four people to walk side by side.
Rationality variations approximately eight meters in front of you. I felt Anya frown through the link. This also approximates the location where Irrat 3302 halted in place for several moments.
As she spoke, a light orange reticule appeared in my Crown to show the location of the anomaly.
Trap? I linked to Gideon alone.
Trap, he confirmed.
I crept forward and peered into the shadows of the hallway.
Bishop, I’m not convinced this is as much of a surprise as we’d hoped, Gideon linked as I crept forward.
That sounds hopeful.
Amir seemed able to hear us or somehow know we were there, he reasoned. He spoke to us while we were supposedly unseen, and he left that door open for us.
You think he knew we were coming?
I think we’d be idiots not to assume that. He paused. The Darkened Road has always been full of surprises.
So what about those papers and dates? I tracked the reticule as I crept forward. If he knew we were coming, Amir’s smart enough to leave false trails.
I just don’t know. Gideon’s frustration felt sour in the link. Not our call. It’s up to the Designates.
Michael, would you like an overlay regarding the shape of the Irrationality in the passage? Anya’s link felt laced with concern.
That’d be wonderful, Anya. Thank you. Both of us please?
No sooner did I send the link but my reticule faded, and a soft white glow appeared before me, three thin bands that traced their way around the top of the passage, the walls, and the floor.