Cascading Error:Critical: A Lovecraftian Technothriller (The Dossiers of Asset 108 Book 4)

by JM Guillen

  I pulled them, and prepared to spring.

  Yet I was slow. Heavy.

  “No.” Amir gestured and someone bludgeoned me from behind.

  My head rang with a burst of white agony, and I fell, shattered and stunned.

  My face found the floor centimeters away from Delacruz.

  “You motherfucker!” I glared at the syringe. Unconscious? Dead? I had no way to truly know.

  My breathing came quickly. Rough.

  “I am who I am, much as you are, Asset.”

  Sofia seemed so beautiful, lying there. The lines of her scowl had smoothed away, and she bore the untroubled face of one whose problems were truly over.

  “No.” I shook my head. A snarl blossomed on my face. “You don’t get to take…”

  The Fierce One. The words growled in my mind.

  I began to push myself up, my neck and back itching madly.

  “We aren’t finished teaching you, Asset.”

  Rough hands grabbed me from behind, one even buried its fingers in my short hair.

  My head was pulled back and to the left, and I felt the bite of the syringe as they plunged into my neck.

  I roared in futile fury and dragged my right arm away from the thrall who held it. I flung the slender figure on the floor. My lips curled back in righteous wrath…

  Blood.

  Something was wrong with my blood.

  They released me and I collapsed. Syrupy dizziness swam through my mind.

  “The Unfathomable comes, Michael Bishop.” Amir’s words came heavy with barbed hatred. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  The shadows of deepest night fell across me.

  Followed Into Hell

  I couldn’t move my arms.

  I blinked and shook my head to throw off the bleary buzz in my mind. Everything lay cast in shadows around me. A few flames burned crimson, and gave off very little light.

  People spoke.

  Chanted.

  The sound echoed, a disfigured, fiendish symphony. The words held edges that burred in my mind, and I could not comprehend.

  I shook my head again and tried to force myself fully awake. My neck hurt on one side, and I couldn’t remember—

  All at once, I did remember. The entire scene in the darkened room came back to me in a rush.

  I jerked at my restraints. My arms and legs had been bound wide, strapped with thick leather. My shirt had been removed, as had my socks and shoes.

  I glanced around frantically, trying to discern where I’d been taken.

  Query: Crown diagnostic, I thought harder than I’d ever done before.

  My Crown did not respond.

  Query: Packet registry.

  Nothing.

  Fuck.

  I lay on a rectangular surface, crafted of some unknown metal, covered with thousands upon thousands of intricate, bas-relief sculpture. I couldn’t see much, no matter how I twisted, but it appeared as if the scenes depicted men and women engaged in insane debaucheries with inhuman monstrosities.

  My arms and legs remained strapped down.

  I stared up.

  A few braziers were close, but I had to arch against my bounds to see them. Even then, I couldn’t see much else in the dim light.

  High above me, set into the ceiling, several crystalline portholes looked out into the sea above. Several of the glowing fronds grew around the crystals within the water. Faint ocean-colored light shone from them.

  “R’tae cannot be found?” I heard Amir chuckle softly, somewhere close by. His voice sounded muffled. “How very unfortunate.”

  “He was slated to sunder the final seal,” someone whispered sharply. “His position is vital to the raising of the temple-city.”

  “I know his part better than you!” Amir hissed. “Trust me when I tell you that all is exactly as it should be.”

  “But—”

  “I shall sunder the seal if it comes to that.” I heard the smile on Amir’s face. “Although I doubt it will.”

  I struggled again, trying to pull myself free.

  “Magister,” the same voice whispered, somewhat urgently. “He awakens.”

  “Does he?” Booted footsteps came closer, clicking even louder than the murmured chants.

  Amir gazed down upon me and his silver mask once more covered his face.

  “Good evening, Asset.” His dark eyes glittered behind the mask. “I’m so pleased you could join us.”

  “Fuck you,” I seethed and pulled even harder at the restraints.

  “That’s the Michael Bishop I’ve come to expect.” Amir glanced to his side, at someone out of view. “Bring him.”

  Four Zealators came into sight, each decorated with black, swirling tattoos. They didn’t meet my eyes, but lifted the platform I’d been bound to.

  As they heaved, my perspective changed.

  The first thing I noticed was the strange vertigo that burned at the edge of my perception. It didn’t feel like a physical dizziness, but a distinct mental uncertainty.

  My eyes, still accustomed to the darkness, didn’t like the shadowed chamber.

  No, that’s not right.

  I didn’t trust what I saw. I felt half asleep, as if I woke to a world didn’t understand.

  Wherever I gazed, my eyes betrayed me.

  As the four Zealators hefted me, great columns came into my vision, something crafted of the black and verdant stone. They loomed like great trees. Because it was night, I couldn’t see…

  Night?

  No, not night. We were in a cavern.

  The trees weren’t trees at all, but thick, black stone columns that stretched to a ceiling far out of sight. From a gargantuan chasm off in the distance, a hungry, orange glow flickered, the only light. I could hear the loud grinding of machinery but did not see it anywhere.

  A column loomed in front of us. I slammed on the breaks, trying to skid away from it.

  Bishop! Wyatt’s link was panicked, but I truly didn’t have time to listen. I spun the wheel as hard as I could, but it was no use.

  The front of our car crumbled into the colu—

  Wait. I shook my head. That was before, not…

  My mind ached. It felt as if I’d been stretched, like warm caramel. Like I’d fallen into myself… into somewhere else.

  “No…” I moaned softly, trying to solidify.

  “Forward then,” one of the Zealators growled, his voice like the grinding of rocks.

  They carried me further into the room. I faced away from the center of the room so couldn’t see where they took me.

  I only saw a collection of chairs, thrones carved from the very stone of the floor. Each was meticulous, decorated with dozens of intricate, swirling designs.

  Each also had an occupant. A cadaver, typically, though some still writhed. Upon each, an eyeless copper mask had been melted to their face. These masks bore glyphs like I’d never seen; large things that took up most of the available space.

  Deep grooves had been cut in the arm rests and back of the thrones. Scarlet blood dripped into those grooves, ran down the chair, and into deeper furrows upon the floor.

  The floor had been covered with channels, small lines in ornate patterns. In the dim light, these lines shone black with blood.

  There must have been dozens of stone thrones, each with its own occupant, strapped down with similar leather restraints to mine. They whispered prayers of dark insanity as they writhed.

  “Seventy-nine of these chairs are filled, Asset,” another Zealator said, a stocky bald man whose tattoos wrapped around his head. “Only two remain.”

  “You’ll have your throne, never fear,” another whispered. “Yes. Your blood shall be the last. You shall be the last.”

  Delacruz? Seventy nine with two remaining added up to their requisite eighty one. I hadn’t seen her, but she must be here…

  We were the final two sacrifices. I needed to throw a wrench in their plans.

  I glanced to the side and frantic
ally tried to find a way out, any way out.

  One of the chair occupants met my gaze. The woman had no clothes to cover her pale, emaciated skin.

  She struggled and fought against her bonds, yet to no avail. She stared at me with that eyeless mask.

  Light from one of the braziers caught upon the copper surface, and shone yellow for the briefest of moments.

  Yellow.

  The fires shone wrathfully across the twisted cityscape.

  The sprawling jungle of spires and oddly squat structures were grouped so closely they almost piled on top of one another. Occasionally, the towers had great, yellow pyres burning atop them, shining like furious stars. Those were the only lights I could see at all in the dim twilight, but they cast a glow like moonlight across Dhire Lith.

  Empty street ahead, I linked over the comm, keeping to the shadows as I slipped forward. I can send patches over the comm if you want a layout, Alp—.

  “No!” I screamed as I pulled myself back from the imagery. It dragged at me, like trying to breathe while drowning in hot taffy.

  “Oh yes,” one of the Zealtors cackled in the apparently belief that I responded to his threat about the thrones. “Oh, Asset, it’s a symphony! It’s delight!”

  I clenched my eyes shut, desperate to not get caught in another moment when my memories became soft. It seemed as if catching sight of the most insignificant thing triggered something within me, a mental fugue that drew me in and snared me.

  “Not real.” I shook my head.

  “It’s the power of the Scion.” Amir’s voice sounded close. “It is not simply your precious Rationality which he sunders. Physics, the veil between worlds, consciousness itself.”

  “You can fuck yourself,” I hissed between my teeth. “Unstrap me for five minutes. See what happens.”

  “Oh, I think not.” Amir’s cruel voice took on a hint of amusement. “It's taken me long enough to bring you here, Michael.”

  “Been thinking about me, have you?” I snarled. “I hope so. I hope you’ve been thinking of what it’s like to have me shatter your fucking teeth.”

  “I have. Truly. You are a random act of violence, Michael Bishop. In the Yucatán you and yours set things in motion that you cannot possibly understand.”

  “Try me,” I spat. “You’re the one who’s always jabbering on about being the answer to questions I haven’t asked.” I paused. “So enlighten me.”

  “That’s fair,” Amir purred. “Gentlemen. Enlighten him.”

  Slowly, they turned me about, revolving the slab I lay strapped to.

  A darkened flame flickered all around us, surrounding us, taking up the center of the room. Those flames did not burn, but capered with a shadowed, wicked glee.

  In the center of that flame, a machine of shadowed darkness sang a soft and terrible song. The thing wasn’t… real, wasn’t actually any kind of machine I’d ever seen. It seemed too organic, bent with tubes more like tentacles, gears that ticked like teeth chewing glass. Parts of stretched off into infinity, into space I couldn’t see—

  No. I shook my head.

  Not a machine. A creature of some kind. A darkness I could only see part of, a thing that lived by some laws of physic unknown to man. Great legs like those of some undersea crustacean, bent greedily toward me. Eyes the size of the moon gazed down upon me, and I felt part of my mind snap, like the string of a violin.

  It snarled and growled, breaking the world—

  No. I blinked. That wasn’t it at all. Labyrinthine, that darkness stretched inward, a citadel of obsidian and finely wrought glass. I could get lost within it I knew, wandering—

  “You cannot comprehend.” Amir took a step closer to me and leaned in conversationally. “Look deeper, Asset. Peer within the shadows.” He laid a hand on my head, quickly before I could jerk away. Slowly, he tilted my head down, so I saw—

  A golden nimbus burned, an aura of warmth and radiant ferocity. That light strengthened me, yet I noted how unsteady it was, how it seemed to quiver against the darkness.

  The shadows fed on that light. The aura spun upward, twining into a braid of golden light to stretch up to an infinity I couldn’t see.

  The source of that nimbus, the fuel it fed upon, was Gideon DuMarque.

  Strapped to an intricately carved slab, Gideon’s form quivered in what had to be agony. Much of his flesh had been flayed away, and in several places I saw the white of bone, carved with horrific sigils that twisted and writhed. Dried blood covered his flesh, as did thousands and thousands of tiny, intricate glyphs.

  He raged, his mouth open in a silent scream.

  His knees and elbows splayed out at terrifying angles, broken. His tactical pants were his only clothing. They’d been shredded at the bottom, though his lateral pockets still bulged.

  Yet these miseries weren’t what pained him. No, as he twisted and writhed, I saw what truly tormented him.

  As that braid of golden luminescence twirled its way from his form, he convulsed. Whatever essential thing was drained from him, it threw his body into spasms of indescribable torment.

  His eyes were those of a madman, lost. They told the tale of someone broken by pain incomprehensible.

  Someone who wasn’t coming back.

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  Anya, I linked, hating how small I felt, please reconfirm the state of Asset DuMarque’s signal.

  Latent signal lost, she sent, matter of factly. Michael, he’s gone.

  Her words felt like ice in my mind. They hit me, in a way that ‘Asset is presumed lost’ never could have.

  Gone.

  He had been taken. Even as I frantically searched, they had him.

  “It’s important to me that you understand how it was accomplished, Asset,” Amir repeated, a condescending snarl in his tone. “You need to appreciate the artistry of the thing.”

  “You…” I shook my head, burning tears like shards of coals in my eyes. “You nullified his Crown. So we thought… and then, just an injection.”

  “You see clearly,” Amir hissed. “Thanks to your choices, you and Gideon DuMarque shall be the last two sacrificed to the Unfathomable. The moment we wrest the last drop of blood from your corpse, M’elphodor shall rise. A new Aeon shall dawn.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “Now you understand what your actions in the Yucatán have brought to be.”

  “Yes.” I ground my teeth, my breath coming quick as I gazed upon Gideon.

  He trembled, contorted as rippling agony wracked his form.

  “Your arrogance is only exceeded by your ignorance, Asset. You toyed with powers you did not understand.”

  My heart raced. I watched Gideon and drank in the ghastly scene. Fury and wrath blossomed inside me, the beat of two ancient and undeniable drums of war. I gazed upon—

  (Pack. One of mine.)

  —the blood. So much of it lay scattered around him, strips and lines of poetry, of primal beauty.

  “Yes.” I trembled and slowly turned my head toward Amir. I itched madly, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  The world slowed.

  I saw his pulse, beating within his soft neck.

  “So you do see.” His voice grew sibilant, pleased. “You understand what you have purchased here.”

  “I do.” I smiled at him, feral. “You, however, do not.”

  The aberration descended upon me, a savage and fundamental fury. It stretched me, poured into me like molten ferocity, strength and rabidity.

  I screamed. I cried the Grizzled One’s name, howled for the pain of one lost.

  I knew this one, knew him like I knew the sound of my own name. We had hunted together, across the years of our lives. We stood against twisted, broken abominations. We tracked our prey through uncanny worlds far from this one.

  He led my pack.

  He was my Alpha.

  I cried a howl of savage fury to the heavens.

  2

&n
bsp; I burst from my bonds, tearing the leather straps.

  Everything around me slowed, the world drifting away as I fell into the primordial bloodlust of the hunt.

  I smelled the heretic’s sudden fear, his incredulity. That scent cloyed, told me the long story of his machinations, his dark deeds.

  I whirled upon him.

  “Kill him! Now!” The heretic scrambled backward into darkness, one arm raised in a defensive gesture. He immediately began to chant, incanting shadows that grasped at me, burned.

  One of his men lunged, a curved blade slashing for my neck. The bald attacker dodged sideways as I lunged for him, his other hand raised.

  “Irig’Nos! I call to you!” His voice became high pitched, frantic. “Strike down this—”

  I leapt at the man, fluid death and primal wrath. I caught his throat in my left hand, and crushed his windpipe with ease.

  Frantic in his attempt to breathe, the man fell backward and dropped his blade.

  I grabbed it and disemboweled him with a single stroke. Scarlet warmth splashed across me, across the floor.

  “No…” he wailed, his voice raspy despair. Frantically, he tried to scoop the strings of his entrails back into his body, but to no avail.

  The man fell backward.

  I turned toward one of the other men, who even now pointed at me, chanting unintelligibly. I leapt, snarling, as eldritch shadows began to gather about his hand.

  Yet even as I leapt, I tasted the sweetness of the first man’s blood. I sipped secrets, names best left forgotten. I savored the ten thousand agonies he had caused, the suffering he had created.

  Two tongues lapped at his warmth.

  It wasn’t me, obviously, as I hurled myself at the second man, my eyes locked on his.

  Yet, it was me.

  The dead man’s lifeblood flowed within me now. Strength surged from its sweetness.

  I caught the second man with the blade of the first, carving susurrus of scarlet twilight from his chest. Splatters of his crimson warmth flew against my skin, and I leaned forward, eager to see the light in his eyes fade.

  I moved without thought, without choice. The path was one I had walked a thousand thousand times. I knew all of it secret meanderings, woven into me over uncountable wild, frantic hunts.