by JM Guillen
In an instant, that sentient, incomprehensible darkness burst away from us, screaming. The Irrational shadow couldn’t remain where those ripples touched. They separated like oil and water.
Amir stared at me, his eyes wide as the violet mark upon his brow sputtered and faded.
“How do you like me now?” I quoted Wyatt Guthrie, not the singer.
I leapt on him. Screaming, the curved blade swung straight at Amir’s masked face.
2
Beneath my first strike, the steel blade bit deeply into the silver mask.
I’d struck Amir as well, and he cried out as blood gushed from his forehead and cheek. He went down.
I followed.
After a moment’s struggle I sat up on his chest. “Death is but a doorway, huh?” I raised the blade high and smashed it down again, carving out a hunk of mask. “I wonder if that’s as true without this thing?” Reaching down, I took the mask from his face. Only a thin strip of silver held the thing together, and I tore it into two pieces with my bare hands.
I cast the halves away, one to each side, as I screamed in triumph.
“What have you done?” Amir’s eyes were frantic. “Do you even know?”
“Probably not,” I snarled. “I’m a fucking blunt instrument after all.” With that, I dropped the blade, grabbed his hair, and slammed him backward. “Speaking of blunt instruments…”
I proceeded to give Amir Cadavas what I hoped was the beating of his miserable life.
“Mother!” I swung and felt his cheek crack beneath my fist. “Fucker!” I swung with the other hand, punching him hard in the throat so I knew he couldn’t breathe.
Red rage, fury that had nothing to do with an aberrant wolf, poured through me. I thought of Katarina, of Max.
I thought of the way Elle had mumbled, her mind broken.
Gideon.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and cracked his head against the stone.
His face was a savage bloody ruin.
CROWN NEXUS PRIME is now interlocked. Axiomatic mesh engaging.
“What?” I sat up and stared around.
Vibrate. CLICK.
CLICK.
Current packet again interfaced. ADEPT, synching.
Current packet again interfaced. WRAITH, synching.
Current packet again interfaced. MAGUS, synching.
“Oh good.” I cackled with abandon as I smashed my fist into his jaw. “At any moment now I’ll be able to continue beating you, only I’ll have my packets engaged.” I punched again and shattered some of his teeth.
Just like I’d him promised I’d do.
Mecha Dialogues, engaging.
Lattice connectivity, engaging.
Latent signal, engaging.
Bishop! Rachel bawled in my Crown. Got you, I got you!
Status, cadre? I smiled wickedly as I shattered Amir’s nose.
All present and accounted for, Hoss.
Here, Mike.
I have your weaponry, Michael, Anya linked. Honestly, I don’t know how you continue to lose it.
I’m just irresponsible. I started to link something else when I noticed that I couldn’t move. I still breathed, my heart still beat, but every muscle I had wouldn’t so much as twitch.
“AAArrrgh!” Amir sputtered, noting I’d stopped beating the living fuck out of him for ten seconds. He lurched to one side and scrambled away.
After a few seconds, warmth flowed through my body like warm caramel trickling through my veins. My muscles warmed with it, and I could move again.
Oh. Oh God.
Sovereign prerogative alpha-nine engaged. The system prompt sounded heavy in my mind, much like the secondary comm. Initiating now.
Bishop, Michael. Alpha of the Citadel. Engaged.
Petrova, Anya. Preceptor second tier. Engaged.
Guthrie, Wyatt. Artisan of the Citadel. Engaged.
Delacruz, Sofia. Gatekeeper of the Citadel. Engaged.
It’s in here! Even at the speed of thought, I couldn’t communicate everything I needed to quickly enough. Frantically, I began to assemble a patch.
A Variance in Rationality has been detected. Standard protocols are being initiated.
I felt it then. A shadowed horror loomed behind me, an unnamable shape. It felt like a snag in reality itself, not quite a thing per se, but a hole where Nothing existed.
A hole through which screaming madness came.
Patch incoming! I sent them everything that happened, everything with the aberration, everything with Gideon. In an instant, I educated my cadre so we were on the same page.
Oh! We stopped the Frog-a-clysm? Rachel linked.
Then, Nothing fell upon me.
Nothing sliced into my mind. Nothing devoured everything I was.
I began to scream.
I knew I would never stop.
3
None could ever know. That incongruous, ominous darkness, the winged, filthy, excruciating miscarriage…
4
I bled then. I bled worms, blackened tendrils that still lay within me. I bled slithering discord, unfolding into a nauseous deranged…
5
The greasy feathers sprouted from my skin, pushing through with insistent fury. They tore at me, blackened, making me scream as they burst through.
Mriswul, the Crow of the West.
I burst.
In the sky, a scarlet star burned, its light shattering me, sundering my mind. I burst into nine pieces. Into ninety nine pieces.
A star? That couldn’t be right. I couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t track what I sang.
Was it a balloon? A red, screaming balloon?
I rocked in place, singing.
6
You and I in a little toy shop
buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
’Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, “Something’s out there”
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by.
99 red balloons floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, its red alert
There’s something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Open up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where 99 red balloons go by.
7
“Got him!” Delacruz crowed. “I don’t know what the [fuck] is going on over there, but the Temporal Corona almost lost him.”
99 dreams I have had, I linked as I gazed up at her. I lay on the ground and trembled, my eyes wide.
Whose blood was this?
“Time to get up, Hoss.” Wyatt extended a hand and I took it. “Anya’s already in it.”
“In this dust, that was a city…” I shook my head. I didn’t even understand what the words meant.
“I got your disruptors.” Rachel handed me the weapons. “Although I think Anya has your katanas.”
“Anya’s already in it?” I turned around to search for her, all but frantic.
There.
Anya walked toward the boiling darkness like an automaton. Her right hand stretched out and she struggled to step forward, as if she waded through thick syrup.
A brilliant shine erupted from her outstretched hand.
Hyper-Rationality.
“Okay.” I shook my head to clear it. “Okay.”
“I’ve got to start laying spikes.” Wyatt trembled, I noticed, like it took everything he had to simply stand still. “I’ve got the coordinates. I know what to do.”
“Do it then.” I nodded. “I don’t think we need to worry about—”
“Michael Bishop!” Those words sounded wet, filled with rage. “I hope you didn’t believe we were finished?”
Amir Cadavas stood amidst the throng of seated thralls, a wild and haunted light shining upon his brow. The moment he had my attention, he cackled with ins
ane, broken glee.
“I have brought you an old acquaintance!”
Behind him, the undulating horror of the amoeba-like aberration gyrated toward us, acidic sludge oozing from the surface of its body. Steam billowed from it. The air reeked of death and otherworldly rot.
“Ew.” Delacruz wrinkled her nose. “What [in the hell] is that?”
“It’s one of his go-to summonings,” I replied with a scowl.
The abomination had no true visage or solidity. As always, I could make out the partially digested figures within it. Yet now, I knew that thing hadn’t taken Gideon. It must have attacked him right before Amir pulled his little parlor trick, but my mentor hadn’t died a slow death within this gelatinous creation.
“Wyatt?” I turned toward the large man even as he started to step away to perform his task. “Remember when I said you gave me an idea?”
“We were fighting some of the Phothu-nacyi.” He nodded. “Sure. I wondered what it was at the time.”
I hurled a small patch into his Crown, directly to memory.
I’m the Alpha. I can be rude.
“Ha!” Wyatt smiled. “I even have it on quick trigger.” With that, he turned toward the ameba-nation and quickly toggled his keys. WHUF! WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!
The spikes tore into the creature.
It roiled and drew back, as if burned. Somehow, the thing squealed, agony and terror in that inhuman sound.
And it began to freeze.
Its body cracked and lurched, as it frantically tried to escape. In a matter of moments, the thing had hardened into a solid mass.
“What?” Amir cried in a spasm of impotent rage. “What have you—?”
“Not done, fuckface.” I took a step, disruptors in hand. I smiled as I fired and fired and fired.
The globule shattered, bursting into slivers of frozen ichor.
“Rise!” Amir screamed, his shattered voice a wail of terror and fury. “Rise, for the Unfathomable! Rise for the Names of Lamentation!”
Around us, the shambling, muttering thralls began to stand.
Okay, cadre, I linked everyone. Here’s the play.
I’m so fucking glad there’s a play, Delacruz linked.
Wyatt, you’re our heavy hitter, but you’re busy. Can you at least spare the bandwidth to watch your own back while you set spikes?
Roger that, Alpha.
WHUF!
I need Rachel and the stinger at Anya’s side. I grinned grimly at the Caduceus. Puts you close to the Variance. Watch yourself. Keep the masked assholes off her.
Okay, Bishop, she linked nervously.
“I’m looking for Amir.” I glanced at the rest of them. “It’s me he wants anyway. If I’m with you, I’m just putting you in harm’s way.”
What about…? Delacruz gestured at the copper-masked miscreations. It didn’t seem as if all seventy-eight had stood, but I imagined there might be sixty.
They’re for you. I nodded at her.
What? She shook her head, stunned. Mike, how do you expect me to—?
Did you do your homework? I raised an eyebrow at her.
Ah. Yes. I didn’t realize. Sofia broke out laughing.
Death is but a Doorway
In that moment, everything started to fall together. Again, my cadre was a well-oiled machine.
I’m with Anya, Rachel linked. Things are going fairly well.
I hope she didn’t mind me grabbing some gear off of her. When I went to Anya to retrieve my katana and some other equipment, she hadn’t even noticed my presence. She simply moved inexorably toward the darkness of the Variance, which boiled and burbled at the far side of the room.
She stared forward, a hint of a smile on her face. As when any Preceptor had her sovereign prerogatives engaged, her eyes had gone pitch black.
Anya walked head down in focused concentration. Upon her outstretched hand, one of her relays burned with furiously brilliant hyper-Rationality.
I didn’t think she’d even known I was there.
The Variance had no power within the brilliance of Anya’s radiant fury. That darkness could only retreat, only weaken in its presence.
It wailed like a child.
The sound boiled and burbled within my mind
I mean, I think things are well regarding Rationality, Rachel clarified. She continues to advance. I notice that the Variance wants nothing to do with her.
I just hope Rationality is stabilizing.
Didn’t Anya patch you a readout?
Well, yeah. I paused. But then Amir McFucko turned my entire system off.
Oh. I felt her realize. Yeah.
I suppose I should be thankful, I linked Rachel, as I thought. If Amir had only uncoupled my packets, you’d have had to soft sync me back together.
It’s a lot more devastating, having your Nexus offline. That cuts everything.
I’m going to try not to let him do it again. I’ve noticed when he starts his bullshit, attacking him with our packets is a bad ploy.
I can believe that.
I couldn’t see Amir, and that concerned me. As I ran barefoot through the ritual chamber, I peered into every shadow I came across.
As long as 3302 remained unaccounted for, we weren’t safe.
I turned, and started a second loop around the room.
Fuck! Wyatt cried out through the link, a panicked exclamation.
WHUF!
Artisan?
Thralls. They slipped over along the—
WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!
Cursing, I sprinted toward him, my disruptors out. Before I got halfway across the room, I saw the problem, and stopped in place.
I’d always thought the copper-masked ones were stupid, animal-like. However, this group had decided to form together in a cluster before picking off the one that had drifted furthest from the cadre.
It’s okay, Mike, Delacruz linked. I got this.
Two different apertures opened, both in front of the charging thralls. As I watched, Delacruz repositioned them carefully, orienting them just so.
Fucking shit! Wyatt fired into the throng, first one spike and then another. Two stasis fields unfurled into silver brilliance, and shone in the shadows.
Delacruz began to hurl the intensely heavy statues we’d seen back on the balcony at the crowd with something close to the speed of sound.
She’d indeed done her homework.
The first pagan, reptilian statue CRASHED against the far wall, smashing and mangling half a dozen copper-masks in its wake.
She’d left quarrels, while I’d tried to read Sumerian orbs. Now she linked those quarrels to cannon-apertures, ones that altered the rate of angular momentum.
CRASH! Another of the obsidian things zipped through the room, spinning wildly. It bowled into a throng of the copper-masked creatures, liquefying them in its wake.
Alpha— Rachel cut off.
Anya screamed.
It always shocked me when I heard Anya scream. Her normally dainty voice was something I rarely heard, her scream even more so.
Now that scream carried agony.
Terror.
Delacruz, you gotta handle these guys yourself.
I already told you I could!
CRASH! CRASH!
Right, but now you have to. I triggered the Adept as I turned toward Anya, and sprinted across the room. I felt shadows burn there, a darkling shimmer of madness.
Anya crouched, one arm upright. Hyper-Rationality still shone from her palm, but those shadows crowded closer.
I ride the winds between worlds, mortal. An unfamiliar, raucous voice burned my mind.
“Rachel.” I slid next to Anya, and gazed up at the Caduceus. “What happened?”
“The Variance surged.” She shrugged. “I think, anyways. The darkness suddenly pushed back, and she fell.”
“You cannot stand against the Scion, Michael Bishop.” Amir’s voice came as little more than a croak.
I glanced up as he limped forward, surrounded by that see
thing darkness. Amethyst light burned on his brow, and he smirked at me, gloating.
Just a glance at it made my head ache, my eyes burn. The swirling tentacles of mist and darkness roiled from the inside of the van. Accompanying them was an odd whispering sound like something the mad might whisper in the dark hush of night. I could see eyes, furious eyes that burned with a feral hatred as the wisps of darkness coursed along on the wind.
For a moment, they looked squarely at me. I could hear the whispers more clearly then, words of hatred and sharpness. I reeled backward from the force of it, dropping one of my guns.
“The EquATiOn is NoT cOmPlEtE.” The venomous words made my ears bleed. I almost stumbled from the weight of them, crushing me. “It is BeCauSE of yOur kINd. YoU wiLl rEPeNt, ManLInG. YoU wIlL kNow LAmEnTATiOn.”
Then, the abomination that had been Bill Iverson swarmed around me, and the entire world was hollow darkness and fanged mist. Every place it touched my skin was a cold, empty twilight, and the wailings of ten thousand madmen sliced at my mind.
“Wait.” I pulled back from the memory and felt space bend as I shook my head. That wasn’t—
“You are children playing at the shore, ignorant of how deep the water can get.” Amir chuckled wetly. “Perhaps you should be shown.”
The shadows rose. They burned at my—
—Guthrie screamed. “They’re crawling on me!” I heard his frantic wails. “Oh fuck! Not like this—”
—Rachel’s wailing as they ate their way into her body. They took her mouth, her ears, her nostrils and her sex. Insectine, they came by the—
—love every second of it.” Delacruz’s throaty purr fell into a strangled gasp as the crustacean sliced away—
No. I shook my head and bit the inside of my lip. This isn’t. I sent the link to the entire cadre.
No response came.
2
In that instant, I turned to Anya.
She still held her arm up, but it had developed a fine tremble.
Rachel stared into the shadows, lost in some meandering darkness.