“No, I’m serious. He puts on a costume and has an army of robot drones. He’s robbed jewelry exchanges, banks, armored cars. He always works alone. He’s been caught twice, and he went to prison for one good stretch. The last time he pulled a heist, the cops shot him and put him in the hospital, but he escaped.”
Anak clapped. He then reeled and almost fell off his chair, but Brendan caught him. Mimi helped bring him back to his cot.
“Tell me, kid,” Anak said. “Does he give his loot away to the needy?”
“No, nothing like that. He has bills that need to be paid. Plus my college fund.”
“You have a good daddy. Sounds like a keeper.”
“You need to get some rest,” Mimi said. “You’re so far past exhausted you’ve come up from behind to lap yourself.”
Anak nodded as she helped him lie down, and waved his hand as if dismissing them. When Mimi stepped back, Anak was already breathing deeply and wheezing as he dropped off to sleep.
“He’s a genius,” she said after a moment. “He built his machine from scraps. Everything he learned came from books. When the Desert Warlords contacted him about making some explosives, they discovered they had a savant who could give them whatever they could dream up. One of the early leaders couldn’t think past simple robbery and vendettas with rival gangs. But why rob a bank when you can pillage an entire world?”
“You know me, don’t you?” Brendan asked.
She walked them back to where Charlotte slept. “I rode with the gang ever since dropping out of medical school. I cooked meth for a few years to make them money, but the gang wasn’t going anywhere. Then we met Hugh. Anak. He thought it would be cool if the warlord lieutenants took on Viking names. The idea stuck. All his ideas did, even the craziest ones of opening doors to other worlds. The gang was making so much money with his side projects, selling drugs and bombs, that they indulged him in his fantasies. The man almost never sleeps and works himself into exhaustion. Then his experiment worked.”
“Was that the door to Torben’s world?”
She laughed. “Torben. He’s a grunt on the fringes like so many others. If I remember correctly, he was a theater student before he joined the gang. A literal drama queen. But no, that was just the last world. We’d gone through two more before that, each step making us stronger. Hugh keeps learning how to better use his machine. But when he’s working, it takes so much out of him.”
She was looking back towards Anak.
“You love him,” Brendan said. “Even though he’s caused so much misery.”
She slapped him. The blow knocked him off his feet.
“Don’t pretend you know me. Yes, I discovered the gate in the cave and came through. For a while I believed your world would be one worth saving, a place I could even escape to and leave the warlords behind. No one could locate the open gates like me. But do you know what I found? Your world was no different than the others. I won’t bore you with a recitation of man’s evils. When Charlotte’s father’s machine was activated I knew there would be more gates opened, like tears in the fabric of space.”
Brendan realized that if what she was saying was true, then the gate in Mimi’s pool had been open before Charlotte’s father had turned on his machine. The fact that it was in line with the other gates was coincidence.
“I knew Sperry was from an upstream world the moment we first met,” Mimi said. “I tried to contain the man and dissuade him, but he resisted me. I had hope in Charlotte, but she gave in to the same temptation to use the technology. Suffice it to say, this world and yours merit no special treatment. I could have put a stop to Hugh moving the warlords along to this world. But I won’t. He, the headmaster you battled, and even perhaps my sweet Charlotte are all cut from the same cloth and deserve everything they receive.”
He tried to make sense of what she was saying. His jaw hurt from where she had struck him. “But they can be stopped. We beat the headmaster. Millions don’t need to suffer because of what a few have done or are doing.”
“You stopped one headmaster. But how many more on countless other Earths are there? How many Hughs? How many Charlottes? Surely some of them don’t have the disposition of my Charlotte and have turned their talents towards evil pursuits. Each time the gates are used there are consequences, ripples, more tears, gates left wide open. This is a path of destruction that can only end in an apocalypse, not just for one Earth but for all of them. The temptation is too great, the power too tempting, even addictive. When I was a young woman still in school, did I ever imagine that with a single blow I could knock a grown man aside or even kill him? Or that I’d have the clarity of thought and the mental abilities of a savant? All by stepping through to another Earth. What could possibly be the harm? Who would ever resist the temptation? Even if some do, others won’t. More will come through any gate once it’s found. With each passage come more chances of something in the fabric of reality breaking.”
“I don’t know about any of that, and how can you?” Brendan asked. “Because of the actions of three people, you’re assuming that every other version of them will be doing what they do and worse? Maybe you’ve been to other Earths, but so have I. The headmaster downstream from my own is a generous man from what I’ve seen, and the one from my world never got around to inventing anything close to a gate machine. What if Charlotte and your Hugh are also unique? Maybe the invention of the gate technology is an anomaly in each of our worlds.”
“I’d like to believe that.” She took a beer from the floor. “It’s warm.” She tossed the bottle aside.
“What if there were a way to close the gates?”
“Besides the destruction of the machines? How?”
“Charlotte has part of the answer. I may have another. Is she…?”
“She’s fine. I would never hurt her. I gave her a sedative to calm her down.” She pointed to one of the cots. “Sit.”
Once he sat on the cot, she began a simple check of his eyes, his skin, even checking the cast on his wrist. Is she going to check my teeth next?
“You’ve acclimated well here. How much from upstream have you been eating and drinking?”
He didn’t know how much to tell her. He was so tired. Yet still in her voice was the odd quality that made him want to trust her. He decided not to tell her about the abandoned world or the cat food that had helped him with Donnie. “The last of what I had on Torben’s world is long faded. I’ve had plenty to eat here. It helps.”
“Hmm. And where’s Donnie? Judging by your fresh scrapes and bruises, I imagine he and you got into a fight. You returned here without him. Did you beat one of the warlords in hand-to-hand combat?”
“Donnie had us return here—”
“Don’t lie. I can smell it.”
Her hand was rubbing his, massage-like, but the pressure was increasing with each stroke.
“If you killed him, I’m the last one who’d be mad. He didn’t have many fans. It’s as Anak said: Donnie had his uses. Besides, it would be interesting if it earned you a place here above slave.”
“I don’t want anything to do with your people.”
“How did it feel? The rising blood? The thrill of seeing his last moment?”
It was dark. I pushed a rock. He might still be—
“I’m not like you people!” Brendan shouted.
“Mimi, if you’re going to murder that kid, do it outside,” Anak said with a groan. He tossed and turned on his cot and was soon breathing rhythmically again.
She released his hand. “Maybe you’re not like us. Maybe none of us were to start with. Isn’t that always the way of it?” She got up and headed towards the front of the tent. “Coming?”
21. Kingdom of Hugh
Mimi stopped by the group of lieutenants drinking outside.
“Detail someone to watch the tent,” she said. She nodded in Brendan’s direction. “This one was wandering around and walked in.”
Ivar, Rolf, and Freyda glared at Brendan, then Rolf w
histled. A grunt with a rifle jogged over.
“I’ll leave it your hands. If anything happens to the girl in there or if anyone disturbs Anak, they answer to me.”
She didn’t wait for acknowledgment of her order before she marched off. Brendan hurried to catch up. She was heading for the car wash. As she approached, the warlord guards stiffened and stopped talking. Some sort of four-wheel drive vehicle with a large machine gun mounted behind the driver had pulled up nearby. A young woman with goggles was in the driver’s seat. One of the guards slapped the roll bars, getting her attention. He waved her on, and she drove away.
“Do you need an escort?” the guard asked. Mimi shook her head.
The aroma of burned air assaulted Brendan’s nose. At first he thought it was the exhaust from the vehicles or a generator, but the smell got stronger as they got closer to the gate. Was it the air coming through from the upstream world, or the gate itself?
When he hesitated, she took him by the arm and led him into the car wash exit. The distortion effect hung above the end of the conveyor tracks. Orange sunlight shined from the opposite end of the tunnel, partially obscured by giant scrubbers and dangling water lines. A porter appeared with a wheelbarrow and almost ran straight into them. Mimi pulled Brendan out of the way. Once the porter passed she gestured him forward through the gate.
The other side smelled worse.
A sooty haze hung around the car wash. Several vehicles’ back-up beepers were going all at once, and the air vibrated with the sounds of large engines. Green military vehicles were parked in a row, along with trailer-mounted cannons of some sort. Boxes upon boxes of supplies filled the parking lot. A big rig trailer truck was backing up on the other side of burned-out frame of what had been the gas station. Sand formed a low dune around it. Dozens of people moved about with purpose. A forklift drove past carrying a loaded-down pallet of boxes that read “12x MRE BEEF.” Army food. The secret to their strength after crossing to the next world. Brendan guessed there were about fifty boxes on the pallet. He had seen a similar empty container in Torben’s tent. Enough food to keep their strength up for years if used sparingly.
A flatbed truck was parked next to the car wash. Mounted to the bed was a large machine topped by what looked like giant power transformers. A pair of generators hummed away, hooked up to the machine with black cables. A guard stared at him until Brendan looked away.
The warlords’ gate machine.
But Brendan knew even if he could get to the machine, disabling it wouldn’t be easy or instant. Even turning off the generators might not close the gate now that it was open. He felt a tickle in his throat and started coughing. It wasn’t just the pollution; the upstream air was hard to breathe.
“Let’s get away from the commotion,” Mimi said.
The sand had enveloped much of the highway interchange’s buildings, but one diner on the other side of the overpass was intact. Several tents had been set up, but only a few warlords and their slaves were around. She led Brendan into the diner and its attached bar. Shattered windows had clear plastic sheets taped over them. A layer of sand covered the floor and broken bottles were everywhere. Several coolers lined the bar. She took a paper cup and filled it with water.
“Drink.”
Brendan took the cup but gave her a look. “Why would you want me to have this?”
“Because you look thirsty.”
She sat in one of the cleaner-looking booths. The place was gloomy. A tequila bottle had been turned into a candleholder and was covered in dried melted wax. She pulled out a lighter and lit the nub of a candle. Brendan sat across from her and sipped the water. Above the neighboring booth was a cue stick someone had thrust into the drywall. A skull had been placed on the end of it.
“Now that you’re finished with this world, it’s on to the next one,” Brendan said.
“Not everyone leaves. But more join us. As you’ve seen, it’s a bit of a loose organization. Some stay. But the world doesn’t survive our visit. Anak—Hugh—noticed that from the first time we crossed through a gate. Significant damage occurs to the planet and the environment. It’s a steady deterioration. Hugh speculates that each Earth might become uninhabitable after twenty years.”
She reached behind a fake plant on the back of the booth and took out a bottle.
“But he keeps going,” Brendan said.
“Finish your water.”
He drank it down and she poured a couple of fingers of a copper-colored alcohol into his cup. She took a drink from the bottle.
“Do you see what’s on the line here? Your world is next. You might have a few years before that happens. Hugh will continue to work on his machine in order to improve it, but he’s not the same man he used to be.”
Brendan smelled the liquid in his cup. It reminded him of paint thinner. He put the cup down, and she scowled.
“I don’t like to drink. Please tell me what happened to Hugh? Why isn’t he the same?”
“Hugh was always an obsessed man, even before he invented the machine. He worked until he collapsed, pursuing an idea day and night until he perfected it. Then he would double down and slave until he had a working model. Or program. Or drug. He can make anything when he sets his mind to it. But anyone working at that level will miss things. Get tired. When we first hooked up it was me that kept him from vanishing into his own head. Made him take breaks. Got him away from his work for a day or a week at a time so he could rest. But then he turned on his machine. We went through and he brought the gang. The downstream effect was an instant hit. Can you imagine what a bunch of savage felons will do when they discover they have enhanced strength and endurance? No one cared that the world they were ravaging was suffering from the effects of a chain of catastrophic earthquakes. They could kill, steal, and rape to their hearts’ content. At the end of the day they could go home. But then they couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
She pointed at his cup. He sighed. Brendan hated the smell and taste of anything alcoholic. He didn’t like what it did to others, and knew he didn’t want any of the side effects of getting drunk, especially under the circumstances. But Mimi was waiting. He took a sip and almost spat it out. When he managed to swallow, she nodded and took a pull from her bottle.
“The machine broke down. Or someone turned it off. Hugh was certain that it just failed for a number of different reasons. ‘You don’t build a prototype like that and expect it to work as well as the final product,’ he said. But then the realization settled in that he was stuck in the broken world his machine had brought us to. No tools. None of his notebooks or computers. His workshop was no more, and there was no way back.”
She paused to pour more for both of them. When she waited, he took another sip. She’s either trying to get me drunk or give me an upworld boost. It scratched and burned the back of his throat and his stomach was on fire. A warm numbness ran up the front of his face. He exhaled sharply.
“As you might imagine, he was upset. That’s an understatement. He almost stopped functioning. If I didn’t pull him out of his funk, the gang would probably have killed him once they found out they couldn’t go back home. Hard to believe some of those animals have wives and kids and even elderly parents that they care for. Hugh needed an answer for them. But I had to get Hugh out of his stupor. So I did what I did best. I got him using.”
“Drugs? Like what he’s smoking?”
“It worked.” She stopped to stare into the candle. The small orange flame wavered.
“What does all of this have to do with me and Charlotte?”
She drank. He took a polite sip but that didn’t satisfy her. He slurped more down. The fuzzy sensation now made his head feel thick and his mouth dry.
“Hugh told them the gate had closed. He said it had been sabotaged by someone back home. This was him at his finest. He promised revenge, he promised to get them back home even if it would take years. And it’s been years, over a decade now. He would have to build, and the gang would
have to eke out a living. No…that’s not right. They would have to establish control over the world they were raiding. The gang fell in line. They did everything Hugh asked them to do. He had to set up a lab from scratch and start over. So he built another machine. But he told me he knew we would never return home. He had no way to control where the gate would lead.
“I don’t know if anyone else ever found the open gates that must have been a byproduct of his machine. Some gang members vanished from time to time. A few got murdered. Some killed themselves. But many more joined us, for obvious reasons. But I found a couple of those gates. I was always afraid of going through, as I had no idea if I would survive. But when we arrived on the last world, and when I watched the gang tear into another hapless population, I didn’t care. Finding an intact world filled me with hope. I would start over and leave Hugh and the Desert Warlords behind. I tried. Then the Los Angeles earthquake struck. I thought it was all about to happen again. Your world was to be next. But no warlords appeared. I assisted in rescue and in the investigation. That’s when I found young Charlotte and took her in. She finally told me about her father and his machine. It was all starting again, as if the universe itself wants this to happen. I helped Charlotte as much as I could. Then when you and your friends were set on stopping him, I dared believe that it was possible.”
“We did stop him.”
She offered a joyless smile. “Not even you believe that.”
“We stopped him,” he said a little too loud. “He was done with it. We rescued Brian and Paul and got them home. But before we could do anything else, your people came. One of the dorms collapsed. So much death and damage, and what for? What’s the point of going to the next world and the next after that? Does your Hugh have any idea how much misery he’s caused?”
“Less and less as time goes by.”
“You could have helped us, told us. Charlotte’s world could have been prepared.” Even as he said it he knew how stupid it sounded. Who would he have called? Even with the headmaster helping, how could he get a county or state or entire planet ready for a cataclysm?
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 62