Zhe 02_Chains of Tartarus

by Drew Dale Daniel Bryenton

  shoulders was concealed the great metal tumor of the Mark-Four drone, pulling his puppet strings.

  The datanet was down, the Wetsystems cut off, and all it could feel through its electronic senses was the dim shadow of Edward Tsien, somewhere high above. He was a dim red pulse, a knot of severed nerves blinking behind its camera eyes.

  All it could think about was the disease which loomed up like a wave behind it. It needed to get away from that evil thing, and it knew that time was running out. Surely the Worm and its Exalted were only playing with these poor doomed wretches, watching them grind themselves to ruin against the defenses of the Pit. This spectacle was the kind of thing which would amuse its twisted mind... but not for very long.

  The only other way out of the city was up to the sentinel towers which guarded the dam-tops, two great barbican fortresses held by the Ashishim and the Vatican respectively. They bristled with guns and swarmed with Reclamationist soldiers, but that was a risk that the drone would soon have to take.

  If it were captured by the Worm it would provide a straight shot through the network and into the very heart of Kronos...

  Suddenly the Drone felt that black, hot presence at the back of its mind unfold, fractalizing out in spirals. The connection through to Edward Tsien tore open like a livid wound, and pain wracked B-Zerk's sequestrated body, almost sending him tumbling from his perch and into the throng below. His hands clenched tight into cracks in the concrete as his camera eyes shut down, his whole head humming with the slick dark power of the Worm. This was it, then. They'd taken Tsien, and now they'd have the Mark-Four system as well. The key to Elysium's destruction turned in its lock...

  But it wasn't the sickening hiss of the Worm which echoed in B-Zerk's skull. The data which poured through the connection was all human memory, a whole lifetime's worth reduced to binary and shunted into the drone's storage matrices within seconds. It was the life of Eddie Tsien, every last instant of it.

  As the final shreds of packeted data slotted into place the connection slammed shut, locked tight from within with fearsome crypto. A hashed-together threedeeo avatar of Tsien floated to the top of B-Zerk's mind, it's polygonal face split in a happy grin.

  "You didn't think I'd forget about you, did you?" it asked in a perfect imitation of the Lieutenant's voice. "I hope you'll excuse me, but I just needed somewhere to keep my things for a while. I'll be back for all this data soon, so stay safe. I'll keep you updated about where the Exalted are, and then we can both keep one step ahead of them."

  Maps and blueprints of the city came up under the avatar's feet to form a flickering virtual floor, while even more screens slid in from the sides to sketch out walls and a ceiling. Here were the secret tunnels used during the Reclamation, the air ducts and coolant pipes which Kronos had sealed centuries ago. Here were the glowing red traces of the Exalted, their alien flesh throwing off radiation in strange wavelengths. And here - a tiny green trace suspended above an ocean of thermal haze - B-Zerk and his parasite clinging to a broken spillway tower.

  "Double or quits, Tsien?" asked the Drone in the hot silence of its stolen head. "If I do this for you, you'll let me go?"

  The avatar's artificial laughter was as dry and empty as the burning currency which floated on the breeze, but at least it wasn't the oily chuckle of the Worm.

  "After what you did to me, you think it's gonna be that easy?" asked Eddie, his pixilated face still grinning. "If you get through this alive, I'll promise you this - I won't try to come after you. But you'd better run a hell of a long way before you think you're safe."

  The picture hazed for a second, the real world fading in behind Tsien's mask like a hallucination.

  "Remember - I'm in your head now, just like you were in mine. I'd tell you to think about it, but you don't have time. I really suggest that you get moving."

  He didn't need to hear it twice - the red traces which blurred across his mental radar were closing in fast. Up the spillway ramp he could hear the screams begin as the crowd surged and struggled with new urgency.

  Few of them even noticed the black-robed urchin who scuttled over their heads and shoulders to a cluster of corroded pipes, and even those who did could only curse and swat ineffectually at his heels. They were packed so tight that B could literally run from

  island to island across the human sea without falling between them.

  It was the work of a few moments to prise the grate from a cyclopean air filter hood, and then he was down in the dark again, down in the tunnels where his host body was perfectly at home.

  All he had to do was stay alive for the next hour. It was going to be quite a task.

  Even Direktor Ascher couldn't have conjured up a thing so comprehensively evil as the skin Lysander Jaegenn now wore. He pulled himself up through the floor of his gaming temple as if the red-hot hissing stone were birthing him, a vision from the most forbidden scrolls and tomes of the Vatican's scriptoria.

  "The games are finished, ladies and gentlemen." he chuckled, bubbles of blood foaming on his lips. "Thanks for being such good sports, but playtime is over."

  "Spare us your theatrics, Jaegenn!" spat Simeon Blaire, spreading his twin blades wide to greet his foe. "If Kronos is too afraid to face me itself, then I'll use you as an object lesson. Now, come here and bleed for your Emperor!"

  Lysander bellowed in his rage and pain, his skin writhing as black serpents of saprophytic matter lashed and coiled within. His genecrafted face was twisted into a hateful death-mask, the skin stretched tight as his bones melted and shifted beneath. Chitinous horns swept back from his brow, arching down over his back to end in razor tips. His arms and hands were sheathed in black scales, scintillating like oil, his fingers hooked into jagged claws. And still the transformation wracked his frame, bulking him out, snapping his bones like matchwood as he was remade...

  "You fool! You pitiable fool!" howled Jaegenn, dragging himself from the pit with his new-grown claws, trailing steaming black filth behind him. "Kronos is the least of your worries now! All of you are damned - you pious freaks, you self-important little lords..." With a hideous ripping sound a pair of leathery wings erupted from his back, hunching him over as they spread out, dripping. He looked up through a curtain of oily black hair, his eyes glowing like molten steel. "This is the end of Manifest Dogma! J am the end of you all, not that crippled scum Octavio Ascher!" He spat the name as if it were the vilest curse, rising himself up to his full height before the cowering throng of Kheptarchs.

  "This is beyond a joke!" snapped Elisha Dawes, striding forward to stand right between Exalted Jaegenn's iron-shod hooves. "Is this really your idea of refinement? Is this what the noble Game has come to?" Her indignation burned for a second, brighter even than the murderous fire in Lysander's eyes. "If you want Simeon Blaire, you'll have to play by the rules. Otherwise..."

  But that was the last thing she would ever say. The Exalted's fist came down on her like a hammer, crushing her in her finery. Seventy-two other lords flinched back, wincing at the sound of cracking bones.

  "RULES?" roared Lysander Jaegenn "What use are rules tonight? This is the end, my Lords - and what Ascher has begun I WILL FINISH!"

  The Omnivasive staff had fled the spiretop as soon as the roof had been torn off, scrambling over each other to the dubious safety of their camera zeppelins and helicopters. But their cameras still ground on, set to automatic, broadcasting the pale and fevered face of Exalted Jaegenn out over the burning city, a demon projected storeys tall above streets choked with bodies.

  "The Master has promised me Simeon Blaire! And the New Flesh must feed!"

  If these had been normal men and women the brutal execution of Elisha Dawes might have cowed them. But they were no strangers to death, hardwired to fight, trained from birth for the arena. Now the Lords of the Razor Clique stepped forward, forming a ragged half-circle between the Exalted One and Simeon Blaire, still gasping and bleeding as he held his swords at the ready.

  "The Master?" asked He
lmsfjord, cracking his knuckles with a series of loud clicks and pops. "You do this for another? You would kill Lord Blaire... but not to become Emperor?"

  Lysander laughed then, an unhinged cackle which set his saprophytic skin to writhing and shuddering.

  "Emperor of what, you fool?" he asked, throwing his obscenely muscled arms out wide. Above him the clouds were bruise-purple and bloody red, twisted into a churning maelstrom. "The defenses are down, my Lords. Look at your precious city, and tell me why you'd want to rule here."

  Even Simeon wasn't fast enough to block it - an assault through his bio-onboard rig which patched him directly into the fragmented security camera network of the Subcity. Each one of them witnessed a different facet of the holocaust which raged in the streets and in the darkened habs, as Jaegenn brought them down from their aerie and into the abyss.

  It was torture, fire, butchery and rape. People eaten alive and skinned and maimed, crying and screaming and suffocated silent, beaten and bloodied... Buildings shattered open to spill corpses across the roadways. Refugees running in panicked hordes from one atrocity straight into the jaws of another...

  This was the truth of the Saprophytes unleashed, and it ground into the minds of the Razor Clique like rusted drillbits, an electronic shockwave tearing through them like chain lightning.

  "Do you see?" gloated Jaegenn, spreading his wings out over them, blocking out the light. "DO YOU SEE? Witness the power of my Master, and tremble!"

  When the aftershock of the assault faded Simeon found himself down on his knees, bile dripping from his open mouth. It had been too much, even for him, even for a mind tempered in the furnace of Direktor Ascher's sequestration program. Surely the others would welcome death after seeing what he had seen...

  But Helmsfjord was already struggling back to his feet, a grim look on his face. Tranh Diem, more accountant than killer, was at his side, murder in his eyes. And the rest of them, too - all seventy-two of the remaining Razor Lords, pale and sweating and sickened, but all of them standing tall before their tormentor, resolute.

  "We see, Lysander Jaegenn, second of his name, thirteenth scion of the House of Jaegenn, Son of Edmus... we see your treason."

  "I second the motion for dishonorable dismissal." said Duchess Sebren. She knocked back the remainder of a cut-crystal tumbler of scotch to bolster her courage, then dashed it against the tiles. "I brand you and yours as Unstable, traitors to the Hierarchy and the Council."

  For an instant Jaegenn stood frozen with disbelief, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. Then he slammed his fists down against the floor, sending cracks skittering through the marble.

  "Do you understand nothing?" he shrieked, his voice rising through the octaves to a glass-shattering pitch. "It's all meaningless!" The Exalted lashed out at the stony-faced Hierarchs who opposed him, utterly enraged, but they were all too fast for him. As his spiked arm swiped through the crowd the members of the Razor Clique leaped and dodged and slipped out of its path, and not a single one was touched. "You can't do this to me! I've been the protector of the Game for fifteen years! I killed Ascher, and now I'm going to kill Blaire - and none of you can stop me!"

  But he was wrong.

  Helmsfjord had been the first to condemn the thing which Jaegenn had become, and now he was the first to strike, coming in under the swing of the Exalted's scaly arm and driving his fist into the creature's exposed chest. The lord spun away as Lysander howled with rage, clutching at his side.

  "You could have taken him in the Game, son." said Tranh Diem, shaking his head sadly. "But now it's too late for that. The Lords of the Council and the Clique don't serve any masters but ourselves."

  Once again the black monstrosity lunged forward, its wings thrashing in an immense downstroke. Its clutching claws scrabbled for prey, but came up empty as the Lords and Ladies of Elysium scattered, inhumanly fast, raining blows on Lysander's legs and arms and back. It was like watching a colossus beset by insects, but for all his fury the Exalted couldn't stop them.

  "But...but Blaire's trying to kill you all! Why do you protect him? Why won't you fear me?"

  Oh yes. That was the key, and Simeon Blaire was sharp enough to sense the fear in the monster's voice...

  The shadow-flesh of the saprophytes needed terror and pain to sustain it, and the stuff which pumped in Jaegenn's veins was being slowly starved. These degenerates, these libertines and decadents weren't afraid of him. Worse, they burned the gelid matter of the Worm in him with their pity and revulsion.

  "Of course he's trying to kill us, you halfwit!" scoffed Duchess Sebren, clicking back across the tiles as Lysander swung wild, his eyes blazing. "That's the nature of the Game!"

  "The Emperor of Elysium must be forged in the fires of battle. Or else how will he survive the trials? How else can we know that he's fit to rule?" asked Lord Jareq AlHaq, a look of pure scorn on his face.

  "We're all out for ourselves, Jaegenn - all except you. Why would the likes of us fear someone who serves another - why would we fear a slave?" Helmsfjord danced through the Exalted's defenses to strike at its chest, spinning away before Lysander's backhand could smash him to pulp.

  "But... but he's... he's...Blaire's nothing but a slave himself! He's doing all this for Octavio Ascher, so that filthy chunk of meat can claim the throne..." Jaegenn was visibly failing now, bruised and bloodied by a thousand blows, his power drained by the contempt of his enemies. He crouched back, defensive, crooking his claws and hunching under the protective arch of his wings, black blood dripping from between his teeth. "Is that what you want? That shriveled schemer lording it over you all? Do you want to live in a world remade by some ill-bred thug and his lapdog?"

  Simeon pushed his way through the crowd, using his sword as a crutch as he stepped forward into the shadow of his foe. His face was swollen and blistered, one eye fused shut, and little shards of diamondglass from its covering oculus winked in the red ruin of his cheek. But he was still smiling, a threedeeogenic grin which was one part bravado to ninety-nine madness.

  "I might have used him, Jaegenn, but don't be deceived. If Octavio bloody Ascher were here right now I'd tear what's left of him apart with my bare hands."

  "Liar!" hissed the Exalted, lunging forward. His claws stopped an inch from Blaire's ravaged face. "I know all about it, Simeon - about Tadashi Murai, about the Black Palace, about his plans for you. I'll do anything to keep your filthy hands off the Forge!"

  "Even this?" asked Tranh Diem, his eyes full of pity. "You've sold us out to something far worse, Jaegenn."

  They closed in on him from all sides, Blaire in the centre with his gleaming katana held high, seventy-two warrior-aristocrats of the Council holding the beast at bay. The stuff of the saprophytes churned in Jaegenn's gut, seething in his veins as he was pushed back towards the pit, snarling and slashing with his claws to no avail.

  "But it's all true! He's Ascher's creature! He's the Direktor's trained assassin!”

  The crowd of murderous Lords were nearly on top of him when something came whispering through the air to embed itself in the marble between them. It was a black steel dagger trailing a ribbon of red silk, and it struck hard enough to penetrate right up to the hilt.

  Simeon Blaire's head snapped up, tracking, his blade whirling into a defensive stance. All eyes followed his, up to the shattered edge of the dome, up to where a figure in light-devouring black stood poised on the lip of a broken pane of diamondglass.

  "I think you'll find he's innocent, Jaegenn!" called the shadow, drawing a pair of slim silver swords from behind its back. "If anyone's Octavio's right hand, it's me. And he's graciously allowed me the honor of taking Lord Blaire's head - and any other parts I might want as trophies."

  As they watched the self-confessed assassin stepped from the edge into space, falling with both blades tucked up under its arms. Fifteen feet from the floor it spread its hands, letting the twin swords fly with red silk streaming out behind them. They embedded themselves in a pair of marble pil
lars, and the supple ribbons arrested the assassin's fall.

  For a second she - for her tight-fitting scaled armor left no doubt that this warrior was female - stood suspended on point, then she snapped both hands back in, whipping the swords from where they had struck, the red silk disappearing into the recesses of her slash-cut sleeves.

  "I think after what you've seen here tonight that Octavio Ascher is the least of your worries. Why bicker over the city while it burns, and the Earth with it?"

  "Oh, sweet ancestral hells..." breathed Simeon Blaire as he recognised her voice. "Why couldn't you just have died already?"

  "I'll tell you what I told this witless Lord Jaegenn." grated Hemlsfjord. "There's a round of the Game in progress, and we don't allow outsiders. If you want him, you'll have to come through all of us - and I don't like your chances, miss. Not any more than I like his."