Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1)

by Brant Williams

  “He’s the one we’ll send,” Marcus finally said, and pointed at me. "He seems to be the less skilled of the two, and it's obvious he's in love with the girl. He won't dare risk doing anything that might get her killed."

  I felt my face turn red at his assessment. I agreed about the less skilled part, but how had he possibly guessed my feelings for Alexa from what he had seen of us? It wasn't as if we walked in holding hands or making out.

  Marcus walked in front of Spencer's cage. "Tell him where to find the goods and give him your gate box to get back here. He'll come back alone with the goods, or we'll kill the girl."

  I felt my stomach clench at the mention of killing Alexa. I wanted to punch Marcus Booking in the throat, cut that spider tattoo off his face, and feed it to him.

  But without my enhancers, that was just a pipe dream. The guards would tear me to shreds in seconds, and Alexa would have even less of a chance to get away. At least if I did what he asked, there was a chance of us making it out of this situation alive.

  Spencer told me where he had been keeping the goods. I wanted to kick myself when he told me. He kept a secret stash of Seam Warden technology in the storage closet we saw him come out of when we were cleaning bathrooms. Under the nasty cat box was a transdimensional storage space.

  Looking back, it made perfect sense, but we had no idea at the time that he was up to anything shady. I had completely trusted him. Idolized him even. I had wanted to be him.

  Now, I was just numb.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” said Marcus. “You will go back into Seam Warden headquarters the same way you came in. That shouldn’t cause any suspicion, assuming you keep your mouth shut. Which you will, right?”

  He looked at me expectantly. I wanted to reach out and strangle the man, but he was too far out of range for that. Besides, without my enhancers, I was just an ordinary human. Well-trained and dangerous, but probably not to the level an experienced ex-Seam Warden would be.

  Marcus grabbed one of his guards’ guns and pointed it at Alexa’s head. “Right?”

  What choice did I have?

  I forced my mouth to say the word. “Right.”

  Marcus grinned and lowered the gun. “See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it? You’re well on the way to being flexible in your beliefs.”

  I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

  Marcus continued as if everything was already decided. "Next, you will go to the closet where Spencer has hidden my payment, and you will open a gate using his gate box and send everything through. Once you have emptied out the closet, you will come through yourself.”

  “And then, you’ll let them go,” said Spencer.

  Marcus shook his head slowly. “There will be plenty of time to talk about what happens next,” he said. “Right now this is about our young cadet obeying every instruction with exactness to keep his friends alive.”

  I was angry enough at Spencer at the moment that I didn’t really care what Marcus did to him. He had earned his fate, whatever it was. But I was not about to let Alexa die.

  “Give me the gate box and let’s get this over with,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Marcus said. “Accept the inevitable. It’s so much easier than trying to fight against it.” He motioned to a guard who opened my cage. I stepped out and felt the overwhelming urge to rip off Marcus’ arms, but I restrained myself – barely.

  Spencer handed me his gate box, and I gave him my most contemptuous look. He held my eyes for a moment, and then turned away, shame overwhelming him.

  I didn’t care what he felt right then. He had betrayed us all and deserved every negative consequence of his actions.

  "One last thing," said Marcus. "You have two hours to get my payment and be back here, or your friends die. Any questions?"

  Two hours? I didn’t know for sure where we were in relation to the door, so that could easily take almost the entire time to get there depending on traffic. I wanted to argue, but Marcus clearly wasn’t the kind of person who made reasonable compromises.

  “Someone show me the way out,” I said.

  It took slightly over an hour for me to get to the door. I came back through to find a different Sasquatch I didn’t recognize on guard. I wasn’t a great judge of Sasquatch ages, but I thought he looked to be a bit younger than some of the others. I kept walking and acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, and I had every right to come through the door.

  The guard hesitated but ultimately didn't try to stop me.

  I hurried through headquarters, but the fastest way to the closet where we had seen Spencer was right past the Cadet Wing. As I passed by the door to the wing, Zachary and Sierra walked out together, laughing and seriously gazing into each other's eyes.

  I tried to avoid them, but Zachary saw me.

  “Pierce! Where have you been? You never came back to the dorm last night.”

  Sierra gave me a sly grin. “And Alexa never came back either…”

  So not what I needed right then. We must have been unconscious for a lot longer than I thought. I hadn’t realized that we had been gone that long.

  “Something came up,” I said. “But not like you’re thinking,” I said to Sierra. I couldn’t let this delay me very long. If I did, it could kill Alexa and Spencer. “Is Reid looking for me?” I asked.

  “No,” Zachary said. “I covered for you. I closed your door and told him you had already gone to bed when he came in last night. And Sierra did the same for Alexa. But we do have practice this afternoon. Will you be there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Pierce, what’s going on?” Zach asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” I said. “And I don’t have time to, even if I could.”

  “That sounds bad,” Sierra said. “Can we help?”

  I thought about that for a moment. I could have the two of them come through the gate with me and fight. For that matter, I could alert Reid and get a whole swat team to come through. But that would still put Alexa in danger. I wasn't going to do anything that might get her killed.

  “No,” I finally said. “But if I’m not back by practice, tell Reid that we’re having issues with Marcus Booking. He’ll know who he is.”

  I left them and hurried to find the closet. That warning would at least point Reid and the other Seam Wardens in the right direction if Marcus didn’t let us go when I brought his stuff.

  When I got to the closet, two Seam Wardens stood not far from the entrance having a conversation about a recent breach they had responded to. There was no way I could get in without them noticing, and closing myself in a closet would look suspicious. Instead, I went to the nearby restroom and waited at the door listening for when they left.

  As I waited, I felt a strange sensation in my chest – almost like an itch, but on the inside where I couldn’t reach it. The sensation wasn’t noticeable at first, but it got more intense the longer I waited. I tried to push it out of my thoughts, but it gradually increased to the point that it started to hurt – like heartburn amped up to eleven.

  Fortunately, the two Seam Wardens left after a few minutes, and I was able to sneak into the closet. I turned on the lights and closed the door behind me. It took me no time at all to find the litter box where Spencer had hidden the equipment. I lifted the litter box up and found a rectangular outline on the shelf beneath it. I pulled the square up, and there was the transdimensional storage space that Spencer had told me about.

  I reached my arm in and began pulling out what he had stored in there: a dozen sets of fully operational Boom Sticks, five enhancers suspended in a jar of liquid — I wondered how Spencer had acquired those — several black shirts and vests, as well as a couple of OPEN guns.

  I got pretty excited when I saw the guns. With a fully-loaded OPEN gun, I would have a legitimate chance to free Alexa and escape. But after a moment of searching, I realized there was no ammunition, and without that, they were little more than big clubs.

  A
s I took inventory, the pain in my chest continued to worsen. What was going on? Why was this suddenly happening? I had never had this kind of feeling before with no obvious cause.

  I rubbed my chest with my fist and continued my inventory of the hole. I found several more items that I didn’t recognize, but since Spencer had put them in, I figured they were part of the deal.

  Once I had emptied out the transdimensional space, I stopped and looked at the pile of equipment I had removed. It was quite the accomplishment to acquire all this without anyone realizing he had it.

  I checked the time. I had five minutes until the deadline Marcus had given me. That should be plenty of time. I used the gate box to open a portal to Marcus’ headquarters. Since this gate box had already been there, it could open a gate with extreme accuracy.

  First, I tossed through the OPEN guns and the shirts and vests, but then I had to stop because the pain in my chest was getting more intense. I dropped to my knees and gasped for breath.

  And then, it was gone.

  In an instant, the pain had disappeared and in its place was… awareness.

  I could feel my enhancers again! Relief swept through me. I felt whole again. The spray Marcus had used on us must have finally worn off.

  I put all my enhancers into healing and felt my body instantly revitalize. Energy flooded through me as I switched some of my enhancers to strength and speed. I was back to normal – well, normal for a guy with eight enhancers – and it felt wonderful.

  And with my enhancers back, the rules of the game had changed.

  I grabbed two sets of Boom Sticks that I hadn’t sent through yet and stuck them in my transdimensional storage pockets.

  Oh, it was so on.

  I took a deep breath and walked through the portal.

  19

  To Catch a Spider

  I stepped through the portal into the room with the cages. I quickly assessed my surroundings. Situational awareness was a top priority since what I was about to do was going to be fast, dangerous, and more than a little bit reckless.

  Pretty much like most of my past plans had been.

  We had practiced this in cadet training. Reid and Abby had drilled it into us that a quick assessment of our surroundings was often the difference between success and excruciating death or pain.

  I visually swept the room looking for threats, exits, weapons, innocent bystanders, and anything relevant to my plans.

  Marcus Booking was still there, surrounded by six guards. There were five more guards positioned around the room guarding the two exits. Alexa and Spencer were still in the same cages. Fortunately, they were mostly out of the line of fire and did not have guards posted next to them.

  The portal closed behind me as I walked through with the gate box. Marcus Booking smiled and looked at his watch.

  “And you even had two minutes to spare,” he said. “Impressive. You have potential.”

  I smiled. “You think so?” I asked.

  Marcus misunderstood the reason for my smile. “Very much,” he said. “You could have a successful future here with me. I need capable men like you.”

  I stopped a moment and pretended to think about what he was telling me.

  “I’m going to have to decline your job offer. I like my current job, too much.” I split my enhancers between speed and strength, pulled out my Boom Sticks, and raised them into the ready position.

  I spun in place and sent a series of three wide compression waves towards Marcus and the guards.

  The six guards were taken completely by surprise. They flew backward fifteen feet and smashed into the walls or other cages.

  Marcus Booking, however, was too quick. He leaped ten feet into the air, over the compression wave and onto the second level of cages.

  Man, he was fast. How many enhancers did he have?

  I dashed to Alexa’s cage and threw the extra set of Boom Sticks into the cage with her.

  Alexa used her Boom Sticks to send the door flying off her cage and into a guard. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious, the door landing on top of him.

  “Get them!” Marcus shouted.

  The guards changed form. Six guards transformed into spider shapes – Brylings. The remaining five were Stoki and transformed into their natural, extra-crispy-zombie-with-wings forms.

  The Brylings surrounded me. They knew it would take only a single bite for me to pass out cold. But my enhancers were back, and with them, I was more than enough of a match for a pack of Bryling.

  I swung my Boom Sticks in protective arcs around me, moving so fast my body was a blur. One of the Brylings moved too close, trying to catch me from behind. I spotted the movement with my peripheral vision, leaped into the air and brought the full power of both Boom Sticks onto the arachnid body of the Bryling with a disruptor strike. It dropped to the ground, its body instantly curling into a ball with white tendrils of steam escaping from where its eyeballs had previously been. The full electrical power of the Boom Sticks had somehow burst them.

  I was glad I had been at the wrong angle to have seen the bursting. That was just nasty.

  After seeing what had happened to their fellow guard, the other Bryling suddenly became much less anxious to attack me. They stood back at a distance, still surrounding me, but unwilling to move in and risk the fate of their brother.

  Fine. Ranged weapons worked just as well.

  I hit one guard in the face with a full-powered, tightly focused blast from the Boom Stick. The Bryling’s head whipped back, and it smashed into the bars of a nearby cage. The Bryling hit with such force that the bar left a bloody, two-inch indentation on the back of Bryling’s skull. Bits of brain matter flecked the bar where it had impacted, and the Bryling fell to the ground, dead.

  Two Bryling down, four to go.

  Alexa was having less luck than I was. I could tell that she hadn't recovered the use of her enhancers yet. Maybe, I recovered faster because I had so many of them, or perhaps she had been given another dose of that dampening spray while I was gone. Either way, without her enhancers, she was in over her head.

  Five Stoki swooped and dived at her, trying to knock her down or rip the Boom Sticks from her grasp. Alexa dived and rolled, getting up in a crouch just in time to knock a Stoki out of the air with a compression wave. I marveled at how she moved with a natural grace that I would never have no matter how many enhancers I took.

  But despite that grace, she was over-matched from a sheer numbers perspective at five to one odds – not to mention the mobility factor of flying attackers. It was only a matter of time until one of them broke through her defenses and caught her off guard. The result of that would no doubt be deadly.

  I kicked a Bryling in the chest to make room – it flew ten feet through the air – and I ran over to Alexa. We stood back-to-back in a defensive position.

  A Stoki swooped down at me, and I knocked it out of the sky with a compression wave. It spiraled out of control and crashed face first into a wall.

  Another one down.

  “You’ll never beat them individually. Attack all at once, you cowards!” yelled Marcus. It was rather ironic, given the fact that he was yelling the command from a safe location away from the fighting.

  He was right, though. If they all moved in at once to attack, they would likely overwhelm us. But that approach would mean severe harm to those who charged in first before the others followed behind to overwhelm us.

  These weren’t trained soldiers who were willing to give their lives for a cause. They were the guards of a megalomaniac arms dealer and drug pusher. They were happy to be the attackers in the rear, but none of them wanted to lead the reckless initial charge that would take the brunt of the damage.

  I spun and elbowed a Stoki in the temple. He staggered and dropped to one knee. I hit him with both Boom Sticks on the neck and shoulder causing him to fall to the ground shaking uncontrollably.

  “Pierce, duck!” yelled Spencer. I dropped to my knees, just barely avoiding the shar
p talons of a Stoki swooping through the space my head had just recently occupied.

  To my surprise, a silvery Bryling jumped into the air, and caught the Stoki with its thick jaws and bit hard. Unbalanced by the unexpected extra weight, the Stoki dropped like a stone and crashed to the ground. The Bryling bit the Stoki several more times until it stopped moving.

  What was going on? Why had the Bryling attacked someone on his own side?

  The Bryling didn’t stop to talk – it was hard for them to say much in their transformed shape. Instead, the Bryling launched himself at the last flying Stoki and began shredding the Stoki’s wings with his fangs.

  "You morons!" yelled Marcus. "Do I have to do everything myself?" He leaped from the second level and landed smoothly on the ground in front of me. I felt power radiating from him. He had to have at least six enhancers going right now. From what I remembered of the story Alexa had told me, he only had a couple when he had his accident. How many extras did he take?

  Marcus pulled out two Boom Sticks of his own and gave me what had to be the creepiest evil smile of all time. There was something about the glint in his eyes that made it clear he was mentally unbalanced.

  Awesome. Who didn’t love fighting sociopathic killers with super speed, healing, and strength?

  I dodged out of the way just in time to avoid his compression wave and fired back with one of my own, but missed as he spun out of the way at the last second.

  He was fast. Almost as fast as I was. I guessed we were pretty well matched on the number of enhancers we each had. The outcome of this fight was going to come down to a matter of training and who was better at using those enhancers.

  I leaped after Marcus and chased him around the room. We circled it three times in the blink of an eye, both of us using our enhancers for speed.

  Two Brylings stepped into my path, extended their spider legs with knife-like tips, and attempted to forcibly separate my head from the rest of my body. I spun out of the way of the first one, and right into the path of the second one.