To Beat the Devil (The Technomancer Novels Book 1)

by M. K. Gibson

  “Maz, what is that?” I asked about the markings.

  “I am not completely sure. It seems to be Denochian, but an older, more primal and more beautiful version. It both intrigues and sickens me. I can’t explain.”

  “Can you read it?” I asked.

  “It really isn’t something you read, but rather, something you know. Like a perfect memory. No, this is beyond me. But there is something to this, something… ancient.”

  We continued our descent toward the center of the room. At the bottom of the sunken dais were three old-fashioned, metal-railed hospital beds with bodies under sheets. The bodies were connected to machines that beeped steadily and IVs. I could hear slow heartbeats, weak yet steady. The bodies were alive. By the bodies were metal trays with scalpels and surgical instruments. The scene was something from a Poe opium dream. If this was where Father Grimm called home, then it fell in line with the information Jensen had provided. God only knows what Grimm had done to the bodies.

  “Salem,” Maz whispered.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Something is coming. Something old. Something I never felt before.” Maz was visibly unnerved. I had never seen Maz like that.

  “What is it?” I asked. I sensed nothing out of the norm. But I did hear soft footfalls coming.

  “I don’t know. This is something that, that…” Maz couldn’t finish his statement. I swore I saw his bony demon knees knocking.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I hissed sharply.

  “I d-don’t know. Something is causing t-this. W-whatever is coming,” Maz stuttered.

  Suddenly the flames from the candles erupted into huge fires, then immediately dimmed to almost nothing. The burst of light blinded us and we stumbled around. Then I felt a presence that wasn’t there a moment before. Something was there with us. Several of the Denochian symbols in the chamber began to glow in various colors. Deep greens, bright blues, fiery reds, and pure white. Then I saw only a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness, and Maz was on his knees crying, apologizing for every horrible thing he ever did.

  And a lot of them were pretty disturbing. I mean, they were fucked up.

  I rubbed my eyes and as my vision cleared I saw the outline of a man place his hand on Maz’s forehead. He simply said “Sleep,” and Maz fell over. The candle lights returned to their normal height and I saw Father Grimm standing over the sleeping demon.

  “Welcome to my home,” Grimm said to me. And then he rushed forward so quickly I could barely track his movement. He was like one of those twisted grainy Japanese horror movies where the water-soaked twelve-year-old ghost girl lurched at you, skipping forward in time. He placed two fingers on my forehead as well. Blackness welled up and I was unconscious before I knew what had happened.

  *******************

  A long time ago . . .

  The boy known as Isaac found that his new body was simply amazing. The nanites, as his father called them, made him nearly superhuman. He was faster, stronger. He could see farther and hear better. All his senses were buzzing with activity.

  His father told him the nanites were tiny robots in his body. And they were programmed to treat his body as their home and to protect it at all costs. They would constantly perfect his body. Also, they would multiply and spawn new generations of nanites, provided Isaac consumed enough special metals and plastics for the nanites to use as raw material. His father told them all the generations of nanites, no matter how advanced or small they became, would always obey Asimov’s laws of robotics.

  Whatever that meant, Isaac thought.

  But as Isaac grew, he noticed things. He didn’t seem to grow as fast as the other kids. Also, his parents kept getting older and older, but he continued to look younger than his age. When Isaac was 20, he still looked 14 or 15. His father explained to him that the nanites were slowing his aging process in order to survive. Since Isaac was their host, they wished to continue existence. And by making him younger longer, they were not disobeying the laws.

  Isaac’s father apologized over and over. But Isaac thought it was pretty cool. He may live forever? How awesome was that?! But as the years passed, and Isaac’s parents got older and sicker, they told him of what may happen to the world. They warned him of what may come. They explained that they tried to make him stronger for the years ahead. They had, in fact, cursed him. Isaac didn’t see it that way, though. At least, not yet.

  Isaac asked his parents why they didn’t try the nanites themselves. They explained they had tried, but because they were already adults, the nanites only could do so much. The younger the person, the better chance they had of becoming more. His father also explained that the nanites were programmed to bond only with his DNA. When Isaac was young, he didn’t understand. He figured it out later. It was a fail-safe. So his parents had used all they had left in making Isaac into a superhuman. And it had worked.

  After a time, Isaac realized he didn’t want to be alone in the world forever. He asked his parents if there was something they could do.

  “There just might be, son.” His father smiled.

  ********************

  I woke up in a dimly lit room. I was upright, that much I knew. I felt like a rebooting computer, just a blank screen and the blinking cursor. Come to think of it, I kind of was a rebooting computer.

  I shook my head to wake up and I was aware of a few things as I took in my surroundings. I could smell concrete, earth, and moisture, which meant I was still underground. I was chained and strapped to some kind of upright rack, slightly leaning back. Crap. The room I was in was simple, maybe twelve by twelve, and there was one door, opposite me. A small wood desk with a chair and a gas lamp was the only furniture I could see. The lamp was apparently the only source of light.

  Well, this sucked.

  I tested the manacles on my wrists. They were tight and thick. Forged steel. Even with enough leverage I doubted I could break them. My ankles were also clamped down. Crisscrossing my chest were thick, wide leather straps. All my gear was missing; I was in only my jeans and t-shirt.

  Someone got my tech bracers off. Huh.

  They were designed to give a tremendous electrical discharge to anyone but me trying to remove them. Yet they were gone. I hoped they zapped the hell out of someone. Hell, even my boots were missing. A pulse blast from them may have dislodged me. Smart.

  As I hung there I tried to listen to everything around me. I heard distant machinery humming and buzzing. I heard people talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I heard the sounds of flesh on flesh. At least someone was having a good time. Last, I heard a sound that hadn’t been there a moment ago. A heartbeat. Then breathing. Behind me.

  Jesus, that was creepy.

  Father Grimm stepped out of the shadows behind the rack I was bound to. He walked around me, removed his hat, sat in the chair and crossed his legs under his split cassock. I could tell he was wearing homemade leather pants. That’s pretty metal. He was quiet, just looking me over. Never blinking, never wavering. His eyes betrayed nothing. His face was as grim as his name. When he finally spoke, it shocked me a little.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “To be let go, for starters,” I replied.

  “What do you want?” he asked again, his voice flat. Emotionless.

  “World fucking peace. Tell me what you want from me, and we can cut a deal,” I said, getting frustrated.

  “What do you want?” he asked a third time.

  “I am going to kick your ass, you hear me?!” I yelled. This Good Will Hunting thing was getting on my nerves.

  Father Grimm stood, tucked the chair under the table, retrieved his leather gaucho Stetson hat, turned the lamp nearly off and walked out the door. Before he closed it all the way, he stopped. Then he came back in and produced a small device from within his robe’s pockets. He turned a switch and set it on the table. A very low static came from the device. He then left, closing the door and locking it.

  Th
e device kept producing a low static tone. It was a white noise generator. I couldn’t make out sounds beyond this room now. Clever. After a few minutes the static was really getting on my nerves. Damn, that static was annoying. It wasn’t the kind of white noise you could sleep to. It was the kind that grated your nerves raw and burrowed into your brain like a tick. I’d call it black noise, but that seemed racist. Not that race mattered anymore. Most of the world was a mixed bag of ethnic mutts.

  But that noise . . . it was in my brain. I couldn’t concentrate.

  Father Grimm left me there for three days.

  I hung there in my own piss and shit. The damn noise generator ran constantly. The harmonics made sleep nearly impossible, only catching bursts. I was starving and delirious. The contact link back to my lair and my parents was blocked due to the depth and concrete. I was alone. My head was pounding from the lack of sleep and I was nauseous.

  On the fourth day, Father Grimm walked in and slowly closed the door. He turned up the lamp. The flare-up in light brought incredible pain to my eyes. I had to turn away as best I could. He turned off the white noise generator and instantly I slumped a bit in relief. A tear began to well up in the corner of my eye. The relief from the noise, the sound of silence, was…joy.

  Grimm pulled out the chair, leaned toward me as I continued to hang on the rack, and he asked, “What do you want?”

  Shit, we were back to this. In torture, or psychological warfare, sleep deprivation mixed with brief breaks from continued agony were supposed to be very effective. I always thought if I were that situation I could deal with being uncomfortable or a little sleepy. I was wrong. I would have told him almost anything at this point.

  “I—I don’t know. I want—I want to be left alone. I want a life free of demons and hiding and fucked-up magicians torturing me!” I yelled, my throat raw from lack of water.

  “What do you want?” he asked again.

  “I want to go home. I want to be left alone,” I said, barely a whisper.

  “What do you want?” he asked a third time.

  “I DON’T KNOW!” I yelled. My throat felt like it was torn.

  Father Grimm stood, pushed in his chair and activated the white noise generator, turned the lamp down low, walked out of the room, and locked the door.

  It would be another three days before I saw Father Grimm again.

  I began talking to myself. I had long conversations with myself. I began to question every action I had ever done and weighed them all in accordance with my current situation. Whether I had built up bad karma and this was the universe getting back at me. I thought of Maz from time to time and I wondered how he fared. I thought about Jensen and Ricky. The Spinoli sisters. Friends. Friends? Were they? Did they care enough to look for me, or even notice I was missing?

  I did come to one conclusion: this Father Grimm was a psychopath. Since I had met him, my world had not been the same. I just wanted to go back to my lair among my things and hide from the world. I wanted to hear my mother’s and father’s voices again, even if they were only digital imprints of the people they once were. Respective ghosts in the machine. What did I want? I asked myself over and over. Each asking brought me no closer to a revelation. I was still chained and strapped below ground, at the mercy of an immortal that in all probability was the Devil’s spawn.

  I was so tired. I was so hungry and that damn little machine was driving me nuts. That machine became the center of my ire. I began to loathe it. It was the single thing keeping me from getting out of there, or at least the single thing keeping me from retreating into my own mind. I hung, incapable of sleep, incapable of touching the dream state, of letting my mind be free even if my body was trapped. The nanites in my system were keeping me alive. My stored body fat and trace elements were all that kept me from death. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.

  On the third day, Father Grimm came into the chamber and turned up the lamp. He carried with him a steak, bloody and red. With it was a baked potato with fixings. A cold beer was his beverage. He carried all these on a silver tray. He came into the room and placed the tray on the table. He pulled out the chair and sat down. He turned off the white noise generator and began his meal.

  Oh God, it smelled so good. I would hurt someone for a bite. I would actually hurt an innocent person just for a sip of the beer. When he finished his meal, he sat back in his chair and looked at me.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Food, water, please!” I begged. I actually begged. I had never begged for anything in my entire life.

  “What do you want?” he asked again. His voice was still devoid of any emotion.

  “To crush that generator and sleep. Oh god, let me sleep.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Please, just kill me. Let me die.”

  Father Grimm stood, turned on the generator, pushed in his chair, gathered his tray and walked out. This time he did not turn the lamp down. I could see the generator. I seethed with my passionate hate for the device. I wanted to destroy it. I wanted to find the makers of the device and kill them all. I wanted to find their families and slaughter their entire clan and burn their home and salt the earth.

  I hated.

  On the second day of this rotation, the eighth day by my count, a strange thought occurred to me. And I mentally kicked myself for having not thought of it sooner. The manacles may have been forged steel, but the wooden rack they were attached to was just that, wood. I recalled an old fantasy series I read, where three of the male protagonists were chained in a slave wagon. The chains were too thick to break. But the chains were attached to the wagon. In the story the chains were attached to the wagon with steel straps, so the attempt to remove them was useless. But my manacles seemed to only be bolted into the wood.

  I bore down with everything I had left. And I strained and strained until I felt muscle tissue began to tear. Nothing. I looked at the generator, and my hate gave me strength to try again. I bore down again and willed my arm to do my bidding. I heard a crack in the wood and I felt it give a little. In my delirious dehydrated state I wanted to cry, but my tears would not flow. Instead, I focused my will again and again. A split in the wood. And another and another. Then a loud crack. My arm tore free. I exhaled and began to laugh. If Father Grimm kept his same timetable, then I had about 24 hours until that door opened again. And I would be ready for him. I immediately began working on my other arm. A smile came to my face as I planned all the horrid things I was going to do to him.

  The next day, the third in this rotation and the ninth in total, just like clockwork the door opened and Father Grimm walked in.

  I sprang from behind him and smashed the white noise generator against his head.

  A savage war cry of pure instinct erupted from deep within me and I felt hatred in all its righteous glory.

  Grimm hit the floor in a roll and I toppled over from the attack. I was weaker than I thought. No food and no water; I was running on pure hate. I pushed myself up onto wobbly legs. Grimm was already standing. A trickle of blood poured down his face from a split scalp. He assumed a fighter’s stance and asked:

  “What do you want?”

  And we were back to this again. My brain was mush, my body wasted. I was coated in my own piss and shit. I was past limits I didn’t know I had. I had to take him out, find Maz, and get out of here. I swung wild, a haymaker. Grimm easily sidestepped and used my momentum against me, shoving me to the hard floor. He wasted no time and he was on me, putting my arm and neck in a joint lock.

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?!” he yelled in my ear.

  “I don’t know!” I yelled back.

  Father Grimm stood me up and shoved me hard against the nearest wall. I bounced hard and he closed quickly with a one-two jab-hook combo strike to my sternum and jaw. I reeled back from the attack, bringing my arms up blindly, feebly trying to block any additional attacks. Grimm batted my arms aside and slammed his forearm into my throat, driving me back ag
ainst the wall. He had me pinned. I was so weak and he was so strong.

  “What do you want?” he hissed in my ear.

  “To be free,” I groaned.

  “NO!” he yelled. “You hide behind this façade, this persona you have created! For once in your life, be honest. Not to me, to yourself!” Grimm snarled at me. He released the forearm to my throat for a moment, only to palm strike my nose, breaking it. He grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me toward him hard. He snapped a knee in my gut immediately, knocking the wind out of me. I fell over. No grace or style, just a beaten man falling. Father Grimm walked over and placed a knee in the small of my back, pinning me down. He placed his hands under my chin and pulled in a modified camel clutch.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “To be left alone,” I grunted.

  “What do you want?” again he asked.

  “To skull fuck your mother,” I managed to spit out. The pain was so intense I was close to blacking out. He may kill me, but I wasn’t going to out without some sort of mental spit in the eye.

  “What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? WHAT DO YOU WANT?!” His voiced reached a roar as he chanted that infernal mantra.

  I don’t know where the words came from, but I let my mind go. Between the last nine days of torture and the beating, I just let go, and I whispered the first thing that came out of my mouth without even thinking about it. Instantly Grimm stopped. The pain stopped.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I . . . I don’t want to be alone anymore,” I repeated in a burnt croak.

  Grimm released me and rolled me over. He was smiling. He ran his hands over my head gently. He smoothed my cheeks and looked me in the eyes.

  “Sleep,” he said, touching my forehead, and I fell into blissful dreamless void.

  Chapter Eleven

  Meet the Devil

  I woke on the softest mattress I had ever slept on. There was a gentle repetitive beep of a vitals monitor. I felt…good. I felt very good. As my eyes came into focus I saw that I was on my back in a modified old-world hospital bed. Two IV lines were going into me. One looked like standard fluids, and the other looked like a dark red and brown sludge. Also, it seemed I was still strapped down. That couldn’t be good.