"How far to Iniquita?" signaled Raymond.
"Ninety-minutes."
"Lead me there. To the v-chamber."
An unrealistically fast-moving blue bird caught Raymond's eye, and he chased after it. Scorpio had resumed blue jay form. Together they flew, low to the ground, weaving left and right around forest fires. The air smelled of smoke, and grew smokier as they went, until Raymond felt his throat drying and his eyes starting to water. As best he could, he slowed his breathing and made his inhalations more shallow, to avoid coughing.
A meteor streaked down the sky and hit about a quarter mile in front of them. Debris rebounded up from the impact, a spray of soil and rocks shot high into the air. Raymond lowered his head to the board and shielded it with his right arm as bits of dirt and gravel rained down on him. After ten seconds or so, he emerged from the shower of debris and opened his eyes to find the blue jay streaking along undisturbed.
o-------------------------------o
The sight of storm clouds on the horizon was a welcome one. It made the dryness in Raymond's throat and the burning in his eyes seem tolerable, an anguish to be endured for only a few minutes longer. A gray haze of rain spanned the distance from the expanse of clouds to the dark land beneath. Lightning flashed from within the stormy area, stirring concern in Raymond's gut. The blue jay held its implausible speed and continued in a straight line, headed right into the center of the darkness.
The rain started as a fine sprinkle, tiny pin pricks of water on Raymond's face. He looked down to see whether the forest fires persisted in the rain and was surprised to see that he was no longer over forested land. Beneath him was a vast swamp. He looked behind him and saw that the swamp extended quite a ways back. The smoke in the air was being carried from distant fires. He dropped closer to the ground, slowly, making sure the blue jay matched his descent. The air lower down was heavy and moist. Its taste of wet foliage and sulfur provided a surprising degree of relief.
The droplets that spattered Raymond's face and bare legs grew heavier and more frequent, until their painful sting was too great, and he had to slow down. The blue jay disappeared from view, lost in the thick precipitation.
"Don't slow down now," said Scorpio.
Raymond sped up, until he could see his guide again. A long bolt of lightning appeared far ahead of him, stretching from high above to a point near the ground about a mile away. Raymond was flying at an altitude of about three hundred feet, yet the bolt seemed to end at a point even higher. He wondered whether a mountain lay ahead.
Another bolt of lightning followed, coming from a different angle but striking what appeared to be the exact same spot. The tiny ever-flapping silhouette of the jay showed up in this new light, closer to him than he had expected. But the light revealed something else as well. Something that gave Raymond the sense that he would no longer need guidance to his destination.
In the blue-white glow of the lightning, Raymond saw a giant demon's head rising out of the swamp. A head the size of a mountain, with horns that protruded from either side and twisted upward in elaborate symmetrical curves, nearly meeting at the top. The eyes of the demon were slits, and its mouth curled ever so slightly at each end. The face had an air of lazy malevolence.
As the glow of lightning faded, the eyes of the demon flared with the same blue-white light. Raymond felt as though the eyes had seen him, seen through him. They reached an intensity so bright that he was forced to turn away, using his right arm as a shield. When he peered out again, the light was fading, with a flicker that gave the demon the shabby quality of a mechanical fairground attraction.
Lowering his arm, Raymond noticed that his heavy wet shirt, saturated by the downpour, was dragging his shoulders downward. He straightened up and drew in a breath, trying to focus on the invigoration of the rain. He looked at his right arm and saw that his skin was gray, nearly black. The smoke of forest fires had mingled with the rain, filled it with the soot of this doomed planet.
Raymond suddenly realized why his attention had been drawn to his arm. Light shone on his forearm from somewhere behind him.
"Go faster!" urged Scorpio.
Uneasy confusion caused Raymond to turn, just in time to witness the blazing streak of a meteorite. An ear-splitting screech brought his head down and his hands to his ears. An explosion of heat and light erupted beneath him, and an upheaval of swamp water launched him upward. He drifted up off his airboard, and his body was pummeled as he rose over a hundred feet on the mass of swamp-water displaced from the point of impact. He arced through the air in a prolonged somersaulting scream, and his body started to fall.
Raymond found himself roughly four hundred feet above the swamp, headed into freefall. Another bolt of lightning struck ahead of him, casting its eerie light over the dead trees that rose out of the swamp like spikes. In that moment before the crack of thunder arrived, Raymond lost all sensation. The world went silent, and his consciousness was occupied by a single thought: I'm going to die.
Chapter 20
"I assure you, he's not the same person. He's a copy."
"Such a perfect copy."
"I think he's coming to."
"I hope the drugs are working."
Voices. A man's voice... it was Scorpio. A woman's voice, another woman's voice. Raymond opened his eyes, then closed them against the red glare of light. He felt as though he were under a heat lamp. He struggled to sit up, but a hand on his chest pushed him back down. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was so dry he couldn't muster enough saliva, and he ended up with nothing but a miserable cough that tore his throat.
"Am I dead this time?" croaked Raymond, hoping for a merciful "yes".
A force shook his head from side to side, and one of the women said "no". He felt as though he might have shaken his own head, echoing her response, then realized it must have been Scorpio's response. He formed a question with his hands, asking for the time. His right finger extended and drew back, as if pawing at the cushioned surface beneath him—it was 1 AM.
"Raymond, do you remember me?" asked one of the women. Her voice was closer to him now, and the red glare that shown through his eyelids faded—she was blocking the light. Her voice was unfamiliar. He opened his eyes slightly, blinking. Compassionate eyes looked down at him, from a face crisscrossed with scars. The eyes were Anya's eyes, and the woman's dark hair reminded him of Anya's. But the voice was softer, more timid.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. He was exhausted.
I'm still in Nurania. Did I die and come back?
He posed the question to himself with a surprising degree of detachment. He was tired of the puzzle of his own mortality.
"Is he ready to move yet?" asked Scorpio.
"I don't think so," responded the other woman. Her voice was harder than that of the first woman, clinical, almost stern.
Raymond signaled to Scorpio for water.
"Could he have some water?" asked Scorpio.
"Sure."
Raymond opened his mouth when directed. He opened his eyes to see what was happening and found, a few inches from his face, a big pair of pinkish Caucasian breasts bulging out of tight white latex. A metal instrument was inserted into his mouth, and a fine mist was sprayed onto his tongue. It felt vaguely cool, then hot, giving him none of the expected relief. The instrument turned in his mouth, spraying the sides and roof. Raymond's tongue and throat contracted in a gag reflex, and the metal instrument was withdrawn. He closed his eyes again.
"Your mouth is a little burnt," said the woman. "Smoke inhalation. As the anesthetics wear off, it's going to feel like you gargled with boiling water."
Raymond tried to speak. He mouthed the words, "Where am I?" As his lips touched to form the 'W' in "Where", he sensed that they were stiff and cracked, and he generated nothing but a raspy whisper.
"Torture recovery ward C," answered the latex nurse.
"Iniquita," answered the other woman.
Raymond's hands started uncontrollably forming gestures, but
in his numbed state he couldn't keep up with them. He noticed the words "thrown" and "carried", and guessed that Scorpio was explaining what had happened to him. Scorpio must have caught him when he was thrown by the meteorite's impact wave. And somehow he ended up here. But who was this other woman? He opened his eyes and lifted his head, looking for her. She was standing next to Scorpio, at the end of the bed. Raymond squinted against the red heat lamp.
He saw now that he was in a small room. An array of medical equipment hung from the ceiling on flexible arms. A grubby black mass of fabric lay wadded up in a chair by the closed door—his clothes, he guessed. He was covered by a translucent pink sheet that glistened in the light, like a pickled-ginger blanket. Scorpio was in human form, in the avatar he used in Seneca, wearing a heavily padded black protective suit and dark wrap-around eye gear. The woman next to him was wearing a torn ivory nightgown, streaked with blood stains. Her face and arms looked like they had been systematically mutilated with razors.
He sunk back. The signs of her suffering were repugnant. Whatever injuries she had received, she had received them here, in a world of his own creation.
"Anything broken?" he asked.
"Two ribs cracked," said the nurse. "Your right shoulder was dislocated when this guy caught your hand. Smoke inhalation. And first and second degree burns over much of your body, apparently from scalding. I repaired your ruptured eardrums."
Good pain killers. I wonder whether they were this good in reality prime.
"Sleep," said Raymond. He closed his eyes and turned his head to the right. But he slowly moved his hands, requesting that Scorpio locate another avatar for him to hijack. Forming the commands was slow and laborious, but Scorpio responded almost immediately with a "Done".
"Name of woman next to you?" gestured Raymond.
"S-A-L-Y-A," spelled out Raymond's hands.
The name seemed familiar. He had heard it in Faralonia. His memories gradually coalesced and resurfaced.
My favorite. The one my god copy took from Faralonia. And this is what happened to her.
He signaled to Scorpio to go to the avatar he had located.
"Salya, stay here with Raymond," instructed Scorpio. He then touched the door, and it slid open. From outside came regular drum thumps, at a high tempo, and faint droning music. The door slid closed behind Scorpio and the music was gone again.
Raymond felt fingers running through his hair. For a moment, he had the disturbing feeling it was a signal from Scorpio. He opened his eyes slightly and saw Salya's tattered nightgown. She had crossed to his side without his hearing her.
"He looks just like the original," said Salya.
"Does he?" asked the nurse.
"Oh yes. Did you never see the Creator?"
"The creator?" asked the latex nurse skeptically. "Did you have some god game going with this guy?"
There was a pause. Salya's fingers continued to run through his hair.
"I thought you might know," she said. "It seems like no one here knows." The nurse didn't respond. "The Creator created this entire world."
"Iniquita?" asked the nurse. Raymond heard footsteps, then running water. The nurse was going about her business.
"No, Nurania. He created the entire planet, when he was young. Before Iniquita, before Faralonia, before the Village. Before there were people. And then he came to it, to live in it, and left his own world behind."
Raymond felt his fingers move—Scorpio was in position. Raymond responded, telling him to wait a moment.
"So, you're saying there's a world outside Iniquita?" asked the nurse.
"Oh yes. A beautiful world. He would take me on his airboard and fly me to places that he wanted to show me. I was the Creator's favorite."
"I gather that didn't last?"
"Something went wrong. He started to call me by the name of his favorite from his old world. When I tried to please him, it made him angry. He would hurt me and tell me I was filthy, and then apologize and become depressed. It wasn't long after that that he went away to create Iniquita. He said he was tired of being god." There was a pause. Salya ran the palm of her hand over his hair, back from his temple. "Then one night he came and got me. He said it was time for me to be punished. He gave me to the men at Venom, and I never saw him again."
"Oh, you're the Venom torture-show girl?" asked the nurse light-heartedly.
Raymond had heard enough. He told Scorpio to prepare to carry out the entity ID switch, putting his old mimic persona in control of his real avatar, with instructions to sleep indefinitely.
He opened his eyes, and looked up at Salya.
"I'm sorry, Salya. For everything."
He closed his eyes, turned his head back to the side, and gestured to execute the switch.
o-------------------------------o
Standing now, not lying down—on his toes, held up by something around his neck, like a thick rope. Total darkness, the feeling of his breath reflected back at him—his head was enclosed in something. His arms pulled behind his back, tied at the wrist. Uncomfortable tugging on the skin beneath his nipples. A vague sense of pain from his stomach, and from his groin, seeping through the pain-killers, making him nauseous. He could hear the droning music and thumping drum again, louder now, but muffled through the fabric over his head.
A thin asexual voice, like scissors cutting through cotton, whispered in both ears at once. "Take a deep breath. I'm going to drop you now."
"No you're not," said Scorpio.
Raymond heard a brief scuffle, which ended with the sound of a body hitting the floor. He felt strong arms lift him into the air. The pull of the rope at his neck was gone. His neck was still constricted, but he was able to draw in a short stuttering breath.
The rope fell away from his neck. He gasped in a lungful of air. The fabric over his head was pulled against his lips—he couldn't draw in a decent breath. He panted and coughed. Scorpio set him on his feet and released him. His knees buckled, but he leaned against Scorpio and was able to remain standing.
"Free my hands," he said between breaths. The words came out in a voice that was not his own. It was older, more gruff.
The binding at his wrists fell away. He brought his hands to his head and pulled desperately at the slick material that covered it, but his fingers were too numb to get a good grip. He expected Scorpio to help him, but there was no sign of help.
"Get this off my head."
The material was cut and fell away to either side. He hungrily inhaled, only to find that the air reeked of burning flesh. He saw a figure in the pulsing red light, arms bound above him, head hanging limp. There was a flash of fire from behind the man, then something between a moan and a scream, and Raymond felt a wave of heat.
"Free me," mumbled the man.
Raymond turned to Scorpio.
"Free him," he instructed miserably. "I can stand on my own."
Scorpio crossed to the whimpering burn victim. A long blue lightblade appeared in Scorpio's right hand, and he used it to cut the chains that suspended the man, catching the man in his left arm as he slumped.
"Can you have someone sent down to look after him?" asked Raymond in his new voice. "We need to get out of here."
He followed up with a hand signal: "To the v-chamber."
Scorpio nodded. He spoke into his lapel, calling someone down from torture recovery, then quickly led the way out.
o-------------------------------o
Raymond allowed himself to be led through a maze of dark corridors until they reached what appeared to be a dead end. Scorpio stooped to the ground, picked up a bit of metal, and tossed it at the stone wall. When it hit, it made a ringing sound of metal on metal, and a small round bronze hatch appeared. Scorpio turned the wheel of the hatch and pulled it open. Inside was a small ornately decorated room, like an old-fashioned train compartment. There were bench seats on either side, and a red velvet curtain across the far wall. A long, angular bronze lamp hung in the center.
Raymond step
ped through the hatch and dropped onto the cushioned bench on the left. Scorpio followed, pulling the thick metal door closed behind him. Raymond let out a long, groaning sigh. The pain killers were starting to wear off.
"Any surveillance?" signaled Raymond.
"No," said Scorpio. "Not here."
"If I kept the pain killers when I switched entity IDs with this avatar," said Raymond, "does that mean that my mimic ended up with all the pain of cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a body covered with burns?"
"It has shown no sign of pain," responded Scorpio.
"Well that's a convenient bug. Good. Okay. I need to bounce some things off you."
"Shoot," said Scorpio.
"First, nice job picking an avatar for me to occupy. What the hell was that?"
"Breath torture," responded Scorpio. "Your first copy got a big thrill out of it."
Scorpio pulled a brass mouthpiece out of the wall and spoke into it. "Glory Hole," he said. The room lurched slightly, and Raymond realized they were in fact in some sort of vehicle.
"Did I really create this fucked up place?"
"Iniquita, sir?"
Raymond nodded.
"You created Iniquita."
"Good lord. Was there something wrong with my NBC?"
"Not that I know of. You created Iniquita as an antidote to the boredom you felt at Faralonia. You gave the people here darker desires and made them want to serve themselves first, not others. You started to experiment with control, to see if losing control would make life here more fulfilling. You would deny yourself god mode for a while and put yourself on the same level as the people of this city. At first, it was just for a few minutes at a time, then hours, and eventually days."
"Did it work?"
"For a while," said Scorpio. "But you started to struggle with shame. You would revel in the sex and—"
"Wait," interrupted Raymond. He put his feet up and sat sideways on the bench, rubbing his head. "First things first. Do you know who this Henry is?"
"Naturally, I am aware of thousands of people named Henry, but I see no clear link from you to someone named Henry."
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