by Shaun Barger
He took Jem aside, guiding her to sit against a wall, safely away from Albert and Ilyana’s continued assault.
He went back to the bubble and pulled up the sleeve of his uniform. Could it really be so easy?
Golden fingers flexing, he took a deep breath and reached for the gun.
The bubble was thick—like jelly—and it was a struggle to push his hand through. It was warm—hot even. But so far . . .
The bubble flashed red. A slow pulse, blinking. On, off, on, off as his fingers reached deeper. The speed of the flashing began to increase and the bubble started to get hot. Sweat poured down his face, dripping onto the bubble, evaporating on contact as his fingers slowly began to close around the gun and he heard a woman’s voice chanting his name and praising him:
The pain will be over soon all will be well keep going Nikolai you’re so close all you’ve ever wanted I will give all your desires I shall grant just take me away from this place you’re so close now Nikolai KEEP GOING . . .
And the heat became unbearable; he could feel the hair on his forearm begin to burn away, feel the golden flesh crack and peel and the pain. Oh DISC the PAIN, and his fingers were closed around the grip and were fused together and he could see the gold boiling away but it felt like his own skin, and he was SCREAMING and PULLING and he didn’t want it anymore, he didn’t want it, didn’t want it—
“Nikolai!” Albert cried. “Nikolai, what are you doing!”
And Nikolai fell back, stumbling with a spray of molten gold and his hand was gone, he had lost his hand again, there was just a stump all blistered and bleeding, the gold running up his arm—burning his arm—and he was still screaming and he dropped the revolver. He didn’t know where the revolver was, all he could do was lie there, hugging the sizzling stump to his chest, curled up into a ball.
And he looked up, and there was Jubal. He stood in the doorway—soaking wet, bleeding, wreathed in smoke, eyes lit with murderous intent.
Jubal raised his cane and pointed it at Nikolai in a moment that lasted forever as he lay there, waiting for death, watching as Jem slowly looked down at the revolver sitting on the floor in front of her, dripping with Nikolai’s golden blood, watching as emerald light flashed across her eyes and suddenly she was UP and the revolver was in her hand and she was firing it at Jubal, three flashes of light, three thunderclaps in a fraction of a fraction of an instant.
“TELOS!” Jubal screamed—the word ending in a gurgle as blood plumed from his throat, as a bloody hole appeared on his stomach, as the hand holding his Focal exploded into gory mist.
Hand ruined, he began to collapse, began to drop his Focal—but not before he had already fired off the spell. The air before Jubal distorted into a blast of tangled, curling darkness. His Focal crumbled, exploding with the curls, falling to pieces—but then Nikolai saw that it wasn’t his Focal that was falling to pieces—just the candy-striped wooden exterior.
It had been a false shell, hiding his real Focal.
A baton, identical to Nikolai’s in size and shape—only a glistening, fleshy red instead of black.
It trailed thick yellow light as he collapsed, that hideous darkness he’d fired off in the instant before Jem’s bullets had pierced him, going far wide of his intended target—a dark that was more than dark, a black that simply ate the light, curls of nothingness erupting into a column of destruction that Nikolai’s mind reeled at the sight of, of vertigo, of wrongness.
It unfurled into the heavy door of metal and glass as Ilyana and Albert cringed away—just inches outside of its range—watching as the door was etched away, devoured and then gone, glass and steel—or was it wood? Or had there ever been a door there at all? There must have been—must have been something to keep them from fleeing before now.
But now there was just a gaping hole in the wall and a missing section of floor beyond.
Jubal lay on his back, breath rattling through bloody foam. Jem walked over to him with sadistic slowness, revolver hanging in her hand as she stared down at him.
“Stomach punctured,” she said calmly. “Gastric acid leaking into your abdominal cavity. Punctured trachea, esophagus. Nicked the spinal column. Nerves partially severed. Paralyzed. Missed the arteries so the stomach will be what kills you. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Maybe longer. Agony until then—too good an end for you.”
She kicked away his leathery baton Focal and slowly pressed her shoe against the wound in his stomach. He gurgled through the bloody froth, eyes bulging. Unable to scream. He gurgled again, trying to say something.
“What?” she said, pressing down even harder against the wound. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
He made another noise, and Nikolai still couldn’t hear what he was trying to say, but there was a flash of silver light and Jem pulled back with a hiss as a gleaming sarcophagus formed and snapped shut around him.
The sarcophagus disappeared—taking the captain with it.
“Where is he?” Jem demanded. “WHERE IS HE?”
There was a great crackling and groan as burning timbers fell free of the ceiling inside the warehouse, smashing down onto the tanks below. They were dead—all the people down there. All of Jubal’s victims. Forever this time.
The air was thick with smoke. Wild-eyed, Ilyana rushed into the white-walled showroom full of machinery and art to raise her dagger—twirling it over her head.
“Have you gone MAD, Xue?” Albert screamed after Ilyana while he helped Nikolai up to his feet.
Reaching into his pocket, Nikolai scooped out the remainder of the Titan’s Tears and poured them into his mouth, shaking his head to clear away the opalescent rainbow aura shimmering at the edge of his vision as the dozen or so beads began to dissolve. The pain of his once-again-missing hand subsided, and as he ran into the showroom he no longer needed Albert’s help to stand.
“No, no, no, NO!” Albert wailed as Ilyana created a spinning maelstrom of fire from the tip of her dagger. “Ilyana, stop! The art—the treasures! They’re priceless! Irreplaceable!”
“I’m counting on it,” she said, grinning viciously as she shoved him away to set Captain Jubal’s collection ablaze.
Albert frantically filled his arms with everything he could carry—featherweighting an ancient bust of the Wandering King, rolling up a pair of tapestries under his arm, slinging a painting over his shoulder.
“Strauss, give me a hand with this!” he shouted, but then looked down at Nikolai’s stump and started to laugh, hysterical.
Jem ran into the shooting range, pockets bulging with boxes of ammunition when she came back out. They passed through the theater, fleeing up the stairs, Ilyana setting everything ablaze as Albert looking with regret at the precious tomes encased in the glass, loudly assuring himself that the enchantments should protect them from the fire as Ilyana mercilessly ignited the unprotected volumes lining the walls and shelves.
Flowers withered and died from the heat in the gardens as Jubal’s once grand estate became a fiery husk behind them—soon to be nothing more than ash.
They burst into Jubal’s office, gasping, and slammed the enchanted door behind them.
“Jubal’s bullet chambers!” Nikolai said, flinging open the other door, revealing a long hall of doors with flickering images of the Veils their bullets would lead to. “Marblewood, Marblewood—here!”
“Ah, and Schwarzwald.” Albert opened the door assigned to his home, groaning with relief as he carefully unloaded the art and artifacts into the small seating area. “I’ll tell my family of these atrocities. And they called our king a butcher?”
“I’ll go to Xanadu,” Ilyana said. “If I can tell my mother about this, she’ll rally the Asian royalty. Demand an investigation.”
“I’ll go to Marblewood. My uncle. I think they’ve got him locked up at home. We’ll get him out—he’ll know what to do.”
Albert ran back into the office, leveled his rapier at the folded space door to Jubal’s estate. He ran his palm over the wo
od thoughtfully.
“There,” he said, making three sharp cuts with the slender blade. “I’ve destroyed the portal. Cut the enchantments. Won’t be able to follow us through there. Lieutenant Xue, could you attend to—”
But she was already on it, the point of her dagger on the elevator door as she superheated it, the ruby blade lit with blinding red light as she fused it shut. The indicator light cracked, going dark. The boiling paint cooled, the molten steel hardening.
“There’s another bullet hall they’ll be able to use in the hangar,” Albert said, “but this should buy us some time.”
Jem stood there waiting by the Marblewood door, though her expression was dazed. Confused. Terrified.
As Ilyana started for the Xanadu door, Nik put his remaining hand on her arm. “Ilyana. Come with me. Please. Don’t go to Xanadu. I—”
She kissed him, and pulled him into a tight embrace. “We’ll be lucky if any one of us escapes,” she whispered so only he could hear. “The only way we have even the slightest chance to tell people about this is if we scatter.”
“No,” he whimpered, “No . . .”
But Ilyana was right. He’d been selfish before, allowing Base Machado to fall so that he might see his loved ones again. But it was like Jem had said—this was bigger than any of them. His own happiness was nothing compared to the enormity of suffering beyond the Veils. He had to find a way to make up for abandoning the humans at Base Machado to the Synth. To make up for the magi abandoning humanity to nuclear war a century prior.
Struggling not to cry, he kissed her again. “Don’t let them take you. No matter what.”
Ilyana looked at him as if memorizing his face, and clasped his hand. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Nikolai grabbed Albert—missing hand forgotten as the drugs pounded through his veins—and pulled the two of them into his arms. The three of them just held each other for a moment, squeezing with rib-cracking tightness while Jem stood off to the side, watching.
“None of this goodbye shit,” Nikolai said, breaking away from the embrace and wiping his eyes. “I’ll find you guys.”
“Be safe, you two,” Albert said. “Aces and charms. We’ll . . . we’ll make this right.”
“I’ll see you both soon,” Ilyana said. She looked over at Jem. “You too. You’re one of us now. What they did to you . . . it won’t stand.”
Jem didn’t reply, but nodded slowly.
As Jem and Nikolai loaded into their chamber, Albert flashed him one final salute. Ilyana blew him a kiss and mouthed Goodbye.
Nikolai reached out to them, a sob wracking his body, and the door hissed shut.
XIII.
THAT HIDEOUS DARK
Jem watched Nikolai speak as they sat across from each other in the cramped, ruby-lit cylinder of the silently traveling bullet chamber. None of this felt real—the words coming out of her companion’s mouth like the ramblings of one lost in delusion.
“. . . and so we’ve been hidden away since then. Lied to while the Mage King waits for all the humans to die off. But if everyone knew—they’d depose him. The magi would riot. Start a revolution or something. I don’t know. But they won’t just let it happen. Even if the king is right, and we really aren’t strong enough to fight the Synth, they’d at least do something to help your kind.”
She listened attentively while he spouted absurdities about magic, Veils, Discs.
The Edge Guard, the king, a town called Marblewood—magically hidden in a pocket dimension on the lake where Jem’s life had twice come to an end.
“I know it’s . . . a lot,” he said, smiling uneasily. “You can see why I lied before. Said that I was a colonist.”
The boy barely seemed to notice the pain of his blistered, bloody stump relaxed on the seat at his side. Whatever drugs the beautiful pyromaniac had given him seemed to be hitting with full effect.
Jem sat there in silence, the moments stretching awkwardly as the boy waited for her to react to everything he’d just told her.
“I can remember dying. Over and over,” she finally said—even her own words feeling as if spoken from the lips of another. “Not quite remember. An approximation. I can’t pinpoint it in my organic or inorganic memory. Yet there it is.”
It was all so fuzzy. She remembered being attacked by Armitage on the beach. Remembered sitting paralyzed in a stark white room, where an older man who’d been dressed like Nikolai wouldn’t stop apologizing.
Then, she’d been in hell. Dying again, and again, and again . . .
Jem pulled the revolver from where she’d tucked it into the back of her pants and a small box of ammunition from one of her pockets, then casually began to reload it. As her fingers made contact with the revolver, she could hear whispers—so quiet as to almost be imperceptible, though certainly not imagined. She felt an otherworldly pressure in her skull, near the center of her mods. Like fingers fumbling at a lock.
“That thing is dangerous,” Nikolai hissed. “Jem, that gun; it’s old magic. It’ll mess with your mind. You shouldn’t touch it. Shouldn’t—”
“Do you know what Torment is?” she said, cutting him off.
Jem was no longer interested in anything else the boy might say.
“The gun,” Nikolai insisted. “I need you to give it to me. Or wrap it in your coat. Or—fuck, I don’t know. Just stop touching it.”
She snapped the revolver’s chamber back in place and continued ignoring him. Him and the distant whispers.
“Being assigned to Torment is the same as being sent to hell,” she said. “You’re brought to a Synth facility where they plug you in. Every facet of your mind explored. Every fear, every memory, every want, every desire. Then they wake you up. Make you forget that you’ve been taken.”
“For fuck’s sake, Jem! Put the gun away!”
“They torture you in ways you can’t imagine. Let you think you’ve murdered the love of your life. Let you watch as your closest friends burn. Tweak your brain chemistry to make you too cowardly to save them. More than physical pain. The torture of loss, of failure—more than suffering evil, of committing evil and living with the guilt. Never knowing that it’s an illusion. That’s the thing about hell—you don’t know when you’re in it.”
Jem stared down at her lap, trembling, clutching the revolver in her hands with a white-knuckle grip. How had it taken her so long to realize what was happening? It was so fucking obvious.
“I’ve figured it out,” she said. “I never really escaped from the cathedral. I remember Ezra saving me, remember escaping. But now I know that’s a false memory. They must have captured me. Must have put in me in Torment for being a Runner.”
She looked at Nikolai, crazed. “You aren’t real. None of this is real! I never met Eva. Never lost Blue, or made it to Base Machado. Never ran away with you in the dead of the night. Never watched the city fall—never felt the foot of the Armitage husk crushing down on my head—never died a hundred times in a magical glass room while . . .”
She stopped. Panting. Fingers trembling around the softly glowing runes.
“Jem . . . that’s not true. This is real. The revolver . . . it’s messing with your head. Making you crazy. For better or worse—everything you’ve seen, everything that’s happened—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Nothing you say nothing you do nothing you show me will convince me that if I shoot myself in the head right now I won’t just wake up somewhere else with new memories. For all I know, you’re the AI charged with my suffering. You’re the constant. The torturer. The wizard behind the curtain.”
“Jem, no! That isn’t true!”
She pointed the gun at Nikolai as he tensed to try and take it from her. The boy stopped, slowly leaning back, frozen.
“You and Eva. My pale, dark-haired companions. My Black Swan. My sorcerer. Are they you, one and the same? How many times have I died already? How many times have we had this conversation? Why wizards—why this? What pieces of my mind led you to create thi
s absurd scenario? Running to spaceships with a mysterious telekinetic. Tortured by sorcerers and rescued by the Martian who’s actually some sort of magical soldier? With his magical soldier friends? Off to start a revolution.”
“Jem,” he said slowly, “I don’t know anybody named Eva. I know you’ve been through a lot, and this is a lot to take in, but please. Put down the—”
“Why, Nik?” she snarled, pressing the long barrel of the gun against her temple. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do it?”
“Jem, NO, don’t—!”
They both froze as the sound of a man clearing his throat emanated from the pulsing gemstone set into the sloped roof of the bullet chamber above them.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” came Jubal’s voice, raspy and pained.
For a moment, they sat there in stunned silence. Icy terror flooded Jem’s veins—hand with the revolver slowly sinking to her side.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
“What,” Jem said through gritted teeth, “do you want?”
“Ah! Hello, Ms. Burton,” Jubal said, his words faintly slurring. The man sounded drunk. “Didn’t expect you to be the first to speak up. Probably aren’t particularly interested in what I have to say, but still, I feel the need to explain myself. Explain the . . . incredible cruelty I’ve inflicted on you. Explain what was in my—in what’s left of my home.”
Of course. Jem’s torturer, back from the dead. Drunk dialing via gemstone to pontificate and gloat. Torment, she was reminded. How could this possibly be anything other than Torment?
The ice in Jem’s veins spread to fill her entirely—no longer the chill of fear, but the numbness of disassociation. Distantly, her mind reeled, howling with helpless, terrified despair at the mind-shattering eons of suffering the Synth would force her to endure.
A special room in hell, made just for Jem.
Nikolai—no, the Synth intelligence pretending to be Nikolai—who’d been watching her, slowly seemed to realize that Jem had checked out, and would no longer be engaging with this farce.