Each conspirator grabbed a vial and left.
The scream grew louder.
How can they ignore such a sound? Kayla thought.
Then she recognized the screams as her own. A force extracted her from Peter’s mind.
Someone rocked her back and forth the way her mother might have done if she’d lived. Her screams subsided to a low moan. She opened her eyes to a golden face, a trunk, tusks, and wide, floppy ears.
“Ganesh?” she mumbled as the clouds obscuring her mind cleared. The giant smiled and set her on the ground.
“I had the same reaction when I awoke,” he said.
“Where are we?” Kayla blinked, shook her head, and gazed about. Glowing balls lay scattered about, projecting strange shadows onto the ceilings and walls. The room resembled an enormous laboratory, with rusting cages to one side. Broken equipment littered the floor, covered in dust and debris.
Ganesh stood and brushed himself off. “I think it must be connected with that unmarked tunnel we passed.”
Kayla took a step and tripped on the piles of debris. “What is all this …” Then her eyes focused on the vacant sockets of a skull lying at her feet. With a shout of disgust, she backed away and stumbled on another pile of human bones, skulls, and deteriorated clothing. She turned to Ganesh. A giant spider creature loomed behind him.
“Look out!” She grabbed the first object she could find and raised it like a club. Ganesh spun, and the ten-foot-tall arachnid came into the light.
Kayla screamed at the sight of a man’s legless torso where the spider’s body should have been. The face appeared human, though the bald skull bulged outward drastically, misaligning and distorting its features into those of a monster. Its eight arachnid legs protruded from the distorted body to span fifteen feet across. The hard claws at their ends made sharp clicks as they moved toward Ganesh.
“Leave him alone!” Kayla charged the creature.
“Kayla, wait!” Ganesh shouted, blocking her way with arms outstretched. “That’s Ohg!”
She slid to a stop and stared at Ganesh. “Ohg?” Confusion wormed through her brain like a parasite. Had words lost all connection to reality? “I don’t understand.”
“Hello, Kayla,” the misshapen face of the spider said. Kayla cringed back, and the creature’s crooked mouth widened into a smile. “I guess that means another kiss is out of the question?”
Puck scurried out of her pocket, up one of the spider legs and into the outstretched hand of the grotesque hybrid. The asymmetrical eyes examined the mouse.
“Ohg monitored our progress through my Mind-Link,” Ganesh explained. “When those creatures abducted us, he came to our aid.”
“But how can this be … Ohg?” Kayla asked.
Ohg’s smile vanished. “As disgusting as it seems, this is the body I was born with. There wasn’t time to prepare another surrogate, so I came in person.”
Kayla’s face twisted with instinctual revulsion—the identical reaction of those meeting her for the first time in Potemia.
“My creators exhibited equal horror at me, but they made one other mistake in my creation.” One of Ohg’s human hands tapped his oversized skull. “Their greatest error was giving me this.”
Kayla forced a tepid smile. Could this be the same beautiful boy she’d so admired for his kindness to the poor Monads? She gazed at the femur bone in her hand and flung it away with a shiver.
“What is this place?” she asked as Puck scurried back up her clothes and onto her shoulder.
“It’s a mystery.” Ohg examined the debris. “I glimpsed them when they fled the lights.”
“Gene-Freaks?” Ganesh asked.
“Most likely.” Ohg lifted something from one of the piles of bones—a rusted metal plate engraved with strangely shaped letters.
“Genetic Military Research Institute,” Kayla translated.
“You speak Russian?” Ohg said. “You’re full of surprises.”
Kayla said nothing.
Ganesh frowned. “But how could this have survived the Gene-Freak purge?”
“A few governments continued secret military research even after agreeing to the ban. When the Great Plague hit, the existence of this place must have been forgotten. Whatever creatures or weapons the government created here must have eventually escaped their cages and tunneled their way out.”
“They’ve been preying on humans for centuries?” Ganesh gazed at the piles of bones.
“Every species has parasites, most never suspected.” Ohg picked up some bones and clothing to examine them closer.
“But how—?” A light-sphere exploded.
“We’ve lingered past our welcome.” Ohg scurried toward one of the many tunnels in the walls of the chamber. Kayla and Ganesh followed. Two more spheres vanished in a crash of splintered crystal, thickening the gloom.
Just before entering the tunnel, Kayla paused and glanced back. Dark forms emerged across the chamber. Their gaunt and elongated faces held vacant holes in place of eyes. She froze, her mind emptying. Once again, her eyes grew leaden. An irresistible urge to sleep overwhelmed her, subsuming all thoughts, all instincts. One of the wraiths approached, stretching its thin black hand toward her face. An entire universe swirled from empty eye sockets.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen...
“Wake up, Kayla!” Ohg screamed in her ear, and scurried between her and the wraiths. They shrieked and attacked. Ohg knocked each aside with great sweeps of his clawed legs. The visions vanished, and Kayla shook her head to clear it.
One of the creatures dodged Ohg’s talons and fastened its hands on his head, forcing him toward its poisonous eyes. “Run!” Ohg shouted. Ganesh tore the creature off Ohg and threw it across the room. It shrieked and launched toward them with a half-dozen of its brethren.
Ohg swept Kayla into his arms and charged up the tunnel with Ganesh. The remaining spheres exploded behind them, the darkness held at bay only by the glowing necklaces of her two companions.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can run.”
Ohg released her and removed a final sphere from a pouch attached to his legless pants. It blazed to ten times its normal luminosity. “Give me your fission bomb.” The elephant-god tossed it to Ohg. “Keep going, and don’t look into their eyes!”
Ganesh and Kayla fled as the dark creatures appeared in the passageway behind. Their shrieks engulfed her in a nauseating weakness.
Ohg gripped the final sphere in his right hand and the fission bomb in his left. The creatures gave way before the light, shielding their eye sockets with their arms and retreating into the ragged tunnel with howls of fury.
“Hurry, Ohg!” Ganesh shouted as he ran. “The sphere will burn itself out in seconds at that intensity!”
Ohg rolled the blazing sphere down the tunnel’s floor, and the monsters fled from the light. In the momentary lull, he fastened the fission bomb to the top of the passageway.
The light went out. Distant shrieks of victory pierced the darkness.
“Run!” Ohg charged after them. When they reached the main tunnel, fire exploded from the opening like an erupting volcano, the pressure wave throwing them to the ground.
A thick silence settled, broken by coughs and gasps.
“Do you think you killed them?” Kayla asked.
“I hope not,” Ohg said.
“You purposely left them alive?”
“Ohg is a pacifist,” Ganesh said.
“I never kill if I can avoid it.” Ohg led them through a series of turns and branching tunnels.
“But they’re monsters!”
Ohg turned to her, seeming every bit as monstrous as the creatures he’d saved them from. “Are you so perfect that you can decide who should live and who should die?”
“I … I …” Kayla wilted before the venom in his words. To the people of her village, she’d been the monster who deserved death. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone …
�
��I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
Ohg grunted and continued on. She verified that Puck was safely burrowed into her pocket.
After they’d put a good hour’s distance behind them, Ohg stopped and confronted her. “You must be hungry,” he said with a probing stare. “You haven’t eaten in two days.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to eat something,” she said. Technically, it was the truth.
“You’re going to love the food in Middilgard!” Ganesh said.
“What makes you think I’m still letting her in?” Ohg’s eyes locked onto Kayla. She averted her gaze.
Ganesh looked back and forth between them. “What do you mean?”
“How do I know she isn’t a spy sent to discover our hiding place?”
“Nobody’s looking for Gene-Freaks anymore.” Ganesh placed a hand on her shoulder. “She’s an ordinary girl from Potemia—”
“How do we know?” Ohg asked. “That drone attack seemed too well-timed for a coincidence.”
Kayla let her hair fall in front of her face to hide her tears. His distrust was justified, though for different reasons than he suspected. Already, she’d gotten Ohg killed once and nearly gotten Ganesh killed, in addition to what she’d done to Suzy, the monk, and Ishan.
It’s my obligation to tell them.
But she remained silent.
“If the government tried assassinating Kayla,” Ganesh said, “then how could she be one of their spies?”
“There exist enemies apart from the government.” Ohg leaned forward and stared hard into her eyes. “Why did you leave Potemia?”
Her shoulders slumped. More than anything else, Ganesh’s trust shamed her.
“They banished me,” Kayla said. She turned and walked back the way they’d come, her footsteps echoing hollow in the underground passage.
That’s it. My last chance gone.
After a dozen steps, a hand settled on her shoulder. She stopped.
“Wait,” Ohg said. She turned and studied his misaligned eyes. Ganesh stood behind, wringing two of his hands.
“I want you to answer one more question,” Ohg said. “How did you disable the drones?”
Kayla stared back at him. “I prayed to God.”
He smirked. “God helped you destroy two government drones?”
Kayla nodded.
Ohg remained silent. His eyes bored into her, but she returned his gaze without flinching.
Finally, he sighed, then wiped a tear from her cheek. “You’re a true Freak if I ever saw one.”
Kayla looked at his outstretched hand. He’s letting me join them. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Ohg, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known!”
Unlike his indifference to the kiss she’d given the body of the beautiful boy, his twisted mouth fell open in what seemed like shock. Ganesh laughed and, for once, Ohg seemed at a loss for words.
Chapter 12
“Security is everything.” Ohg opened the door to an enormous metal pod that one might have mistaken for a hunk of scrap discarded centuries past. It sat at the edge of a wide crack in the earth that emitted sulfurous steam from unseen depths. Ganesh could have fit a dozen of his flying machines inside its bare interior. The elephant-god gave Kayla a smile and rolled his eyes at Ohg’s pronouncement.
“Ganesh may roll his eyes,” Ohg said, his back to them, “but this system has kept our refuge safe from detection for over four centuries now. The sole way in or out of Middilgard is via one of these automated transports that will self-destruct if anyone subverts its security system.”
Kayla followed them into the hollow innards of the vehicle. Ohg closed the door and strapped her into one of the dozens of seats ringing the walls. A claustrophobic anxiety intensified when Ohg closed the hatch and slid the hard tips of his eight legs into several straps on the floor. A hiss sounded as the interior pressurized, followed by a lurch.
“Middilgard was the name of the nine worlds of Norse mythology, and the only one that mortals could enter.”
They became weightless, and Kayla emitted a startled yelp.
“Though it doesn’t look like much,” Ohg said as gravity returned, “this vehicle is engineered to withstand the enormous heat of Earth’s molten mantle. In this way, I alone know the location of the city.”
The vibrations increased with the ship’s acceleration, rendering conversation impossible. Kayla held tight to her vibrating seat, but Ohg and Ganesh breathed calmly. After an hour, the craft slowed.
“It’s safe to unstrap now.” Ohg spun the door’s wheel and paused like a showman, regarding Kayla with a gleam in his eye. Then he opened the door. “Welcome to Middilgard.”
Golden light bathed her face. “It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. Ganesh smiled, while Ohg straightened like a proud father. Within a huge cavern as wide as a hilltop meadow, a forest of crystal stalactites and stalagmites reflected the light from thousands of glowing spheres in the ceiling. A stream of clear water twisted a serpentine route and disappeared into the ground near their feet to continue its secret journey through unknown realms of the earth’s crust. A stately willow tree leaned over the stream, while a carpet of flowers and ferns interrupted the rock floor like patches of a quilt.
The transport perched on the edge of a wide fissure with a river of lava flowing far below. Kayla stepped from the transport, careful not to tread on any plants. She breathed in the moist perfume of nature and sighed with contentment.
Ohg puffed up like a peacock. “The light spheres in the ceiling create the energy necessary for photosynthesis.”
“How did you find this place?” Kayla asked.
“That’s a long story for another time.”
Kayla drifted to one of the crystal columns and ran her hand across its smooth surface, seeing her reflection multiply in the natural prism. The flowers, trees, and lights built a kaleidoscope of colorful worlds within worlds.
A child’s scream announced the arrival of a half-dozen children. They rushed headlong into the cavern through a tunnel entrance and sprinted toward them. “Save us from the monster!” they shrieked and latched onto the legs of Ohg, Ganesh, and Kayla.
“What’s wrong?” Kayla asked the blonde five-year-old girl entwined around her leg. The answer came with a blood-chilling shriek from the tunnel the children had fled.
“He’s coming!” the children shouted and covered their eyes. Before Kayla had time to look at Ganesh or Ohg, a black figure with yellow eyes leapt from the passageway and landed with fangs bared. Kayla lifted the little girl into her arms and tensed, ready to fight or flee to protect her.
The huge black panther straightened, its toothy snarl vanishing as it stared at her. Its mouth opened, but one of the children shouted, “Let’s get him!” All the children erupted into shrieks and giggles and charged the forest predator.
Before Kayla could react, the panther fell to its back while the children wrestled, climbed, and tickled it. “Mercy, mercy, oh please, have mercy on me!” the panther begged.
“Let me go!” the little blonde girl in her arms demanded. “I have to help fight the monster! Let me go!” Kayla set her down, and the child ran to the panther and gave a great yank on its tail.
“Ow! Not the tail, Saphie, my dear.” The panther lifted her onto his stomach, where she proceeded to punch his muscular frame with tiny hands. The panther reacted as if mortally wounded. The children laughed and redoubled their efforts. With a shudder and a moan of defeat, the panther went limp.
“We won! We won! The monster’s dead!” the children shouted.
“Let’s tell Auntie Fatima!” Saphie shouted, and they dashed away. Kayla stood in the vacated silence, staring at the vanquished panther. It rolled gracefully onto all fours, its ebony fur shimmering like liquid midnight, the slits of its yellow eyes triggering a primordial dread.
“Well,” the panther said in a refined accent, “I rarely have the pleasure of making a new acquaintance—especially on
e so fair.” Despite standing next to a ten-foot-tall man-elephant, not to mention a giant man-spider, a talking panther still left her speechless.
“Kayla,” Ohg said, “I’d like you to meet Richard—”
“Sir Richard!” The panther sniffed, cocking his head indignantly at the slight. “My rank holds no sway in these days of barbarity, but I expect my friends to remember that I was knighted by the queen herself—of Britain—in case there is any confusion on that point.”
“My apologies,” Ohg corrected with an eight-legged bow. “Sir Richard Panthersly—the third.”
Sir Richard bowed to Ohg, then to Kayla, and offered her his paw. After a moment’s hesitation, Kayla gently took hold of the predator’s clawed appendage and curtsied.
“Sir Richard,” Ohg continued, “I’d like to present Kayla of Potemia.”
The panther’s head snapped upward and his eyes widened. “Potemia? You don’t say!”
“You can talk,” Kayla said.
The panther laughed. “Most animals in Middilgard can. Speech was one of the first Gene-Freak modifications patented.”
Before she could reply, a young man who looked a couple of years older than her walked into the cavern. His wide cheekbones and exotic eyes marked him as Asian in origin. His black hair hung down his back in a braid, while an embroidered silk vest displayed the lean muscles of his arms.
“Tem of Mongolia,” Sir Richard said as the young man stroked the satiny fur along his spine, “let me introduce Kayla of Potemia.” The panther spoke the last word with special emphasis.
Tem inclined his head in greeting, his expression impossible to read.
Kayla nodded, and eyed the book in Tem’s left hand—The Dialogues of Plato.
The exotic youth held the book without a trace of fear.
All her life, she’d hidden books, stealing glances at their forbidden pages with the knowledge that discovery meant death. Seeing this famous book so casually displayed sent a thrill through her nerves.
Tem followed her gaze and extended the book. “Would you like to read this?”
Kayla’s hand closed on the neatly bound spine with reverence. “I’m afraid of damaging it.”
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