“Is it an earthquake?” Tem tore his vest into strips and used it as a makeshift tourniquet on the stump of Ohg’s lost spider leg.
Something massive pounded toward them like a landslide. With each step, the cavern floor flexed and trembled. Cracks appeared in the ceiling, and a shower of rocks rained down like mini-meteorites.
“It’s Xampyx!
“Ohg save Xampyx. Xampyx save Ohg. Ohg save Xampyx. Xampyx save—”
The T-Rex faced the charging psycomp and roared. The towering amalgamation of human brains and machinery plowed into the dinosaur like an avalanche.
Every mini death-struggle within the great hall halted as the mechanical legs of the psycomp drove the T-Rex before it like an unstoppable plow. Its thousands of faces screamed as one.
“Ohg save Xampyx. Xampyx save Ohg.”
Valac scrambled out of the way of the two titans as they neared the glowing crack in the earth. The T-Rex tore chunks of human heads from the front of the organic computer with its jaws, but to little effect. Its tail brushed against Kayla’s inert body, and she slid closer to the edge of the cliff.
“Kayla!” Fatima shouted and stumbled forward despite the distance. Kayla came to a stop with her left arm and leg dangling over the edge.
“Ohg save Xampyx. Xampyx save Ohg.”
The towering psycomp was triple the mass of the dinosaur and drove the T-Rex right over the edge of the great crack. The dinosaur latched onto Xampyx with a final crushing bite, its weight dragging the psycomp along with it to the edge. Xampyx dug his feet into the stone and leaned back. For a moment, the T-Rex dangled motionless over the edge, held in midair by its jaws and the counterbalancing weight of the psycomp.
But then Xampyx’s rear legs gradually rose. As the fulcrum shifted, the great body tilted forward and finally plunged into the chasm along with the dinosaur.
When the two bodies hit the surface of the lava, a geyser of molten magma rose into the air with the slow motion grace of a solar flare. Those near enough to feel its heat fled. As it mushroomed outward and then descended, the liquid rock struck attacker and defender without prejudice, burning through their fragile flesh as if nothing more than paper cutouts.
A few splashes of magma landed on Kayla’s body and burned into her stomach and arm. Instantly, the wounds began healing, but still she didn’t move.
“Wake up, Kayla!” Ohg shouted, even as he and Tem were driven back by a dozen goblins.
***
Kayla struggled against the collective might of the Rogues as she tore memories from the duchess.
Ohg’s turncoat girlfriend fell to her knees and screamed.
Kayla extracted the memory of the duchess slipping into Ohg’s mind while they made love.
“The prison security codes!” Kayla’s stomach and left arm erupted in flames, and she screamed.
“As you can see,” Melchi said, “our reach extends beyond Ixtalia.”
I have to save Middilgard!
Out of the corner of her eye, a glowing figure dressed in a white cloak stepped from the mist. Kayla turned her head, but the form vanished. Am I hallucinating?
A metal tear slid down Aarohee’s cheek. “Please say you’ll join us, and all this madness can stop.”
“I will never kill for you.”
Aarohee averted her eyes. “You leave us no choice.”
Every Rogue invaded her mind like a thousand voices shrieking at once.
Chapter 33
Ganesh paced around his broken air-cycle like a frustrated sculptor. Heaps of rescued engines, disassembled chassis, and a thousand parts of every size and description filled his workshop. One never knew when a particular bolt or washer would come in handy, after all.
“I’ve gone over every valve, seal, and cylinder,” Ganesh grumbled under his breath. “Why won’t you start?”
His trunk gripped a wrench, and each of his four hands held even larger tools at the ready. For the hundredth time, he checked the battery.
“You’re as frustrating as Ohg and Tem!” He tightened a bolt and then pressed the starter.
Nothing.
“Why should I have to choose one over the other?” Ganesh jiggled a wire and pressed the starter again.
Nothing.
“Well, I won’t do it!”
He kicked the battery, and the engine roared to life. “Finally!”
Something pounded on his door, and a voice fought for recognition over the roaring engine. “Help us, Ganesh!”
Ganesh dashed to the door and yanked it open as a giant cave bear tackled Humpty Dumpty.
“Help, help!” Humpty screamed as he rolled on his back and threw his arms across his throat.
Ganesh lunged into the hall and crushed the bear’s skull with a single blow from his crowbar. A pair of goblins and a velociraptor attacked simultaneously. The wrench gripped in his trunk crushed one goblin, a massive screwdriver lobotomized the other, and a sledgehammer crushed the entire chest cavity of the dinosaur.
Ganesh helped Humpty to his feet while Nicky, the three-foot-tall mouse, frantically searched among the dead bodies.
“Oh my God, no!” shrieked Nicky when he spotted his mouse-wife, Jill, lying on the ground with her throat ripped out. The cartoonish mouse fell to his knees beside her, sobbing uncontrollably.
“What in the name of Vishnu is going on?” Ganesh shouted.
“The prisoners have escaped, and Middilgard is under attack!” Humpty waved his arms over his head.
Ganesh carried Jill’s body into his workshop and mounted his bike. Humpty and the sobbing Nicky followed him.
“Lock the door behind me.” Ganesh flipped a switch, and the bike rose into the air. He twisted the throttle and launched out the doorway in a cloud of exhaust.
The ten-foot-tall Hindu god followed the trail of bodies toward the castle cavern. Now and then, he swooped low and decapitated some monstrosity with his crowbar or sledgehammer. He pushed his bike to its maximum speed and maneuvered through the twisting maze of corridors with reckless abandon. The restored engine rattled and coughed in protest.
“Just hold together a little longer,” he urged the machine.
Ganesh exploded out of the tunnel, ears popping from the change in pressure, and soared above the castle. Xampyx teetered on the edge of the chasm with the T-Rex and then fell. Ganesh veered around the geyser of lava just as Valac charged the unconscious Kayla, who was lying precariously on the edge of the crevice. Dozens of nightmarish creatures drove Tem and Ohg farther and farther away from her, despite their furious attempts to break through.
It’s all up to me.
Ganesh gunned the engine and aimed the bike into a dive. It jerked and protested, but surged forward like a bucking bull. The cyborg pounded toward Kayla and pulled one of his three legs back for a final kick.
The flying motorbike hit Valac in his side and knocked him off his feet. Ganesh, the bike, and the cyborg rolled in a tangled mass along the stone floor, crushing everything in their way like a boulder careening down a mountain. His sledgehammer and wrench were lost to the impact and flew over the edge of the chasm.
When they halted, Ganesh wrapped three of his arms around his foe and pounded its helmet with the crowbar. Though similar in height, the metal cyborg outweighed him significantly. Like an outmatched boxer in a clinch, Ganesh pinned Valac’s deadly appendages and hammered at his head.
Sangwa’s hologram flickered unsteadily, but her voice came through clear and commanding. “Leave him and finish the girl.”
Valac rose to his feet, but Ganesh wrapped his arms and legs around the cyborg’s, and they fell into a pile once more.
Kayla slowly slid over the edge of the chasm.
A tear squeezed out of Ganesh’s bloody eye. I’ve failed again.
Fatima dived into view and grabbed hold of Kayla’s hand. For a moment it seemed Kayla’s weight would drag her down just as the T-Rex had done to Xampyx. But the toe of Fatima’s left foot found a crevice, and she jerked to
a stop. She lay flat on her swollen belly and heaved with all the power of her slight form, but lacked the strength.
“That one holds Tem’s unborn child inside her,” Sangwa said to the cyborg. “This is your chance for revenge!”
Valac roared and slammed his helmeted head into Ganesh’s thick elephant forehead. Once, twice, and then a third time.
Blackness.
***
In Ixtalia, Kayla screamed from the agony of a thousand minds forcing themselves into her own. They bombarded her with their memories in an overload of data that subsumed her own consciousness. She swam against the images like a body tossed beneath the waves. Identifying up or down became impossible.
Then a voice separated from the rest. “Wake up, Kayla!”
Fatima.
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Fatima said. Kayla latched onto the sound and swam against the tide of images tormenting her mind.
A distant crack formed like the faint glow of daylight spilling beneath a door.
Fatima’s voice rang out like a beacon. “We need you, Kayla!”
Kayla forced the crack wider and saw two slender hands gripping her own. The Rogues fought to swamp the sliver of consciousness she’d taken back, and she wavered.
Then a new voice spoke within her mind. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” It was the same voice that had told her she wasn’t alone months before. Was it God speaking to her?
Kayla concentrated on her own memories, expanding them into a beachhead among the flood of intruders. Words the monk had spoken to her as a child formed her mantra. Believing is the first step to doing.
“I believe!” Kayla shouted and yanked open the doorway to the real world.
Fatima held onto her hand from a ledge. The Indian girl’s face contorted, and her entire body trembled with the effort. Sweat poured down her face, her breaths coming in gasps.
“Can you hear me, Kayla?” Fatima shouted.
Though she’d opened the doorway to her senses, the pathway controlling her body remained cut off. The screams of pain, terror, and battle yanked at her insides. The smell of sulfur from the river of lava mingled with the salty tinge of sweat dripping onto her face from her rescuer. Even the feel of her own limp hand inexorably slipping from Fatima’s grasp came through with excruciating precision. But as desperately as she tried, she could not move.
Valac suddenly loomed over Fatima like death incarnate. I have to help her! But the weight of a thousand minds held her hostage. The cyborg lifted one of its armor-plated hands and brought it down like a guillotine beyond view. Blood spurted out of Fatima’s mouth, and her hands went limp.
Kayla fell, and the heat rose around her. Fatima’s sacrifice would be for nothing. Once again, Kayla had brought tragedy to those she loved.
Then she stopped fighting the flow of information from the Rogues and the solution crystalized. The world of the atom and the electron are one. Nothing is an illusion, and everything is. Kayla’s mouth opened, and she expressed this truth in a single vibrational note of AI mathematics.
And she was free.
Activating the nanobots within her body, Kayla halted her fall inches from the lava’s surface. The heat seared her neck and back for an instant, but then she ascended out of the molten chasm like a rising phoenix and landed beside her friend. Fatima’s torso was sliced nearly in half, her spine severed and her organs torn out. Kayla listened for a tiny heartbeat, but the child was dead as well—beyond the healing powers of even her nanobots.
Kayla turned her face to the heavens and produced a sound similar to Eve’s death-cry. Her eyes transformed to red orbs, and her skin darkened.
Anger coursed through nerve as it had when she’d faced Elias after her resurrection. This time she allowed it full rein, feeding on the sorrow of Fatima’s death. The symbols flared across her body and glowed beneath her clothing like hidden flames.
Valac’s back was to her as he ran across the cavern toward Tem and Ohg. Fatima’s blood dripped from his fingers and left a trail on the stone floor.
“You will die,” Kayla said and sprinted in pursuit.
A man with the head of a lion intercepted her. Kayla thrust her hand down his throat and tore his still-beating heart out. A towering cyclops charged, and she vaulted it with a somersaulting leap. Even before landing, she extended her hand, and a discarded chisel flew to it from twenty feet away. The fifteen-foot monster turned, and she flung the metal wedge at its bulbous head. The projectile embedded itself in its forehead just above its single eye. The creature slumped to the ground with a thud.
Dozens of nightmares from the vast archive of humanity’s collective fears converged on her. She killed them one after another with hardly a break in stride.
A hundred yards distant, Valac joined the mob of creatures attacking Tem and Ohg.
Kayla launched herself into the air, her nanobots carrying her like the winged sandals of Perseus. Her heart throbbed as her fists balled into weapons of destruction.
The cavern shook, and chunks rained down from the ceiling. A howling roar sounded from the right, drawing every eye. The dragon clawed its way out of the largest tunnel as if birthed by the rock itself. Once free, its body reared forty feet into the air, with wings extending outward double its height. The dragon’s stygian hide glinted like volcanic glass, and its eyes swirled with an amber glow. Dozens of horns bristled off its head, neck, and spine like a desert lizard grown into a monster.
Kayla remained on course, flying toward the cyborg as he charged Tem and Ohg.
Halfway there.
Flying beside Valac, Sangwa glanced her way.
“Attack!” Sangwa shouted at the dragon. It jerked slightly and followed the hologram’s finger to Kayla flashing through the air. The mythological beast rose on its haunches and inhaled a vast rush of air. The top of its horned head brushed the ceiling as it opened its great jaws.
Kayla dived as jets of liquid geysered toward her. As the two streams of chemicals merged, they ignited into flame, driven forward by the air expelled from its lungs. Kayla screamed as the inferno engulfed her.
She hit the ground and rolled to extinguish the flames. Pain seared through her skin, and her clothing crumbled to ashes. She’d survived the fire of her execution, but this burned magnitudes hotter. Ohg had warned her that intense heat could destroy the nanobots. Taking to the air again was out. She stumbled behind a group of half-finished blocks of stone, and a second blast of flame roared around her.
Kayla’s skin smoked and sizzled. But the rocks did their job as a partial shield. When the eruption ceased, she limped into the open and faced the monster. A second discarded chisel flew to her hand, and she launched it at the dragon’s face. The metal wedge glanced off its hide and buried itself with a clang into the stone ceiling.
“Its scales are nearly impenetrable,” Ohg shouted. “Our only chance is destroying Sangwa’s computer so I can access the implants in its brain.”
The dragon’s attention drifted to the castle, where the defenders fought the attacking horde with improvised weapons. Lott flung stones with his dozens of hands, while Durendal used a crossbeam as a battering ram against those reaching the battlements. Giants, dwarfs, centaurs, and all manner of Gene-Freaks desperately fought for their lives in a thousand individual dramas.
The dragon took a step toward the castle.
This is my chance! Kayla crouched and jumped into the air, but sprawled onto the ground. Enough nanos in her body had perished that she now lacked the critical mass necessary for flight.
“No!” Sangwa shouted. The dragon jerked and shook its head.
It turned toward Sangwa and roared.
“No!” shouted the Rogue, and the dragon reared back as if struck by a blow.
“Attack!” Sangwa pointed at Kayla, and the creature’s malevolent eyes locked onto her like a cat sighting a mouse. Kayla stumbled toward Valac, but the dragon closed the distance with only a few
strides. The ground shook with such force that Kayla’s damaged legs gave way. The dragon’s great head descended toward her.
Across the cavern, Tem thrust his spear toward the black box strapped to the cyborg’s chest at the same time as Ohg attacked from the side. Valac seized both spear and talon and snapped them in half.
With nowhere left to hide, Kayla waited for the inevitable.
The dragon sucked in an enormous breath and opened its jaws. Saliva dripped from its teeth, and its breath reeked of burnt chemicals. Its pupils narrowed to vertical slits as they locked onto her. Its sinewy neck transported its rhinoceros-sized head to within a foot of her.
Kayla slumped forward. Maybe it’s better this way.
“Kill her!” Sangwa shouted.
A blast of air hurricaned around her, the precursor of the chemicals that would ignite like a giant Bombardier beetle defending itself from a threat.
Then something small drifted into the dragon’s eye, and it flinched. The rush of air choked off. Eyes the size of Ohg’s head blinked as more and more yellow specks floated into them.
A buzzing filled the air.
“I must teach this creature a lesson of the Tao,” Yuan Shi Tian Wang said in his vibrating voice.
The dragon reared back and shook its head as the swarm of bees engulfed him. It roared as the stinging cloud entered mouth, nostrils, ears, and even burrowed beneath its scales.
“As the sacred Tao Te Ching tells us,” Yuan hummed. “The weak and pliable overcomes the strong and hard.”
The dragon bellowed and thrashed its head from side to side. Blood ran from its eyes, and blasts of flames burst from its mouth in attempts to clear it of the miniature attackers. Soon it turned the fire on its own body. Charred bees rained down, but more took their place.
Kayla stumbled toward Valac, even as the dragon thrashed its wings and lurched blindly toward the moat surrounding the castle. An occasional orc or other monstrosity attacked her, but she killed them in turn.
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