He emerges from the kitchen. Ruin in all his gray, white-toothed glory. My master. "I told you never to come here, Ritry," he says.
"I just need," I begin, but I am so drunk and my nose so broken I can't speak well.
"You are disgusting," he says. "What is it? Here, let me."
He leaps the bonds between us, into my mind. I have a little strength now, but not nearly enough. The power he's raised from Lagging them, from feeding off me even now, makes me useless to resist.
He reads the marine's tent shrine, and grins his big white grin. "You want mementos," he says. "Well, of course, Ritry. Of course. Take a seat."
I take a seat right there, in the doorway, on the floor.
"Very good," he says. "Now wait."
I sit and look at my wife. She is pale and fresh worry lines wrinkle her face, but she is my Loralena still. I love her so much it aches. Mem and Art gaze at me without seeing, and I want to reach out and tell them everything will be all right, but how can I say that when he is here even now? I can't promise a thing.
Ruin comes back with a roll of black plastic garbage bags and a stack of photograph albums. I recognize them; one from our wedding, one of the kids growing up, one of us in Candyland. "Yes, this is a very good idea," he says. "I should have thought of this myself. It will only make your suffering keener."
He shakes open the black bag and holds it open, then starts peeling photographs out of the album. He looks at each one for a moment, holds it out to me, then tears it to little pieces and drops it into the bag.
"Something for you to do," he says.
It takes hours. He goes through all the albums painstakingly, and when he's done with that he collects Mem's old rooster teddy and cuts it to chunks with a pair of kitchen scissors. He unloops the cotton stuffing within and makes a show of spooling it into the bag, like intestines. He cuts baby clothes to ribbons, smashes ornaments, plates, cups, cutlery and adds it all to the bag.
Every bit hurts. Every one is what I need, though I don't consciously know why.
At the end there are four full bags. He knots the top of each and tosses them to me. They land on the floor before me with a crunch and scrape.
"Now get out," says Ruin, "and if you ever come back again, well." He strolls over and lays his palm possessively on Loralena's cheek. "You know."
I pick up the bags and I leave.
It takes a month. I set up in Candyland atop the old wooden roller coaster. There's a platform there where Loralena and I sat, on the night I think Art was conceived.
I build the tower out of mortar dust ground from the park's old buildings, mixed with water from the sea to make a sticky paste. I blend the broken and torn fragments of photographs and letters into the paste, then daub it onto a frame of wood and nails I salvage from the roller coaster's support struts. It is like papier-mâché, one of the games I used to play with Art and Mem; building impossible figures from our imaginations.
The tower rises, rickety and creaking and filled with the memories of my life. When the regular pain comes from Mr. Ruin and my family, I focus it through this. The tower becomes a totem, amplifying my suffering and rewarding him more, as he'd hoped. I suffer more for it, am left gasping and sick since now I no longer drink, but there is a plan here somewhere even though I do not know what it is.
The tower rises a story high, then two stories, like a subglacic conning tower, and I plaster in the walls with mementos. At the top I fashion something like a periscope, jutting through the wooden ceiling. It is a haphazard affair, made of wooden planks with shards of warped mirror I found in the funhouse, but it works. I peer through it and see the cities of Calico spreading away like layers in the mind.
I scour the beaches around Candyland for days until I find enough rope, and a piece of wood suitable to serve for a wheel. It was once the top seal of a capstan, I think. I affix it at the head of my trembling tower atop the roller coaster, and look out over the world I have left behind.
The power of memories wells up around me, not only my own but also Lorelana's, Art's and Mem's. Their trails are everywhere here, the bonds hot and tight in this space where so much of our life together is now interred.
There is only one thing left to do.
In Calico it is easy to find Mei-An, with the power of the bonds behind me. She is a manager in an energy company now, specialized in ethical investment in renewable energy; trying to move the city on from hydrates.
I call her from a public node, and she comes to meet me in a coffee shop in the shadow of the wall. We sit in red plastic bucket seats and I look at her like a ghost from my past, and wonder about all the ways my life could have gone.
Now I come to her for help.
I look into her eyes. She is as beautiful as ever. She has grown into her implanted knowledge, building a proud and powerful woman out of the Skulk-touring youth she once was. In the background I can feel Mr. Ruin's curiosity as he watches us, and his confidence that there is nothing I can do. He is listening with me as I ask for the things I need.
"Please," I say, at the end.
Mei-An rests a hand on mine. She can see what has become of me. I wasn't much then, but I am nothing now. She could so easily say no, but she doesn't. "I'm so sorry. I tried to warn you."
I smile, and think back to a beeping text on a node from so long ago. She thinks that Don Zachary has brought me to this low ebb. Perhaps she thinks me his slave, doing his bidding all these years. She never knew Mr. Ruin. So I smile for her, to show that it is not so bad as that. Of course it is worse, but that's not her doing.
"It's all in the past," I say.
She leaves then comes back like a child sent out on a treasure hunt, bringing me good clothes, a node and enough money to pay for a hotel. These things are trifles for her, but impossible for me to attain on my own. I have no identity in this world anymore since Mr. Ruin took it, no name or money of my own.
I thank her, and she starts to cry. Perhaps she suspects, even as Mr. Ruin does, that this is some kind of last hurrah for me. That I am going to my death.
Perhaps. I kiss her hand, taste the scent of her unique skin I last tasted in another life and say goodbye.
I go to the hotel and wash, cleaning out the grime of a year. In the steamy heat of the shower I cut my hair and shave my scraggly beard, watching the filth swirl down the drain. I've done this before, one life shedding away for another. This is nothing new.
Mr. Ruin watches with amusement. I know for certain now; he thinks I will try to kill myself. He has prepared defenses against this; a line of control inside my own mind, implanted to prevent any such action. He will watch as I try, and be disappointed in me, and lick his lips as my punishment deepens.
In the evening I step out into the fresh Calico sea air, set to bring this farce to its end. I do not know what is going to happen, but I trust myself, that part of my mind which has saved me before; the child from a seven-toned womb that I once was, more vicious than anything I have become.
I stride up the steps toward the Wall train line, finally ready.
ME
L. SOLID ROCK
We race, and days pass us by. Corridor after corridor we run, metal turning to flesh as the many worms of the Lag hunt us down. In my HUD the blip of our flashing red dot penetrates deep into the Solid Core, running on faith that So calculated it right, that we're not even now speeding into the heart of a fractal off-shoot.
We shed memories like breadcrumbs at our backs. Piece by piece our memories of Ritry Goligh wear away as we shave them into slices and throw them out to keep the Lag from our heels. We forget every bit.
We grow weary. We snatch water and shock-jacks in what few moments we can, hunkered down in nodule-rooms that get darker and danker the further inward we go, with books of knowledge that get smaller and hazier. These are stories from a fragmented childhood now, of moments glimpsed by an infant mind and laid down in the unconscious record to build Ritry Goligh's unique mental architecture.
&nbs
p; Ten or so rooms and twenty or more years of life later, there's nothing on the blood-mic but the distant, intermittet fuzz of So's ghostly voice, singing a lullaby.
We stop to catch our breath in a nodule very different to the rooms of the outer maze. The rusted metal walls are long-gone now, the signature RGs smoothed out into veiny seams of rock. Rather it's a murky, primordial cave; egg-shaped and marked with ridges, cracks and banded discolorations in the stone; a place before time. There are fossilized skeletons half-buried in the surface, barely visible in the gloom; the shapes of things that came before. It's hot and wet, and my wheezing breath condenses on the inner screen of my HUD.
I try to clear the visor but the vacuums are failing. I take off the HUD and run my finger around the suction cups, and something clicks loose. I hold it in my hand, a small chip of black plastic.
This equipment was not designed to last this long. None of us were. I look at the others, panting in the damp air. It smells of old things here, peat and a past long-buried. Doe's skin is whiter than the book I'm standing on, her cheeks sallow and drawn. Ray twitches in a half-sleep, haunted by nightmares of emptiness.
It's the same for me. I don't see Mr. Ruin or the Lag in the darkness behind my closed eyes; I see only the nothingness I've left behind.
Far trembles, now. I've tried holding him but it does nothing. The weals on his face and neck shine brightly like neon lights. Even when he's walking with us, he's suffering. Half the time we carry him because his legs won't hold him up. Sometimes when he tries to speak all that comes out are the same four tones. The panic in his eyes scares us all, shining through the defiance.
SAVE FAR
I think back on the mission folder's first directive, what feels like a lifetime ago. I am a different person now. I don't know what role Far is supposed to play, but I feel the importance of it. I love the boy like he was my own son, like he was me, and I know he will do all that he can to save us.
I set my broken HUD to the side and look down at the book beneath my feet. It is far thinner now and poorly stitched, in keeping with the degradation of our surroundings. There is no heavy leather cover, only a damp-mottled stretch of card atop cheap pulp paper. The pages within are blotted with dark scuffs; in places the handwritten text has been redacted with squiggling black lines.
Perhaps this is what was lost.
I read the few snatches of words for myself; they tell a splintered story of my infancy, or the infancy of Ritry Goligh. I am an expression of Ritry as he became, I think, only one version of the real man. The further we go in, the older the memories get, and these are all foreign to me.
We are close to the center now. A little further and we will be there with the first few cells of Ritry Goligh while the seven-tones of his artificial womb build him into existence. Further still, back beyond the arc of recollection to a place that is truly primal, we will hit the moment of conception, and perhaps answers will lie there. Perhaps there will be a bridge to something better, and a reason for all of this.
Abruptly, Far screams.
The noise is incredibly loud in the dark cavern, and without my HUD I cannot buffer it. The boy is sitting bolt upright and screaming, and at once I see why.
The Lag is in the room with us. We have become blind with exhaustion and it has snuck into our midst. Now its distended pink head is buried in Far's stomach. Blood spurts as it burrows deeper, and before I can even act Far's screams halt and his eyes roll up in his head.
I leap to the Lag and rip it out. It swallows my whole arm up to the elbow in turn, chipping deep divots into my sublavic suit. I rove with my fingers inside its gullet until I find the pieces of Far that it stole, then grip them hard.
"Kill it," I shout as Doe and Ray stir awake. Another slim Lag worm shoots across the space and hits Ray full in the HUD, knocking him flat onto his back inside the book.
The creature bites through my armor and up, chomping into my shoulder, and the pain is excruciating. I beat it with my free hand but to no avail. Doe is already astride it with a bayonet in her hand, sawing like So at the necks of the soldiers.
In three strokes she decapitates it; its jaws loosen and I pull my wounded arm out. Blood flows everywhere, whether from me or the ruins of Far's innards I don't know.
"Stabilize him, shock-jacks, transfuse, whatever you can," I shout as I lurch out of the way.
Doe goes to Far, unclipping tubes from her suit. Somewhere nearby Ray wrestles with his own Lag, his open hand stretching toward Doe. She places the bayonet smoothly in it as she kneels by Far, and Ray drives the blade through the monster's face, sealing its lips shut.
I activate sealant inside my suit and drop next to Far, already dizzy with blood loss. He is thrashing now with the impact of shock-jacks from Doe, his upper body jerking in time with her pulse. I hold out the fistful of viscera, glistening in our flickering suit lights. His heart is amongst the mulch, I think.
"It's going to be OK, Far," I say, though I am too terrified to believe it. Doe holds his head, his suit aorta linked in to her own, carrying her blood in only for most of it to spill out through his torn belly.
"Quickly, Me," she says.
I push my fist into the hole in Far's middle and deposit the organs that were stolen. They sit in the hole of his belly like food vomited from a mother chick's mouth, and I feel ashamed that this is all I can offer. I reach for the edges of his exo-suit to seal him up like La, but it seems the Lag must have ravaged it too thoroughly, as the edges don't match.
Doe is already stripping, pulling her suit off over her head. Beneath it she is all sinuous white flesh with a sweat-darkened shirt bound tightly across her chest.
"Get that off him," she says and I comply, fighting with Far's fading tremors to yank his arms out of the suit.
Ray drops beside me to help, covered in gore too, with ragged tears in his cheek where the beast caught him. Between us we tug Far's suit off then work to feed him into Doe's. It's large and we get his arms in easily then seal it over his bloody middle.
Ray breathes a sigh of relief. Doe closes the blood siphon off her throat and hands the tube to Ray, who plugs it in to his own.
"He'll be all right," says Ray, and though the words are hopeful I can't help but detect the desperation in his voice. Far has to be all right.
Doe slumps heavily, probably dizzy with the blood she's given, and points at the dead Lags. "Where did they come from?"
I rise and track the fleshy appendages. The lights on my suit have weakened so it's difficult to pick out the cracks where their bodies pass through the rock, but there are none. The conjunction is seamless; there is rock, then there is flesh.
"They didn't get in," I say. "They grew in."
Ray laughs, but there's no humor in it. "What the hell, Me?"
I prod the Lag's middle where it connects to the rock, but it doesn't peel away. It simply strains, and tight white sinew lines rise up along it like scars.
"It grew," I repeat. "This whole mind is turning against us."
"Out of solid rock?" Ray asks.
I don't have the strength to answer. None of us has strength to spare. Ray has Far's head against his chest now, rocking the boy unconsciously. Doe is sitting and breathing hard, her white skin glowing like an oxygen flare in the deepening dark.
Maybe this is where we all die.
There's so little of us left. I can barely breathe. I watch Far. Ray starts to turn pale and hands the blood siphon to me. I plug it into my neck; now the things I know will pass into Far, and whatever strength I have might keep him alive, but I have so little.
Ray's breath comes wetly. I should give commands but I don't know what to say. We can't move like this. We can't carry Far like this.
"You look nice," Ray says to Doe.
I'd laugh if I had the strength. She looks terrible. We all do. Her suit is off and she's rimed with sweat and oil and blood.
"Shut up," Doe manages.
"Pretty," Ray gulps. "I always thought so."
A long, breathless moment stretches out, then Doe speaks again.
"Fine," she says. "Let's do it."
I'm shocked. Ray is more shocked.
"It?" he asks, like he has no idea what she's talking about.
"Come over here."
I don't watch, but still I feel her long, willowy arm snaking out. Taking him by the hand. With what little strength they have, they stand, and lead each other into the shadows beyond the book.
I stop the flow of blood to Far before it kills me, and try not to listen as they fumble and groan in the dark. More intestinal worms could burst through the rock at any moment, but right now I don't care. This is the chord, my chord, and this is what Ray does best; he heals. Brings light to darkness. We all love each other, after all. You have to love yourself, to heal.
Their lovemaking is tender and urgent. She rises, he rises. It's a union, and through it I feel a new strength rising within me. Not a lot. Not a fire, but a seedling. A new memory all of our own; not one inherited from Ritry Goligh but something we made ourselves. In this place I consider it a wonder.
They finish together, sweaty, sticky and satisfied. I look to Far; his skin tone is clearer now. The artery in his neck pulses smooth and strong. Ray strides across the space behind me, pulling his armor back on.
"Come on, Me," he says, "can't sit around on the job." There's urgency in his tone, but there's also some of his cheeky irreverence, returned. I'm glad to hear it. "The Lag's right by your head."
I turn, and see the rock beside me distending. I jerk away as the tendril of a Lag worm grows a speck of flesh at a time, exuding out of the rock. Ray punches it flat.
Our reprieve is over. It's time to finish this mission. Ray fits Far in his holster, Doe kicks out the door and we run back out into the tunnels. Heads ducked, we sprint fast and cramped through dark and dripping caves, on pathways bored through solid stone as though by giant insects, skirting stalagmites and stalactites with the glow of new love encircling us and our pulsing red dot inching ever closer to the heart of the Solid Core.
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 17