Soul Jacker Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  THE CHORD

  L. DOE

  Over the rampart and running with the howitzer roaring at full blast, Doe takes in the blood-spattered stone and the dead Napoleonic bodies. To her left the helicopters are rearing up as the tsunami flood eclipses the sky, with Ti and Ray just black smudges far below. To her right lies a mud-swathed courtyard, dug through with a riddle of wet trenches that run from the walls to the White Tower at the center.

  The Tower alone is pure-white still, a circular structure built out of fulgent oblong blocks like those in the pyramid, rising taller than the walls. Narrow slit windows punctuate the white at regular intervals, and within one Doe catches a hint of movement.

  Then she reaches the projectile QC pillbox and sees a man squatting on the bloody stone, beside a large vat-fed flamethrower mount. The sight of him stops Doe in her tracks, and the whirr of her howitzer cycles down.

  "Ruin," she gasps.

  It is Mr. Ruin, dressed up as Napoleon. He is wedged into the crook of the wall, his potbelly filthy with old blood, his blue jacket slung back off his shoulders and torn at the cuffs. His face is mired with black bruises and there's a crust of dark blood around his mouth, as he gnaws at the bloody stump of his right wrist.

  He looks up as Doe draws near, unsurprised and unafraid. "I'm so hungry," he says, his voice a Gaullic rasp. "I can't eat any of this."

  It is repellent and fascinating at the same time.

  "You're not going to believe who I'm looking at," Doe says through blood-mic.

  "Cover us," comes the reply from Ti.

  Doe strides forward, kicks Ruin sharply in the face then slots into his position at the flamethrower. With the howitzer in one hand and the projectile QC muzzle in the other she takes sight on the nearest helicopter as it drops missiles from its belly.

  The howitzer spins up and shreds them. The projectile QC belches out sizzling purple flame with a whoosh that engulfs the insectile machine and fuses it at once. It drops into the torrent of mud just as a faint clicking sound comes from her leg. She ignores it long enough to drive the second helicopter into the tsunami flow with another geyser of purple QCs, then hazards a glance down

  Napoleon is biting at her calf, directly into the metal of her suit. It is repellent but fascinating, and she finds herself wondering that his jaws must be strong to make that much sound. She heaves the barrel of the howitzer back over the rampart and hammers it into his forehead, even as another helicopter erupts somewhere behind her.

  He flops unconscious to the side. She spins back to see Ti and Ray launching upward on a grapnel with the tsunami surging scant inches behind them, then there is a thunderclap crash as the mud-front strikes the wall and Doe is rocked off her feet.

  Frothing mud sloshes over the rampart edge and drenches her, obscuring her HUD. She clicks the visor up and trains the howitzer on the skies, but nothing further comes. There are no more Dactyl helicopters, only the burning glow of the twin suns through the scabrous clouds.

  A second later Ti comes running toward her along the rampart while the flow of the tsunami still convulses the stones underfoot.

  "Are you all right?" Ti shouts over the churn.

  "All right," Doe answers, "but I found someone." She looks down to point at Ruin's squirrely body, but he is gone.

  She looks back up at Ti.

  "Mr. Ruin is here. Somewhere."

  They congregate by Ray's side, where Doe dips into his HUD and sees fresh dislocations in his left shoulder and leg, though the majority of his earlier injuries remain sealed. The new injuries are lesser and ought to heal themselves in the existing bath of microbials within the suit. She syncs in and sends a flood of her own shock-jacks to wake him.

  His eyes pop open and he blurts our words. "We're in Mr. Ruin's mind! The soldiers are dressed in-"

  "We know," says Doe with a calming hand on his shoulder. "I saw him."

  Ray's eyes bug. "You saw him? Where is he?"

  "He ran, must have gone inside the Tower." Doe points. "Which leaves the wall to us."

  Ray cranes his neck to look back over the ramparts. Doe follows his gaze. The new flood is settling outside at a height barely below the rampart. The weight of so much mud already has the wall leaning inward.

  "This place is not going to take another tsunami, and the next attack will be hard to stop," he says. "They can come up at a crawl, if they want, and what have we got?"

  "The projectile QC," Doe says, "the howitzer's almost out."

  Ray nods. "We need more. I don't want to be helpless when this place gets taken. Whatever this army wants, it's not friendly."

  "Agreed."

  Doe turns to survey the Tower. She'd like to simply grapnel to the top, blow her way in through one of the arrow slits with a knob of candlebomb and burn the rest to the ground, but she knows that won't work. The White Tower is a Solid Core, and there is only ever one correct way through the maze.

  Her eyes fall to the warren of trenches dug into the courtyard, leading up to the Tower's heavy wooden door.

  "There might be weapons inside," says Ray, following her gaze. "There could be anything."

  "Whatever Ritry Goligh sent us here for," Ti says.

  Doe turns back to look at her, this tall blond ex-twin. She has proven herself beyond any doubt.

  "You're right. I expect that's where Mr. Ruin's gone as well."

  A moment passes. None of them has ever met Mr. Ruin, not really, but they've seen him in memories. They remember him through the echoes of Ritry Goligh. Even weakened in the ruin of his Sunken mind, he is their enemy still.

  "The aetheric bridge," says Ray. "It's the only way out."

  Doe nods. The bridge is the obvious end point for them all, but there is nothing simple about achieving it. "Without Far I don't know if we can cross."

  This doesn't seem to phase Ray. "Then maybe it's not that. Perhaps this is our last redoubt, the place we fend off an attack and die heroically. Anyone had an update on their chest bulletin boards?" He makes a show of looking at their chest plates, hunting for fresh yellow paint.

  Doe knows he's trying to lighten the mood. It is both endearing and annoying. Ray bulls through the disappointment. "No? Well, it's up to us to decide then. Personally I've always liked the romance of a famous last stand."

  "Famous to who?" Ti asks, dropping a dampening blanket on his good cheer. "If we die here, nobody will know."

  "I'll know," Ray says, and winks.

  He's probably high on residual shock-jacks, but still, the reality drops a silence over them all. Doe wonders what it might mean, to truly die. No more magma floes in the Molten Core, no more of Ray's touch in the dark, no more Bathyscaphe or missions or Me.

  What would it mean for Ritry Goligh?

  She lays a hand on Ray's good shoulder. "If it's our last stand, we'll make it a good one. I want the mud outside this wall littered with the dead."

  Ray winks. "We'll stack them high to the sky, sweetheart."

  With that, she makes the decision.

  "I'm going into the Tower alone. I'll hunt down that rat-bastard Ruin and find out why we're here. I just need you two to buy me enough time out here."

  She looks at both Ray and Ti. Ray is broken still. Ti is exhausted. But they're marines, and will do as they're ordered.

  "Aye aye, captain," Ray says.

  She wants to touch him again, even through the suit, but that would be too much. This is a chord and she is the captain. Propriety is the key to discipline and motivation. He looks at her, probably reading as much.

  But screw discipline. She steps forward, yanks off his HUD and kisses him hard on his tooth-pierced, dark-purple lips.

  He kisses back. It sends a thrill all through her body.

  "Stay alive," she whispers, holding his handsome black face.

  "And you."

  She turns to Ti, who is looking awkwardly at her toes. "Stay alive, that's an order."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  It's already embarrassing enough. The
y've wasted enough time. She turns and walks away. Five steps on she grapnels off the rampart wall and swings down to the mud-courtyard below, into the squalid dark of a high-walled trench.

  M. DOE

  At once she's cut off from the world behind.

  The mud underfoot is boggy, with oil-skinned puddles glinting in the shallow troughs left by past footsteps. The trench walls rise either side taller than she is, leaving an avenue barely two shoulderwidths wide. In that narrow space the air is hot and close, rank with fresh peat and acrid powder smoke.

  There is no sound but the soft bubbling of mud and a faint scratchy hint of old music coming from far off, muted by the damp walls.

  She starts forward, each step tentative, sucking out of the mud then slipping in again.

  "Ruin," she calls softly ahead, "I don't want to hurt you."

  Ahead the trench branches at a T, which she doesn't remember seeing from above, but of course this is the outer ring of the Solid Core where anything goes.

  At the T she looks both ways. To the right there is a dead-end scattered with shreds of paper ammunition cartridges. To the left is a grotesque tableau in an oval clearing made up of bloody, ruptured naked bodies. They are soldiers that have been blown into pieces. Here a pale leg dangles from a root in the wall, there a torso lies forlorn like a belly-up turtle.

  Doe counts ten dead in the carnage.

  On one side of the clearing, in stark contrast to the chaos in the center, the uniforms of these dead soldiers hang neatly from bayonet 'hooks' pushed into the mud walls. Their muskets are arrayed in a smart lean-to A-frame nearby, with all their magazines of shot and powder looped together and hanging from the crux like a pot suspended above a fire. Beside that the soldiers' boots are laid out in a neat line.

  On the other side of the clearing there is an old gramophone placed in a dugout culvert in the trench wall, like a hearth. The record deck slowly turns, producing an ethereal, corrupted classical ballad from its tarnished brass trumpet. Beside that is a table overspread with notes. A thin tendril of bluish smoke rises from a solitary cigar resting in an ornate ashtray.

  "They all jumped on a grenade," comes a voice from behind her.

  Doe turns and sees Ruin standing in the right turn of the T. He is holding a musket trained on her chest, balancing the stock across his bloody forearm.

  "What hole did you crawl out of?" Doe asks.

  "A deep one," he answers, and fires.

  POP

  The musket ball flies slow and cracks off Doe's chest armor, spiraling away to slot into the trench wall with a sizzle.

  Doe glances down at the crack in her suit. No serious damage.

  "Your muskets aren't as strong as they used to be," she says.

  "They were never that strong," Ruin answers. "You were just weaker."

  Doe stares at him. He stares back. His eyes are rimmed with yellow and dart ferally, like a wild animal caught in a snare.

  "I am caught in a snare," he says, as if he heard her thoughts. Then he grins widely to show blood-clotted molars, and holds up his amputated hand. "I keep trying to bite my way out, but it doesn't seem to be working."

  "You're dying," says Doe calmly. "Let me help."

  He laughs high and loud. "Help me? Ha! You did this to me, you bitch! I ate my own hand because of you. You fucking bitch, Goligh, I hope the Suns gobble you down forever."

  POP POP POP

  The musket balls crack off Doe's armor until she closes the distance between her and Ruin and yanks the musket out of his one good hand. He reeks of piss, shit, and stale gunpowder.

  "What do you mean, the Suns?" Doe asks.

  "Get off me, albino!" he shouts, twisting and tugging at his one good arm. Doe holds it locked. He laughs then squeals as she tightens her grip.

  "Ha ha, you bitch, Ritry, aaah! Aargh, stop it please! Ritry, please, my darling boy!"

  Disgust ripples through Doe. Guilt follows quickly after as old memories from Ritry Goligh slot into her mind. She remembers what he did atop the old rollercoaster, and what it meant. She eases up the pressure on his arm.

  "Stop what, the tsunamis? It's too late for that. Besides, you were going to do this to us."

  "No, no I wasn't, that's different," whines Ruin. "You don't know. You don't know what I wanted, and you ruined everything."

  He starts to sob. He wraps his arms around Doe, presses his head against her chest and starts to weeps.

  "Are the Suns the ones with the helicopters?" Doe asks. She'd point but Ruin isn't looking. "In the sky here?"

  "Uuurgh!" he groans into her chest-plate. "You don't even know that. You don't know anything at all. How was I beaten by you? How?"

  Doe feels a sharp clack in the small of her back, against her armor, and spins Ruin away, twisting his damaged arm until he starts to hop and drops the dagger.

  "I only stabbed you a little bit," he pouts, a strangely childlike grin on his face. "Only a little, you barely felt it."

  "I'm wearing a sublavic suit. I heard it more than I felt it."

  "Ha ha ha ha," he says, grinning again. "Ha ha, I'm such a fool. Let me go now, please. Come on, sweetheart, dearest Ritry, let me go."

  "I'm Doe. Ritry isn't here. It's just you and me."

  Ruin stops hopping and looks at her with sudden interest. His head cocks to the side. "You are a woman, aren't you? You're so pale."

  "I'm Doe."

  He nods eagerly. "Yes yes, that's it, of course! Clever Ritry! Oh I knew he was so clever. Seven tones, who would have thought of it? An army of plastic soldiers is one thing, just a pitiful kind of projection really, but a Soul broken into seven parts? Only the Suns ever came close."

  "You keep saying the Suns, what does it mean?"

  "What does the Suns mean? Doe, my darling, where are the others? I'd like to meet them. Ritry always respected me, I know that. We were good friends, really. Where are the others? I want to meet Me. I want to see the little boy, Far. Yes!"

  "They're not here."

  "Oh," says Ruin, then narrows his eyes suspiciously. "I saw others, though, with you. Two others. The black one and one of the twins. Where are the rest?"

  Doe says nothing. She contemplates beating him but doubts it would help. Instead she merely tightens her grip on his arm.

  This time he doesn't squeal. He doesn't leap, and instead only stares straight through the visor of her HUD with the light of understanding growing in his eyes. When he speaks it is with surging happiness.

  "He's abandoned you, hasn't he? Ritry sent you here alone. Half of you are dead, and Me and Far never came. I can feel it. You're alone! He's not anywhere near. He abandoned you!"

  "He didn't abandon us."

  "He abandoned you!" Mr. Ruin crows. Tears of joy leak out of his crusted yellow eyes. "Oh it's delightful. Thank the Suns, to send me such as this. I was so hungry and there was nothing to eat, and now Ritry Goligh has provided. Bless you child, bless you."

  Doe feels some shade of his joy leak into her and begin to corrupt her own certainty. This mind is dying around them, Ruin is a bitter ghost haunting his past glory and Me and Far really are gone. What was Ritry Goligh thinking? Are they votives so that he can survive?

  "What are the Suns?" she asks again.

  A slow smile spreads across Ruin's face. "I'll tell you. You'll love it. It means he has him. Ritry. It means he's going to suffer."

  Doe shakes him. "What are they?"

  "Only a god," Ruin snarls back at her. His spit flecks her helmet. "The holiest of them all. I'll show you, if you want. I'll show it all, so you know what fate your dear Ritry is facing. He sent you here to die, little Doe, you little bitch, so I could eat your brains out of your white little head."

  She slaps him then, hard. He wails, laughs, then starts shouting for more. She slaps him until he stops and a fresh run of blood trickles down from his nose.

  "I was so hungry, you see," he says softly, looking down to the mud. "That's why. That's only ever why. I was so hungry."

/>   "So show me," Doe says.

  He starts to shuffle around her. His feet take tiny steps like an old man's, squelching in the mud. When he sees the pile of dead bodies in the left branch of the T, he starts to cry harder.

  "They dived on a grenade for me," he says, in a tiny voice Doe can barely hear. "All for me."

  "Why?"

  He looks up at her. The madness is back in his eyes. "I was so hungry."

  She holds him at arms length, and while he mutters about Ritry and Me and the Suns, she guides him inexorably toward the Tower.

  RITRY GOLIGH

  19. NOT THIS

  Hours blur into days. The torments that follow are endless and inventive. At some point I lie curled and shaking in the semi-dark of my white room, wanting only to vomit, but I don't want to have to eat another one of my own fingers. It's a punishment I have received before.

  It is so hard, to be like this.

  "A reward," King Ruin said, as he stroked my sweat-soaked head resting in his lap. "For eating so well."

  I am different, now. There are many tortures and humiliations behind me. I have done things I never thought I would; everything he demanded. I am broken and bloody and ready to die. I have already surrendered multiple times, but that didn't make him stop.

  It wasn't enough, he said. It wasn't sincere. It had to come from deeper within.

  Only one thing comes from within.

  not this

  It is a voice speaking in the back of my head. I don't know what it is. It comes in the worst moments and I wish it would stop. I don't know if it's a thought put there by King Ruin as some kind of trick or if it's truly my own. Already he's dug and burrowed within my separated brain to prize it out, but he didn't reach it yet.

  Now I am full of holes.

  The pain is all around me. I remember the soft caress of his hand and how I leaned into it like a cat, desperate to please. In such ways I sicken myself, traitor to whatever I once was. His hand stroked my brow and I was grateful, after he'd taken away pieces of me I'll never get back. He striped my body with scars I'll never remove. He pulled out half of my teeth. He cut holes in my mind.