Soul Jacker

by Michael John Grist

  I feel the wave rise on a tide of the bonds.

  It's beginning.

  I jack in.

  Down into my own mind I plunge, buoyed by the strength of the tower. Layers of thought pummel me like bubbles until I lose all sense of my body and the world around me, jacking deeper until my own Molten Core is a red glow ahead.

  I hit the blazing magma hard, too fast for Mr. Ruin to stop me, and consciousness falls away like protective brick cladding. Everything I am splits into the seven constituent tones of my mind's architecture, each one burning into existence in forging pods within the sublavic ship.

  Doe, Ray, Me, Far, So, La, Ti.

  They rouse and for an instant some sense of me is still with them, writing the mission folder they will soon read, painting the map they will need across the captain's chest, because for a brief moment only I see it all. I have glimpsed what violence lies ahead; I understand what is required to truly break free of Mr. Ruin's desecrating touch. It is terrifying and beautiful and beyond my comprehension.

  Then it is gone, as my last sense of self is swept away in the forging and I come to in one mind only, Me, coughing up treacle-black smoke in the rusted corridors of the sublavic, with the pod-forge flaming me to life and the screw failing and the air filled with the stink of burning brick.

  ME

  N. THE BRIDGE

  Huddled by the blast-door we talk in low fast whispers as Doe trims the wicks of the candle-bomb, aligning the gamma-clamp to corrosion marks in the huge black blast-door. Ray is talking into his blood-mic to So back at the outer orbit, his piercing green eyes on me.

  "Anything you can give us, So, on what's on the other side, anything at all."

  As ever, no answer comes. I flip up the chronometer function on my HUD. Has it already been a week in this maze?

  Far calls us to hurry from the end of the corridor. His trembling shadow casts a long way down in the orange oxyfer lights, and I gesture to him to be calm. I try to project my soothing vibes out to him, but it's hard when there's sweat beading down my face and pooling in the dead vacuum cups gathered under my eyes. I nod to Ray, who was always better at morale, and he smiles to Far, which helps.

  "T-minus three," says Doe, wiping her greasy hands on her black double-breasted flak jacket. I try to blink the panic-sweat out of my eyes but it won't dissipate. The HUD vacuums stopped working days ago. Everything here reeks of sweat.

  Ray claps a hand on my shoulder. I look through his visor and see his big grin and bright white teeth inset with loop piercings like some ridiculous mesh of braces.

  "You crying, Me?" he asks.

  "It's the vacuums," I say. "They don't work."

  He chuckles like I'm telling a lie.

  "T-minus two," says Doe, and turns to face me. Her white albino face stares like a ghost. Her fingers are covered in candlewax. "Nearly there," she says.

  "What's the problem?"

  She points at the fuse; it's already blackened, as though the spark wouldn't take.

  "This length is a dud," she says. "Everything's failing."

  "So fire it remotely," says Ray, his sharp green gaze meeting Doe's pink irises.

  She shakes her head. "Transmitters are broken, and I don't have enough fuse left to get us out of range. We used most of it on the Deathgate."

  A beat passes.

  Down at the end of the corridor Far whimpers something. He's been seeing monsters for hours; I expect he's seeing one now. I've been seeing them too, ever since I pulled one out of his guts. They come big and small, they come with jaws and suckers and they devour us all

  Ray nudges me and I jerk back to the present.

  "Use my arm as fuse," he says. "The skin will conduct." He doesn't need to think about it. This is who he is; anything for the team. It doesn't make much sense to me, but what does in this place?

  Doe looks at me and I look at her.

  "Maybe just a few fingers," she says. "If I lay them end to end. They might just put us around the corner."

  Ray holds up his left hand, grabs Doe's trimming tool from her waxy grip, and chops off his little finger.

  It drops to lie amongst the floor's printed RG initials, like some kind of meaningful augur. Blood pools around it. Doe gazes at Ray and I know what she's thinking. One more. Ray lifts the clippers but before he can do it I've raised my own hand.

  "You do it," I say, holding my hand out to him. He grins.

  "I thought you'd ever ask." He clamps the fuse-trimmer around the base of my little finger and snips it off. The digit drops to lie neatly next to his, and I wonder briefly what that could possibly mean; like tea leaves telling our fortune. Blood pours out but I pinch the suit sealed over the wound.

  Doe gathers up the fingers and aligns them with the existing fuse.

  "Let's hope this is the last door," says Ray.

  I give a token dry laugh, then Doe motions us to get back. "Lead time of fifteen seconds, then it'll blow."

  "Far, we're coming," I call to the kid, "T-minus ten around the corner."

  He shuffles out of sight.

  Ray claps a hand on my shoulder. "It's been an honor," he says.

  "The honor's mine," I reply, and look to Doe as well. "To serve with you both."

  She grunts, then sparks the fuse. It fizzes to life and we sprint away together, the metal floor clanging beneath our feet. Around the corner we hunker down to join Far where he's huddled in a ball, squeezing our eyes tight shut and cupping our ears until-

  BOOM

  I catch the B- of it before the sound becomes too loud to even hear. Light flares around us then I'm up and charging into the aftermath of the blast. The floor is melting with the heat, smoke and vaporized metal streams off my HUD and I speed through the ruin of the door barely seeing a thing until I burst into -

  A room that is not a room, in a space that is not a space, in the midst of the thing we've come all this way to find.

  The center of the Solid Core.

  I barely keep to my feet. Ahead of us lies a universe. It spreads out into blackness for distances I can't fathom, filled with a trillion stars spread around two massive red suns at the center. I waver in awe. It is everything and nothing at once, a secret dimension lying above or below reality, and before its splendor I feel myself begin to drift.

  I am Me, captain of the ship, but I am also Doe, and Ray, and Far and So and La and Ti, and Ritry Goligh, and Ven and Ferrily and Tigrates and Heclan and Carrolla and my biological mother and father who I never met and Mr. Ruin too, and Loralena and Mem and Art all at once like we're all individual cells building into one vast fetus floating in the universe's machine womb.

  "Ritry Goligh," says Ray by my side, and it is my mouth and my voice that breathe the words, and my ears that hear them, and my mind that made them.

  All these stars are Souls, I realize, perhaps all the Souls alive and all that ever lived. If I squint I can seen the countless silvery lines of bonds linking them together and shining like comet trails across the black. The air is so thick with connection it should be solid: friendships, relationships, family ties, chance encounters, inspirations, memories, stories all linking people to people to people in an indescribably complex web.

  "Sweet Goligh," Doe murmurs, now weeping openly. Her hands hang slack; there is nothing to fight here. We are at once standing in space, and lying on the ceiling, and swirling at light speed forward and backward and spaghettified by the black hole mass of it all tat the same time. La and Ti are with us now, singing, and So too; we are all here again.

  I think I understand something that Far always knew, that all good things require sacrifice, and this is the sacrifice we have come to make.

  I turn to Far and he smiles at me. In this place all his weals are gone and he is smiling. He is the master of our seven-toned Soul, I see that now, and its ultimate protector. I always thought I was the one bringing him here, but I see now that he was the one bringing us.

  "And I'll bring you back," he says to me, in my own voi
ce, "I swear it."

  Then he plunges his musket bayonet into Ray's chest. Ray bursts in a shower of fizzing white energy. Doe nods with understanding as he plunges the blade into her next, releasing more force that crackles around us both.

  I spread my arms like an icon from the godship temple and smile at this child of mine, this part of me both innocent and utterly vicious at once.

  ONE OF YOUR CHORD WILL KILL YOU ALL.

  We are the sacrifice. We are the bonds that will fuel him on.

  "Thank you," I say, and he spears the bayonet through the center of the maze written across my chest and into my heart, and I am gone, my matter converted to energy with all the fissile strength of a hydrogen bomb.

  O. FAR

  The boy Far stood in the center of consciousness and looked out over the aether. He'd never come here before, though he'd come close once, driven by the tortures of his parents. Their lessons had taught him so much: how to breathe molten lava, how to tame the Lag, how to build a trap out of scar tissue powerful enough to smother them all.

  He saw the dizzying array of bonds arcing outward. They were inconceivably complex, linking a trillion souls across the aether into a single pulsing fire. He reached for one in particular; a star that shone brighter than the others, that had haunted him since before he was born, and he plucked at it.

  Mr. Ruin stood in an apartment in Calico Reach with his blades in his hands, bringing them down upon Loralena, Art and Mem. Seconds ago Ritry Goligh had initiated a jack into his own Molten Core, and now the punishment was due. Excitement sparked through him as the blades swept down; an appetizer only, to be followed by the final extinction of Ritry Goligh himself.

  Then something happened.

  He couldn't see it as Far came in like an assassin from the aether, through an inner bridge he didn't know existed. He didn't understand what was happening when all his memories of Ritry's family were abruptly Lagged away, though he felt the sting. It burned like a cauterized stump in his mind, so he no longer knew why he was standing over this terrified woman and these children with his knives in his hands. At once they were meaningless to him.

  All that remained was a name, and Far injected that name like an engram deep into Mr. Ruin's Soul, etching blazing letters five-feet high onto the rusted metal of his Solid Core.

  Ritry Goligh.

  Instantly it enraged and consumed him, making Ritry Goligh an indelible part of his mental architecture in a way he'd never been before. Now Ruin would hunt with an all-consuming ferocity until he found and broke his prey, and this time there would be no long drawn-out tortures and no search for the Solid Core. There would only be death.

  Then Far was yanked backward through the aetheric universe, his power spent, glimpsing only briefly the glory of the twin red suns burning and revolving, and a distant purple star spitting out electric pulses, and a universal aether made up of endless connections that linked every Soul to each other in a glorius whole. Howling forces dragged him back and flung him out through the ruptured blast door.

  He leaned in to the momentum, flying so hard he punched a hole clear out of the fractal maze and past poor disembodied So surrounded by the headless corpses of Ruin's Napoleonic guards. He shot out of the Solid Core through the Deathgate and hit the Molten Core below with a joy he hadn't felt in years. This was his home, the prison he'd been forged within, and into it he breathed out the seven primal tones of his own Soul's architecture: Doe, Ray, Me, Far, So, La, Ti, ringing them out through the lava.

  Like a fetus inflating within an artificial womb, the Bathyscaphe built itself from memory around him, and the six marines that made up the rest of his chord came with it; Me at the bridge and Doe by his side, Ray manning the trim tanks, So and La on the coolant stacks and Ti down at the engine screw driving them, driving them, driving them forth.

  All together again.

  RITRY GOLIGH

  19. TOGETHER

  The world spits me out complete, Ritry Goligh once more, and I sag to the floor of my memory tower shaking as the immense weight of terror lifts for the first time in a year.

  They are safe.

  It is all that matters. The relief is impossibly sweet. I can feel Mr. Ruin coming for me but I don't care. My family's long year of torture and loss has finally come to an end, and they are safe.

  I laugh and cry at the same time, standing at the tower top with my hands on the wheel still, like Me in the conning tower of his Bathyscaphe. I remember all that my chord did for me: the noble sacrifice of Ti to get us out of the Molten Core, La fighting Ruin's soldiers to the death, So remaining behind as our anchor, Doe, Ray and Me giving their lives at the end to fuel Far's final transgression.

  Crossing the last door into the heart of the Solid Core. I remember the wonders I saw and they fill me still. Stars rush inside me like Souls, and I feel them all spread across the world. So many people and so much hope.

  Now Ruin is coming, and I am ready. At last I understand Far's plan, and what this tower I have built truly is.

  I descend the spiral stairs to the roller coaster's wooden rails, and drop to my knees in the shadowy middle. Here the air is split by bars of morning light that shine through the holes in the tower, opened when I turned the wheel above.

  The chord begin to slip from my grasp as I shuffle back into the darkness. Just moments ago I held them within the palm of my hand, but now the details are fading. I say a silent thanks as they dwindle away, and the wounds in my mind begin to heal over with fresh scar tissue.

  All memories are scars.

  I kneel in the dust of my tower, in the sun-shafted darkness, and wait for Mr. Ruin. I feel him out there like a shark in the deep. He doesn't know about my family anymore. He never understood the power of devotion, because he has never loved a thing more than himself. The family he helped me to find have made me strong in ways he will never understand.

  I rub my eyes. How long did I jack for, and what did I see? Maybe seconds only, though it felt like days. There are only glimpses of the invasion left now, my chord of marines in a dark space fighting soldiers and the wormy Lag with cannon and bayonets.

  I am dizzy and exhausted, and I wait.

  I rouse from a fugue with Mr. Ruin standing in the archway to the tower. It is early afternoon, judging by the gray light filtering through the slits and haloing him from behind. The inside of the tower is murky, filled with dust and memory.

  He watches me as I blink to full consciousness, as I remember who and where I am; not the captain of a chord racing into the depths, but a man in a tower made of ruin. He's wearing his gray shark suit, and he looks no older than the day I first saw him in the ruined arena. I can feel the blinding fury I wrote into him, raging now within his steely shell.

  "Not bad," he says, penning the rage in. His teeth shine in the deepening dark. "It's the first time since Napoleon that anyone fought this hard. I have to respect that."

  I laugh, a shallow barking sound. There is the dust of pounded memories in my throat. He doesn't know what he's doing here. He doesn't know what I've done.

  "You don't respect me. You didn't respect Napoleon. You're empty inside."

  He gives a light shrug. This doesn't touch him. "I honor Napoleon, as I will honor you, Ritry." He takes a step into the darkness, savoring the moment. "I admit, I never expected him to escape Elba a second time, just as I did not expect this from you. He was a rascal, really. Such charisma. You don't remind me of him in that regard."

  I shuffle further backward in the dark. "You've come for more than insults."

  He grins, feigning confidence, but there's uncertainty there too. "You're right. You did something to me, Ritry, didn't you?" He wags his cane. "But what? You took something from me, and I didn't know what at first, or how." He pauses, taking another step in. "But I do now."

  I glare up at him, feeling the fear he wants me to feel, because I am afraid. He is no fool. He is and always was a killer, and he is still stronger than me.

  "It explains a
ll this," he goes on, gesturing at the tower around us. "This contraption. Is it a lens, Ritry? You focused your considerable skill. You jacked the Molten Core against my explicit direction." The cane wags admonishingly, another step in. "You killed the guards I left there and you dared to enter the Solid Core. You know that's what I wanted." Now his eyes gleam with excitement. He can barely breathe with anticipation. "You breached the aetheric bridge, didn't you? I always knew you could." JHis expression sours. "Then you used it to steal something from me. What did you take, you clever little boy? You clever little shit."

  I gaze back, defying him. It only makes him angrier, bringing the rage to the surface and boiling off him like lava in the Molten Core. I need him angry and blind.

  "What did you take, Ritry?" He stamps closer, shaking the tower on its rail-top frame. "What have you stolen from me?"

  "It wasn't yours," I say. "It never was."

  His eyes flare wide, and I think for a moment that I have pushed too far and he will simply Lag me lying here, in the ruins of the ruin of my life. But he is too curious for that, too hungry to understand. With visible effort he calms himself and takes another step into the gloom, so close now he could touch the central tower column.

  "You see the pins you have in me, Ritry? Tweak them a little in and I explode. But perhaps that is what you want? A quick ending. I won't grant it." He's calmer now, the shark tucked away deep in his belly, the smooth gray veneer back. "It's what Napoleon begged for in the end, as I screwed the spirit out of his beloved Josephine, while he could only languish on his shitty island just like you in this place. I had to send a message, you see. The utter depths of his defeat were delicious. But where's your Josephine now, Ritry? I could swear I had her, but she's gone. Is that what you took?"