“What the fuck?” Anderson growled through bloodied lips. “Asshole, you should be dead.”
Peel lifted Anderson to his feet until the man’s head was millimeters from a stilled bullet. “You touch that; it will shatter your skull and your brains.”
Anderson seemed to understand, and slumped.
Peel let the man fall to their floor while he removed his foe’s switchblade. When he found no other weapons he pocketed the much larger knife and bound the man with a spare zip lock.
In one sense this was a complete change of fortune for the role of captor and captive. In another sense, they were trapped inside a cell and Peel had no idea how they had gotten here, and more importantly, how to get out again.
The suspended blood and bullets, about thirty in total, intrigued him, as if someone had been here before them. The positive in this scene was that the individuals the blood belonged to were no longer here, propelled outside again, he hoped, or into the next sequence of this puzzle.
During the fistfight Nicola had crawled across to Peel. Standing by his side now, he handed her the switchblade to cut away her own bindings, then turned to see what Reznikova was up to. The Russian spy was seated, appearing a little bewildered herself, gravity for her an obtuse angle to his and Nicola’s sense of gravity.
“Where are we?” Nicola asked. She looked pale, but that was only to be expected considering the events of the last couple of hours.
“We’re inside your weapon,” responded Reznikova, disjointedly, as if in a trance or verging into a dissociative state. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think, so elegant in its simplicity?”
“You’re a nutcase.” Nicola’s words were loaded with venom. “Harrison, what the hell is going on?”
He handed her Anderson’s Colt Delta Elite pistol and pointed to the assassin with his other hand. “Keep this trained on him.”
She did as he asked.
Peel moved quickly from one floor to the next, always ensuring that he had one hand or foot on the floor/wall at all times, until he reached Reznikova.
She remembered then she had his Glock, and fired off three shots at him that suspended in the air. He ducked around their suspended states, disarmed her easily and recovered his weapon. Now there were three more bullets suspended in the air, any of which if touched could kill.
He twisted Reznikova’s arm behind her back until it hurt, and pushed her forward to the floor/wall with Nicola and Anderson. He sat his two enemies next to each other, making it easier to watch them both.
“You seem to know what’s going on,” Nicola’s fury was directed at the Russian woman. “Explain?”
She cackled, “We’re inside a puzzle.”
“What kind of puzzle?” Nicola demanded. The heavy Colt in her delicate hands remained aimed at the prostrate Anderson.
Reznikova pointed to the Pentapod writing on the floors all around them, which Peel now noticed and to him resemble algebraic equations.
“A mathematical puzzle,” the Russian agent confirmed. “Why do you think the SVR sent me, a mathematician?”
Examining the writing, Peel identified many pentagrams with dots. It was an alien language of course, and he had no idea how to translate it, let alone solve the formulas they might present.
“Can you figure this out?”
The Russian smiled, “Of course. I’ve already started.” She pointed to an equation on their floor. “Look at this, three dots plus five dots equals eight dots. That symbol means it’s true. Three dots plus five dots equals nine dots. That’s not true. See, I’ve learnt much already.”
Reznikova was enjoying herself way too much for Peel’s liking, but he understood that he had no choice but to leave her with her equations. There were no exits to this four-sided prison. Solving equations seemed to be the only way out and he had no idea how to complete the mathematical riddles himself. He didn’t have confidence that Nicola or Anderson could either.
“What can you tell us?” Nicola asked.
She looked tired so Peel raised his Glock 9mm pointing it at Anderson and then indicated with a glance that Nicola could take a break from keeping them guard. She did so.
“This is an algebraic equation to do with geometry. It’s asking to solve an equation related to the distances in a three dimension space.”
“Can you solve it?”
She laughed, winked at Peel. “I already have.” She touched a symbol on the floor next to her, held her hand upon it for a moment and concentrated.
The room folded again, edges and corners appeared, gravity and walls shifted, and the tetrahedron became a hexahedron.
A cube.
#
Stage One, Tetrahedron, July 1995
Shapes folded around Coaldale and Jansen, edges and walls materialized from nowhere as if pushing through space to create their own dimension. Soon the walls came together, locking into position like a complex three-dimensional puzzle, until the two men became trapped inside a three-sided pyramid.
They were not alone.
The US Ranger watched in horror as a shifting shape of arms, tentacles, mouths and eyes tore limbs, one by one, from the screaming CIA Case Officer, then feed upon the fresh flesh with multiple mouths crowded with razor wire-like teeth.
When Jansen was without legs and an arm, perversely he remained conscious. Blood splashed into the air hung suspended like a photograph capturing thrown paint. The creature serrated off Jansen’s ears, mouth and throat attaching the bloody, pulped organs to dexterous appendages of its own, formed from its constantly shifting goop. Further appendages grew into shape that ate flesh from Jansen’s skull, then ate the skull itself until finally the brain and half the spinal cord was pulled free, and absorbed into the creature’s being, unsullied.
The dismemberment was completed in a less than half a minute.
Coaldale absorbed the horror unfolding before him with far too much attention, and his mind couldn’t handle it, his grip on sanity becoming more tenuous with each passing second. Without thought the Ranger fired his M16 depleting his magazine of bullets to kill the creature, but like the blood they hung in the atmosphere, just above him, like they too had been photographed in the moment.
He touched one, and it moved suddenly for a second and stopped again. He burnt his fingers on the heat.
“Are you done?” spoke Jansen’s mouth, manipulated by the creature.
“Wh—what?”
“Are you done with your unintelligible outpourings?”
“What are you?”
The voice sounded like Jansen, but it was raspy, guttural, commanding… unreal.
“You know what I am.”
“A shoggoth?”
It said nothing for a moment, and Coaldale understood that a shoggoth was exactly what he was staring at.
“I’ve been trapped here for a very long time,” it eventually explained as it fed on more of Jansen’s organs not required for communication. More blood splashed into the air, and more of the crimson liquid curtains hung like abstract art.
“Are you going to kill me too?”
“No,” it said matter-of-factly making a sound like a burp and expelling a gas that stunk like gasoline. “I require your skills to release me from this prison.”
Coaldale felt his Adam’s apple run the length of his throat, up and back again. “Where are we?”
“We are inside a trap. A puzzle trap. We need to move through its stages to get out the other side, and I can’t do so alone.”
“You need me?” Coaldale asked, suddenly hopeful.
“Do you understand mathematics?” the oozing, pulsating shaped asked with three mouths of three completely different shapes.
Coaldale nodded. “I completed an engineering degree at military college.”
The monster grew large, like a balloon inflating, wrapped itself around the remaining gory spectacle that had once been Jansen, and with a thousand mouths that formed on the inside edge of its new skin, he consumed the remainder of the
human flesh.
“Good,” it said with the few mouths not feeding. “I have equations for you to solve.”
#
Stage Two, Hexahedron, October 2012
The second cell was no larger than the last, approximately ten meters across. As before gravity pulled from each floor/wall, and each surface featured formula etched into their semi-metallic surfaces. Once the disorientation of the shifting space had come to an end, Reznikova became occupied and animated, feverishly translating then solving the new equations fused into the floor/walls. Nicola meanwhile kicked into action and held her gun ready in case the Russian decided to turn on them.
Peel would have liked to keep an eye on Reznikova himself but he was more focused on Anderson, for the assassin seemed the greater threat. The way he moved, how his eyes watched the room and the people, his level of fitness and no-nonsense attitude all pointed to military training. Even now he would be planning his escape, how he would become the one holding the gun and calling the shots. He would use any lapse in Peel’s concentration to turn the situation again to his advantage.
While Anderson remained the physical threat, his real problem remained Reznikova. She held all the ace cards. It was her who had progressed them through to the second cell. Only she could progress them to the end. Peel had to keep her alive and cooperative otherwise they might all be imprisoned here for a very long time.
“How many cells into total, do you know?” Peel called out to the Russian mathematician.
“Five,” she called back without looking up from her work.
“How can you know that?”
“I just know. Look around you, the writing, the shape of the Pentapods; it’s all fives for them.”
Peel accepted this, knowing in his gut that she was correct, and yet certain there was a critical element of her hypothesis she was holding back from him.
She made an arrogant snorting sound. “The equations of the hexahedron are complex so I can’t be disturbed while I study them. You hear what I’m saying?”
Peel shrugged, frustrated. “Very well.”
While Peel, Nicola and Anderson waited, he studied the cube, or hexahedron as Reznikova insisted on referring to it as, searching for his own clues. He remembered the bullets fired into the air in the tetrahedron. They had vanished here, presumably left in the previous cell. He made a mental note not to be suspended when the next equation was solved.
Peel took a coin from his pocket, threw it into the air. It remained there, suspended. After a minute it had gone nowhere, not even spun. When he took it down again he felt it hit his hand with the force he had applied throwing it.
When he looked back at Anderson, the man behind the sunglasses was tensing every muscle in his body, ready to leap into action. Peel had been momentarily distracted after promising himself to be diligent, a lapse that had encouraged the assassin to scheme his escape. So Peel waved his Glock in Anderson’s face reminding him who was in charge.
“What was it like,” Peel asked, “when you were suspended?”
“Let me throw you, then you can appreciate it for yourself.”
Knowing that he would get no answers from the brute, Peel remembered again this man was familiar to him. He wore his sunglasses at all times even though it was not bright in here, and Peel wondered why. So Peel snapped the wire frames from the man’s face, discovering his left eye was missing, messed up with brutal scar tissue.
“I remember now,” Peel spoke aloud but mostly to himself. “You’re the terrorist who smuggled that nuclear suitcase bomb into Sydney a few months back.”
Anderson smiled, proud of what he’d done.
“We didn’t get you, but we stopped you from detonating the device.”
Peel remembered where the dirty bomb was hidden now, because the case file contained fringe Code-89 elements and he was cleared to know such Intel. He remembered the report, how the Australian Special Air Services Regiment had swept into an abandoned apartment building in Sydney securing the weapon of mass destruction before it could be armed. Anderson had been identified, but he had managed to escape. In the gunplay it had been reported that Anderson had been wounded in the face, most likely shrapnel in the eye now that he was seeing Anderson’s disfigurement directly.
At the time no one had known who had funded the operation. In light of today’s events, Peel figured Anderson had long been on the payroll of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Peel could guess why too. The Australian government had discovered the ruins of an alien city in the deserts of Western Australia. After a failed period of six months learning nothing, they had opened up their find to the Americans on the proviso Australia could also gain access to the Pentapod City in Antarctica that the Americans claimed sovereign rights to. It would be an ongoing slight to the Russians that they were denied access to both. A WMD to destabilize Australia, and a ploy to steal Pentapod technology—the Russians were playing hard at securing their piece of the action.
“We’ll get you again Peel,” snarled Anderson, seemingly disappointed that Peel now saw him as a wounded creature. “I’ll see to it personally.”
“It’s your turn to shut your mouth. You want to get through to the next cell as much as I do.” It wasn’t a question.
So they waited. Hours seemed to pass and Reznikova was the only one who was active, frantically calculating numbers in her head and typing equations into her smart phone. Peel wasn’t worried she could call anyone, not in this place, which probably wasn’t part of their universe anyway and definitely off the telecommunications networks.
Anderson shifted, alerting Peel that his attention was distracted again. Peel realized he was tired and exhausted, but that was no excuse, not when failure would forfeit his and Nicola’s lives.
“Nicola?” he called out not breaking eye contact with Anderson. “Can you help me for a moment?”
“Sure.” She nodded indicating the Russian. “This one is self-obsessed anyway. She doesn’t even realize I’m talking about her.”
Peel looked to Zoya Reznikova who acted like she hadn’t heard them, and then at Nicola crawling awkwardly from one floor to the next as gravity shifted. When Nicola reached his angle, Peel holstered his weapon and lifted Anderson up under his arms.
“Grab his legs please, and when I say ‘go’ throw him into the air.”
“What—?” the assassin protested. He kicked with his feet, but Nicola soon had him under her control.
“Three, two, one… Go!”
Anderson was thrown. He stopped instantaneously, suspended mid-air with a frozen furious snarl directed into the void.
“We’ll get him down before we move to the next cell. In the meantime he’s less of a threat this way.”
Nicola smiled. “I like your plan.” Then more gently and intimately she said, “But what about her?”
Peel moved close, so they could whisper. “We need her to solve the equations.”
“Have you tried, to solve them yourself?”
He shook his head. “Not really. I know the mathematics will be beyond me.”
“I have a science degree in computing and environmental studies. I know some mathematics as a result.”
“So you’ve been checking out the equations?”
She grinned proud of herself. “I can’t translate the Pentapod writing, but I can see the equations Reznikova is keying into her iPhone.”
“Do they make sense to you?”
“They’re geometry. She keeps getting stuck though, as if there are multiple solutions, depending on what assumptions she makes.”
“What do you mean?”
Nicola shrugged. “That I don’t know how to explain because I don’t really understand myself.”
Peel took a moment to think, the first moment of uninterrupted mental reflection, he realized, since this morning’s encounter in the RAAF Darwin hanger. He was operating on extremely limited intelligence and was too reliant on people he didn’t trust, people who would kill him without hesita
tion given the opportunity. He looked at Nicola, saw how beaten up she was; how tired and highly strung—like him.
“How are you holding up?” he asked tenderly.
“I’ve been better.”
“You need anything?”
“To get out of here, alive!”
He smiled. “I agree. If you can work on the equations too, then do that. I don’t want our lives left entirely in her hands.”
“What about him?” Nicola’s eyes rolled towards the suspended Anderson.
“Let me worry about him.”
“I can’t see him hurting us like that, suspended in the air, but when we move on…” She shuddered. “This place is just too weird.”
“Tell me about it.”
Nicola crossed her arms. She looked fragile, dressed only in her pajamas and badly beaten, not at all the confident and self-assured Nicola he had fallen for not that long ago.
“I love you,” he said out loud.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You’ve told me that before.”
“I know, but I wanted to say it again. It’s important.”
“Why so gushy all of a sudden?”
He shrugged. He didn’t want to say it might be their last chance together, alone, to share their feelings for each other.
She leant forward, reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you too, soldier. Now back to work.”
Peel grinned, glad for once that he was not alone in a predicament of cosmic proportions.
She said, “What about the suspended blood in the last cell? What do you think that was?”
“And the bullets,” Peel responded with another shrug. “I don’t know, except that someone before us got through to this cell and the next. That gives us hope don’t you think?”
“Except someone lost a lot of blood in the process.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Da!” exclaimed Reznikova. She stood, smiling, her hands resting triumphantly on her hips.
“You’ve solved the equation?” Nicola asked.
She nodded. “It is simple really. The shape of the room, it is part of the equation. Until I realized that, I had too many variables to be able to provide a solution.”
Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013 Page 30