Cacophony

by Aaron Frale

  They had all heard the tale about the man. The Tuners readied their weapons. DeAndre said, “You think we should be doing this? I mean, look at him. He’s a little old—”

  Before DeAndre could finish the thought, Dr. Ray hefted up the cart of implements and threw it at the Tuner. It hit DeAndre hard, and he was out for the count. The other Tuners charged the guy. Dr. Ray picked up the bone saw from the floor and readied the weapon.

  While Hailey, Patel, and Azerius battled the man, Anya ran to Jon and unplugged all the monitoring equipment. She worked on reviving him.

  Dr. Ray was a formidable opponent. The three of them had trouble keeping up with him. He was able to dodge each one of Hailey’s attacks and pivot out of the way when she attempted to best him with acrobatics. The sound of metal on metal reverberated throughout the hall while he blocked Patel’s blows with the saw. Azerius was taken out of the fight early when he cut the kid’s sword wrist.

  Dr. Ray was resourceful and used objects in the room. At one point, he got Patel in a stranglehold with a tube hanging down from the ceiling. Hailey flung one of her daggers, cut the line, and freed her friend. However, each time they thought they had him, he’d wriggle his way free.

  Patel was the next to drop out of the fight followed by Hailey. Dr. Ray disarmed the katana and quickly knocked away the last dagger. He forced the Tuners left standing to kneel and said, “It looks like I have enough pituitary glands to keep me alive for years to come.”

  Hailey palmed a scalpel on the floor, and when Dr. Ray was close enough, she thrust it into the man’s groin. She stabbed several times, and the mad academic doubled over in pain. Before the guy could recover, she climbed on top of him and sliced the artery in his throat. It didn’t take the man long to bleed out.

  Jon sat up and said in a groggy voice, “Why did you do that?”

  Hailey huffed and said, “Like you can lecture me about killing.”

  “No, he’s the only one who can turn off the device. He said it would take months for me to learn out to turn it off.”

  “You maybe,” Patel said.

  “Yeah,” DeAndre said, nursing the welt forming on his forehead. “We are the Tuners.”

  “You want to lead the way, Jon?” Hailey said.

  “Why not? Let’s save the multiverse for old time’s sake,” Jon said.

  22

  The Tuners ran back into the vault to find that the inner door had been sealed. Jon attempted to type in the code he had observed, and it rejected his attempts to enter it. After a few tries, he realized that he had dropped the terminal. He told the others about it, and they scattered while they searched the shelves.

  “I swear,” Jon said to Azerius when he rounded the corner, “It was right here.”

  “There is nothing on the other side,” Azerius said.

  Patel met them by the shelf, pointed down the way, and said, “There is nothing there either.”

  The blur of DeAndre could be seen racing toward them. He was out of breath. “I checked the body. He’s still dead, and no terminal.”

  “Do you think it would shut down on its own? Maybe there is a failsafe?” Patel pondered.

  Hailey walked up with a breastplate from a suit of power armor. She dropped it on the ground, and Jon knew precisely who it was. The piece belonged to Ludie.

  “Ludie,” Jon said and looked over the shelves. He pulled out something that was labeled a plasma drill prototype. He fired it up and a burst of energy incinerated an entire shelf. He switched it off and marched toward the front door. He aimed it, and Hailey’s hand grabbed his shoulder.

  “Jon,” Hailey said.

  “He’s going to kill us all.”

  “And you won’t by blasting whatever is beyond that door? Talk to him,” Hailey said. “Give him a chance.”

  Jon wavered for a moment. He lowered the drill and flicked an intercom switch. “I know you are in there. Whatever it is that you have planned, stop. You don’t want to go through with this.”

  Ludie’s voice said over the speaker, “I don’t think you want me to do that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Inverse the polarity, and—” Ludie said and laughed. “I can see your eyes glazing over already, Jon. Maybe we could have been friends…in another life.”

  “Ludie,” Hailey said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m saving you all,” Ludie said. They could hear his voice crack. “This thing is building massive amounts of energy. Well, that energy needs to go somewhere, so I’ve redirected most of it toward Universe One, but there will be some blowback here.”

  “No, Ludie,” Hailey said. “There must be some other way.”

  “There is no other way. There are too many adjustments to be made. Maybe if I had a few weeks, I could write a program. I am pretty well versed in Universe One code, but we are out of time. I either do this now, or you can say goodbye to the multiverse.”

  “At least let me take your place,” Hailey said.

  There was silence for a while. Then Ludie came back. His voice was choked with emotion. “I tried to kill you, you know. You and Jon. I saw the way he fought for you. I saw the way you looked at him. At first, I thought I’d trigger the volcano and get you both out there. Then I realized it when the whole place was going down. The way you held each other. I had to save you both. It was the only real example of love I’d ever know. I burst out of the laboratory, but you were gone.” Before Hailey could respond, Ludie added, “The clock is ticking. I don’t know if the vault door will hold or even if Tuners HQ will survive. You should go.”

  “Ludie,” Hailey said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Yeah, man,” Jon said. “I wish I would have gotten to know you better.”

  The others chimed in with their words of encouragement.

  They could hear Ludie get choked up, “Thank you, guys. Now go.”

  There was an explosion. They took off running.

  Seconds later, the entire structure was shuttering, and the hull was groaning.

  “The car,” Jon said, and he guided them to the replica of Alex’s ride. Unlike the old TF2 adapter, this one had a TF3 slot. Once they all piled in, the structure around them groaned again. There was more violent shaking, and stuff flew off the warehouse shelves. Lights shattered.

  Jon dialed into the audio system. However, there was no music. The noise through the speakers was a cacophony of the background static from every universe. The soundwaves assaulted their ears.

  “I can’t hear it,” Patel said. “It sounds like white noise.”

  The others tried and couldn’t hear a thing. They began to panic.

  Jon silenced them.

  He concentrated. There was a noise. A series of hisses, pops, fuzz, and guttural tones. One pattern among the blend. It was the sound of another universe. Jon was sure of it.

  He hit the gas and sped toward it. Shelves were collapsing around them, objects pelted down on the car, and they wove and dodged through the debris. A pipe burst in the wall, and Jon was forced to avoid the flame. The shaking threatened to tear the place apart, and the shriek of metal almost overpowered everything else.

  Jon latched onto the pattern, punched it, and hit the tune button when the sound of the universe was at its peak.

  23

  Jon and Rashaun were up late at the skate park. Jack Falshon had finished telling them a hilarious story about this girl he met over the summer. It ended with Jack running down the street in his underwear while her dad chased him with a shotgun. Jon had been working on a trick that had taken him a while to master. He kicked off his board and gave it another try.

  He fell on his face, and both Jack and Rashaun hooted with laughter. Jon brushed himself off and was about to go back for another one of Jack’s stories when his pocket buzzed. It was an emergency text from Patel.

  Jon told his friends goodbye, put a pair of headphones on, and listened for the nearest tuning point. It was a couple
blocks away near some shops. He hopped onto his skateboard and was in Tuners HQ in no time.

  “Jon,” DeAndre said as he met him at the platform. “We have a situation in 7j.”

  The place was fixed up and looked better than before. The replacement equipment had been found in storage and various safehouses throughout the multiverse. There even was a new conference room overlooking the whole show. Ernest was tapping away on a keyboard at the lead control station with robotic fingers and a new eye implant. DeAndre gave him the thumbs up, and the techs scrambled to get it ready for the tune.

  “Can’t it wait?” Jon asked. “It’s the last day of school. I might not see those guys when they go off to college.”

  DeAndre rolled his eyes and said, “You know it can’t wait. Just because you’re sleeping with the new director doesn’t mean she is doing you any special favors.”

  They made their way upstairs to the conference room where Hailey sat at the big chair where Hector used to sit. She was always a better leader than Jon. He was too much of a hothead, and she could make the tough decisions. Besides, when Jon wanted to go screw around with his friends, he liked being able to sneak out. The wall of previous Tuners was now a memorial to Hector, Meathook, and the people they had lost along the way.

  Magdalena, Patel, Anya, and Hailey’s sister Sarah were already at their places around the table. Hailey said, “You’re late.”

  Jon slumped on his seat and said, “What else is new?”

  “Don’t think I won’t throw you in the lock-up,” Hailey scolded him. “Now, anyone know the location of our asset?”

  “I think they’re in U-53,” Magdalena said.

  “Could you let them know we have a situation in 7j?” Hailey said.

  Asset was the term Hailey used for Alex and Azerius. Jon had given Alex the car they had used to escape from HQ as payment for services rendered. Alex had made a comment about liking black better anyway.

  Alex and Azerius drove off into the sunset with full intentions of becoming the next great scavenger duo. However, Hailey must have worked something out with the pair because they always seemed to show up when they were needed. It was all the perks of being a Tuner without having to attend the meetings. Jon envied them.

  As for Jon himself, he had finally found something he was good at and would also make his father proud. Even though the cult was dead, and the multiverse was safe, there were still jerks out there who wanted to screw it up for the rest of humanity, and he was working on his temper too. Jon only broke noses when he had too.

  Even though most people thought the anomaly that destroyed downtown was a tornado, and the few people who knew the truth about it were considered crazy, Jon enjoyed the fact that no one knew he had saved the multiverse. It was nice to be just another kid out at the mall once in a while.

  Notes

  If you’ve enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review. Reviews help others discover works they will enjoy. If you want to help me get the word out about this work, tell a friend about it or share it on social media. The little things add up.

  For free and discounted books and all the news about upcoming releases, consider signing up for my mailing list or follow me on Twitter @AaronFrale. If you want to see more books like this one, please consider supporting me on my Patreon page.

  Patrons

  A special thanks goes out to my Patrons on Patreon. You all made this happen:

  A.S. Van Dortson

  Christopher Goetting

  Felicia Karas

  Frank Popplewell

  Janice Ryberg

  Katherine Bedell

  Kay Smillie

  Melinda Dixon

  Michael Karas

  Wesley Barnett

  Atmospheric Pressure 2 Sample

  Breath clouded the faceplate of Helena’s hazmat suit. She was nearly hyperventilating, and the reduced vision didn’t help calm her down. Not that she could see anything even if her suit wasn’t fogged up. She was enveloped in a red haze and couldn’t see past the reach of her hand.

  The most frightening part wasn’t the visual impairment but the screams of her team. She could hear them crying out in horror over the headset in her ear. They choked and wheezed, and a few sputtered out phrases about their lungs burning before they all went silent. All except for one. She could hear his labored breath sucking in oxygen.

  “Luis? Vladislav? Boris?” Helena yelled out into the unknown. No one returned her call, just the gasps of her one colleague. She stumbled forward, holding her arms in front of her. She knew the tent walls were close. She was lucky that she was already in the biohazard containment room when the accident had occurred, or else she would be sucking in her last breaths too.

  She bumped into the wall of the tent. It was a plastic enclosure that acted as a makeshift medical facility. However, the fog had somehow penetrated the barrier. Helena wasn’t sure how because it was airtight. The tent was created to be airdropped into outbreak zones and inflated into an instant quarantine unit.

  The answer as to why the mist penetrated the room came quickly enough. The plastic was being eaten away by the vapors. She could see the wall becoming brittle before her eyes. No sooner did she see the disintegration that she realized it was also eating away at her hazard suit.

  She could see the rubber in her gloves flaking away. Helena tore through the plastic wall and stopped for a moment. She attempted to visualize the camp in her mind’s eye. The medical facility was on the southern edge. The living quarters were on the west. The sinkhole was on the east. Luis’s lab was in the middle and the jeeps were on the north end.

  To the best of her knowledge, she was facing west when she had escaped. She breathed deeply and turned ninety degrees to the right. If she was correct, she might have to dodge Luis’s equipment. If she was wrong, she was heading towards a sinkhole that had appeared in the Siberian tundra a few weeks ago, the same damn sinkhole that got them into this mess in the first place.

  Helena was a doctor for the CDC. She had been called into Siberia when the crater first appeared in the warming tundra. It wasn’t anything unusual. When the permafrost melted, sinkholes would appear as trapped gases were released into the atmosphere. It was just another effect of climate change. However, what got the CDC involved was an interesting phenomenon.

  This particular sinkhole had a red mist at the bottom. A few Siberian farmers had their lungs liquefied when they went to investigate. Helena had been called to the scene when they discovered the fog was nothing more than a byproduct of bacteria they had never seen before.

  How the phenomena had grown past the crater to envelop the camp, Helena wasn’t sure, but it had happened quickly. She had been in the process of treating one of the farmers when the room had filled with the red haze. She had seen it coming through the patient’s breathing tubes and had pulled off his oxygen mask. The murk had penetrated his eyes, nose, and ears then she had heard her colleagues scream. Her patient had died, and she was powerless to stop it.

  Helena took off in a sprint towards what she thought was the motor pool. She didn’t have long until her gloves dissolved. She also wasn’t sure how far the haze had extended and wanted to get to one of the jeeps to drive herself out of the danger zone. She was halfway to her salvation when she tripped over something and went tumbling to the ground. At first, she thought she had fallen into the sinkhole, but when she realized that she wasn’t tumbling to her death, she turned around.

  It was Luis. He had gotten into a hazmat suit just in time. It was his labored breathing she heard over her headset. He was unconscious, and Helena could barely lift him. She looked at her glove. It was flaking, but it would hold out a while longer. Her suit would breach eventually. It could be minutes. It could be hours. There was no way to tell.

  The thought of leaving him behind crossed her mind. Her instinct was to run away, get in the jeep, and drive. She couldn’t live with herself if she did, so she hoisted him up by his armpits and dragged him on the ground towar
ds what she thought were the vehicles. Luckily, the mist had dissipated somewhat, and she could see the outline of a jeep through the red clouds.

  She dragged Luis towards the transport and tossed him into the back. She climbed into the front and felt her suit depressurizing slowly. The glove was failing. She dug through the front for the keys. The hole in her glove got bigger, and she coughed and felt her lungs burning.

  Helena found the key and hopped into the driver’s seat. She thrust the car into gear and sped off. Her lungs were burning. Blood dripped from her eyes, ears, and nose. She bounced through the Siberian tundra and almost flipped the jeep twice.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was only a few moments, she could see the blue sky and the sun overhead. She had driven out of the radius of the killer fog. Her face was swollen and red, and her gloves were almost entirely dissolved. The tires of her jeep were also worn from the fog, but nowhere near as bad as her glove.

  She tore her suit off and tossed it into the passenger seat. She turned around to check on Luis, and saw that he was dead. The mist had eaten away his gloves entirely. His eyes, mouth, and nose bled. By comparison, she could feel an ache in her lungs, but whatever was causing the burning had stopped.

  She dug through the jeep for a first aid kit and cleaned the blood from her face. She removed Luis’ helmet and noticed the burns around his mouth and nose. The damage looked exactly like what had happened to the farmers. She wondered how much was done to her lungs. If she was lucky, she might escape with the lung capacity of a heavy smoker. Though Helena would need access to a lab to access the extent of her exposure.

  She turned back toward the camp to see if the red cloud had dissipated. The mist was billowing out of the sinkhole as if somebody had started a bonfire. The entire camp was enveloped as the vapors rose into the atmosphere.

  She noticed there were several other sinkholes that had appeared after she had arrived in Siberia, and they were also releasing the same gas. It was as if the Siberian tundra was littered with deadly smoke stacks. The little scrubby plants that grew on the vast plain were withering and dying near the plumes.