by K Hanson
The wasps came down at us. They grabbed at us with their little legs, pulling us toward their stingers. A branch swung toward us, and I shielded my face with my arms. The heavy branch struck the wasp in the back of the head. It let out a clicking noise and pulled back.
Next to me, Amari’s feet were almost off the ground as a wasp pulled her into the air. For some reason, they seemed more interested in grabbing her than stinging her. I jumped and pulled her down by the waist, yanking her from the grasp of the wasp. Then the other two wasps from the nest arrived. It was four on two, and they could fly. Not exactly the odds I would have liked.
“Amari, follow me,” I shouted to her as the wasps tried to surround us.
I dashed off toward the cluster of gnarled trees. Amari’s steps pounded on the dirt behind me as she chased after me. At least she trusted me enough to think I knew what I was doing. I wished I felt the same way.
The wind of the wasps’ wings gusted from just behind us, blowing dust up around us in swirling formations. A puff of dust hit my eyes, and I stumbled forward as I rubbed and blinked the dirt away. What sort of grit was in my eyes now I didn’t really want to think about.
The clicking sound was just behind my ears. Tendrils of legs tickled my back as a wasp tried to grab me. Without looking, I thrust my knife over my shoulder. I didn’t hit anything, but the sounds and feeling of being grabbed backed off a bit. I had bought myself a few more steps.
Just over my left shoulder, Amari swatted at the wasp trying to grab her.
The remaining two wasps flew parallel with us. Not trying to catch us themselves, but making sure we didn’t stray from our line. Were they actually working together?
The gnarled branches of the grove waited for us, ready to embrace us in their safety. Well, ready to embrace us literally, at least. But maybe they could help shield us from the damned wasps.
A swipe of branches came at us, and we ducked under it. The wasps behind us retreated, while the other two swirled around the trees in opposite directions.
We ran toward the middle of the grove, evading the branches as they started to reach for us. At least they seemed to take a moment to wake up when something got close enough.
We came to a halt in a small clearing in the grove. I took in the situation. Amari and I stood back to back, facing the deadly trees and the wasps as they worked out a way toward us.
If we stayed in the exact spot we were standing, the trees couldn’t reach us, though that didn’t stop them from trying. One branch almost hit my head, and I blinked as the breeze gusted off it when it passed me.
I pulled Amari into a tight crouch, huddling together just out of reach of the branches. We had a spot away from the wasps, but for how long? We couldn’t stay here forever, and if the wasps had more friends join them, it would be useless to try to outlast them.
The four wasps swirled around and above the copse of trees. One tried zooming toward us, but a branch reached up and snatched it out of the air, pulling in toward its trunk.
The other three let out loud clicks, and another wasp flew from the direction of the tower. How many reinforcements did they have?
Even more came out of the nest, until a horde of them swarmed the trees all at once.
Several of them got caught and wrapped up in branches, destined to be crushed to death. The first one already had bits of blood and goop dripping out of it where it was pressed against the trunk.
I took shots when I could, but it seemed useless with how many wasps were coming for us.
With each wasp that the trees grabbed, that also took more branches out of play as they were occupied with holding their dinner and squeezing the nutritious guts out of them.
The branches grew ever thinner, and our shield was deteriorating.
One of the wasps darted down from the center of the trees above us and grabbed Amari, trying to pull her away from me. I held onto her arm, but a second wasp came down with its stinger first, straight toward me. I staggered back out of the way and tripped over one of the tree roots that crawled over the ground, sprawling backward. I popped back up just in time for a root to reach up and wrap itself around my ankle.
So, the roots were nasty fuckers, too.
Too angry to care, I pointed my pistol at the thicker part of the root a little ways away from me and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times until the root fell off the tree and let me go.
When I turned back, the pair of wasps had lifted Amari out of the trees, with the rest of the swarm pulling back with them. She dangled in the air, far out of my reach, her limbs flailing as she screamed and tried to beat the wasps away from her.
I dashed out from under the trees and aimed my pistol toward her, but couldn’t get a clear shot. She might heal, but that didn’t mean I wanted to shoot her.
With a grunt, she slammed her fist upwards into the wasp’s face. It released her, and she plummeted toward the ground. She landed on her left leg with a snap.
She screamed as she clutched her leg.
Before I could get to her, one of the creatures flew right down at her and jabbed its stinger into her chest. She fell limp on the ground, white foam oozing from her lips. The wasps gathered her up and carried her away, heading up for the tower.
For the first time, I noticed a device similar to the night stalker controllers affixed right on the neck of the stingers.
The Necromancer was controlling them too.
I sank to my knees and ran my fingers through the dirt, clutching my hands in anger. I had let Amari down again. The creatures had gotten her.
Yet, they carried her not toward their nest, but up and over the walls at the top of the tower, near the source of glowing light. The wasps were going to deliver Amari straight to the Necromancer.
I would get her back. I just needed to climb that tower without the wasps harassing me.
It was time to end this shit for real.
I reloaded my pistol, checked that I still had my knife, stood up, and set off toward the tower.
CHAPTER 24
The tower had been built out of a hodgepodge of sheet metal, parts of shipping containers, and some of the stone that was from the area around the tower. Now that I wasn’t running from a horde of giant wasps, I could see that some of the rock formations near the tower had chunks cut out of them.
The way the tower twisted upward in the darkness made a slight chill tingle on my skin as I approached. I didn’t know what the Necromancer had available for defenses, and I would have to climb my way up.
I reached the base of the tower and walked around the circumference, keeping my eye on the wasp nests above me. I could still hear the occasional buzz of wings flapping, but none of the creepy crawlies came out from any of the holes. I was safe from them for now.
I reached a solid metal door in the base of the tower and stepped back as I looked it over. It had no handle or key hold. Nothing that I could obviously use to open it. The hinges weren’t even visible.
With all of my weight pressed against the door, I tried to push it open, but it didn’t budge. I rammed my shoulder into it, but it just thudded in the solid stone frame around it, and my shoulder hurt from the impact. I rubbed my shoulder free of the pain, then stepped back farther for a running start. I threw myself into the door at full speed. It still didn’t give. I sighed and staggered back.
My shoulder took a moment to recover from the solid blow against the steel. I gazed up the side of the tower, starting to chart a path up toward the top. I could climb it if I had to, though that assumed the wasps would let me get to the top without coming after me. It seemed like an awful lot to hope for.
Yet, I didn’t seem to have another option. I approached the wall and reached up to start my climb. I had made it just a few feet up when the door next to me clicked, and then creaked open.
I dropped down and hurried over to find a familiar face gazing out at me from a fire lit interior. It was the man with three scars along his cheek, staring back at me with an amuse
d smile. I lunged toward him, hauled him out of the door, and slammed him up against the side of the tower.
“Where did your things take Amari?” I asked with a snarl. “What are you doing to her?”
The man held up his hands and kept his amused expression, which just annoyed me even more. “Hey, relax, we aren’t hurting her right now, I promise. The Necromancer is just having a conversation with her.”
“Yeah, and I bet that will end with hugs and love for everyone involved, right?”
“What we’re doing is for the greater good, Detective Espinoza. In time, you’ll realize that we were right to be as aggressive as we have been.” He waved at the horrifying terrain around us. “You’ve seen now what we’re up against. What awaits us on this side of the portal. It’s only a matter of time before some of these other nasty creatures make their way out into the real world, or our world, I should say, as this place is every bit as real as ours.”
“Why not just block off the portals, like you did in the Falls Park base? We can keep things from coming through that way.”
“You think that will stop all of these creatures?” He glanced down toward the ground, shaking his head. “Yeah, that will slow down any new night stalkers that come through, but the stingers can fly, and maybe you’ve seen some other things that wouldn’t even care about a wall.
I thought back on the giant four-legged crabs and the worm scorpion thing that had attacked us. The trees probably couldn’t spread through the portal, right? I hoped not.
“Yeah, you’re right, this place has some awful stuff, but I don’t see how that connects to what your Necromancer is doing.”
He pushed against my arm, but I didn’t give him an inch.
“When he’s ready to see you, I’ll bring you upstairs, and you can see everything he’s working on and hear from him yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not patient. And I’ve come a long damn way to find this fucker, and he’s just kidnapped my friend with flying wasps. So, you’ll excuse me if I don’t wait for you to take me up when he’s ready. I’ll decide when it’s time to head up, and I’m doing it now.” I threw him to the side, sending him sprawling on the ground, and charged past him and into the tower. I paused for half a heartbeat in the entrance to the tower to get my bearings. To my left, a spiral staircase wound around the circumference of the tower, leading up and up.
I dashed up the stairs, some of which were stone, some metal, and others wood, a mix of whatever materials the Necromancer and his followers had been able to scavenge.
Footsteps sounded behind me, though I was faster. I could reach the top of the stairs without the scarred man getting close to me. I crossed a small, flat landing with a door on my right, on the inside of the tower, and then continued upward.
The next section of stairs pivoted into a sharp ramp, rather than the steps that had been there. My foot landed and slipped from under me, and I tumbled backward down the spiral staircase. I rolled down the length until I reached the small landing, stopping just outside the door.
The scarred man stood next to me on the landing and had his hand on a wall switch, grinning down at me. “You think we didn’t make some security additions to this place? We don’t survive in the middle of these wastes without a few precautions. And you’re far from the nastiest thing to try to get inside our little tower.”
I hauled myself to my feet. Before he could react, I clutched him around the throat, dragging his back against the wall as I lifted him up.
“I have trekked across hell to get here, and your damned boss has my friend,” I said between clenched teeth. “I’m not here to fuck around. Bring me upstairs, or I’ll kill you right here, right now. As you said earlier, Amari was the first one to be resurrected, so I don’t think you’ll recover quite as well as she did.”
He kicked, hitting me in the ribs, but I ignored it as I tightened my grip. His eyes went wide, the smile finally slipping off his face, and he pounded on my arms. Slowly, I let him down and released his throat when his feet hit the ground.
He placed his hands on his knees as he bent over and caught his breath. I waited, arms crossed over my chest.
“The door upstairs is like this one,” he said, standing upright and rubbing his neck. “He won’t let us in until he’s ready. But I suppose I can start to show you some things that we have here, if that will sate your desire for a bit. You might even start to understand that we’re doing this to help the world.”
“Fine, show me one thing that you’re working on, then take me upstairs. I’m not waiting any longer than that. If that will stop you from turning the stairs into a slide again, so be it.”
Even though I was eager to get up to find Amari and get her free from the clutches of the Necromancer, I was also curious about what the hell they were doing out here.
“As you’ve seen,” he said, “we’ve had success in a couple of different areas of research. One was with resurrecting people, and the other was controlling these creatures.”
He popped open the door on the landing, revealing the interior of the tower. It was a round room, which I assumed took up most of the space that was within the spiral staircase. A stone column, about six feet in diameter, rose from floor to the twenty-foot high ceiling.
Several glass containers lined the walls, lit with a strange green glow. Within the glass containers, the bodies of several different creatures floated upright in bubbling water or another clear fluid. I recognized a couple of night stalkers, a stinger, and one of the worm scorpion things. Another held what looked like a smaller version of the tall crab things.
I let out a pent-up breath. “Shit. What are you doing here?”
“To control the creatures, we needed to understand their anatomy and psychology. You can see our dissection tables there.”
A relatively large table sat near the far wall. Thankfully, it didn’t have the open corpse of any of the creatures on it at the moment, but it had stains in a variety of colors on the surface.
“With the creatures in the containers, we can monitor their brain activity and get a feeling for how their minds work. That has opened up the path for controlling them. With our research and the technical expertise of our supplier and partner, we have been able to make incredible advances in bringing these monsters to heel so that they may serve the interests of mankind, rather than just mindlessly causing destruction.”
“So how did it serve humanity to attack Cathedral Hill?” I snapped, spinning around to face him. “People died there. Seems like an awful lot of destruction and pain is paying the price for your experiments.”
The man shook his head. “You won’t understand until you meet the Necromancer. He’ll explain why we’re doing what we’re doing. But you are an obstacle to our progress, and we will eliminate you if you can’t be persuaded to see things from our perspective.”
I let out a laugh. “You’ll try.”
“Ah, yes, you are quite an opponent. I can see why our partner took an interest in you.”
“Partner?” I asked. “You mean Arkwright? I saw their logo on some of your stuff.”
The man shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. The Necromancer will tell you if he thinks you should know. It’s not my place to reveal any more.”
“Why did you get involved with him? What did he do to inspire such loyalty?”
His lips twitched with the hint of a smile. “I’m sure you’ve noticed my scars.”
“Oh, I thought they were just something cute you added onto your face.”
He ignored my snide comment. “The man who would become the Necromancer hired me for a simple security job to help him through the Void a while back, near when he was beginning his work.”
He leaned against the wall and scratched at his scars before continuing. “As we were traveling, a group of night stalkers attacked us. I fended them off but got horribly wounded in the process, enough that I would have died and become one of those creatures. But the Necromancer t
ook me back to his place and worked around the clock to save my life. He used everything that he had developed up to that point to keep me alive and heal me. The scars on my cheek are all that remain as a reminder of what could have happened if he hadn’t done that for me. Ever since, I’ve worked to help him bring his gift to the others around us.”
“That would be noble, almost, if he wasn’t murdering people like Amari and sending hordes of night stalkers after innocent communities.”
“When people get in our way, sometimes we do what we have to do rather than what we would like to do. I’m sure you’ve made some sacrifices too.”
“Not if I can help it,” I snapped as I glared at him. “And nothing good can come from what he’s doing. People should not be able to control night stalkers.”
He looked down and shook his head. “You have no idea what you’ve been impeding.”
“Then take me up to see the Necromancer and Amari. You promised me that he isn’t hurting her, and I want to see that you’re right.”
“Fine, I suppose it’s been long enough. Let’s go.”
Finally, he led me out of the weird experiment room and up the set of stairs that were not a ramp anymore. We reached the top, and he tapped on a steel door. After a moment, it clicked and opened a couple of inches. He shoved it in, and bright purple light spilled out of the top chamber, revealing a sight unlike anything I had seen before.
CHAPTER 25
In the center of the main chamber, a large purple crystal sat right above the opening of what appeared to be a well of energy emitting from the long central column that ran up the middle of the tower. The energy collected in the crystal, illuminating the entire chamber.
Around the circumference of the room sat a couple of operating tables, a lot of medical equipment, several different other instruments displaying information, and shelves and desks covered in books and notes. To my right, what looked like the beginnings of a map of this side of the portal was taped to the wall. The position of the portal was marked, along with the tower. I recognized the ravine that had run along the path Amari and I had taken.