“Why am I not surprised?” I asked.
It was Cynthia Witherbot.
Chapter 14
Cynthia’s accent had changed over the years. When I first met her, I’d been eighteen and on leave in England where I fell instantly in love with every British girl I met. Not lust, love. It was the accent, and every one was true love. Until I met seventeen-year-old Cynthia Witherbot and discovered what true love really meant. I couldn’t bear to be away from her for more than five minutes.
That feeling never fully went away.
“I regret the necessity of speeding up your integration, Steed,” Cynthia said, ignoring my last remark, “but clearly the plan for easing you into SAD has been overtaken by events.”
“That’s all right, I don’t believe today is really happening anyway.”
Cynthia stared me at for a few seconds, which was disconcerting since all I could see was her head. As transparent heads went, though, it was lovely. I knew she was trying to read my expression, which she could do back when we were both naked teenagers sweating out our lust three or four times a night. But that was more than twenty years ago, before she walked out of my life without so much as giving me the finger.
“That doesn’t work anymore, Cynny,” I said, using the pet name she hated even back then. “I’ve changed a little in the past two decades.”
To my surprise, she didn’t tell me not to use that name or grab the low-hanging fruit of insulting me about the changes even I could see in the mirror. Instead, she did something guaranteed to get my attention and force me to focus: she used my first name.
“You’re in grave danger, Arthur.”
The twins exchanged a glance, but I ignored them. Only Cynthia knew that nobody called me Arthur because I hated that name. I preferred Steed, but for those who insisted on using something else it was always my middle name, Duncan.
“Would that be from you, the company, or the orange rhino?” I asked, still wary that it might all be a bad peyote trip.
“I am the company,” she said, and even with the shimmering nature of her visage I could see her irritation. “And if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. You know me well enough to believe that. There is much you do not know, Steed, too much for me to relate to you here and now, too much for you to safely absorb on your own in the short period of time we now have. But you need this knowledge, and you need it now. That means you must discover the Balance.”
“Does that involve a colon cleanse?”
Before I could say more, Jürgen leaned in front of me, blocking my view.
“He’s not ready for that!”
“Let me be the judge of his readiness,” she said. “I have known Steed far longer than you have, Jürgen. We have—”
She stopped herself mid-sentence.
We have what? I wondered, deep mutual animosity? What had she been about to say?
“We have a long history together,” she said after half a second. Neither of the brothers appeared to notice the stumble, but I did. It was one more thing to think about. But not now, so I filed it away for later. Assuming there was a “later.”
“As his training agent, I would be remiss not to point out the risks,” Ribaldo said. “He seems strong-minded enough to face the Balance, but one can never be certain. He’s had no preparation.”
That concerned me. Jürgen was obviously the more gregarious of the two, someone who made friends easily, while Ribaldo stood aloof and observed. If he was worried about my safety, then I was smart enough to be worried, too. And since when was he my training agent? Since when did I need a training agent? Since when was any of this real?
“There are factors of which you are not aware, Ribaldo.”
“May I ask what those are?”
She looked away for a moment. “Very well, perhaps you do need to know at this stage. Steed is a natural gatandi.”
That shut up both brothers for a moment. “Quantra Level?” Jürgen said.
“Fifteen. It’s why he can sense danger, never misses, and is likely why Delvin’s kaval didn’t work on him as it would someone else.”
“What does Dawn have to do with this?” I said feeling more disoriented than ever. “What are you people talking about? What’s a…cacandy?”
Everybody ignored me.
“That would explain her switching.”
Cynthia nodded, but at what I had no idea. None of this made sense to me.
“That’s our analysis, too,” she said.
“Now I understand, Assistant Director. There seems no other choice than the Balance.”
“Do I get a say?” I said.
Cynthia was emphatic in her answer. “No.”
I spread my hands in a gesture of outrage. “Hey, have you read the Thirteenth Amendment?”
“Have you read the contract you just signed?” she shot back. “You agreed to participate in any and all training the company deems essential for the carrying out of your employment duties. And I deem it necessary that you discover the Balance.”
“Do I at least get to know what that means?”
“You don’t want to,” Jürgen said out of the side of his mouth.
“At least tell me why I have to do this balance thing.”
“Do you want to save Miss Delvin?”
“Not particularly,” I said, lying yet again. What I wanted was for Dawn to sit in my lap and never get up.
“You forget that I know when you’re lying, Steed, but your feelings do not matter anyway. I do want her saved, and since your fates are now inextricably linked, you must do it.”
“I don’t follow any of that.”
“You will.”
You’d think after twelve hours of sprints, car chases, an interview with a dead man, and hallucinations of monsters as rendered by Ralph Steadman, not to mention running into the woman I both loved and hated more than any person in the world, then learning she was my boss, a normal person would have looked at me and said “maybe tonight’s not the night for the most grueling test of your life.” But apparently the preparation for discovering the Balance involved drinking whiskey on an empty stomach while trying not to fall asleep.
I changed out of my suit into running shorts, a black T-shirt, and sneakers—no socks—as I preferred. They had all come from my old apartment, but the shorts hung loose, and I had to tighten the elastic waist cord. Without intending to, I’d lost ten pounds or more during my healthy lifestyle of the past month.
In the hallway outside the living chambers stood a non-descript door open to reveal a spiral staircase leading down, not to another level directly beneath us, but down and down so far that I began to wonder if it would ever end. Dim lighting came from LEDs recessed in the wall.
“You dug a stairwell but couldn’t put in an elevator?” I said between quickening breaths.
“There’s an elevator,” Jürgen said.
“Then why in the hell aren’t we using it?”
“Your discovery has already begun,” Ribaldo answered with a hint of disappointment.
We had descended at least twenty flights when the stairway ended at a metal door. Once through that, we stood at one side of an enormous chamber with passages leading off in several directions. The only lighting came from torches flickering in evenly spaced sconces on each wall. Not LEDs or other artificial lighting, but actual torches, with smoke and creosote staining the walls above each flame. Large, dimly lit underground spaces in the company of high-level assassins didn’t fit my definition of “comfort zone,” and if they turned on me with weapons my only recourse would be to seize a torch to use as a weapon.
I tried not to show relief as we crossed the chamber toward one of the dark passages on the opposite side. Once we’d turned into the passage the lighting grew fainter, probably indirect LEDs, and we came to some sort of three-dimensional maze. Portals led off in both directions, some closed off by heavy metal doors, some not, and we passed through at least a dozen such doorways. They always led to similar corridors, except with stairways leadin
g up or down. I tried to keep track of our trail, but lost track. My internal clock gave up at half an hour.
Eventually, we reached a corridor with a ceiling so high it was lost in shadows. It stopped in front of a door more than three times my height. Made of fire-hardened oak and bound in iron, it could have once been owned by Henry VIII.
Ribaldo produced a key the size of my forearm and inserted it into the lock. The effort to turn the key caused him to clench his jaw, one of the few human reactions I’d noted from him. It turned with a chunk so loud it startled me.
Abandon help, all ye who enter, read a message that suddenly glowed on the face of the door in blood red script. I wanted to say something smart-assed or defiant but came up empty.
Nothing lit this room. The darkness was absolute. Once inside, Jürgen held an orb in his palm of a type I’d never seen, which radiated a pale red light by which I could make out faint details of my surroundings. The floor and walls were a black, mirror-like material unfamiliar to me. Faint silver lines traced floor, ceiling, and all four walls, in great swirls and loops and squared-off angles. Although creepy, I didn’t see much to warrant the implied trepidation involved in “discovering the Balance.” Whatever that meant.
“This is it?” I said, not bothering to hide my lack of being impressed.
All I could see of Jürgen were features picked out by the orb’s red light, and even less of Ribaldo, who stood behind us in the darkness. I did see him nod, though.
“I assume I’m being watched in here.”
“No,” Ribaldo said. “There are no cameras and no observers. None of us will ever know what happens during your discovery unless you choose to share it. We will only know the result.”
“What if I need you?”
“Once I lock that door you are totally alone. This is something you must do by yourself. No one can aid you once you enter. You will either succeed or fail on your own. Whatever happens during your discovery, you must push through to the end. Always go forward, never backward, never to either side; go forward only. If you stop or get diverted from the path you will fail. It will take everything you have within you to discover the Balance.”
“What if I do fail? Can I try it again?”
This time it was Jürgen who answered. “If you fail, then I will make an offering in your honor.”
“Are you saying this is do or die? Didn’t you think I might have wanted to know that before agreeing to this?”
“Few people have ever died trying to discover their Balance,” Ribaldo said. “Not physically, that is. The death is of the mind.”
“Oh, now I feel better,” I said, not feeling better at all. “How will you know I make it if you’re not keeping track somehow?”
“You will rejoin us upstairs,” Jürgen said.
“I’ll never find my way back on my own!”
“Yes, you will. If you discover the Balance, then you will know.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “Because the Balance will reside within you. Remember, whatever you do, keep going.”
“What if I don’t discover it?”
“We will do what we can.”
It all sounded like New Age bullshit dreamed up by a conman for selling self-help books. “Discover the Balance” even sounded like the title of something peddled on infomercials and talk shows.
I stood in darkness more total than anything in memory. The only sounds were those I made; a slight whistle as I inhaled through my nostrils, a swallow, my heart pounding…I smelled nothing and the air had no taste, no doubt filtered by powerful scrubbers to enhance my sensory deprivation. I don’t know how long this period lasted. It could have been ten seconds or ten hours. Soon I no longer felt the hardness of the floor under my feet.
I was at the center of some void, the dimensions of which transcended my comprehension, like standing at the center of the galaxy. The silver tracings started pulsing with light and energy. I could feel faint pressure waves on my skin, as if the primal expansion of the universe was only now gaining speed. I saw the lines wavering in the far distance, the way a thirsty man sees mirages distorted by thermals rising in a desert. I had the sensation of floating in zero gravity and kicking my legs as if swimming, then of rotating as the lines on the wall began to move and surround me.
Words can convey only a hint of how deeply the experience permeated my entire being. I had no conscious thoughts, only sensations and reactions. This was the way to the Balance, though, I knew that with absolute certainty. I don’t know how I knew; I just did. I began to walk. Things began to swirl in the deep shadows, near enough to glimpse but too far to identify. Ahead of me I sensed more than saw something like a cave mouth, which I made out only as an absolute blackness against the black around me, a place where light could not penetrate. I stopped. I knew that once I stepped through that door there was no turning back.
I found out my internal warning system didn’t work in this place. Behind me, something screeched and claws raked across my left shoulder, drawing blood which caused droplets to drift of as if I were in space. I had the impression of a pterodactyl, then another thing rushed toward me from the side. I ducked and swiped at its belly as it flew past me with a cutlass that had suddenly appeared in my right fist. I tore out its guts with a long rip across the belly as more came at me. With no other choice, I ran for the archway. Once I was over the threshold they vanished.
I found myself in a tunnel. I forgot the burning pain in my shoulder, as my head ached with agony so sharp that I fell to my knees. If somebody had driven a railroad spike into my ear canal, it could not have hurt worse. I was alerted to danger by the hiss of something on the ground, which lunged at my arm. Only by honed reflex was I able to swing the blade in time to decapitate the serpent when its fangs were inches short of my left forearm. A heavy triangular head bounced away into the shadows. There was no light in the passage, yet I clearly saw it die.
The blinding pain in my head continued, but I somehow knew that stopping led to attacks, that the attacks were real and deadly, and would not end until I either reached the end of the path, or was killed. Ribaldo’s words came fresh to my memory: Whatever you do, keep going.
The incessant, tormenting agony made thinking an effort. Pushing to my feet, I took a step forward and the pain eased some, not much, but enough to allow me to think. Moving forward, I began to feel resistance, as if this environment resented my incursion and resisted me. I knew this to be true, even if I didn’t know how I knew it, because somewhere within me lay the Balance, as it resided within all creatures, and if I could discover mine…what? What would that mean? I didn’t know, yet I did know that if I completed the journey that knowledge would come to me.
I pressed on.
To my right, a wizened old man in the robes of a monk grinned and pushed a small table on wheels, keeping up with my strides. On top was a chess board with a game in progress. There was no clock.
“Check,” he said after moving a knight.
I moved my king.
Ahead was another opening, this one blocked by an iron gate. In my wake I heard the unmistakable roars of lions.
His smile grew so wide I thought the top of his head might fall off. He smelled of curry and body odor and moved his queen’s bishop.
“You can’t go through till you beat me.”
I saw the path to victory, but it was six moves away. The monk increased his speed, and I did the same, trying to keep up. A Japanese samurai jumped out of the dark on my left and swung a katana in a decapitating blow that sliced my hair as I ducked. I thrust with my cutlass, but he backpedaled, and my point barely scratched his lacquered armor.
“Rook takes bishop,” the monk said.
He’d fallen for the trap. I parried two more swipes from the samurai, trotted to keep up with the moving chess board, and responded to three more of the monk’s moves. My cheek bled from a close call, but the samurai overplayed his advantage. He drew back for a two-handed, over-the-shoulder blow that
would be difficult to fend off, so I lunged, spun my hips, and caught his thigh just above the knee. As he fell, I cut off his sword arm.
The monk wasn’t smiling anymore when I moved my queen to the 7th rank.
“Checkmate.”
For good measure I beheaded him.
Chapter 15
I kept moving despite the crippling headache, passing through the next arch into a place of fire and black flames. Red sparks filled my vision as the daggers in my eyes were twisted. I was blinded enough to miss dodging the giant purple bearish thing that lunged at me next. More than twice my height, I smacked its nose with the flat of the cutlass, but that hardly fazed the beast. Two-inch-long teeth ripped into my left calf muscle. I watched as it ripped out a gory chunk of flesh, tossed back its head, and swallowed the meat. That gave me the chance to stab it in the throat. It fell at my feet, purple blood spilling over my sneakers.
Agony ran along my leg and into my back. My left leg crumpled, but through sheer will I maintained my balance and kept going, trailing a blood smear.
“Yikes,” said a scantily clad Dawn Delvin, walking beside me on the left. Her breasts seemed bigger than I remembered, her ass rounder. “That’s gonna leave a mark. Don’t you think you should bandage it or something?”
“Where did you come from?” Which was a stupid thing for me to ask; Dawn lived in my head. She giggled and lightly tapped my head with her forefinger, which hammered the iron spike deeper.
“Rest a minute. You deserve it.”
“Can’t…” I said. “Gotta keep moving.”
“You silly man, why are you doing this anyway? Because they told you to? That’s no reason.”
“You’re not real.”
She sounded surprised. “I’m not?”
Dawn lifted my left hand and placed it on her breast, something I’d dreamed of doing many times. It sure felt real. Strangely enough, that’s what gave me the will to deny her.
“You’re…not…real.”
The Trashman Page 14