by Hodden, TE
The cyborg nodded. “I understand, and will obey.”
The pair left through the doors at the far end, into the body of the suite.
The lights dimmed.
Harris drew his crossbow, eased the door open, and stepped into the lounge. The walls, floor and ceiling were clad in seamless black marble, broken only the shell shaped light fittings around the wall, at eye level.
Harris scanned the sphere. It was a solid lump of metal, an alloy of bronze with an alien metal his visor didn’t recognise. There were no circuits, no machinery, no source for the voice.
“Magic,” a voice said, from everywhere at once. “The sphere works by magic, Agent Harris.”
Harris wheeled around. He was alone, but the back of his neck prickled. “And who am I addressing?”
“That,” the voice said, with a dry cackle of a laugh, “is not an easy question to answer. I have lived a very, very long time, and I have known a goodly number of names. Here, and now I have come to be known as the Lord of Misrule.”
“Right,” Harris sighed. “I get the feeling you spend a lot of time smiting people for laughing at that, right?”
“No,” Misrule purred. “I find that an all pervading fear works better. Anyway… You, Agent Harris have been a surprising inconvenience. The Honour Guard have been testing my plans for too long. You seem to know too much, too soon, but you, more than the others, always seem to be where you should not. I did not plan to make this meeting for some time, but… here we are. If there is to be a wildcard in the game, I would have it in my hand. I want you to join me.”
“Join you?” Harris scowled. “You were behind Elois, Miami, and I get the feeling you were pulling strings for Zero Vector too.”
“Yes,” the voice said. “I am part of something so much bigger than you know. I am the necessary evil, that this world needs. I am the greater good.”
“Good?” Harris snarled. “I have seen nothing good from you.”
Somebody stepped from the shadows.
Phoebe… exactly as he remembered her. Every bit as beautiful as he remembered. Every bit as bright, as vital, as sweet. She had the right laugh, the right smell, and her fingers sent his heart racing the way she always had.
“Are you sure about that?” She whispered.
00101
Barney followed Flintlock at a distance, hanging back in the crowd, and taking a path across the floor that ran parallel to hers. She was trying hard, maybe a little too hard, to look carefree and casual, but he could see the way she looked around her, when she was supposed to inspecting something on sale in the market, and slowed her pace as she approached junctions, looking for signs of danger.
He was wearing the Osprey armour, under a long trench coat, that more or less disguised it, with the hood down and no helmet. Given the bizarre wardrobes of many visitors, it probably wouldn’t draw too much attention. Hopefully. He kept his fingers crossed.
Flintlock followed one of the lower tunnels, to what would once have been the accommodation facility for the working mine. Now, according to the billboard over the tunnel, it was the Suburbs.
Every nook and cranny in the tunnel, that could be sealed off, and locked, had become a home to some of the permanent residents.
Barney hung back, and watched as Flintlock let herself into her bedsit. There was a bar on the same street, a little further back along the tunnel. He sat at the end of the bar, ordered a beer, and watched the bedsit.
It was a fair while before Flintlock emerged from the bedsit. She had changed into dark jeans, a plaid shirt, and hoody, all of them men’s clothes, a few sizes too big for her, with a rucksack over her shoulder. She flicked up her hood, and hurried through the crowd.
Barney took a few more sips of her drink, as he let her get a fair distance ahead of him. As he reached the edge of the ravine, she was already on the far side, in the crowd for the elevator. He leant on the balustrade, and watched her emerge two floors up, and head into a club called Dregs.
He hurried over the bridge, and moments later he was stepping out of the elevator onto the balcony. The front of the club, and the walls within, were clad in black glass, coated with a honeycomb patterned sound dampening plastic. When a couple of dockers staggered out the club, the heavy thud of loud music followed them.
Barney ducked into the club, and fought his way through the crowd, to the bar. Flintlock was in the corner of the room, lurking by the service doors. She was hiding under her hood, holding a beer as a prop, and watching the crowd.
Barney took the time to look around. He couldn’t see any obvious threats watching her.
Flintlock checked a device on her wrist, too bulky to be a watch. Probably a personal comms-link. Her eyes darted about, and she ducked through the service door.
Barney veered in that direction.
A man stepped out of the crowd. He was tall, with delicate features, painfully beautiful rather than handsome, with pale blue-grey skin, and lilac tattoos, a shock of white hair, and lilac grey eyes. He wore a dark shirt, and grey trousers, over polished boots. “Where are you going?”
Barney tried to ignore the question, but somehow, he couldn’t look away from those lilac grey eyes. The urge to answer, needled at Barney’s brain, burrowing into his thoughts. The answer almost escaped him, but he swallowed it back, and forced himself to smile. “Is it any business of yours?”
The blue-grey man held him in his gaze. “You followed her from her room. You paused at the ravine, to watch her come here. Why?”
“I¬” Barney choked on an answer, and wrestled with his own tongue. It escaped him in a babble. “I’m watching her.” Still the urge burrowed deeper. “A friend and I spoke to her earlier. She got spooked when we were overheard. I want to make sure she isn’t hurt.”
The blue-grey man blinked, and instantly the pressure on Barney’s mind ebbed away.
“What,” Barney asked, “was that?”
The blue man shrugged. “People don’t like to lie to me. You didn’t tell me everything, but that was enough truth for now. Come on.”
He nodded for Barney to follow him, and they went through the service door, and down a plain corridor past the store rooms, and out into one of the tunnels.
Flintlock was leaning against the far wall. She glared at Barney. “Why is he here?”
“He wants to help,” the guy said. “He thinks he put you in danger.”
Flintlock shook her head. “And you believe him? Sounds like a stupid idea, Harper.”
The blue man smiled. “He told the truth.”
Flintlock growled. “Typical.”
Barney cleared his throat. “Sorry. But… are you two…?”
“It’s complicated,” Flintlock said. “Just…”
“Siblings,” Harper said, cautiously. “More or less. “It’s…”
“Complicated,” Flintlock repeated.
“Who are you afraid of?” Barney asked.
Harper looked at Flintlock.
She breathed out. “The… people I got that fungus for? They like to keep their secrets. I didn’t realise how deep in I was getting when I took on the job, but since then, I’ve started to hear stuff, and they think I worked out too much…”
Barney tapped his link. “Scimitar? I have the girl. We need to get her surface side. We can call in some favours and help her vanish, but right now we need to find her transport.”
There was no answer.
“Harris?” He asked.
Magic rounded the corner at the end of the tunnel, followed by four bulky figures, in glossy black and yellow armour, carrying heavy carbines.
Flintlock backed a step or two away.
“Okay,” Barney said, staring at the armoured figures. “Anybody know who they are?”
“Nope,” Harper whispered.
“Kill them all!” The bulkiest of the figures snapped.
00110
Melisa braced the shields of her mind, as they rode the elevator down from the helipad. She blotted out th
e cacophony of impressions and overspill that saturated the Tombstone facility. Charlie touched her hand, and the cold steel of his own shields opened a crack, offering her a refuge from the noise.
Their connection had become effortless these last few months. When they touched, it was instant, but even when they were apart, she could reach out and feel the candyfloss bliss and butterflies of his feelings for her. There had been nights when her dreams were haunted by memories of her parents, and he had crept across the hall, to sit on her bed, and hold her hand, until they settled back to the past.
His presence, when he dropped his shields, regardless of distance, was like slipping on a comfy old jumper, and curling by an open fire, with cocoa and a good book.
He could be annoyingly stoic. She envied the way his mind was ordered into a labyrinth of cells and vaults, his troubles not so much hidden from her view, but locked away where he could contain and control them. Even now, his darker thoughts, the fears and misgivings dredged up by their mission, were pacing back and forth behind bars, like a tiger at the zoo.
She wondered if he had any of the mint cake left, and he answered by taking the crumpled paper bag from the pocket of his jacket.
Melisa smiled, and took one of the sweets, letting it melt onto her tongue.
The elevator slowed to the reception floor, and the doors hissed open. Carlton Chandler, the facility Administrator was waiting for them, with a pair of guards.
Charlie offered them the bag of sweets.
They eyed him suspiciously.
Melisa took out her Honour Guard ID. “Gentlemen. Might we see the Visitation Room?”
Chandler nodded. “Of course. This way.”
Melisa and Charlie followed the Administrator through the star, utilitarian corridors, to the visitor’s suite. As they rounded a corner they passed work crews repairing bullet holes and craters in the concrete wall. There were scorch marks on the floor, in the shapes of flailing bodies.
Charlie stopped, and crouched to inspect the scorch marks. His aura hardened, as he steeled himself against… a terrible fear. He touched the ashen mark.
Chandler cleared his throat. “Twenty three of my guards are dead. Three are missing. We think those marks are all that remain on the missing.”
Charlie looked up at him, his eyes heavy with sadness. “I’m sorry.”
Chandler nodded a little, and waved them on.
Further down the corridor there were dozens of bone spikes, embedded in the wall, as though they had been fired from a machine gun. A little further there was a stretch of corridor where the concrete had melted away from the layers of reinforcement within, blackened by an incredible heat.
Melisa ran a finger over the glassy residue. “Is… concrete meant to act like that?”
“Not normally,” Charlie muttered. “This was elemental fire, from a primordial realm. As soon as Wormwood was free of the dampeners, his connection to the magic was back, as strong as ever.”
Melisa put a hand on his shoulder. There was a fleeting suggestion of a painful memory, before he locked it away. She cleared her throat. “The girl who visited him?”
“A psychology student,” Chandler said, showing her the CCTV footage on his tablet. “Her background checked out, her paperwork was in order, and she passed the scan. No powers, no magic, no mutations…”
Melisa tapped the screen to pause the image. She stared at the girl on the screen. Her hair was shorter, and dyed, her clothes were a world away from the smart dresses and plain sweaters chosen for the TV cameras, but even so, the girl was unmistakably Elois Croft. Melisa frowned at Chandler. “You didn’t recognise her?”
“No…” Chandler pondered a moment. “Well… She has one of those faces, I guess. Kind of familiar, but…”
Melisa tapped through the screens, to the sensory data. “Huh. Weird temperature fluctuations as she was being scanned.”
“All within a normal range,” Chandler said.
Melisa frowned. “Sure, but… so many changes, so quickly…”
They walked on, to the Visitation Room. Melisa looked around at the broken window, the burned out lights, and the broken dampener unit.
Charlie picked up a piece of the broken glass. It was curved, bent, in a way glass from a flat window shouldn’t be. He sniffed it.
Melisa looked away before he licked it. “Do you have to do that?”
Charlie held the fragment of glass up to the light. “What does this remind you of?”
“The Spear,” Melisa said. “The displacement when Cathy popped out of the Warp.”
“Warping…” Charlie nodded. “Reality bending to reshape itself around something.”
Melisa stared at the shattered window. “Reshaped so… the sensors didn’t pick up on her powers, and people don’t… recognise her? What could do that?”
“Something…” Charlie frowned. “Something big. Too big to fit in a person’s head…” He trailed off, and his expression opened, and cold dread spilled from him. “It’s anchoring itself to her.”
“It?” Melisa asked.
Charlie looked up at her, and tapped his lips. “Necrex had his Cohort. I guess you would call them his Lieutenants. The Yeomen called them his Hunters. They were… demonic. Incredibly powerful, but… they can’t stay here for long…until they are invited in.”
“Okay,” Melisa whispered.
“The Yeoman texts called them Corruption, Memory, and Nightmare. They were the agents of Necrex on the worlds he ruled, and…his bridgehead to prepare worlds for invasion.”
“And?” Melisa pinched her nose. “You think one of them is…”
“Reaching in from another world, with a tendril of their mind, to use Elois like a puppet.”
Melisa felt echoes of a fear she had never felt from him before. “To open a doorway, for Necrex to come here/”
“If one is here,” Charlie said, “then the three will be here.”
Melisa nodded. “Okay. So… We can stop them.”
He looked at her, and that fear bubbled out again.
“We can stop them,” she insisted. “Sir? We are going to need to see Wormwood’s cell.”
*
The cell was uncomfortably quiet.
Under the blue glow of the dampeners that blanketed much of the prison, her psychic abilities were muffled. Where there had always been the hornet buzz of background noise, there was just a strange cold fog.
Charlie found excuses to touch her hand, or shoulder, often as they searched, but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t even feel his shields up.
Wormwood’s cell was more spacious than she had expected with a simple bed, and some basic furniture.
“Are you going to be a gentleman?” Melisa asked.
Charlie smiled and looked at the corner with the sink and toilet.
“Wait!” Melisa gestured to his pocket. “I better take those before you get your hands dirty.”
Charlie took a battered paper bag from his pocket, and tossed it to her. She caught the bag, and helped herself to a mint cake.
Charlie searched the bathroom corner, removing the air, vent, opening the service panel beneath the sink, and groping down into the toiler.
Melisa searched the bed, the small desk, the books, the small stack of CDs, and opened the battery compartment of the stereo. She found nothing. She reached into the bag of sweets for another block of mint cake. The peppermint sugar crumbled over the floor.
“Dammit!” She whispered.
She crouched down to sweep the crumbs away, as cockroaches crawled out from a crack between the floor and the wall.
“Hey,” she cooed. “Do you guys like this stuff too?” She rolled her eyes. “Great. I meet a guy who isn’t weirded out by my life, and he has the taste of a…”
She trailed off.
One of the cockroaches had a circuit board lodged in its head, and an LED between its antenna.
Melisa reached up to the desk for a plastic cup, and pounced at the bug. She caught it before
it scuttled back under the crack.
“Ha!” She grinned. “Hey! Charlie! Come and look at this!”
He looed up. “You found it?”
“I did!” She laughed. Her earpiece buzzed. She tapped it. “Hey?”
“Mel,” Cathy said. “We need you and Charlie back in New York, as soon as you can. We have a situation. Code black.”
“Code black?” Melisa croaked. “As in…?”
“End of the world,” Catherine said, her tone leaden. “Please. Get back here. Now.”
00111
Harris stared at his wife, as her fingertips traced the line of his visor, just as she used to trace the lines of his face each night, right before¬
Phoebe leant in and pecked a kiss on his visor.
“You can’t be real,” he whispered. Rage boiled in his heart. “How dare you? How dare you try and use her image!”
“I’m real,” she promised. “Real enough. Please… Just… Trust me for a few minutes. You did that once before, when I was a criminal. Do it now. Please?”
He backed away, and thumbed the dial on his crossbow. An inferno bolt loaded into the breach. “Okay. I’ll listen.”
Phoebe held up her palms. “Misrule isn’t what you think, Rock. The evils he has done are necessary.”
“He shot down Air Force One, and he¬”
“To save the world!” Phoebe said, sharply, and loudly. “Allistaire is calling Legion to Earth, not one avatar, but thousands, maybe millions.” Phoebe softened her tone. “Misrule has been trying to stop him. Believe me, all the horrors at his hand have been the lesser of the available evils, necessary to stop the invasion. As we approach the endgame, now Legion is days away, if not closer, he is the only one prepared to do the unthinkable, because that is what it will take to stop Legion.”
“Which is?” Harris demanded.
Phoebe gave him a sad look. “The Legion mothership will position itself over San Francisco. Remember the kid told us, about how he became a Yeoman? About stopping somebody from ripping open the San Francisco sky, and letting out pure elemental energy? It would destroy the mothership, and at the very least, do enough damage to drive it away, maybe even kill it.” She gave him a sad look. “Ask Angel. She will tell you it could work, but… Charlie won’t do it.”
