by Hodden, TE
Echo crept up to the deck, and crouched under the window line to the door.
Laying on the sofa, huddled under blankets and shivering was the Yeoman. Drowning in sweat, his eyes out of focus. His breathing was ragged, and uneven.
The decks were still, in the halcyon summer afternoon. The only noise was the roaring and squealing of the prolonged car chase, on the screen.
She eased open the door, and stepped inside.
The Yeoman glanced up at her.
“Hey…” She offered him a sugary sweet smile. “Would you rather I called you Charlie or Alexander?” She crouched by the sofa, and slid her fingers through his hair, feeling the scarlet welts where the needles had punched their way in. “Oh… That must have been painful. Anyway… Wormwood said you were really an Alex. I like Alex. So… Who else is here Alex?”
His eyes struggled to focus. His parched lips croaked.
“It would be better,” Echo said, soothingly, “if you just told me. Is it the dried out old husk who used to be the Scarlet Knight?”
He stared at her.
“Okay.” Echo leant forwards. “The other option is I make you scream, and we see who comes running. Shall we just do that.” She clicked her fingers, and summoned the fork to her fingertips. “Do you know what this is?”
There was a click of a remote control, under the blankets.
The TV channel changed to a blank screen and a single high pitched, high volume note. Painfully high pitched, The Yeoman was braced against the noise, his jaw set, his eyes closed. In the back of Echo’s mind, Elois was squirming in pain from the way the sound was driving into her skull like an ice pick.
Echo ignored it, simply blocking out the pain with a twist of thought.
The fork began to vibrate. The shockwaves flowed down into her hand. It made her insides churn, and her head spin. The sound around her rippled and distorted. She tried to let go of the fork, but couldn’t. She turned to look at her hand, and twisting her head was like moving it through treacle.
Her mouth moved. There was a noise she couldn’t hear over the banshee note of the fork.
It took her a moment to realise it was her voice.
No! Elois. Elois was screaming. “Get out! Get out!”
And then it happened.
The tethers that anchored Echo broke.
Elois, dropped her to her knees, her body tucking into a ball, as she rolled to the floor, but Echo, the shadowy, ethereal, insubstantial psychic form remained standing, hovering, in the air.
“No!” Echo roared. “No!”
She could feel her form already dissipating, melting away like smoke on the wind. She could feel herself being drawn back to her essence.
Something moved in the doorway.
The Scarlet Knight had one arm in a cast, and her other hand was holding one of the Scimitar’s crossbows. She thumbed the dial, and an inferno bolt loaded.
“Wait!” Echo ordered. “Don’t!”
The Scarlet Knight said something, but it was lost in the shrill resonant tone, that filled the cabin. She pulled the trigger and the bolt flashed through the air, detonating as it hit Echo’s shadow form.
Echo’s grip on the mortal realm was lost, before she had time to scream.
01100
Mister Perkins stood in the assembly hall of Hamilton Creek Middle School, Washington State, waiting for the children to settle, before he spoke. At last the hubbub died down. He walked tapped the microphone, and looked over his glasses at the crowd.
“As you all know, today we will all be taking part in the Civil Emergency Drill,” he said. “In twenty five minutes you will hear the sirens sound in the city first, then the fire alarms here. At which time, each class will report to the front of the school, and board the busses. You will board the bus your form teacher guides you to, not, I repeat not, the bus you take home. Everybody will board a bus, and everybody will then enter the bunker beneath the Millennium Housing Tower, in a calm and responsible manner.” He wagged a finger. “I know many of you will be tempted to see this as an excuse to slip away. I should remind you that the local police will be taking part in this drill, and a very dim view will be taken of any student whom they deliver there after the fact.” He evened his tone. “I also know that for many, this will be an uncomfortable reminder of all too recent events. I ask you all to be mindful of those who will find this difficult for personal reasons, and to remember that are very real reasons we need to know we can ensure your safety.” He held up his hands. “There will be a brief talk by the fire chief, about how to protect yourself, and how to react in future drills, or God forbid, a real emergency. Then lunch, and entertainment, a movie I believe, will be provided to pass the time in which we are obliged to be in the bunker.”
He checked his watch.
“I know,” he said softly, “that you will all represent this school, and this district, in a way which we can all be proud of.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Well,” Perkins groaned. “Somebody started early.”
The fire alarms sounded.
“In an orderly fashion please!” He shouted, over the scraping of chairs, and the shuffling of footsteps.
Perkins stepped off the stage, and went to pull on hi-vis coat, as he hurried to organise the drill. As he did so, as he ushered and herded the student body in an orderly fashion, he wondered if it was only Hamilton Creek who had jimped the gun, or if every other school in the time zone, had been caught off guard.
It was, he decided, probably part of the damned drill.
01101
Matthew stepped back into the shadows, as the Nightmare took off from the Hotel rooftop, and soared over the construction site.
Padmaja nodded, tightening the straps on her rucksack.
Summers tapped her staff on the floor. Her Martian armour slithered over her like liquid metal, taking shape in an instant.
Matthew tapped his earpiece. “Angel. Your shark has smelt the chum, and is incoming. You best get out of the water.” He flexed his aura out to lift Summers and Padmaja. “Ladies?”
He carried them aloft, over the heads of the security agents, and set them down on a quiet corner of the rooftop, by the junction box for the security system.
Two guards saw them, and lifted their assault rifles to look down the sights at them.
Matthew cast out tendrils of his aura, and grabbed their necks in nerve-pinches, that made their bodies go slack, and their mouths hang open, before they could shout a word. He dragged their bodies into cover, and lay them gently down, in the recovery position.
Summers put her staff to the junction box, and the sphere on the staff glowed red, as she foxed the alarm systems, and set the security cameras to run a continuous loop twenty seconds loop, with enough bugs and glitches to disguise the loop.
Padmaja took a sonic device from her pocket, and held it to the keyhole on the door to the stair well. The lock released with a clunk, and the door swung open. The guard within raised his gun. Padmaja caught it with her cybernetic hand, crushed the barrel, and whacked the guard on the side of the head with it. She winced as he stumbled and caught his body, looking into his eyes. “Sorry. You will be fine. You just need to sit here a while. Okay?” She sat him against the corner of the stairs.
Matthew floated past her, and drifted silently down the stairs.
01110
Misrule stepped over to Allistaire’s corner of the table, and put his claw-like fingers on the President’s shoulder, his lips to his ear. “Our friend in the computer has detected the Honour Guard in the city. Agent Scimitar is on his way to… solve the problem. Agent Echo will mop up the rest.”
Allistaire’s heart lurched into a higher gear. He nodded, and sipped water, to soothe his parched lips.
“Now,” Misrule whispered, “is your moment.”
Allistaire stood, and swept his gaze over the gathered dignitaries and heads of state. The tables had been joined in a circle that filled much of the grand ballro
om. Sat away from the main table, on smaller tables amongst the pillars on the edge of the room, were a small army of translators and advisors.
The buzzing and chatter died away.
“Please,” Allistaire said, holding up the leather bound document that held the Broadsword treaty. “Think for a moment about what we are truly asking of you, here, today. One hundred and fifty six nations, have gathered, here, in one room, today. Many of you have been enemies. Many of you have been divided, for generations, by feuds, by history, by pride, by… all the reasons that have come to look so petty and meaningless this last year.” He held gestured around the tables with the document. “This is the moment when we show the world what our nations, what our people, truly stand for. That we can see beyond our past, and into the future. This is a grand gesture, but in the future, we will need to face many more. We have spent too long pretending to ourselves that poverty, famine, and the damage to our ecology are other people’s problems, that lines on a map are reason enough to argue a way out of the steps we must take. This document states ‘no more’. Tomorrow, we will stand in a world that can acknowledge, even celebrate it’s diversity, to take pride in our nations, in our individual identity, but… to know that need not mean we stand divided. That it need not mean we fail through a lack of will, or vision. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step to a new world. A new tomorrow.” He set the document on the table, and made a show of placing a pen beside it. “If you have it within you to make this choice,” Allistaire said, “if you have the will of your nation to make a new world,” he tapped the document, “then open the books before you, and sign your copies.”
One by one, the delegates opened their copies of the treaty, and uncapped their pens.
As the pen nibs scratched on the papers, Misrule’s smile grew.
Allistaire nodded at him, and signed his own copy.
The fate of the world was sealed.
The delegates lay down their pens. Allistaire set his pen down, and beamed a smile at Misrule.
“Excellent.” Misrule whispered. “You all signed of your own free will.” He held out his hand towards Allistaire and smiled, brightly. “And your purpose is fulfilled.”
A fungal bloom, not unlike a rose, unfolded on the old man’s palm, and a single spore, no bigger than a mote of dust, puffed from the bloom, and drifted through the air.
Allistaire watched, in numbed horror as it settled on his hand.
Other spores puffed out, and flew like insects tracking down the armed security agents around the room.
Misrule marched to the centre of the room. “Do I have to warn you what will happen if any of you move, or speak, or so much as tremble without my leave?”
The guards dropped their guns, and fell to the floor, howling in pain and horror as they scratched at their own skin.
The spore on Allistaire’s hand burrowed down into his flesh, sending waves of agony along every nerve, down to his bones, to his very core. He wailed in terror, as he too, fell.
01111
Melisa stood in the rain-specked ruins and looked up into the clouds, as the sonic boom shattered the sky. “Angel! Batter up!”
Angel leapt to her feet, and adopted a ready stance.
Melisa loosened her neck. Her heart was thundering, and her chest was frosted over. Her fingertips prickled with pins and needles. She set her jaw.
The Nightmare dropped from the sky, with a heavy, curved sword drawn. He looked down at the markings on the floor, and grunted.
Melisa took the remote control for the ether-converter from her pocket, and tapped the button.
The magic circle activated.
The air within shimmered and distorted, the daylight bending the wrong way. The Nightmare snarled like an animal, and dropped to his knees.
“That,” Melisa said, “is a Reality Buffer. It lets the universe shuffle all that flux and uncertainty about you into some kind of order. I bet that must be a real headache for you. Like being inside a ringing bell. But…” She stared at him. “It also lets us see who we are really dealing with, and¬”
The haze around the Nightmare resolved itself to his real form, a vaguely humanoid mix of bear, wolf, squid and lobster, the size of a double decker bus, with a maw full of barbed tentacles, and a razor sharp eagle beak.
Nightmare shrieked, and clutched his head. His true form folded ups and sucked back into his head. He rose shakily to his feet. “Do you think this pitiful buffer would stop me?”
He sprinted forwards, his sword raised, screaming a war cry.
Melisa closed her eyes, and held her breath.
Angel’s force projection caught the Nightmare on his blindside and slammed him into the far wall. The magic circle painted on the other side of the wall burned through the concrete. The Nightmare cried out, but Angel held him firm. “No. We thought it would give off enough background noise to disguise me, and the holding spells that surround us.” She gestured at Melisa. “Do what you have to. I will hold him.”
Melisa up to the Nightmare, and stared into his eyes.
The inhuman thing with octopus eyes stared back.
Melisa touched his forehead with her fingertips and plunged into his mind.
*
Melissa ran through the snaking, twisting labyrinth of the mind, following the corridors that were red brick and worked stone, that felt more Rock Harris, than coral and rusting steel of the Nightmare. The passages twisted and rolled, spiralling in impossible shapes.
She skidded to a halt at a blind wall, with a locked door.
Harris was beyond. She could feel him.
She put her fingers against the door, and plucked out the rivets that held it shut. The door creaked open, onto an ocean. An ink dark ocean, in which the sleeping dead bobbed and swayed, tethered by the chains on their ankles, dreaming their eternities.
Except one.
Harris clawed at his ankle, wrestling with the chain.
“Harris!” Melisa shouted. “Rock!” She plunged her hands into the water. “Take my hand! Now!”
Harris stared at her, and mouthed something.
Behind you?
Melisa turned.
The Nightmare, in his alien form, loomed impossibly over her.
“Huh.” She pointed at the ceiling. “I thought that was smaller.”
The Nightmare swatted her aside, and she bounced off the wall with a wet thud.
“Dammit,” she muttered, as she ducked another punch, and ran for her life.
The monster galloped after her.
10000
Charlie clicked off the TV, and a near silence fell over the lounge, broken only by his laboured breathing, and the sobbing from the young woman curled in the foetal position on the floor.
Catherine lowered her crossbow, and stepped into the lounge. “Elois?”
The girl was crying, many years of pent up tears pouring over her cheeks.
Catherine crouched beside her, and draped a blanket over her. “Elois. You need to look at me. Please.” She picked up the tuning fork, and tucked it in her pocket. “Hey.. Hi.”
Elois lifted her head, and tried to focus. “Is it dead?”
Catherine smiled. “I hoped you could tell me.”
Elois nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to get away from Dad, and make him…” She trailed off. “Oh God. The jet. My parents.”
“It’s okay,” Catherine said. “You’re safe now. It’s gone back where it came from, and shouldn’t be able to worm back into your head.” She sat the younger up. “How about some tea? Or coffee? Or…”
“Is he okay?” Elois asked, nodding to the sofa.
“Charlie?” Catherine scooted over to him.
Charlie had slumped back on the sofa. His eyes were half closed. His breathing had subsided to almost nothing. She put a hand to his neck. His pulse was weak and laboured.
“He needs rest,” Catherine said, softly. “Pulling that trick took a lot out of him.”
Elois gave her an u
ncertain look. “What happens now.”
Catherine forced herself to smile. “Tea. I’ll make some tea.” She glanced at her watch. “I guess beyond that, we just have to wait.”
Elois cleared her throat. “Can you call your friends? There’s a ship, in the Pacific…”
10001
The screams echoed through the halls of the hotel.
Summers ran after Matthew as he smashed through the doors into the ballroom where the summit was being held.
The delegates were cowering in place, as Professor Laurence held them at bay, the deadly wraithrose blooms on the palms of his hands matching the fungal growths that covered the flesh of the fallen security men. President Allistaire, his face covered in the blooms.
“That,” Laurence snapped, “is far enough.” He gestured to the bodies. “Another step, so much as flex your aura, and I will command those blooms to spore.”
Summers and Padmaja joined Matthew. Summers gripped the staff.
Laurence smiled at her. “You can tell there are no more spores in the air?” His eyes seemed to burn into her soul, through her helmet, with a power far beyond human potential He stepped closer. “Tell my son who I am.”
Summers swallowed. “You are the one Charlie warned us of. The third of Necrex’s lieutenants. You are Misrule.”
Laurence nodded. “This world’s leaders have offered me dominion, and welcomed the blade to their throat, of their own free will.” He gestured around. “Tell them what that means.”
Summers whispered. “They will be sacrifice.”
Some of the delegates rose to their feet.
Laurence pointed his palm at them. “Do not try me.”
Matthew eased them back into their seats, with his aura. “How can you have claimed the Professor? He was…”
“Dead?” Laurence asked. “Yes. But he was prepared for that eventuality. He had a gene-forge, capable of building… well… you. He constructed one of his own, and programmed it with his own body, give or take a few genes. In his research he learned of a fungus used by aliens, to create a neural network, that would allow him to return himself from the seas of the dead. He even had a way of waking himself from the dream, and finding his way out of the sea…” He smiled. “He just needed a little help. He thought he could use me, as a pathway. That if he freed me, he could absorb me into his will. He was wrong.” Laurence looked around. “An interesting man. Would you like to know what he thought of you?”
