by M. K. Gibson
Algren Yaat was on his knees before me, quaking. His hands were on his head and a puddle of his urine soaked into the ancient stone floor.
I pressed my blaster’s barrel harder against the base of his neck. “Where is she, Al?”
“I--I d-don’t know!” Al half screamed, half cried.
“Then why don’t you walk us through it again?” Lydia said, kneeling down beside the alien. “What exactly did you do to my child?”
Al looked at her with a sideways glance. And then at the razor sharp knife she was holding. I knew my wife, and ol’ Al was about a nut hair’s width away from no longer needing oxygen.
“T-the c-captain brought us here,” he stammered. “W-we carried t-the k-kid in a s-stasis module to this spot. T-there was a--” Al said, then paused.
“A what,” Lydia demanded.
“A cloaked figure,” Al said.
“So you brought her here,” Lydia continued. “Then what?”
Al said nothing at first, so I pressed the gun harder against his head. “Answer her.”
“W-we, we just gave her to the cloaked person. We collected our money and we left.”
My daughter. Sold. I itched to pull the trigger and splatter this man’s brains on the floor. “Who was the cloaked person? Why did they want her?”
“I-I don’t know. The c-captain said that it was a h-high p-paying bounty. That’s all. S-she never said who the buyer was. I-I don’t think s-she knew.”
“What happened,” I asked. “What happened after you . . . you sold my daughter to the cloaked figure?”
“They disappeared.”
“Where.”
“Th-there,” he nodded. “Down that hallway.”
I glanced over to where Al gestured, then over to Wraith Knight and to Myst. “You two, check it out. Use your . . . I don’t know, space iPads, and look for clues.”
“You got it, boss,” Myst said. “Come on, Tons of Fun.”
Both of them walked off and began scanning the hallway that led deeper into the temple. I turned back to Al.
“So, what did this mystery person tell you about me?”
“N-nothing,” Al said. “O-only the c-captain talked t-to them.”
“I see.” I nodded, then looked to Lydia. “What do you think?”
She frowned and let out a sigh. “He’s telling the truth. I’ve broken weak and strong people before back in my day. This one—well, he just wants to live.”
“Is that true, Al?” I asked. “You want to live?”
“V-very much,” Al croaked.
“Then how about this,” I said, kneeling down next to him. I took out a soul-binding contract and a pen. “You can live, if you agree to work for me.”
“Jackson!” Lydia hissed. “Don’t you dare. This . . . thing is culpable for our daughter’s kidnapping.”
“Of which he had little to no part,” I countered. “He knows this realm better than we do. And if he works for me, then I can always kill him later.”
“I-if I may,” Al said, “I like living. So, do I need to sign that?”
“Yes,” I said, holding out the contract. “You sign this. Agree to work for me for five years and I will pay you a substantial sum. But while you work for me, you forfeit all other ties. As far as you’re concerned, I own you. Now, do we have an accord?”
Before I could even draw a second breath, Al was signing his name on the soul-binding contract. As he did, I felt my mantle of power envelop him, as it had both Wraith Knight and Myst in the comic book universe I took them from.
Good.
“Wraith Knight, Myst, what have you found?” I called out.
“Boss, this is pretty messed up,” Wraith Knight said into my comm link.
“He’s not wrong,” Myst agreed. “You should see this.”
I looked over at Lydia, who gave me the nod. Al wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet, anyway. I reached up to my shoulder and tapped the light mounted there. The beam pierced the darkness and I walked through the giant halls of the ancient temple. Each step I took clacked against the weathered stone and echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
The hallway opened up into an incredibly large triangular room with a pyramidal ceiling. Ahead, I saw my minions standing there, looking up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“All of it,” Myst whispered. “This place is . . .”
“Is what?” I demanded.
“Empty,” she finished. “No exits. No windows. Nothing. Just solid stone.”
“So, there’s a trap door somewhere. A secret passage.”
“Boss, look,” Wraith Knight said, pointing to his device.
“What am I looking at?” I asked, growing more infuriated by each ticking minute.
“These readings,” Wraith Knight explained. “They’re seismic pulses. There’s nothing underground or behind the walls but more stone.”
“Impossible.”
“Boss, check this out,” Myst said. She was in the center of the room atop a raised triangular dais.
“What?”
“The readings, at least in this spot. They are, well, similar to your dimension. This room, this place, is some kind of . . . gateway.”
“Move,” I demanded, and Myst complied.
I stepped over to the center of the dais and placed my hand upon the ground. Once my flesh touched the stone, I felt it. A . . . thinness, between the veil. This planet, that which orbited a dying sun, was the first of this universe. And there, at the beginning, I sensed the portal to other realms. Other universes. And through this spot, out into the endless vast expanse of all that is, was where Evie was cast. Whatever this temple’s function was, it was clear that this place was . . . holy. All of this told me one thing.
Evie had been taken by a god.
I closed my eyes and simply said a silent message of warning to the one that had her. Nothing would save them from me.
Standing, I gently rubbed my thumb against my eyes, pushing back my emotions until it was time to let them out.
“Boss?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“What are those?” Myst asked, pointing towards the ground.
I glanced over to see the alien pictographs along the floor. They stretched along the wall and into the high dome. The images were . . . incomplete.
But I had a suspicion of what they were.
“Sophia,” I said, clicking on my earpiece.
“Go ahead, sir.”
“I’m turning on my camera,” I said. “There’s something I want you to see.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t want to say,” I explained. “I don’t want to taint your conclusions with my theories.”
“Standing by, sir.”
Reaching up and tapping the device on my shoulder again, I activated the transmit function. The light dimmed and the camera was live. I panned around so that Sophia could see what I saw.
Myst and Wraith Knight were in a small huddle, chuckling to themselves.
“What?” I asked, as I continued to look about.
“N-nothing boss,” Wraith Knight said, stifling a laugh.
“Nothing at all,” Myst confirmed.
Sigh. “It’s because I said ‘taint’, isn’t it.”
Both of my minions barked out a quick laugh. I just shook my head. “You do remember why were here, hmm?” I asked. “My missing daughter. If all it takes is for me to say ‘taint’ to derail you, perhaps it’s time for me to search for replacements.”
“Sorry, boss,” Wraith Knight said.
“Apologies, Jackson,” Myst confirmed.
“Good,” I said firmly, but with a slight smile. “Now, had I said ‘grundle’, then that would be a laughing matter.”
Both of them laughed once more and I chuckled along with them.
“Go,” I said. “Go get Lydia and Al. If this is what I think it is, then I want them both here.”
“Got it, boss,” Wraith Knight said, as he and Myst did as instruct
ed.
Heh heh. Grundle.
Once I was alone, I stood in the center of the dais and put my hands on my hips. “Sophia?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”
“Damn it,” I swore.
“And if this is saying what I think it’s saying--”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head in frustration.
Kneeling down once more, I touched the center pictogram on the ground. I imbued that spot with just a touch of my power.
Like flowing mercury, my godly essence streamed out in all directions, along the floor, walls, and domed ceiling, filling and illuminating the pictograms. Each symbol glowed with a silvery blue light. Moments later, semi-transparent images flashed and swirled around me, like a three-dimensional hologram.
I saw it all. The beginning of this universe. The expansion outwards. The progenitor races, created by this plane of existence’s gods. And I saw the markings of a time yet to come. A map of sorts.
“Jackson,” Lydia said as she entered the room. “What is this?”
“A prophecy,” I sighed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Where Saviors Abound, Linguistics Is Key, and Specific Numbers Are Important
There are countless overused tropes in storytelling. The butler did it. The best friend double-crosses the protagonist. The power was in you the whole time, but you just had to believe.
You get the point.
Even in science fiction and fantasy, tropes are abundant. How many time-travel adventures fix themselves in the most circuitous and exhausting ways? How many times will the robotic AI go crazy and kill the humans? When will those damn people learn to stop messing with alien eggs? Oh look, another European-looking person goes native on a planet and becomes the great savior.
Which leads me to my least favorite theme: the prophecy of the one. You know, the ancient, mystery-shrouded legend passed down in bad prose that foretells the coming of a savior.
The Wheel of Time had the Dragon Reborn. A Song of Ice and Fire had the Prince Who Was Promised. And don’t act like the Neville Longbottom angle excuses Harry Potter. It does not. (Team Slytherin all the way. Salazar was a good bloke. Too bad his descendants and disciples were complete twats.) All three of these are modern examples of the classic prophesied “the one.”
But Shadow Master, those are from fantasy, not science fiction, you say, in that annoying anime voice of yours. (Yes, I imagine your voice sounding like a high-pitched anime girl. It’s the only way to deal with your incessant chattering. Because for you to question me is like a snotty child questioning an actual functioning adult.)
Well, Squeaky, you are correct: Those are from fantasy. But what about The Fifth Element and Leeloo? Or the messianic overtones of Dune? How about the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to The Force in Star Wars? Or, even further, the actual The One in The Matrix? And while we’re just spitballing here, Ender in Ender’s Game is basically the chosen one, as was the Amy Adams character in that gods-awful overly hyped movie The Arrival. Backwards, time-travel-storytelling nonsense.
From Gilgamesh to MacBeth to even the Bible, the prophesied coming of The One has been the lazy creator’s crutch for all of time. And that very overused tool was now staring me in the face like an unsolicited dick-pic.
********
I watched the glowing symbols and images float across the room. The sequence of events, the pattern . . . they haunted me. And no matter how I tried to see it, no matter how I wanted it to be something else, the same answer kept coming back to me.
Damn it.
“Jackson?” Lydia said, coming to stand next to me. “What do you mean a prophecy?”
“This,” I said, pointing towards the floating imagery and scripture, “tells of a primordial time, when the ancient beings that predated the gods were creating the multiverse.”
“How do you know this, boss?” Myst asked. “It just looks like gibberish to me.”
“Because you are not a god. Nor are you a member of the Fifth Race.”
“The what?” Wraith Knight asked.
I sighed. “Look, for the sake of a narrative no-no exposition dump, I will sum it up like this. There are the gods. Then come their cousins, the Celestial and the Infernal.”
“And the other two?” Lydia asked. “Mortals, I assume are one?”
“Yes.” I smiled. “Well done.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said with a smirk.
“You do it to me all the time,” I countered.
“Because I’m better at it.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. The Fifth Race are beings of tremendous power that were neither god nor mortal and who could float between the cracks of the multiverse. It is why all legends speak of them.”
“The djinn,” Lydia said, seeing the picture. “Wait, you speak Djinn?”
“I took an online course available to gods, yes. But it is a complex language that predates the written word of man by millennia.”
“So what you’re saying is you got a C,” Lydia taunted me.
“A C-plus, thank you. Which is why we call in an expert,” I said, setting my transmitter down on the ground and tapping the holographic interface. A moment later, a digital projection of Sophia floated amid the room.
“Hey there, sir.”
“Sophia,” I said. “I need your expertise.”
Sophia nodded, then began to flit around the room. While she was still back on the ship, the projector here allowed her to exist here in a VR-like state. She inspected the images, the pictograms, and the connecting lines of power.
“Well?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re fucked.”
I crossed my arms. “Could you be a little more precise?”
“Dry anal?”
“Sophia--”
“It’s like this,” Sophia said with a wave of her hand. “This place serves multiple functions.”
“Which are?”
“It exists as a . . . Place of Memory, for the time before. All major universes have one somewhere; you just have to look for them. They serve as junction between the major realms,” she said, pointing towards the iridescent beams of light that connected glowing, swirling masses. “You can see that the multiverse is connected. The worlds of myth and wonder are all connected by the threads of reality. And that is where the prophecy comes in.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
“I thought you read the Fifth Tongue,” Sophia said, eyeing me.
“He got a C,” Lydia interjected.
“C-plus,” I growled.
Sophia tsked at me as she moved past the images and stood before the glowing glyphs of the Fifth Tongue. “The translation, roughly, says that there will come a time when a god who was not meant to be will rise to power. That god will sire a child--”
“Patriarchal bullshit,” Lydia said with a huff. “Sire a child? I was the one who carried her. I’m the one who suffered.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, dear wife,” I said, “but didn’t you use your goddess power to, um, adjust your . . .”
“Feminine canal?” Wraith Knight offered.
Everyone looked at him until he stared at the floor. I turned back to Lydia. “But yes, your ‘feminine canal,’ so that you felt no labor pain, and birthing Evie was as easy as, literally, taking a bun out of the oven?”
“I’m the one who suffered all through the pregnancy, alone.”
“Wasn’t that because you kicked him out of his pocket dimension?” Myst asked.
“Our pocket dimension,” Lydia corrected. “And you’re not one to talk about that particular time, Little Miss Homewrecker.”
“Hey!” I yelled. “First, we were on a break. Second, you had your fun as well, if I recall correctly. And third, what happens in Comic Book Universe stays there.”
“Except chlamydia,” Myst said offhandedly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Myst said, turning her head away. “But
. . . you may wanna get checked. Just FYI.”
“See what your dalliance may have gotten you?” Lydia smirked.
“That was kind of aimed at both of you,” Myst said, giving my wife a sheepish shrug. “Sorry.”
I eyed my wife, who crossed her arms and shrugged. “What? She’s a shapeshifter and we have an open arrangement. Damn my need for side booty.”
Gods above and below. There are other villains out there with better support staff, I was sure of it. Granted they were dumber and less successful than I, but their assembled teams of minions had to be better than mine.
“Will you all shut up?” I said, breaking up the stupidity. “Sophia, what does the rest of it say?”
“That the god will sire a child,” Sophia continued, “whose sacrifice could enact a great and terrible change upon existence.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, sir,” Sophia explained. “But the way it’s written, I think there is more.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
And that was it. We’d come so far only to have nothing. I felt my fists clench on their own.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to kill.
We weren’t any closer to finding Evie than we had been the moment she was taken from me by the Gunjaar Horde.
“Algren!” I yelled.
“Right here, Shadow Master,” the impish alien said from behind me.
“How much?”
“Master?”
“How much did this . . . being pay you and your captain to take Evie from me?”
“Master, I--”
“HOW MUCH!”
“F-fifty thousand Quen,” Algren said.
I nodded. “Fifty thousand?”
“Y-yes?”
“Wraith Knight, Myst. Cut him into fifty thousand pieces.”
Chapter Twenty-One and a Half
Where I Explain Why Specific Numbers Are Important
“Boss, I don’t think we’re going to reach fifty thousand,” Wraith Knight said over the comm link.
“Yes, I agree,” Myst added. “And frankly, this is fucking disgusting.”
