The actual explosions were fairly small, but shrapnel bounced off my green armor with a sound not unlike hail. I struggled to my feet just as three warrior bane leaped on me. Their claws dug into my armor with snarling, screeching sounds. But nothing got through. I grabbed one by the bony hips, throwing him at another, then blasted the third with lightning. I drew my pistol one handed and my shotcannon with the other, sprinting forward. I leaped onto a pile of corpses as the demons surrounded me.
"Come get some!" I snarled.
I unloaded an entire magazine into one demon's chest and head, then fired off the shotcannon at another. He splattered and the big fucker shouldered his way forward. His rockets were still reloading or regrowing or something. I tossed my pistol aside, cocked the shotcannon, then leaped forward. I landed on the shoulders of one of the other smaller demons, then sprang up and landed on the big fucker's back. I pumped a round of buckshot into his head. He staggered, groaning, reaching up towards me with both hands. I fired again and this time his head exploded like an overripe melon.
As he toppled, I reached down and yanked the implanted rocket launcher free, my arm straining with the effort. I held the gory, dripping piece of cybernetics in my hand and sprang off the big fucker as he face-planted onto the ground. Well, bleeding neck stump planted.
Demons massed before me.
I held the rocket launcher up and surged it with a tiny jolt of electricity. I hit something I was supposed too, because the rocket shot out of it, a jet of superheated gas blasting the demon behind me square in the face. The rocket plunged into a terrified looking warrior's chest, then sent him rocketing backwards into a mass of his friends before the warhead went off. I lifted an arm to shield my face from the splatter.
The demons were backing away from me. Blood dripped from my body and I laughed shakily.
"What... are ...you?"
The Lightbringer stepped out from the mass of demons - all of them backing away from him, bowing respectfully. Behind me, I heard Jules and the others gasp in shock. Jules, his body covered with tiny scratches, a pistol in his hands, called out to me.
"Who the fuck is that, Beatrice!?"
The Lightbringer spread his hands wide, flicking his fingers. The demons continued to back away from him, bowing low, their foreheads scraping against the ground. He ignored Jules as the quiet whirring of the portal became the loudest sound in the room. I panted softly, breathing in. Breathing out. I thought back to the earliest moment I could really remember. Not the boat. Not the ritual chamber. Not the chanting robed corporate wage slaves. Not even the coldness of cryosleep. It was the moment after, staggering out into the corridor.
It was that strange voice I had heard, echoing in my mind.
I remembered those words and I smiled. I lifted my head and felt an utter lightness filling my whole being. I knew what I was. I knew what I was supposed to do. And I knew how to do it. I looked right into the Lightbringer's eyes.
"I'm good enough," I said, quietly. "I'll do . Until someone better is found."
The Lightbringer's face twisted with rage. His suit was fraying and a darkness swirled around his body - an infinite blackness and a twisting, crackling aura of spite. I could almost see wings unfolding behind him.
"Good enough won't stop me ," he snarled.
"You're right, Lucy," I said, casually. "But he will."
The Lightbringer turned right before Leviathan, emerging from the elevator tube with a squeal of bending metal, smashed into him. The Lightbringer had changed utterly in that moment. There was something huge and spined and black, hissing and roaring. Claws slashed into Leviathan and black blood went flying. Then Levithan's mouth opened wide and a searing red light burst from between his jaws. I staggered away from the flames as the Lightbrighter struck back hard enough to send the flames flying out in every direction. Demons screeched and ran for cover.
I staggered back into Jules hands. He didn't look away from the titanic struggle as the two creatures older than time and greater than humanity slashed and bit and struck. The Lightbringer was smashed into the wall, denting it outwards. Hissing, screeching air roared past him as I realized they were about to breach the walls.
Virgil Station shuddered. The portal behind me cracked and a bright blue light poured from it.
"Jules!"
Tracy screamed it at us - and we both turned.
The portal was opened and showed a large city street. Cars had stopped and people were running from it. I could see the gleam of the Golden Gate bridge between the bright, smooth faces of the buildings. Several humans with more guts than common sense were holding up their phones, filming the portal. Tracy and Amanda and Marisa were already rushing through. Jules dragged me towards it.
I could smell the sweet sea breeze.
Leviathan unleashed another blast of torrential, hellish energy. The searing light cast Jules face in molten iron. But even through that freakish coloring, I could see the concern in his eyes.
"We have to go now !" he shouted.
My hand went to my belly.
I am making a choice multifaceted.
Leviathan's voice echoed in my mind.
I smiled at Jules. I shook my head.
"No..." he whispered. He grabbed my wrist and tried to tug me forward. The depressurization alarms were going insane. I mouthed a single word at him. Sorry. Then I socked him in the jaw hard enough to send him staggering backwards, through the portal. He scrambled up, helped to his feet by several police officers. I lifted my hand...and touched my index finger to my thumb and grinned.
It was going to be okay.
Then I shot the portal's power cables. They sparked, crackled, and the portal shut down with a squeal of doomed souls. Behind me, I saw Leviathan and the Lightbringer going tumbling out into space. The air had vented out of a hole so massive that the wind had barely tugged at my sleeves. I snapped on my spacesuit helmet, clicking it into place. The station was starting to spin now and I sat down, my back resting against the portal. Every rotation made Hell come closer and closer and closer.
I grinned.
A short life, I thought.
But overall, I was happy with it. Even if I had never gotten a chance to save a single Tesc hybrid. I looked to the side and checked - and saw that Daniella had been left behind. She was glaring daggers at me. I flipped her off, then closed my eyes and readied myself for the burning heat of reentry. Something darted past me and I felt myself jerked aside. My head smashed against the inside of my helmet and I groaned. By the time I blinked away the white fog, I was already kilometers away from Virgil Station. The roughly pyramidal shape of the station was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.
I was held against something vast and black and warm . Wings beat above my head - despite the fact we were in a fucking vacuum.
The station drew a searing hot streak underneath us. I watched it, not caring that it left behind a white smear that left my eyes burning with pain. Then the brightness was overwhelming. I whooped inside of my helmet, tasting blood dripping from my nose.
Virgil Station had smashed into the vast plains of Hell like the fight of a furious God. The station - easily more than half a million tons of steel and ceramics and plastic and electrical cabling and fucked up scientific equipment - had to have been going terminal velocity. I knew enough about physics to know that that was really going to ruin a load of peoples days. And as my vision cleared, I could see the vast swelling bloom of light and color. The racing edges of the firestorms were followed by the smoke and dust kicked up, blotting out the ground underneath my feet.
I grinned.
"Who's the Lightbringer now?" I muttered.
We sailed down - slower by far than Virgil Station. And so, there was no searing heat. No crisping, burning reentry. Instead, there was just a slow, settling fatigue. I was becoming aware of how long I had gone without sleep, without food . Without fucking water. Alarms were filling my HUD about that. Adrenaline seeped out of my body and I let myself simply be held
like a limp rag. Those huge, beating wings started to make sound as an actual atmosphere surrounded us. Then we were through the clouds, soaring over plains of flames - open, crackling rents in the earth that filled the air with soot. The horizon glowed with the firestorms from Virgil's impacts.
Then we were landed - the ground underneath suddenly transformed into an obsidian black field. The arm holding me up let me go and I gasped as I fell to my hands and knees. I groaned and let myself roll onto my side. I rolled onto my back and saw that I was laying on the parapet of a massive tower. A castle, timeless and yet somehow ancient, loomed out of the hellscape and I was sprawled on the roof with Leviathan.
The immense dragon leaned forward and licked at his claws. Tasting the blood dripping from them.
I pushed myself to a seated position.
"I don't suppose," I said, my voice raspy. "You have anything to eat." I grinned. “Or some cyber-mods? I feel...like I earned a few for that one.”
***
Beatrice Montenegro lounged in her bed, silken sheets draped about her as she listened to her Muse.
[And,] the voice - cool and sexless and modulated in a way designed by expert AI programmers to be utterly relaxing - said. [That is the rest of your personal correspondence for the day. Do you wish to peruse your news feed as well?]
Beatrice sighed and flicked her finger. An augmented reality window pane that showed her the camera feed on one of her brother's parties skidded out of her field of view. She was trying to not feel jealous. But it was so hard . Her brother wasn't just using the funds that father had left him and the company that mother had left him. He was using them to throw parties that the elite were going to be talking about for months. Gene-sequenced extinct tigers? How gauche . She looked at the point of light that represented her Muse and nodded.
[Firstly, the Eastern Bloc has withdrawn forces from-]
"Skip," Beatrice said, closing her eyes.
[Secondly, the Virgil Station Oversight Committee has found several quite damning pieces of evidence against TemplarSoft's CEO and board of directors. The United Nations has opened up an inquiry and there are rumors that they might be facing actual charges.]
That made Beatrice stand up and start towards the bathroom. She needed to splash water in her face - to stop herself from shuddering convulsively. The only good thing about that whole horrid business was that whatever had taken the station hadn't left enough evidence on her . The evidence brought by that awful doctor-
[Doctor Jules V. Delacroix,] her muse said.
"Right," she muttered as she rubbed the water into her face. "That awful doctor might have taken the corporation down, but at least he-"
She stopped.
Her reflection was smirking at her.
Beatrice stood stock still, her eyes wide as saucers. Her reflection wasn't just smirking. It was also subtly and grossly different in a dozen different ways. Thin scars seamed several parts of her otherwise naked body. Her breasts were slightly larger. Her eyes were...warmer than hers. Playful, even. The reflection then held up a piece of paper - the words written with the too-careful strokes of someone deliberately writing backwards, the tiny errors created by this making them look odd...but still readable.
DONATE FORTUNE TO CHARITY
Beatrice opened her mouth wide.
The reflection flipped the paper, then slapped it against the mirror.
OR YOU WILL REGRET IT
The 'will' had been underlined and circled a few dozen times. Between blinks, the reflection was normal again. Beatrice stammered. Five minutes later, she was on the phone with her accountant.
"I don't care how hard it its!" She said, clutching the crystal orb of the phone to her head. She could have used her internal coms, but at the moment, Beatrice desperately wanted to hold something. "Start some charities! R-Right now!"
***
I sprawled in the bed. It didn't seem right for Hell to be quite so comfortable. My aching muscles twinged as Leviathan's hands caressed along my shoulders. I shivered as his cool fingers found places where I had gotten tight and he loosened them. I let myself turn into a puddle and reflected on just what a bit of sleep, some food, some drink, and a quiet talk could do to someone's perspectives. Lev had taken me to his kitchens and cooked up something that tasted a great deal like a well marbled ribeye. I had eaten, drunk down some beer, and gone right to sleep. The next three days had been spent just...recovering.
There were nightmares.
There were shivers and shakes.
Lev didn't talk much.
But he did hold me. So there was that.
Then, when he did talk, it was simple and to the point.
"Interaction is bidirectional."
My brow had furrowed, my cheek pressed to the hard muscle of his belly. I kissed around the soft divot I kept calling a belly button, despite it being no such thing on his alien biology. The kiss had come naturally - though we hadn't shared more than fifty words between one another. It was a bond made in fire and blood and sex. I didn't... wouldn't call it love, but it was something that made a kiss like that feel as natural as breathing.
"Okay," I had said. "Evil can't come into a world without good leaving it."
Lev inclined his head, fractionally. His avatar had cables connecting it to his draconic body, which sprawled on a massive pile of obsidian and copper and shale rocks. Smoke rose from several points on his body, wafting down wind over us and filling my nose with his scent. I noticed that as his head was inclined, his dragon body nodded in unison - creating a small cascade of shale rocks.
"Temporal exigencies force alteration in cyclic systems," he said.
"Time makes Hell different," I translated.
He held up his hand, inclining it from side to side. When he spoke, it was his dragon who opened its mouth and the words were deep . Bone rattling, sex moisteningly deep.
"Possibilities exist."
"But are resisted, aren't they?" I asked, quietly.
Both nodded.
"Entrenchment in purpose leads to calcification of mentality." Lev chuckled, quietly. I snorted and leaned forward. I found his nipple and bit it gently. He rumbled quietly. I felt a strange squirming happiness in that rumble.
"Well, ain't that just a pisser?" I asked, brushing my hands through my hair. I sat up and shook myself a bit. "Lucifer runs away from the Big G to find freedom. Now, who knows how many billions of years later, he's just as stuck in a rut."
"Biblical allegories are imperfect and inexact," Lev said, shrugging those athletic shoulders of his. "Suffice to say that the multiverse remains irreducibly complex. There exists threats larger than a lack of illumination."
I shook my head slowly. "I can't fucking solve those."
"You can solve this. Or help." He looked right into my eyes.
I smiled. "I'll need a break, first."
And I had gotten it.
Rested. Relaxed. equipped. Blackened and scarred by reentry, my shotcannon had been tossed away from the space station, and had landed in the vast plains. The artisans loyal to Lev had worked day and night to restore her to working quality. My armor was pitted and scored - but I hadn't wanted it fixed. I liked it weatherbeaten. Armed and armored, I stepped out of the front gates of Lev's castle. I rested the shotcannon against my shoulder and looked out at the vast steppes of Hell. The smoldering flames, rising and crackling from the pits. The rust red skies.
According to Lev’s agents, the breakup of Virgil station had scattered cyber-mods. Demons, inspired by the many sacrifices TempleSoft had made, used them now. That meant that demons were producing cybernetic modifications and the mod-packages themselves.
That meant that I had some places to go. Some places to grow.
In the distance, I could see the banners of Lucy's armies.
I grinned.
"The mind games are over, buddy," I muttered.
And I set off.
Cause I had some hell to pay.
THE END
Dragon Cobolt, Mind Games
Mind Games Page 15
