Transformation from what? her sister said, listening in on her thoughts.
“You still don’t understand, do you, Warchild? I found my ship. I think it’s time I met my makers.”
“Your makers?” Jetta kicked aside one of the Liikers that had gotten too close to her, causing the others scramble toward their hiding spots.
In the back of her head she felt a growing disquiet radiating from her brother. He was sensing something beyond what she or Jaeia could, an unseen, imminent danger in Victor’s grasp.
“Yes. And I fully intend to return as I see fit. I find it insulting to have you stand before me as you are, ungrateful and unworthy of your gifts, weak and impuissant, while I am the one capable of wielding what you cannot. It’s very disconcerting.”
“What would you do with these gifts, Victor?” Jaeia said, removing her helmet and stepping onto the platform.
“Ah, Captain! So good to see you again. Congratulations once again on your promotion! I know how hard it’s been for you to rise above your sister’s reputation,” he said, raising his glass. He crossed his legs and seemed delighted to answer her question. “I tried to murder the people of Earth 1,100 years ago, but that was before my eyes were opened. Much too vulgar, and too trivial a pursuit—a menial task for someone else’s pleasure. I want to rape the soul of this galaxy. I want the worlds to collapse into the suffering that gave birth to this wretched existence—to me.”
Her brother’s words formed in her head and trickled out her mouth in a gasp.
“You are... quite... the... Sportive Lunatic.”
Victor’s voice became hushed. The room darkened and closed in. “What did you say?”
Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic.
The words from Victor’s correspondence with Ramak Yakarvoah repeated over and over in her head.
What are trying to tell me? she called out to her brother.
Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic.
Jetta ground her teeth and dug her nails into her forehead.
Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic. Sportive Lunatic.
Jahx—help me see!
Victor uncrossed his legs and stood up. Setting down his champagne glass, he tucked his cane in his armpit, and clapped his hands together.
“Let me show you the face of suffering, what the Gods never intended. Let me show you how I will take the reins of the Azerthenes’ power and purify this universe.”
The floor next to Victor’s chair slid open. Jetta and Jaeia fell to their knees as the monster with the burning red eye elevated from the bowels of the command center. The Motti Overlord hissed at the sight of them, excitedly moving his pincers back and forth.
Fear and panic consumed all rational thought. She reared back her knife to throw at M’ah Pae, but a Liiker drone tumbled down from the ceiling and seized her blade before she could release it. Other Liikers spilled out from the opening in the floor, crawling over her and her companions, stripping their weapons. Everything around them buzzed, moved, and vibrated with flesh-skinned machines.
Jahx—I need you!
“I know you have met my servant, M’ah Pae,” Victor said. Jetta watched in sickened awe as the Motti Overlord bowed to his master in an unprecedented display of subordination, allowing Victor to place ringed fingers on his mottled skull.
“He has been most faithful to me all these years. We have been patiently awaiting this moment since the fall of Earth. You and your siblings almost ruined our chance once—it won’t happen again.”
Jetta couldn’t believe her ears, or eyes. Victor had been behind the Dominion Wars. He was behind the Motti’s rise to power, and their second coming. He was there all along, waiting and plotting for his chance at galactic genocide.
Oh my Gods—
What did he say?
“I tried to murder the people of Earth 1,100 years ago, but that was before my eyes were opened...”
She saw the words in her head again: Sportive Lunatic. They broke apart, floating in a sea of whispers, of confusing imagery from places she had never been and people she had ever seen, until they rearranged themselves into a backdrop of a world reduced to ashes.
Sportive Lunatic. It’s an anagram for Victor Paulstine—
Jaeia heard her revelation and put the remaining pieces together. Ramak and Victor are the same person.
With a scream, Jetta lunged wildly for Victor. He never moved or flinched as his servant snatched Jetta with his pincers and slammed her into the ground.
“No!” Jaeia shouted, but Victor cautioned her.
“One more step and I’ll end her life.”
Jetta could see Jaeia holding Triel back as she struggled to breathe against the intense pain and pressure the Motti Overlord exerted on her chest.
Don’t let her Fall— Jetta whispered silently to her sister, feeling Triel’s mounting rage.
“Do you know who I am?” Victor said, leaning down to whisper in her ear. His voice sounded disembodied, inhuman. “I am the monster inside your head, the venom in your veins. I am the rot eating away your soul.”
Jetta couldn’t breathe. Something slipped into her head, a veil cast over her eyes. She wanted to scream, but she no longer had a mouth, and she no longer had a body. She unraveled from the inside out as Victor Paulstine stepped inside her skin.
JETTA—
Jaeia fell to her knees as something bit into the back of her head. She felt the Healer grab onto her and drag her away from the scene as Victor laughed. “So weak, so useless.”
“Jaeia,” Triel said, propping her up behind a console and shaking her shoulders. “You’ve got to come around. He’s poisoning her mind.”
Jaeia fought the pitting nausea as her sister’s presence tore away from her like a limb pulled from socket.
“I feel her too,” Triel said, her face blanched and clammy. She hugged Jaeia tightly. “We have to help her fight.”
Jaeia caught glimpses of Kurt holding up her brother, hysterically trying to bring him out of his stupor.
Victor’s hold on Jetta is so strong—
—he’s dragging all three of us down with her—
Tipping her head back, Jaeia fought the fire consuming her belly. She could hear Victor’s voice in her sister’s mind, playing to her worst fears, making her worst nightmares come true.
Jaeia saw Victor and Jetta standing in their old apartment, in the bedroom in front of the mirror. Positioning himself behind her, Victor whispered in Jetta’s ear, pointing to the reflection. Jaeia tried to shout out to her, to tell her the hideous beast with scarred, swollen flesh and rivulets of saliva streaming across pulsating appendages wasn’t real.
(It’s a lie!) she screamed, trying to draw her sister’s attention away from the gruesome creature mimicking her movements.
(Jetta, no—look away—that’s not you!) she tried again. But their bond felt choked, as if Victor had knotted it in his fist.
“Kill them,” she heard Victor say. “Kill the ones that make you weak.”
TRIEL SCREAMED WHEN she saw Jetta’s face. Green eyes projected only menace and hatred. She no longer felt the soul that had shone through its corporeal fetters, but a vacuum encased in false skin.
The Liikers buzzed in a high-pitched frenzy as Jetta rose from M’ah Pae’s clutches and approached them. She isn’t just going to kill us; she’s going to tear apart our souls.
Jetta, she called out, remember us—remember me—remember my love for you!
“Kill them!” Victor laughed, raising his glass. “Rid yourself of their wasted flesh.”
A chasm of hopelessness and fear broke open inside her.
No, I cannot let myself Fall—
Triel swallowed the awful truth. There’s no turning back.
(Then I will use the last of my strength to save her.)
Warm hands lifted her from the ground. Two blue eyes gazed back at her. In them she soared beyond her own sight, beyond the realms of human understanding, into
the worlds she had only known from the carvings inside the Temple of Exxuthus.
“Jahx,” she whispered. “Help us.”
JETTA DIDN’T RECOGNIZE the world. On some level she sensed the roots of the nightmare, a place born of hatred and unfulfilled needs, selfish desires and untold suffering; a place she had brushed against in the hearts of men. But not like this. No one person could imagine this hell.
Faintly aware of her surroundings, she walked down the aisle of a burning church. Its bells tolled the end of the world, and the foundation rumbled. As she approached the altar, the ones who came before her, strung up by their ankles and dangling from the rafters, doused her in their drippings. Blood and black oil oozed from their raw, mangled flesh, riddled with machinery and inorganic matter she did not recognize. She heard familiar cries, calling her from a distant place, but she could not understand them.
She knelt down before the altar. Candles made from broken fingers illuminated the passages of the Book of the Worm laid out before her. Passages whispered up from the pages—
“...without hope, there is total freedom...”
“...he will open his eyes to the dead light of his wickedness...”
“...submit to the wrath of chaos...”
A severed head with open eyes lay next to the Book of the Worm. She thought she might have recognized the face. A voice she should have known whispered his name.
(Josef Stein...)
A knife lay next to the severed heard. She took it, cleaning its bloodied blade on her thigh.
“I loved them. That’s why I did this,” the head lamented.
Jetta raised the knife with two hands, aiming for her chest. The ground quaked, and the fire roared in anticipation.
That’s when she heard the clatter.
She looked down, arms tense and shaking, blade hungering for her flesh.
Jahx stood beside her, his hand open above the altar. Following his line of sight, Jetta saw the rock dice that had dropped from his hand and onto the soiled cloth.
(Jetta,) he said. (What do you see?)
Jetta’s arms dropped to her side, the knife clanging to the stone floor. She touched the rock dice, not believing what she saw. The tattoo. The symbol they had carried with them all their lives.
(Believe, Jetta,) Jahx said as the roof caved in around them. The stone floor split down the center, a guttural scream rising from the glowing pits. She reached out for him as the world collapsed.
JETTA FOUND HERSELF lying in a heap next to her sister, Triel, and Kurt as they sheltered behind a console.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked through a mouth stuffed with cotton.
Triel embraced her tightly. “Jetta, thank the Gods.”
“Jahx!” Jaeia shouted, picking herself off the ground.
Propping herself up, Jetta saw her brother standing in front of the platform. Victor, still sitting in his command chair, looked delighted as the Motti Overlord and the hoard of Liikers writhed around him in a humming mass.
Somehow Jahx’s voice broke through the noise of the swarm. “I have kept my promise. I have come to save you, to set you free.”
“What did he say?” Kurt said, shooting up from his cover.
Jetta pulled him back down. I don’t know what he’s doing, she thought, feeling the edge of her brother’s knowledge, but we need to keep our position.
Victor laughed and sipped his drink. “Ah, and you must be the venerable Jahx Kyron, the weakest of the Kyron three. I remember when my Liikers tore you limb from limb. Oh, how you screamed. How you got your skin back, I’m not sure, but I’ll enjoy tearing it apart once more.”
Jahx’s voice never changed pitch or volume, but seized all who listened. “You cannot trick me with your lies. I know who you are, and I know your heart.”
Slamming down his drink, Victor pointed his cane at Jahx. “Kill him.”
Jahx looked down at the Liikers circling his feet and spoke in a language Jetta did not understand or even recognize. The Liikers backed away from him, settling back around Victor.
“I pity you, Ramak Yakarvoah. You were always inferior, the one in Josef’s shadow, the one remembered not for his genius, but for the ugliness his mother made known to the world.”
Victor squeezed his cane, knuckles turning white. “How dare you—”
“She looked at you and wept. Her religion made her believe she had given birth to the devil, and that it was her duty to put an end to your life. But you survived because you are a parasite, and you draw your life from the suffering of others.”
Her brother’s knowledge played out in her head like clips from an old movie. Ramak’s descent into madness after his mother set fire to him. The government agencies rescuing him, trying to salvage the burned remains of an orphaned child. Jealousy and rage as the successes of a handsome classmate who never thought twice about his gifts overshadowed his own achievements. The subconscious invention of Victor Paulstine, and the blurring of his identity as Josef Stein treated his scars with synthetic skin made by his Smart Cells.
“Your genius was all you had, and yet it paled in comparison to Josef’s. He was always better than you, even when you were children.”
“Is that so?” Victor said, his anger dissolving into a smug smile. “You think I was no match for the brilliant Josef Stein? The one who was supposed to bring about enlightenment, the spiritual evolution of the human race, and yet destroyed the world?”
Enraged at the accusation, Kurt Stein tried to break cover and go after Victor, but Jetta held him down. “Just wait.”
Victor’s teeth sparkled, his synthetic skin pulled taut. “I was the one to discover what we were—prophets created by the Azerthenes to compete for the heart of mankind. And I, the one who you accuse of being the lesser, did not kill my saintly opposition.” Victor looked back at M’ah Pae and laughed. “No, I showed brutal benevolence. I turned a savior into a disciple of death.”
Jetta gasped as her brother’s inner eye became her own. The Motti Overlord with the burning red eye and twisted flesh dissolved into a dark-haired man with mournful eyes and bloodied hands. She saw his aura, faint and flickering, in the shadow of the great beast.
“Josef—”
“Enough of this madness. Kill him. Kill them all! ” Victor thundered.
This time M’ah Pae took charge, the weight of his many legs splitting the white tile.
“Dad!”
Jetta couldn’t hold Kurt back as he leapt out from behind his cover.
“Dad, no! Stop! It’s me, Kurt! Dad! Please, Dad!”
Liikers poured over Kurt, slamming him into the ground. Jetta protected Jaeia and Triel as long as she could before the sheer number of fleshy machines overwhelmed her and struck them all down.
“Dad, please!” Kurt screamed as the Liikers tore at his skin. “Dad—don’t you remember your own son? It’s me!”
Grabbing Jahx by the waist, M’ah Pae brought his razored pincers to his neck. Jahx did not struggle as he dangled off the ground.
“Josef Stein,” Jahx said, closing his eyes. “You have not forgotten. Remember.”
JETTA AND JAEIA’S MINDS split between two worlds as their brother delved into the depths of the Motti Overlord.
What is he doing? He’s going too fast— Jetta called out to her sister.
No, Jaeia replied, lending her sister a different perspective into their brother. Glimpses of his former abduction by the Deadwalkers, and a chance searching of M’ah Pae’s soul, touched Jetta’s mind. He’s already been down this pathway.
Still, Jetta could barely keep up with him as he dove through the murk and the sludge until she feared she could go no further. Memories, tortured beyond those of any Sentient she had ever grafted, bombarded her at every turn.
(Jahx, I can’t go on—)
(You must never be afraid,) he whispered back as he plunged deeper. (You have to believe.)
Jetta thought of Yahmen, and of all the times Jahx had fruitlessly tried to help their abusive
owner, risking his life for him.
(We’re all here this time,) she heard her sister say. A hand wrapped around her own. (Trust in our strength.)
Jetta slowed her breathing down, blocking out the psionic cacophony and concentrating on the steady pulse of her siblings. Opening up her mind to them, she gave them all that she had. She remembered the Josef Stein that Edgar Wallace passionately revered, and her mother’s respect for a brilliant scientist and a good man. She recalled his last video recording, asking for forgiveness and promising to find the son he loved. Most of all, she concentrated on her own visions of the man with the immense second shadow, the angel from her nightmares.
“Ramak lied to you,” she heard her brother say. She saw him reaching for a petrified heart in a hollow chest. “Kurt lives.”
OPENING HER EYES TO the real world, Jetta saw that her brother was no longer in death’s clutches. The Motti Overlord had released him and stood completely erect on all of his legs.
M’ah Pae’s face contorted in disbelief. In a garbled, grating voice, he feebly said, “Kurt?”
“Dad—please—help us!” Kurt cried out as one of the Liikers sliced away at his chest.
The Overlord hissed, and the attacking Liikers immediately retracted their pincers and scuttled away from Jetta and her companions.
“Kurt, you’re alive...” M’ah Pae said, his single eye tearing with a mucoid substance. He crouched down and extended his front graspers, as if to offer an embrace. Bloodied and bruised, Kurt touched the edge of his father’s metallic limb and wept.
In the corner of her eye, Jetta saw Victor steadily backing off the platform.
“Don’t let him get away!” she shouted. As she tried to scramble to her feet, her lungs protested the sudden exertion, sending up gobs of bright red blood. Gritting her teeth, she forced her legs to work past the dizzy burn, and ran after him.
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