Hell's Gifts - Complete Series Boxset

by Mark Russo

  I laid my hand on the knob, and a trapdoor opened below my feet, and I fell downward. Darkness enveloped me, and my body accelerated as it plummeted. I expected to reach the bottom, but it did not happen. I pierced the air without knowing where that mind trip would leave me.

  “You’re not scaring me. I’m rather bored.”

  I slowed down, and my feet touched the ground again. Darkness still surrounded me. Something circled me.

  “Enjoy your time with the Kund. It’s a delicate creature. I wouldn’t move, if I were you.”

  I had to prioritize my actions. Kunds are Mind creatures, so it would perceive any intense emotional state.

  The six-legged beast marched in circles around me and drew closer. That’s what a Kund does before attacking.

  I closed my eyes and did that breathing exercise they taught me as a kid. It would relax me.

  It affected the weird monster immediately; it slowed its pace.

  Although I couldn’t see the animal hunting me, I could perceive its cumbersome presence. I recalled how it was to run in the Highlands as a kid, the feeling of the cold wind stroking my chapped lips, the smell of hay in my grandparents’ house.

  The Kund’s paws shuffled farther away, proving my strategy at least partially effective.

  Then I relaxed, maybe too much, and my ankle twisted on itself—one of those pointless movements just to adjust my posture. As soon as my heel scoured on the pointy gravel beneath it, I heard the beast burst suddenly toward me. Then I realized I had just stepped on soil. I couldn’t believe my captor had been so stupid.

  I lowered my back as fast as I could, and I touched the small rocks with the tips of my fingers. That was when I knew I was myself again.

  The monstrous entity’s charge ended violently against a Rock Wall I had summoned by my side. The impact sounded like a giant mosquito squashing on the windshield at high speed. Then nothing. I couldn’t hear it moving anymore, only the rhythmical repetition of my breath. I conjured a Stone Board and bolted away.

  “Where do you think you are going? You’ll die if you head that way.” The voice sounded distant now.

  I carried the wall for protection—I certainly needed some, since my energy reserve was not yet at its max. I roamed an unknown area of Plane K and anticipated another fight ahead. I needed to find Emma more than anything else.

  13

  Maria

  Something new had come my way, joder. I imagined I would have gotten a more complicated task, since I had completed the first. My peers had incredible abilities, and I was the one often ending up doing pointless stuff. For example, throwing a ball against a wall was my latest assignment. Nothing against doing it for wasting time or when awfully bored, but Akko looked so severe when he explained it I had no other choice but to take it seriously.

  My hand moved up and down, following the trajectory of that damn rubber sphere. Up when hurling forward, low for catching it on its return. It was tedious, and, for the second time, I was not sure of its benefit. I lost count how many times I threw it against the wall and watched it hit the bright blue wall.

  “Pleased to see you’re practicing. Any improvements so far?” He appeared behind me.

  “Don’t you see I’m a rising baseball star?” I strongly doubt he got the joke.

  He moved closer. “I’ll give you a hint, Maria. Remember the stones. Sometimes things are not what they seem. We probably should take a break, right?”

  I thought he had some knowledge of the Path of Mind too. In certain situations, he said the right thing at the right time.

  “I want to check out on Emma and James.”

  Akko raised his head, aligning his eyes with mine. He activated the magical antique, and it took some time for it to show what was happening to the closest person I had at EIBM. It was like looking in a super old cathode TV; although the quality of the images was way worse.

  “What do you want to do? She’s caged, no escaping that place. I told you that they would end up like that.”

  My throat became drier, and I coughed a few times. “Can we do something for her? We have to try.”

  He raised his voice. “No, Maria. I don’t want anyone to think I might have something to do with any of this.”

  I looked away from him. “Do we leave her there to die? Can we do something?”

  He surged toward me, grinding his irregular teeth. “If some of my people discover I have an eye on their part of Plane K, they’ll take it back.”

  “How do you mean? Ain’t this Plane K as well?”

  “It’s more complicated than that, kiddo.”

  “How? Can I—”

  “Stare into that as long as you want, it won’t do anything to help Emma. End of discussion.” He turned and walked away, irritated.

  Emma was standing in a cage; it was almost inconceivable how lost and lonely that place must be. I couldn’t take it, I had to take action and support her. With a deeper inspection, the device looked like an outdated mirror, like those I would find in some 3D museums in TL. I went behind it, hoping to spot an interface to interact with—a button or a magic switch—but no such things adorned that marred wooden piece of furniture. In front of the window in Emma’s prison, I noticed she was still there, barely moving, her head lowered.

  I realized I might mentally connect with her. She was Path of Mind, that would probably come in handy. As the bear had taught me, I closed my eyes and concentrated, like those guys did in those yoga things I had attended. I inhaled then exhaled rhythmically, focusing on my inner peace or a peaceful prairie. My ability to do that had always been lower than my expectations; I gave up as soon as my eyes were open again. My patience wore thin.

  My eyes glared in the mirror again. I wanted to punch into it, but I resisted the impulse, since Akko would have probably killed me. I touched its reflecting surface, and my hand passed through like the mirror was made of water, not glass. I yanked it back and inspected it, but nothing weird had happened to my limb.

  The small one was not behind my back as I feared for a moment; I breathed a sigh of relief. After having checked the whole device again assuring I hadn’t damaged it, I just couldn’t help myself but put my hand into that fluid-glass barrier again. And, just like that, my hand was inside the mirror, inside Emma’s narrow cage, but she didn’t seem to notice my phantomlike presence. It felt like having my arm shoved into a puddle of soft mud, like you would experience in those hyper-enhanced perceptive worlds in TL. I had tried that equipment once, but it did not impress me.

  I wouldn’t touch her, no need to scare her more than she already was. As soon as I made contact with those cage bars, they bent and plummeted to the ground. I retracted my arm and breathed faster.

  Emma didn’t escape at first. She might have thought they were tricking her again. I really didn’t feel like submerging my arm in that thing for a third time. My minute mentor was still not around.

  Then she moved. She slowly lingered toward the exit I had created.

  I stared so closely to her that the tip of my nose got wet from touching the mirror’s liquid surface. I should have kept a greater distance from Akko’s relic.

  Then she slipped out and disappeared. Was she even safe?

  “Are you still wasting your time there, Maria?”

  “She’s not there anymore.”

  He poked me with his stick. “Resume your exercise. You’re not helping anyone by staking out her cage.”

  “I will, just don’t hit me. It’s not helping.”

  I looked one last time into the mirror, but she was gone. There I was again, hurling a rubber ball against a wall. I thought the wall might be the point of all that throwing, so I approached it.

  A huge chunk of cement-like material was very close to my pupils, but I could not spot any details or a symbol hinting at a hidden meaning. It was a colorful wall, though. Yes, the color—damn, this place had them all wrong.

  Emma and James were somewhere in this terrible place, in danger of God knows w
hat troubles, and I was busy doing something meaningless. I returned to my position, blood boiling, and launched the ball with all the strength I had. Things looked quite different then.

  The rubber object bounced back toward me and multiplied. Dozens and dozens of balls exploded in my direction, perfectly aligned on the same trajectory. I didn’t have time to react, so I kneeled, protecting my head with my hands, like people during an earthquake or an explosion.

  When the ball hit my back and all the others disappeared, I looked around more puzzled than I had been in days.

  “Are you scared of this ball, Maria? It’s a just a toy, a piece of junk.”

  I stayed on my knees, and Akko looked as tall as me. My hope was he would not tickle me with his lumpy stick.

  “I’m sure you won’t explain what just happened, and I’ll get more riddles and nonsense.”

  He cleared his throat and straightened his neck. “What you just witnessed was a temporal series.”

  “Yes. Now I understood everything. Thanks.”

  He lifted the ball again. “Relax. Don’t be afraid. You won’t get hurt.” Akko performed the best baseball pitch I had ever seen, and the ball skyrocketed into the color-shifting top layer of Aeg.

  Thousands of different balls followed the first one, creating a visual effect very impressive, even for someone like me used to top-notch 4D inter-animation sequences.

  “Why are there so many balls in the sky? You threw just one.”

  “As you’ve already seen twice now, there aren’t many but only one.” He confused me even more.

  I remained kneeling, for no plain reason. “So, when we launch this ball, it multiplies, but then it becomes one again? Am I right?” I gestured exaggeratedly with my hands as I talked.

  He shook his head, remaining very serious. “No, Maria. The ball is one all the time. The only thing that changes is the moment you look at it.”

  “You say that you’re teaching me how to see time moving?”

  His smiled. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “But the pond did not move. What about that?”

  He paced, like an anxious person waiting for a doctor to deliver the diagnosis. “The pond works the other way around. Most stones are projections of the central one. The pond is a magical place where time is at the same time, flowing and forever still.”

  “I think I understand. What do I do now?”

  “You’ve seen that time moves. Now you’ll learn how to walk through it.”

  This perspective excited me for the first time since I got to Aeg. Walking through time? Wow! I got quite emotional, even for my standards. “I’m more than ready. Tell me what to do. I can do more than one exercise simultaneously.”

  He giggled, patting the ground with his stick. “We don’t do that here. You’ll follow every step needed to master the Path of Time.”

  I nodded while looking here and there, like waiting for something to happen at any moment.

  “Follow me. Remain behind my back. Try nothing I don’t ask you to do.”

  “Sure, I’ll behave.”

  When he started walking, the disbursement that happened to the ball happened to everything around us, like reality was being dismantled into slightly different photos and we were walking through them. It was overwhelming.

  “I’m feeling sick.” I bent over and vomited.

  Akko came by my side. “Do you realize why we have to do this slowly? You’re still very much like a regular human.”

  “How do you mean, very much like a human?”

  “Did you think all of this would not change you, Maria?”

  Later, I was alone in the pond's vicinity, reflecting upon all I had learned today. My trainer could see time moving; he had lectured me long about it. How to walk through time was still a mystery. Did he mean we might, like, time travel? Or was it something else? Could we stop aging? The answer to all those questions eluded me; my mind moved elsewhere.

  Akko could spread the ball-launch effect to everything around himself. It felt like the world multiplied and infinite skies existed. I’d probably be capable of doing that too, maybe sooner than later.

  When I hurl the ball, it accelerates. Up to this point, that’s nothing new. Then something happens, and I see it multiply. When it finishes moving though, the ball is one, like in the very beginning. Does the speed have something to do with all that?

  I had an idea. I took the wind sprint stance; I barely remembered it from that game I played with my family once. Then my feet left the ground. I gained speed, and it happened, like I expected. Everything around me multiplied for a moment. I saw an infinite line of ponds before me.

  It lasted for less than a second, then all the nausea and lightheadedness returned, and I barely managed not to retch again. I was on my knees, but I was finally smiling.

  14

  Emma

  I stepped out of the cage, and the surroundings transformed. On both my left and right sides, colossal walls erected as far as I could see. Climbing was not an option. I was born in the mountains, but I never interacted with them much. The area appeared like a canyon dug in Plane K’s green soil. I had no recollection of being there ever before.

  In the world I come from, such a place would be windy as hell. In plane K, it was quite the opposite, as the air was motionless.

  They let me out to wander that wasteland, and I expected something bad to happen any second. I was confident it was all another trick. My thoughts returned to James; who knew what might have happened to him?

  Having no indications to follow, I proceeded straight to explore that profound canyon and see where it would lead me. The powder that Plane K soil would become when you stepped on it covered my arms and legs. The line of what once was a river curved left, hiding the horizon.

  If they wanted to kill me, they would have done it already. I needed to repeat those words. I concentrated on my self-preservation instincts and noticed a clearing on the right-hand side—a small patch of green grass reminding me of my grandparents’ house in the mountains. I’m Swiss; mountains always had a dedicated place in my heart. The grass was green and soft; it had to be there for a reason, probably connected with another wicked torture those monsters were planning for me.

  For a split second, I forgot about Plane K, about EIBM, about that devious bear, and all the rest. It almost relieved me to be here. I eventually got a little more curious about that place. If that was a strategy to make me miserable, it wasn’t the worst I could imagine.

  I walked more. Soon after, the canyon broadened in a much wider valley. It was dark all around, except for a lighted spot at expanse’s center. I threaded my way carefully. Even if that place didn’t prove unpleasant yet, it heightened my senses.

  I reached the illuminated area, and I entered a room without walls. Despite this detail, it was a replica of my parents’ kitchen. It was my kitchen. That big fridge was there, the smart one.

  “Hello, Emma. Would you like some water? Your dermal sensors suggest you’re dehydrated.”

  I opened the fridge and drank from the glass container my mom and I had overpaid on that auction site. And it was just as refreshing as I would have expected. Those countertops looked even cleaner than I could recollect. Touching those flat and smoothed surfaces was like clinging onto a long gone past, moments lost hundreds of years before.

  Then those monsters’ tricks worsened—the worst I’d dare say. Sitting on a tattered carpet I would use as a playground as an infant was another me. A child me, and it was not one of my Doubles.

  When she noticed me, I had no other choice but to talk to her—to me. “Hello, Emma.”

  The kid regarded me, pulling away a little. “Who are you? Are you one of those people working for my mom?”

  “Yes, yes. I was just passing by to check on you.”

  “There is no need.” She pointed at something I had completely blocked out.

  The robot-nanny. I had probably spent years alone with her. My parents got the v
ery advanced model that could do everything a human caregiver would do, but just better.

  “Hi, Ara. Do you remember me?”

  The automaton smiled. “Of course, I do. It’s been a long time.”

  “My nanny is teaching me how to use the toilet. My mom finds that disgusting.”

  Oh, I remembered that. Corporal functions and substances were something my mom would never even hint at while talking to me.

  “Will you stay for dinner?” Ara asked me.

  Did they really dive this deep into my memories?

  “What are you guys having for dinner?”

  “Candies and chocolate,” the baby-me yelled.

  Yes, I craved sugar constantly as a kid. I think my body weight issues started way back then.

  “We’re having soup—minerals and proteins enriched. We’d love to have you for dinner.”

  I nodded.

  “Are my parents around?”

  “They’ll be home soon, Emma.”

  “They always will be home soon. I’m used to that.”

  I looked at the baby-me one last time. She waved as I moved to the other side of the kitchen.

  “There is something else you might want to see,” Ara said while following me.

  We turned left through the door to my room, and we found ourselves again in the canyon, my former robot wet nurse by my side.

  “Will you leave the kid alone?” I asked her, as if all that was even real.

  “She’s used to being alone. We have important things to do.”

  Her presence helped me relax. She always had that effect on me.

  “How is it even possible you’re here?”

  She stopped walking and regarded me in a way I had seen thousands of times before. “It’s this place, Emma.”

  “Who’s controlling you, Ara? Why they don’t just kill me?”

  “You don’t understand. Follow me. I’ll show you a few other places. Trust me.”

  And on we went. The area looked exactly like before—a long, deep furrow in Plane K’s gleaming sick-green soil. We probably were in the very same spot as when I first found myself here, since I could no longer see that reproduction of my kitchen around me. This plane proved multiple times it didn’t make much spatial sense. They had holes in the sky here.