“Whatever is causing the implant to fail on Earth it is not the power source alone,” Malkier said, his voice disappointed.
“If I may sir?” Cede began, “It could be worth exploring whether or not all variables that were present on the two occurrences are accounted for. What commonalities existed in both instances?”
Malkier considered. “Water. It rained when I fought the father and the son. And we weren’t on the ground, but on the roof of one of their taller structures.”
Without needing to ask, Cede began to alter the chamber around him. The inner sanctum lost the appearance of Feroxian tunnels and gave way to the black void. Projections began to manifest in an approximation of a human rooftop beneath his feet. Once the details solidified, an overcast sky came into existence above him. Soon, the humidity rose as cold water began running down his skin.
“Yes,” Malkier said, his excitement growing. “Again, Cede.”
The lightning came from above this time, as though it were a naturally occurring phenomenon. Again, the light came. Again, the threads arced over his body and the wet surfaces of the rooftop. Again, they dissipated, and nothing had changed.
What else had he failed to account for? The humans themselves? Brings the Rain had been standing on that rooftop with him. Likewise, he had been holding Echoes the Borealis by the throat ten years earlier. It seemed unlikely that a man with an implant need be caught in the current with him.
Then a far more immediate difference occurred to him. In both incidents, he had been inside The Never. Could the makeup of the temporary dimension have a role? He had to hope not, Heyer’s AI alone possessed the technology to open The Never. There had to be something simpler.
“The stone,” Malkier said.
“This would have been present in both instances,” Cede concurred.
“Prepare it.”
A pedestal began to manifest within a gathering puddle beside him. The water parted as it rose to the height of his torso. A moment later, the small red sphere formed. He plucked it off the surface and stared down at the lambent red glow it cast from his palm. He only waited for another moment. The insertion was never a pleasant experience—not unlike swallowing a rock. As the sphere settled in his stomach, he felt it react, becoming a viscous mass that slithered carefully inside him. Closing his eyes, he waited as that mass crawled its way into his torso and began the disturbing internal process that created the vein-like appendages that anchored the stone inside him. When it ended, he shook the experience off, and looked once more into the sky.
“Again,” Malkier said.
Light built in the clouds above, then surged down with a clap of thunder.
Malkier couldn’t move. He thrashed against the bonds in the dark as he opened his eyes and found himself in the inner sanctum once again. The building, the sky, the rain were all gone, and the normal camouflage of the cave tunnels had been restored.
“Cede, release me,” Malkier said.
The shackles holding him fell away and he caught himself with his hands before falling to the tunnel floor. He had not fully regained his faculties, feeling as if he had suddenly been jarred from a long sleep.
“What did you observe?”
“Your device was temporarily disabled,” Cede said. “For a short period Ends the Storm reclaimed control. While I did not reveal myself to him, he believed himself on Earth. I ended the rooftop simulation in an attempt to calm him. However, I was forced to restrain him when he began beating the walls in search of a way out. I feared that he might injure the host body in his panic.”
Malkier could feel Cede’s explanation. The skin of his hands felt raw, as though they had been thrashed against the rough surfaces of the tunnel only to find that they would not give. He felt similar discomfort from every point of restraint Cede had used to keep the Alpha Ferox subdued.
“Ends the Storm was not amenable to having his movement restricted,” Cede said. “The wounds have not healed. It is peculiar, but not without precedent. The wounds incurred while the implant is offline do not heal as they should. Almost as if they are subject to the same rate of repair as any Ferox.”
“What is causing the malfunction?” Malkier asked.
“The reaction is not a malfunction, the implant is temporarily shutting down to safeguard your core memory after it detects a compromised internal environment it cannot actively regulate,” she said.
Malkier chewed on this for a time. “What is keeping it from regulating?”
“The issue appears to be the result of competing regulators inside your body while inside The Never. When you are hit with an external electrical source your host’s internal charges are pushed past desirable thresholds. Normally, your body’s natural anatomy and your implant would take steps to regulate the charge back to ideal conditions—homeostasis. However, when you enter The Never a third regulator is present. The portal stone is attempting to regulate your internal environment. It seems that cross talk exacerbates the issue instead of suppressing it.”
“Fine, can you fix it?”
“The encryption protecting your implant’s programming makes it impossible for me to adjust such things. However, there is no danger to you outside The Never,” Cede said.
“The prophet will fight with his people in the battle for the Promised Land,” Malkier said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “You will find a way to protect me from this inside The Never.”
“An external defense against strong electrical currents should achieve the same result,” Cede said. “A working prototype for testing would not be difficult to produce.”
“Show me,” Malkier said.
Nearby, another platform protruded from the tunnel floor and a black sphere manifested. It looked like a finely polished cannon ball, until Malkier picked it up. The moment he touched it, the sphere lost shape, losing cohesion until it became a cold viscous slime in his hand. That slime began to spread up his arm, its mass thinning as it covered the limb. Soon, it coated his chest and was reaching for his feet. He closed his eyes as the material continued to thin and cover his head. When the process was complete, he felt as though he were wearing a second skin, but the liquid had stretched so thin it was transparent.
“The exterior will ground any current and insulate you from contact,” Cede said. “It will provide adequate protection from anything you might encounter on Earth.”
Malkier surveyed his skin skeptically. If recent events proved anything, it was that all Borealis AIs were not created equal. Cede was a newer model, supposedly more advanced than that which was installed on Heyer’s vessel. Yet, she’d proved inferior on multiple occasions. Heyer’s escape from Cede’s security net being the most recent in evidence.
Ever since discovering the vessel on Nevric’s home world, Malkier had found that onboard AI annoyingly eccentric. Too much personality—curiosity. His brother had always given the machine so much leeway with its endless inquiries. When they were younger, Malkier thought it somewhat pathetic—a sadly misplaced affection for a machine that stemmed from Heyer’s loneliness. The same loneliness that eventually led him to seek out the humans.
It was a void Malkier had always tried to fill as his older brother—though they grew apart as the centuries passed. And for what? His brother had chosen humanity over him.
Of late, he couldn’t help but grow wary of what that AI was capable. Perhaps he had misjudged. Perhaps Heyer had long ago seen more in the machine’s programming. Something that gave its consciousness a greater flexibility.
Regardless, upon taking Earth, Heyer’s AI would serve him—and he would do it quietly.
Until then, he required far greater assurances. He would not be satisfied that he was safe in The Never with no more protection than a thin layer of grounding skin. He could not risk his people seeing him weakened, their faith tested while they fought the battle to save their species. The prophet must be an unstoppable force delivering them to the Promised Land.
That, and . . .
&n
bsp; He still didn’t know what had happened to the twenty-eight dead Ferox returned to his gateway.
“This is a start,” he said. “What more can you suggest?”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
DATE | TIME: UNKNOWN | FEROXIAN PLANE
BURNS THE FLAME saw no reason to hurry.
She stopped where the land crested and looked out over a landscape she scarcely recognized. This place that had been her home, was now a depression in the rock. The sheer size made it possible to mistake the hole as a valley, but there was nothing natural about this place—and so she only saw a deepening pit.
The Ferox who had begun the Pilgrimage at the onset, those who had come for no more than rumors of Echoes the Borealis’ rebirth, had rightfully been promised their place on the front lines when the battle for the Promised Land began. However, those who had only come after the prophet’s decree were put to work.
Each day, the pilgrimage brought hundreds more. The males did not come alone, any female of mature age who wished to be a part of the battle had left their tribal lands behind as well.
Unsurprisingly, most had been born during the period when their gods, the Borealis, had abandoned them. They had lived with the fear of helplessly watching their species dwindle—extinction seemingly an ever-approaching inevitability. Now, the Borealis had returned, calling upon her people to once again be the weapon against a race of abominations.
In short, most Ferox had been waiting for this moment their entire life.
As they flooded in, those who were set to work did so without complaint. There was a shame in having had to be called, as though those who had begun the pilgrimage before it was decreed were somehow more attuned with the will of the Borealis. Burns the Flame didn’t doubt that the early arrivals were happy to believe such nonsense—convince themselves that there had been something more than personal glory calling them here before the rest.
The males of her species weren’t known for their introspection.
Below, the workers were a sea of movement. Most of the work was being performed by hand. The Ferox used tools that humans would have found primitive given what they undertook. The heads of pickaxes and hammers were shaped from the hardest stone, their handles fashioned from the bones of the creatures they hunted for food on the Feroxian Plane. In the hands of a Ferox, the massive tools were undeniably effective. Some broke rock, others hauled the largest stones away. The youngest and weakest took part, sweeping the smaller shards and dust into thick sacs fashioned from the skin and stomach of the local creatures.
She would have been amongst them but Burns the Flame’s status had elevated. There was no question that she would soon become the tribe’s most dominant Alpha female. The eldest of Alphas knew who would be the strongest amongst them. There were no politics involved—only instinct. When Burns the Flame completed the last stage of her maturity, the current Alpha would submit to her dominance.
She would, in effect, be second only to the prophet.
Despite her recent steps up the tribal ladder, she was no less in the dark than all the workers below as to what it was they were bringing into being in the rock. Each day the depth increased near twofold as all that stone being hauled out was piled in a steadily growing ring around the quarry. At first there had been a number of ramps that led down, so that the stone could be hauled out from all around the growing circle, but the prophet had decreed the work was nearing its completion and ordered all but the largest of the ramps filled in. Now, only one path led down into the pit.
The very crest of the land she stood on was made of freshly hauled stone. Carried here that day to cover what had been left the night before. From atop it, the shape, but not the purpose, of what they labored to build was plain to see. The prophet would have her people believe that the gods required a massive cylinder drilled into the rock. Yet, the location was not chosen at random, at its center was the mouth of her tribe’s home. Well, what remained of it.
Her home would never be as it was . . . a sadness the prophet asked them to endure for the promise of the new paradise he was to deliver them to—The Promised Land.
. . . Or so the prophet told her people.
Today, there were places where the digging had stopped. The workers in those areas were smoothing—leveling—the prophet called it. The Ferox came to grasp what was needed, though the idea was foreign to them a week past. Apparently, the rock simply being flat was not good enough for what their gods required.
The result was massive and strange to her eyes. Creating a structure unlike any a Ferox had ever labored to build. Everything about it was unfamiliar—and perhaps that was to be expected, as there would only be one battle for the Promised Land—so everything about such an undertaking would be unique.
That said, some of the males, those who had fought in the arena, said there was a resemblance to what they now labored to build and what they had seen constructed by the abominations on the other side.
Burns the Flame had no doubts of this. She had long been alone and silent in her knowledge; she knew the prophet was not what he claimed. As such, that he shared traits with those he called abominations brought her no shock. This was another piece of an answer to a question she couldn’t quite put into words.
Burns the Flames was not the only one who remembered the prophet when he was simply Ends the Storm—before he claimed to speak for the gods. He had been the Alpha of her tribe—but more than that, all who knew him would sense that he’d have been the Alpha of any tribe. If a time ever came that the Ferox needed an Alpha amongst Alphas, Ends the Storm would be that leader.
The reason was simple.
The Alphas seldom met face to face, but whenever this occurred, there was no question who amongst them was the dominant—the Ferox sensed these things the same way they sensed that she would take her place amongst the Alpha females. As such, there was no mystery to her people as to why Ends the Storm had been singled out when their long silent gods finally returned. The Alphas of all the tribes would have obeyed him should he have ever given commands. But, until he became the prophet, Ends the Storm never exercised that theoretical power.
There was an understanding amongst the Ferox that Ends the Storm’s ascension had changed him. It should be expected that being the conduit of the Borealis—a god made flesh—changed him profoundly. Some of the changes were obvious. He was stronger than any Ferox should naturally be. At times he seemed virtually indestructible. When he chose to, he was able to appear to all the tribes—all over the planet at once. And most telling of all, he knew things. Things that none among them could have imagined.
Sometimes he spoke of these things and none amongst them could honestly grasp what he told them.
For a time, she had been as convinced as anyone else that he spoke for the gods. But, while many of the tribe’s females had shared the consonance with Ends the Storm, Burns the Flame alone had shared the experience before and, more importantly, after his ascension to prophet.
Not once, but twice, and in both those instances she had known a difference. Though it remained a contradiction of which she was aware but could not give an explanation. To experience it was to say that, for a time, she believed herself in the company of Ends the Storm. The Ferox he had been before his ascension. It was always short, a thing she sensed in moments when he first came to her. Always in the minutes immediately following the prophet’s return from the gates—scandalous as they were—when he trespassed against his own decree that no Alpha should enter.
Yet, there was always a moment when he slipped away. She knew on some level—even in the rapture of the consonance—it was jarring when Ends the Storm faded away and the prophet returned. How she could know such a thing she was never certain. The consonance was a fire burning itself to ashes, feeding on itself until smoldering in its own exhaustion. It was what bringing life into the world should be. For the very same reason it was a haze, not a moment where one could focus their attention on detail.
But, it was intima
te—and both times she felt as though she had been with two separate beings.
The first time, when she walked away from the experience, she thought that perhaps this was another of the things she wasn’t meant to grasp. Perhaps the gods had no wish to be part of the consonance, and only took back the Alpha’s flesh as it neared its end.
Yet, what followed afterward made her begin to question if the prophet was an entity of their gods’ will at all.
The Ferox did not fight with one another. This is—mostly—the truth.
In most things where a disagreement could be found, the Ferox placed the greatest good of the species over their personal interests. If a disagreement passed between two adults, biology established a clear hierarchy. Male or female, a Ferox knew its place in the pecking order. Even so, in an extreme moment, any adult Ferox that truly considered actions of violence against another of their kind was taken by the sickness.
She had heard stories that some males had been known to argue over kills. Said stories came from a time long past when their people had waged wars large enough that such a thing as who had killed an enemy might be confused. In general, this never came to blows. It was a time of plenty when a single trophy was no scarce resource.
But there were exceptions. Most often when two males were indiscernible in the hierarchy. When it occurred, it usually resulted in a tug of war over the vanquished enemy that rendered the carcass an unattractive trophy to any female.
The second exception, the one known to be far more frequent to any female who had ever whelped, were the actions of the young as they matured—before they entered adolescence. It was a period of great confusion amongst all those who had yet to complete the first phase of maturity. Their place in the hierarchy unclear to them. Often, they squabbled over simple things like portions—the best cuts of meat.
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