The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga)

by Christopher Hinz

  "Two,” answered the inspector.

  A strange expression appeared on the midget's face. Slowly, grimly, he turned to face Xornakoff, so that his back was to the car. “Before today, you never met the occupants of that vehicle, right? You simply received orders that the ICN would be sending observers."

  "That's correct,” said the inspector, still frowning. “Two men. They rendezvoused with us—"

  "Get off the ridge!” hollered Nick. “It's an ambush!"

  The roof of the ICN vehicle snapped open. A strange glassy sphere, attached to a thick shaft, rose from the body of the car, flowering into a weird bouquet of gleaming silver spikes.

  "Run!” yelled Buff, diving across the lawn table, tackling the Lion, sending their bodies tumbling down the embankment, away from the car.

  The Lion saw a flash of blue heavens, a whirl of treetops. And then coils of silver lights were lancing skyward from the ICN vehicle to the hovering E-Tech assault craft.

  The jet shrieked. Metal twisted, folded in upon itself, as if the entire craft were being smashed between megalithic rocks, grinding it to rubble. Golden flames leaped from the underbelly—vital fluids being squeezed from its deepest cavities—and then pieces of twisted remains, unrecognizable as technological procreation, tumbled upward, away from the sunlit albino field, falling into the sky, a sprawling mass of debris, impossibly ignorant of the cylinder's gravitational polarity.

  —And then the Lion's breath was knocked out of him as he slammed into the packed soil at the base of the knoll. He shook his head to clear his senses, wondering if his eyes could be trusted, wondering if what he had seen had actually taken place.

  "C'mon!” yelled Buff, grabbing his arm, yanking him to his feet. They stumbled toward the house, managed only two faltering steps before the very air seemed to change in quality, became stale and dry, sucked free of all moisture, stripped of its cohesiveness. The Lion started to turn around.

  The ridge exploded.

  He saw figures enveloped in a blinding white light, lifted into the air, thrown end over end, away from the knoll, tumbling like freefall circus charlies but battered lifeless by the force of the blast. And the Lion did not understand what crisis-driven subconscious process made the determination, but he knew, in that instant of piercing light, that one of the flying corpses belonged to Adam Lu Sang.

  The blast radius expanded, enveloped them, catapulting him forward and he hit the ground head first, somersaulted violently into a large blue rosebush at the base of the A-frame, below a window. Thorns slashed through the fabric of his thin shirt, ripping into his back.

  Buff, oozing blood from a gash below her chin, whipped out her thruster and fired into the window. Slab glass disintegrated, raining them with shards.

  "Up!” she hissed, grabbing the Lion by the elbow and propelling him through the opening. They half-dove, half-scrambled over the glass-strewn sill and tumbled into the day room.

  A Costeau guard, her rifle unslung, leaped in from the hallway, took one quick look at Buff and the Lion, activated her crescent web, and charged toward the window.

  "Get down!” hollered the Lion and Buff simultaneously.

  The warning came an instant too late. From outside, something hit the guard's front crescent with the force of a geo cannon. Scarlet tracers streamed from her web as she was picked up and hurled backward at deadly velocity, straight into an acrylic painting of Aaron, the Lion's adoptive father. The painting and the wallboard behind it exploded, pulverized by the force of the collision.

  "Jesus Christ!” yelled Buff.

  The guard was gone. Only a splintered hole in the wall—a huge leering eye stood on end—remained.

  The Lion shoved Buff forward. On their hands and knees, keeping below the level of the window, they clamored like terrified puppies toward the hallway entrance.

  Two more guards, crouching low, appeared in the doorway. They reached down, dragged Buff and the Lion out into the corridor. Another explosion shook the house. Small ceiling panels, torn loose, crashed onto the carpet.

  "We think it's Paratwa,” cried Buff. “Two tways, maybe three. It'll be coming into the house."

  The Lion dragged himself upright, tried to ignore a sizzling pain coursing through his knees. “Let's go!"

  Buff turned to him. “Are you wearing a web?"

  "No."

  She yanked him in close to her, snapped her jaws down. Front and rear crescents ignited. The air hummed; dust from the dislodged tiles sparkled as motes danced away from the activated energy field.

  "Stay tight against me,” ordered Buff. “My web should protect us both."

  The Lion said nothing. The Costeau in the day room also had been wearing a web.

  Sounds of a new commotion emanated from the front of the house. The two guards whirled, raised their thrusters. A trio of figures came hurtling around the corner.

  It was Vilakoz, the retreat's security chief. And one of the E-Tech officers, now weaponless and clutching a bloodied shoulder. And behind them, barely visible, cursing and limping at breakneck speed: Nick.

  "Faster!” urged the midget. “This ain't a goddamn scout jamboree!"

  At the opposite end of the corridor, thirty-five feet away, a door slid open. Four thrusters and a salene were instantly aimed into the open portal.

  "Hold!” shouted Vilakoz.

  Another Costeau—a young girl, barely a teen—came out of the room, walking slowly. She was not wearing a web. Her head was lowered. All her attention was focused on the digital readout of the rhythm detector strapped across her waist.

  "This way,” she said softly, her sweet preadolescent voice seeming to suggest that nothing unusual was taking place.

  "Go!” ordered Vilakoz, hustling Nick in front of him, shielding their backs with his own rear crescent.

  En masse, they raced down the hallway, their crescent webs ejecting shafts of red lightning as multiple defensive fields interacted, furiously protesting the cramped conglomeration of bodies.

  They followed the young girl through the portal and into one of the guest bedrooms. Beyond the bed and dresser lay another door. The girl, still gazing at the rhythm detector's readout, hesitated, then spun to face the wall adjacent to the second entrance.

  "Something's coming at us—this direction—very fast—definitely organic—about three seconds away."

  "Get ready,” ordered Vilakoz, crouching low, aiming his thruster at the bare wall.

  Buff and the other two Costeaus raised their weapons. The Lion felt a shudder race through him. Not since childhood have I been so scared! Not since...

  "It passed overhead,” announced the girl, spinning around and flipping the rhythm detector up closer to her face. “Right over the house. A jetpak rider maybe. I don't know—"

  The sound of explosions—like grenades being detonated in rapid sequence—came from somewhere outside.

  "Go!” shouted Vilakoz, pointing toward the second entrance.

  The girl nodded, raced toward the door. But she came to another sudden stop, right in front of the portal. “Another signal—"

  The door blew inward, knocking the girl backward onto the bed. A fierce orange light, bright as the sun, spilled into the room, like a cauldron of deadly fire dumped from some ancient rampart.

  The air gleamed, crackled, as the orange light leaped up at them from all sides. Crescent webs hissed, emitted puffs of fiery brown smoke, then became completely visible, metamorphosing into miniature cascades, darkly tinted, like waterfalls of molasses.

  Something came through the door—a dancing figurine, a smear of jerky movements. Through the blur of Buff's web, the Lion could just make out the shafts of flickering light clutched in the creature's fists.

  Flash daggers, thought the Lion, recalling descriptions of the deadly weapons used by the tway known as Slasher.

  The creature leaped at them. Cartoon blades reached out, doubling in length, cutting through the distorted crescent webs of the two Costeau guards as if the protecti
ve fields were not there. The guards went down, their chests carved open, huge globs of blood spilling onto the floor.

  Someone screamed: “Webs aren't working!"

  Thruster fire erupted from behind the Lion, nailing the creature. But the blasts merely altered the tway's direction slightly; the creature seemed to frolic with the thruster blows, twisting its body to avoid direct hits, offsetting the drubbing force of thruster energies in a mad dance of counterpoint rhythms.

  Such speed! the Lion thought, images of movement registering too fast to comprehend fully.

  Cartoon daggers assumed new axes. The E-Tech guard with the injured shoulder screamed as twin scalpels of color lopped off his arms. The young Costeau girl hurtled from the bed and threw herself at the creature, the rhythm detector held in front of her—shield and weapon.

  "No,” the Lion heard himself whisper.

  A flash dagger lanced downward, plunging through the body rhythm detector in a burst of scarlet flame, continued its forward drive straight into the girl's temple, directly above the left eye.

  The girl seemed to release a loud sigh, like the disappointed utterance of a child denied some precious thing.

  Noise—agony—erupting inside the Lion's head, enveloping him, as if mad dogs were barking directly into his eardrum.

  Buff had fired her salene.

  The weapon's wavering sheet of white light spilled onto the tway, outlining its crescent web, and for a stark instant, the creature froze. Conflicting energies dueled as the disruptive expulsion from the salene sought to decoalesce the polarized field of Slasher's defensive web.

  "This way,” yelled Vilakoz, grabbing the Lion by the shoulder and yanking him back toward the hallway door. A tremor passed through the Lion as his body slipped through the murky brown cascade—water without wetness—of Buff's now-useless crescent web.

  Slasher's own web neutralized the effects of the salene. White fire melted away. The tway spun toward the Lion, hurtled forward. Buff leaped into its path.

  "C'mon, fucker!” she screamed, deactivating the useless remnants of her own web, lunging forward, thruster wailing. At point blank range, she blasted the creature's front crescent. Discrete packets of energy battered the tway, shoved it backward through the open portal. Buff charged after it.

  And then the Lion was out in the first hallway again, with Vilakoz at his side. A fresh set of explosions came from somewhere outside the house. The corridor was empty.

  "Where's Nick?"

  Vilakoz shook his head. “I think he was—"

  "Right here!” yelled the midget, hurtling through the doorway ten steps behind them.

  The Lion pointed to another portal, still closed. “Through there! We can get to the back of the house—"

  The left side partition, to their rear, collapsed inward. A rolling mass of wallboard and assorted rubble billowed into the hall, trapping Nick on the other side. The midget screamed, then disappeared beneath a thundering cloud of debris.

  A car had driven through the wall. It had E-Tech markings.

  A door slid open. “Get in,” ordered a man's voice.

  The Lion glanced at Vilakoz. The security chief, with thruster extended, rammed his massive body into the vehicle. The Lion hesitated, peering down the hallway for some signs of Nick. Nothing. The hallway was completely blocked.

  "Get in!” hollered the voice, more desperate this time.

  The Lion leaped into the front seat, pinching Vilakoz between himself and the driver.

  "Hang on,” screeched the tall E-Tech sergeant. A deep gash across his forehead leaked tiny rivulets of blood, down between his eyes, along his nose, to the corners of his mouth, where the red tears coagulated in dark clusters.

  With the three of them jammed in the front seat, the door snapped shut. The sergeant reversed the engines, backed out through the devastated day room, through a massive opening where an outer wall had once stood, into sunlight and destruction.

  "Somebody's going to pay,” muttered Vilakoz.

  "Believe it,” said the sergeant, brake-locking the car's left side wheels. The vehicle spun around. The sergeant rammed the accelerator and pinched a control stud on the wraparound dash. Blue flames—uncorralled fires from the car's auxiliary rocket engines—rose from beneath the vehicle, licking at the windows. Shrieking, the car raced across the white grass toward the stony path. The Lion was pressed into the thick cushions.

  An undulating shriek—above and behind them. The Lion managed to twist his head around and stare out through the rear window.

  A black jetpak—a prone rider enclosed by maneuverable rocket tubes—raced out of the northern sky, scant feet above the tree line, arcs of pulsating gray lightning rippling beneath the rider's body as if he were some ancient water surfer skimming across waves of his own making. He was heading straight for them.

  The Lion instinctively ducked low in the front seat. The jetpak rider shot directly overhead.

  "Spirit of Ari,” muttered Vilakoz, as shafts of lightning gouged huge chunks of dirt from the field immediately in front of them. The E-Tech sergeant swerved the car to the right and cut the rocket engines. The vehicle raced over a small rise and up onto the stony path just as the bizarre jetpak rider vanished into a swath between towering pines at the southern edge of the retreat.

  The car was now moving parallel to the distant house. The Lion stared out the side window and bore witness to the true devastation of the attack.

  The A-frame was a twisted shambles, pockmarked with monstrous holes—including the one they had driven through—and emitting wafts of gray smoke that curled up into the afternoon sky, disappearing into the brightness. Fading embers, thought the Lion, acknowledging a desperate sadness rising from within, an omniscient force tunneling beneath his rage, fear, and pain, adding greater depth to the horror while it simultaneously subtracted potency from his very spirit.

  Never before had he felt such a sense of loss. Never before had he been bruised by the knowledge of such defeat.

  And he knew that one Paratwa had done this.

  The knoll where they had stood only moments ago had been stripped clean; human beings and albino grass, lawn chairs and table gone, the earth blotted, ravaged. Beside the elevated ridge, the remains of the two E-Tech cars lay upended, shattered hulks of black and gold, minor monuments to technological achievement. Crisp geysers of tangerine flame spouted from portions of the surrounding forest; pines yielded their needles in consummations of oily smoke until they became serrated spears, poised for futile jousts against an indifferent sky.

  A few figures still moved in the clearing, but they appeared to be dazed and wretched, wandering like the lost children of Apocalyptic Earth, the last generation who had been unable to escape to the Colonies and who had slowly perished in the radiation and plague-scarred cities, the final victims of a planet's madness.

  The Lion had seen authentic videos from those ancient times. He knew.

  One Paratwa.

  The E-Tech sergeant abruptly wrenched the car to the left.

  They leaped from the path, cut through a cluster of youthful oaks, and screeched to a halt in a thicket of vines overgrowing a white birch. Unmolested woodland, the Lion found himself thinking, and wondering, in the same instant, why they had stopped.

  Dread came over him.

  There were only two E-Tech cars and they're both back there in the clearing, destroyed. Where did this car come from? How could it have gotten into the retreat so fast?

  "Please allow me to introduce myself,” said the sergeant, turning to them with bared teeth. A repugnant smile began at his mouth, slithered up across his cheekbones. All traces of human emotion vanished from the sergeant's face. The gash on his forehead took on a remote quality, an air of fabrication.

  Vilakoz, sitting in the middle, tried to raise his thruster.

  Too late.

  The sergeant's fist came up with blinding speed, an energized attack gauntlet brimming with sparks, juiced to maximum power. Vilakoz caug
ht the gauntlet in the face, directly below the nose. The security chief's head snapped back against the headrest, then crashed forward. He was unconscious even before his jaw slammed into the dashboard.

  The door opened. The Lion was shoved from the vehicle, onto his back, onto cool moist earth, and then the creature was somehow out of the car, and propping himself on the Lion's stomach before the Lion could even think to move. Gauntletted fingers closed around his throat, squeezed. The creature's other hand rammed itself into the Lion's mouth and for one petrifying moment, the Lion feared that the tway's probing digits were going to snake their way down his throat. He stifled an urge to gag.

  "Jerem Marth, Lion of Alexander, councilor of Irrya,” certified the creature, speaking calmly but in an odd cadence that somehow suggested it did not often use the complexity of speech. “I believe that I have your attention."

  The tway lifted the Lion's head and wagged it up and down, providing an affirmative answer to his own question.

  "Jerem Marth, it is said that you've been helping that foul remnant of Empedocles, the one who calls itself Gillian. They say that once, long ago, you even enabled Gillian to destroy Reemul."

  I'm going to die. With the gauntlet crushing his neck and the creature's other hand jammed between his teeth, fingers almost to the back of his throat, the Lion could barely breathe. He thought about not being able to see his wife and children once again. He wondered where Gillian was.

  "Jerem Marth—good news. It is your lucky day. You are to be listed as a survivor of a Paratwa attack.” The tway sighed. “Personally, I would prefer to kill you. But politics being what it is, there are reasons that you be permitted to continue processing oxygen."

  The tway smiled and released the gauntlet from his throat.

  The Lion gasped. His chest heaved, sucking air through his nostrils. His mouth remained an almost completely blocked canal, filled with the creature's gloved fingers. The Lion wanted to bite down, crush through those fingers, but something told him that such an action would prove to be a terrible mistake.

  His lips quivered. This creature—it plans everything. Contingencies existed for all situations, against all tactical responses.