Leona stuck her whole hand down Reilly’s throat as she swallowed the keys. The girl vomited blood from the strain and fell forward, wheezing.
“Calling BS! I’m…” Reilly vomited several times, beating the ground to catch her breath.
“My child? Oh, right, so that’s supposed to mean I need to nurture you and respect you, just because we shared a body for a handful of months? You disowned me, Reilly. Had a chance to join my kingdom, dear, and you turned it down.” Leona kicked Reilly in the back of the head. The girl landed ice cold in the path.
“Dante!” Leona took a step through the ranks. She held the bloody keys high above her head, twisting the tuning forks in them. A high-pitched squealing bell chime rose from them. People fell and swayed under the harmonic torment. Some had seizures. Others passed out. A few vomited. Only Taylor and Company were unaffected.
“Oh God, it’s you…” Dante clutched his throat. He had no choice, as badly as he hated it. The tuning forks sent signals to his brain’s motor cortex. They manipulated his motor function enough that he was forced to get on his knees.
“Hello, love. It’s been a while.” Leona took a few steps forward. She was visibly brightened by the sight of her old flame.
“Hello, Taylor, as well. It was amiable you trying to overthrow the Gates of Hell, going after the head of the snake. I’m the Queen here. I’ll deal with my subjects the way I see fit. Stand aside while I exact justice on my usurpers.” Leona was so full of herself in that moment. She could never have seen what came next.
“I get it. I would have bought that back in the day. You know how they say that for every action there is a reaction?” Taylor thrust out the same death’s head key chain he’d used to open the portal between Washington’s airspace and his entry into this dark dimension. Leona gasped, mouth bleeding.
Taylor laughed. The Death’s Head drew the metallic tuning keys to him. He caught them in his fist.
“As many bridges as you’ve burned, lies you’ve told, lives you’ve stolen…You sometimes forget the things that you do to secure your reign. Well, let’s not forget who the first responder was when you came to power. Or who you came after to hide what you did to our little sister.” Taylor shook the Death’s Head in a superhuman fist. Blood bubbled from it. It screamed with a woman’s voice. A familiar voice.
“Do you know what this is? It’s the vial you took when you first started your rampage. The secret to my petrification in permanently dead flesh. You extracted spinal fluid from Kiara the day that she died. Bone marrow, hair…Blood. The energy she extracted from your gods…From your Lucia…It passed to me when you had me murdered and embalmed in my sister’s blood. My sister’s death!” Taylor grimaced. His face contorted in a thousand different expressions. He and his gang took a single step forward.
“Now, I know her…I know her better than anyone. She will try to save the Earth’s soul. She will go through with undoing all that you have done. She’ll drink the Seven Snakes and she’ll fall into that permanent sleep. My sister…Your scapegoat. You’ve come to defend your empire? It doesn’t belong to you anymore.” Taylor spat on the ground. Now the others were closing in. Harrison stepped up behind Taylor, eyes dead in his face. He wanted to make sure she saw him. Remembered what she had done to him too.
Joseph stormed passed Leona and scooped up Reilly. Lindsey and Ivy pressed closer on every angle.
“Only Kiara will be able to undo the keys to this place and send it spiraling back into the darkness of the space/time continuum. Where is the justice in that? At last, I will have the ultimate justice. Me and mine. What better way for the dark lovers of New Orleans to destroy one another? Master of puppets by puppets mastered…” Taylor clicked his teeth. He twisted the tuning fork violently. Leona and Dante moved like pieces in a music box, porcelain stiff and groaning now.
“Confess. Where is the prize of the Athena’s Rings and how does it perform?” Taylor twisted the key like a baton in the air, mastering Dante’s speech box.
“The prize is called the Golden Fleece. It’s a lamb whose genetic anomalies in its blood make it the proper counter agent to Andromeda serum that will stabilize its effects as well as grant the injected one immortality.” Dante bit his tongue trying to cut it in half. He'd rather destroy himself than give away his treasure.
“How can that be accessed without having to journey through the Rings?” Taylor’s eyes glittered hopefully.
“It can’t. But there is an encryption room in the Gate’s basement. If someone were to travel through the rings, open them from the inside of that room. You could fetch the prize and anything else on file or in the zoo down there.” Dante thrashed, tossing his head.
“Guys, that’s where you come into play. Somebody’s going to have to download what’s left of this simulations lab and carry it back to the land of the living. Who better than my mad scientists to fight chemical fire with fire?” Taylor pointed at Harrison and Joseph. The two men had been waiting for their chance at the action. They smiled now, vindicated. Stockpiling crazy chemical recipes and tweaking them for peak performance was their grim specialty.
“Alright, sign me up. Somebody’s got to do it.” Reilly stepped up, holding a hand high above her head.
“Nah, kid. I have other plans for you. Old Croc can do it. He’s plenty mean and ugly enough to be a Gladiator.” Taylor winked.
“No need. Captain Matheson and Sergeant Manson are already on the case. I saw them in the rings a while ago. One of my brothers that has sonar hearing heard them conspiring with a prisoner to get the Fleece. If you were to contact them, we could all rendezvous. Collaborate, ya know?” Jessop pushed his way to the front of the ranks.
“Mm, Boss? I love it when we win.” Croc snapped his fingers, hoarsely giggling.
“Maybe for today. My partner, Lewis the Kid, yeah? He’s not tied down by this crap hole. He’ll just sober up from a chemical high when you bury this place once and for all. You’ll never be free. He’ll never stop hunting you. Just when you think you’ve had a sound victory...Tssk, it’s right out of the frying pan and into the fire for you guys.” Dante clicked his tongue. Taylor wrenched the tuning fork again.
“Right, well now that all the cards are stacked together, each of us will have to play our hands. Leona, I think the perfect punishment for you is to let you have your revenge. A public execution from the shoulders of the Poseidon this time. We’ll crush Lucia and distribute his blood to the worlds. Guess I’ll have to clean up after him too. Killing that psycho only makes him angry…Yes, a daylight execution is what you two will finally have. It’s about time.” Taylor drew the keys together. Leona and Dante went sailing across the balcony, landing in each other’s arms.
“You loved each other. Or was it lust? Whatever the case will be, you burned the world down and now you have to lay in its ashes.” Taylor’s cackling voice raged above the machines.
Harrison and Joseph exchanged a nod.
“Go with your uncle, Reilly. We’ve got this.” Harrison helped the girl up.
“Where are they going?!” Lindsey leaned over the rails of the Rings, breath coming in great gasps. For the first time, the others took the time to look out over the extreme height they stood at.
“They’re doubles. They’re moving fast for this like icy pit under the gate. I can just make it out.” Kendra had made good use of her time caught up in all the madness. She’d found a camera at the door one of the concert building like Athena’s Ring’s levels. It was not like regular cameras she’d known. Rather, it was preprogrammed to pick up the images and make holographic recordings along with all the other super tech in this dimension.
“Oh, good! We’re going to need that! We’ll need you to film our great reformation!” Joseph smacked his palms together, rubbing them fiercely.
Reilly got up, rubbed her nostrils. She looked over her shoulder at Taylor who was disappearing.
“Wanna take care of these geeks while I find my place in the kingdom of men?” Reilly p
ointed over her shoulder with her thumb. Jessop laughed.
“Go on, hotshot. I’ve got this.” Jessop pursed his fingers in the OK symbol.
Harrison took a deep breath. He closed his eyes to stifle the urge for tears.
“What?” Kendra stepped away from the camera, amazed.
“Well, it’s just that. This ship has finally turned itself around.” Harrison ran a palm across his brow.
“Yeah? But at what price?” Lindsey leaned out over the balcony, ashes and grit sticking to her skin. Only one person could have attracted that many evil beings to move in the same direction.
Andromeda was about to strike again.
*****
Chapter 19
The ‘71 raged its way through an Edgar Allen Poe style maze of pendulum blades. Guards from the Rings jumped out with kamikaze machine weapons and Molotov cocktails.
“Really? I’m a human torch, idiots!” Leaf caught the onslaught of torches with his bare hands swallowing.
Derek and Ethan leaned back in the back seat, taking in the scene, all smiles, and no cares.
“So, anyway, that’s the story, bro. Soon as I split off with you guys, I found my way to the tunnel I’d been looking for all along. I’ve been in prison long enough to know the way, to map my path, man. My girl here is like the Robin Hood of Street Racers, dog. That’s why they took her in the first place. She was always finding ways to double cross them rather than work for them. She raced out pink slips on several of Libby and Annie’s girls, buying them out of Leona’s trade. It should all be there in the archives.”
Ethan pointed. They were close enough to the end of the line that they could see them. The prize tank was a little pillar of glass, on the opposite facing wall of another glass-enclosed computer room where Professor Lucia had kept every dirty little secret of the Order, particularly of extensive high-space tech research of Kelley Pharmaceuticals under lock and key.
“Yeah, and while I agree that mine is a totally boss story, there will be repercussions to all this. This is like cherry-picking compared to what they’re known for. I mean, Dante and Lewis practically gave this to you, yeah?” KC kicked the gas. They sailed for the glass wall where the lighting white lamb stood in a little trough of straw, bleating in terror at the flaming scene before him.
“Another story for another day, huh?” Derek put his hands up, to catch the shards of glass that ricocheted from the wall. Leaf jumped up and rolled head over heels over the nose of the car. He lifted the lamb up on his shoulders, surprised by the euphoric feeling its fluorescent fur seemed to emanate.
“Leaf!” A hand was beating on the walls of the opposite facing glass, not a stone’s throw away. A young man stood on the other side of it, one that looked vaguely familiar. That’s because he could pass for Kingsley’s brother. Wait…
“Joseph?” Leaf paused, transfixed by Joseph’s transfiguration and presence. Harrison pushed to his side.
“Bring it here! Bring it here! We found out how to escape all this!” Harrison jumped up and down, ecstatic.
“Hang tough!” KC backed out of the glass maze and leaned over to look at Derek.
“Wanna do you thing, boss? I just touched up the grill.” She snapped a loud bubble. Derek hurled the shards to the lamb’s cage into the walls of the control room. It shattered into a billion pieces.
The Fury tore into the room. KC cut the engine. Timlin knelt over a control board. He had an ax posed to the President’s neck.
“See, the Wikileaks thing isn’t so hard, sir. You should be used to this kind of under-the-table stuff, with your reputation. But at least now it will be to some purpose.” Timlin grinned. Matthews hit the final button.
The super Agent’s master plan had worked. President Matthews had gone to the Matrix of his treachery and spilled Judas’s entire diary into the databases. Now the Feds and the public medical researchers would have access to the causes, effects, and cures of all those hyper chemicals and technology that had been created in this place.
“I wouldn’t say this absolves me any. Or makes you any safer and more victorious. This system might be a godless one but it has an honor code and there are benefits to it all, you know? My only regret is that I decided to jump on that bandwagon so late. It would have been better for the people than letting a child stand in as a decoy.” Matthews spat at the controls.
“You made that child a promise. Now, if she can come back from here, if resurrection is actually possible with this little creature…Well, you will have to pay for your sins, sir. In kind. Till you’ve fully made that broken vow right.” Lindsey stabbed a knife into one of the chemical tables surrounding.
“Right, speaking of which…Hello, boys. I’m glad you could all join us.” Joseph pulled off some chemical goggles in sudden amazement. Harrison spun on his heels, laughing.
“Ethan and KC! We thought…” Harrison shook his head.
“You gave me up for dead, huh? That’s not fair, zombie man.” Ethan winked.
Joseph sputtered, elated. His eyes were haunted by the guilt and the weight of all of this, wondering too what the final ending had been for his son. He nodded.
“Right…It is so good to see everyone, alive…Soon we’ll be in the flesh and we can put all this crap—this super-crap anyway—behind us. Because even if there are lingering side-effects and problems, well, we’ll be equipped to get it under control.” Joseph motioned to Leaf to bring the little lamb to a table decked with vials of a blue solution.
“Now, if I’ve followed all these calculations correctly…” Joseph pointed his pencil to several rat sheets laying on the table.
“The agent I made to counter Andromeda, plus the lamb’s blood, will also have to be cut with this solution. It’s the recommended inactive ingredient because it’s a hybrid DNA balancer. Says in these notes that it was the same basic agent used in the DNA manipulation of all the Altered Children. We need some evolutionary booster in the mix if there is bad fallout from all of this. That way the people exposed to it will be vaccinated where it counts, in their own genes. They can adapt to overcome as humans do.” Joseph slammed a stack of files on the table, turning to look at Harrison. He was connecting the ends of a gaseous release system/fire extinguisher that ran throughout this whole hellacious simulation.
“What is it, Doctor?” Harrison smiled. He knew that look. That was the glorious exoneration of Joseph Kingsley when he knew he’d overcome the odds.
“Oh, well it’s just…” said Harrison. “We saved the world and now we’ll be able to cure the world, all in the same act. How many people can boast of that, ladies and gentlemen? We’re making history here.”
Joseph smiled, measuring dosages. He used a photon acoustic machine to replicate the mass and shape of ingredients. All his colleagues looked on in amaze as the device made chemicals and particles out of light and material substance hanging in the thin air. This only existed and was possible because they were in a simulation.
“I think we’ve completely carved the face off of human history, man.” Derek clutched his throat.
“True. If we wanna pay for our sins adequately, we’d better shake this place. Got to get these syndicated ingredients to the outside walls so we can distribute them to anybody else involved before this all goes dark. And, if that execution goes as they planned, I have a feeling it will.” Harrison started gathering things.
“They’ve got it on camera, yeah. Everything that goes on in this joint shows up on these screens, you know? However, it might not be necessary for any more than justice now, see?” Timlin pointed to the screen. They all watched in horror and none more so than Joseph, as Kingsley and Kiara made the ultimate sacrifice.
“Oh my God…” Joseph covered his mouth to keep from throwing up. The others blanched. Ethan, KC, and Timlin weren’t emotionally invested. They turned away from the other’s horror to talk amongst themselves.
“If that’s going down then we’ve really got to bust out of here, fast. The Altar was designed to floo
d this place once it had all of Kiara Riveaulx’s metaphysical function to react off of.” Ethan clenched his fist to his mouth.
“We’ve got a bigger problem too though, right? When you work the Race Ring, uh…Well, you see and hear stuff. Those doubles that they made of all you people. They will get nastier as the life is leached out of them. It won’t happen all in a big blaze of glory like in the movies. They’ll have time to wreak some havoc and they’ll wanna take it out on us.” KC clenched a fist to her mouth, mirroring her boyfriend.
“Not if we have a scapegoat…” Ivy pointed a shaking finger to a lower screen on the water that had gone unnoticed in the wake of tragedy.
“That must be the machine my dad mentioned!” Leaf slapped the dash, eyes crossing in horror.
“Jane!” Lindsey’s shaking hands went to her lips. This nightmare marathon…When did it ever end?
*****
Chapter 20
“This is where it ends.” Kiara greeted the sight of her eternal slumber like an old friend.
Thunder rolled in the background. They had parted company with Jane and Dexter many hours ago. Striding deep into the heart of the court, they now stood under the great statue of Poseidon. The Altar of Poseidon, that interdimensional dark altar that had corresponded and communicated with the Dark Altar of Centralia, was the statute’s foothold.
“Whatever you bind on earth must be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth…” Kiara could no longer speak. She pressed a hand to her throat and looked up.
Lucia had been overcome. His ambitious moment of terrorism had lasted only a fraction of the time that his protégé’s had. Physically, he’d failed to represent himself as the dark lord of fury that everyone had feared him to be. He was a storm cloud, brewing and then dissipating. Yet like the clouds, his traces would stretch into the heavens for many leagues. Vincent may have crushed him, but his spirit was a stronger enigma.
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