Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “What has happened?”

  Wordlessly, Herrig played the video message he’d found waiting for him this morning. The two men watched in silence. It was … embarrassing. For Landmark.

  “I can barely understand a word that old sa is saying. That is no accent I have ever heard before.” Ute frowned. “And why is he calling the men from Landmark cattle rustlers?”

  “I have no idea.” Herrig stopped the playback. “Whatever the case, Sa Orin continues on in that vein for another ten minutes, suggesting that Sa Candall and his men work for the government and that with Martial Law she –being the Chairwoman- can do whatever she wants. I assume Candall would tell Orin that he was there to purchase the bullet?”

  “I would say,” Ute tilted his head and stared at Candall’s freeze-framed image on-Screen, wondering how long he’d been trussed and hung upside-down for, “that if it weren’t for the gag in his mouth, that would be amongst the first things he would say.”

  “Garth’s mysterious need for a large amount of duronium notwithstanding, Sa Orin has threatened these men with their lives if ‘someone from the gummint’ fails to show up on his property.” Herrig looked Ute in the eyes. “As a just-born Conglomerate, UltraMegaDynamaTron cannot have more deaths on its hands, specifically the deaths of men involved in something that is –or soon will be- illegal.”

  Ute shifted in his chair, sitting upright. “What do you want me to do?”

  There was no dismissing the sudden change in Ute’s bearing. Herrig was no expert when it came to soldiers, but he’d learned enough during his search for people to get the duronium bullet. Ute was definitely an ex-soldier, but … but without any sign at all of toxic shock or supplement withdrawal. So many secrets.

  “Nothing … untoward. Meet with Sa Orin. Explain to him that we are not government lackeys or whatever a ‘Communist’ is and offer him money for that bullet. Make him see reason.”

  Ute rose. “And if that fails?”

  Herrig didn’t like thinking thoughts like these, but he supposed he had no choice; following the insanity of yesterday’s daylight robbery of a several hundred ton hunk of metal, it was relatively safe to assume that everything Garth said, did and needed hewed to some inscrutable purpose. Therefore, if Sa Nickels said he needed that much duronium, it was probably –no, definitely- best if they just figure out a way to get it. “Garth needs the duronium, Ute. Just as much as he needed that armored plate.”

  “Understood, Sa Herrig.” Ute stopped at the doorway, held there by a word Herrig.

  “There is a vehicle waiting for you in the car park.” Herrig tossed the ex-soldier the entry fob. “I am assured by the ‘LINK vendor that it is the fastest model available. Go with all good haste, Sa Ute.”

  Ute fought the urge to salute. On his way out, he shook his head. Where Garth was rash, maniacal, and more than a little suicidal, Herrig DuPont was calm, rational, and unbelievably well-planned. The two men suited each other perfectly.

  xxx

  It was funny to Garth how, after a shower, he felt so much better. There were times across The Cordon, when he’d been fighting truly grim representations of what Humanity could become without the benevolent interference of Trinity’s influence that he would’ve done anything to have a proper shower. Had done anything. As he finished scrubbing the last of the dried blood from the back of a knee –he was quietly, morbidly distanced from the sight of the stuff that kept him alive thanks to yesterday’s madness- Garth chuckled at the Raid on Semma Tau Set.

  The whole thing, from start to finish, had been about the Crazy Mayor’s one operating water shower. The other guys in the group, cyborgs to a one, hadn’t cared one way or the other about how they smelled, but then again, they’d abandoned most of their humanity by then.

  The laughter dwindled. A few missions after that, he’d abandoned his humanity in favor of … doing what it took. From there, the Specter had risen from the ashes of his former life to wreak havoc and nightmares.

  He'd been so very good at it.

  Toweling dry, Garth slid on some of the clothes that he’d recovered from the wreckage of the heavy lifter; he thanked his lucky stars he’d had enough sense to have Huey’s home pulled out and stored safely out of the way.

  In the Acme facility a couple miles away, the intensely illegal technological device would be out of sight, out of mind. The only person who could –maybe- at this point see what was going on with the ‘LINK was Oscar, and that guy wasn’t going to say anything.

  Garth looked at himself in the mirror and sighed happily. Basic black tee, the Latelian equivalent of jeans –they had weird extra pockets because while the dude at The Palazzo had been able to shrink stuff down to normal size and work with the concept of catchphrases on t-shirts, he just hadn’t been able to dismiss Latelian fashion when it came to shoes. He looked like the most normal dude on the planet next to Herrig, who, with all his chubbiness and male-pattern baldness, looked about as interesting as snow falling. Once you got your fill, you looked away.

  Herrig was the perfect and ideal choice to help him run UltraMegaDynamaTron.

  Garth stepped out of his private rooms on the added third floor of the big warehouse where … where everyone in Port City was congregating and let out a silent whoop. Leaning on the balcony, Garth watched nearly a thousand people milling back and forth, eating, drinking, pretending that outside the walls, no Chairwoman awaited, no God soldiers tried to count past one to see if there was some killing that needed to be done.

  “Impressive, isn’t it, sa?”

  Garth looked over and watched Herrig hoof his way up the stairs, chubby face bright red with the effort. In his hands, the ex-banker carried a thick Sheet. “You did all this yesterday, huh?”

  A worried smile involuntarily flickered across Herrig’s face, one that turned into a broad beam a second later. “I did, sa. You …”

  Garth waved a hand and turned his attention back to the crowd. “I would’ve thought of it, but, like, a day late and a dollar short. You probably saved the lives of thousands of people. I wish I could do something like that.”

  Herrig walked up and put his arms up on the railing beside Garth. “You and Ute saved the world yesterday, Garth. As I understand it, possibly even the … everything?”

  “Yeah, but.” Garth pointed out two kids running tear-ass through the lineup for food. One of them tripped on a table and went flying headlong into another table. Instead of crying or wailing, the idiot got up, laughed her damn head off and resumed running. The adults at the assaulted table applauded the young girl’s fortitude and that was that. “No one knows we did that. No one can know, Herrig. The Chairwoman launched fucking missiles at us. Okay, sure, she didn’t know what we were doing, but still. This …” Garth pointed at the crowd, “this is something I could never do.”

  Unable to define the emotion sleeting off his employer in waves, Herrig simply chose to ignore it; he didn’t know how you were supposed to feel after risking your life to save the planet. Maybe it was natural to act as if you had, in fact, failed. “It was a small thing, sa. And UltraMegaDynamaTron is becoming synonymous with ‘helping hand’.”

  “I fought a synonymous once.” Garth quipped. “Big fucking thing. Had teeth the size of me. Big ears, too, liked cheese.”

  Herrig chuckled appreciatively and the two of them watched the food line together for a while in utter silence. There was one thing you could say about Latelians; they were orderly. Those freshly arriving automatically queued themselves in line, those that had been there for a free meal gave up their seats just as quickly. Some small numbers went back for a second plate, and the cooks, aided by their protes, gave them diminished amounts for their efforts. The only people slightly less orderly were the immigrants, but only because they hadn’t been around long enough to realize that things went quicker if everyone worked together.

  “Ah.” Herrig pointed to a table of men laughing quite loudly. “Young Oscar.”

  Garth nodded. He’d made
the Latelian first thing, intentionally avoiding looking that way. He turned his attentions to the young man now.

  “I wonder what he’s saying?” Herrig mused. When he’d interviewed the scientist over the ‘LINK, he’d been shy, unassuming, almost incapable of talking without a stammer.

  “If I was down there, I’d be telling them about the time the Fonz jumped a shark in a leather jacket.”

  “The shark was wearing a leather jacket?” Herrig didn’t know what leather was, or, even what a shark was, but the implication that the latter was dangerous was there. “And how is that funny?”

  “Nah, the shark wasn’t wearing the … look. It’s funny. The Fonz was a very cool guy who did all kinds of neat things.” Garth wracked his brain trying to find the Latelian equivalent and failed. “Okay, look. It’d be like me, jumping a car across a chasm full of man-eating God soldiers. Absolutely ridiculous.”

  Herrig thought that was an absolutely nightmarish thing and said as much, adding, “He seems well enough following yesterday. Saving him as you did … that was …”

  “Oh,” Garth said glumly, turning away from the crowd, leaning with his back to the scene, “I didn’t save him. I just … kept him from dying right then.”

  “He is absolutely healthy, sa!” Herrig protested, hunting through his prote for the medical reports from the tests they’d run using the Weyland facilities first aid scanners. “The avatars found nothing wrong with him.”

  Garth looked over at Herrig, who still clutched the Sheet reflexively. “How much did Ute tell you about … stuff?”

  Herrig pressed his lips together in a scowl, which he then did his best to iron out into a concerned look. “Sa? As much as he could bear to get out. The day’s events left him … rattled. Beyond that, Ute is a, well, I can’t think of the word I want...”

  “Uncomplicated is the word you’re looking for.” Garth supplied helpfully. Inwardly, he grasped towards the spark of real-born energy that’d made him the central focus for all things hostile and bizarre in this universe. There was just a bit, a tiny, pathetically small splinter of the … of the essence he’d absorbed during his time in the other Universe. Big enough to do one thing, too small to do anything but complete that one worthwhile thing, a promise he’d made to Lisa, of all people.

  What could she want that required so much power?

  He could feel the change in Hospitalis’ atmosphere. The concerted and concentrated attempts to end his life in ever-increasing and maddening ways were at its lowest ebb. In times past, he would’ve never ‘run out’ of that essence; his exit and reentry into this Universe was –had been- an incision through possibilities, keyed specifically to his waveform and he’d never needed to do anything to recharge. Oh, he’d had to be cautious, sensible, cunning, lest the Heshii and their armies of Kith and Kin and Harmony Soldiers discover the depth of his abilities, but run out?

  He’d never imagined that. Here, though, thirty thousand years into the future, the rupture had either closed on its own or been closed by any number of beings, up to and including the Heshii themselves. There was to be no recharging, there was no Deus Machina Level Event to rip the fucking M’Zahdi Hesh out of the spider warrens and there would certainly be no easy fix.

  That was okay. He’d fought them to a standstill –almost- once before, only then, the War had been relegated to a single planet. There were millions upon millions of worlds now, and science had gone to weird and unsuspecting places down through the years.

  “Er, yes, uncomplicated is a good word.” Herrig wondered what was on Garth’s mind. He’d changed since coming out of the Palazzo, since surviving The Museum. Oh, he was still quick with a smile and a joke, but deep under the surface, it seemed like he was grieving. “Herrig told me about your belief that none of this is real somehow, but couldn’t elaborate. About these Muza…”

  “M’Zahdi Hesh.” Garth corrected. The name was a hard one to pronounce, even if you heard it properly. “Roughly translated and depending on inflection, it can mean either ‘Hesh Gods’ or ‘Gods of the Hesh’.” Their Reality-based counterparts, the Ushbet M’Tai, identified themselves as ‘Lifesavers’ or ‘Sphere Guardians’. It was all very early Smith.

  “I … er … oh my.” Herrig cleaned his glasses absentmindedly. “And this is all, er, true?”

  “Given a value of true, yeah, basically.” Garth summoned up a bit of his ‘natural born’ talent and watched blood well up under his fingertips almost immediately. Hazy blue witchfire crackled between thumb and forefinger. The pain was exquisite. Nope, he wouldn’t be able to use his Kin’kithal powers for any duration prior to getting into Bravo. His upcoming Placement Fight was going to be a bitch without the power of the sheathes; unless he planned to die in the most spectacular way, he was stone cold human. “How do you feel about what I told Ute?”

  Herrig grabbed Garth and wheeled him around so he could look once more upon the people eating and carousing down below. He pointed to no one and nowhere in particular. “I think that I see life, sa. Down there. Children running, children playing. Parents looking on in wonder at the life they’ve brought into this world. Old men and old women looking at those same young children wistfully, remembering that moment in time when they felt just as invincible, just as immortal. I think that, regardless of the true state of our existence, life is what it is. Maybe what we are isn’t right, should never have been, may never be, but life is life. You say these Hesh Gods want to destroy everything. I’ve never seen or heard mention of these beings before, but if you came thirty thousand years out of the past to fight them, I say, kick their fucking asses. Only, don’t stand there and say that we’re not real. Reality is what we make it, sa.”

  Garth stood there, nonplussed, wordless. Herrig –nebbish, nerdy, high-strung Herrig- was bang on the money. Garth didn’t know how he was going to beat the Heshii now, wasn’t even sure if they could be beaten, not this far, not as he was, but with his partner’s strident words ringing in his ears, it didn’t really matter.

  What mattered was that they needed a chance.

  That would never change.

  It was undeniable that Bravo had to hold answers on how to defeat the Heshii; instinct said that just as he’d kept most truths from himself on the off chance that they’d reawaken into a completely Heshii-dominated existence, so too he must’ve held back on any final solutions for that very same reason. It was the sort of thing he’d do, and for a brilliant reason.

  Contingency. If -for whatever reason in this hypothetical Heshii-controlled Universe- he had failed to survive long enough to get into Bravo for the Final Solution, someone, sometime else, could have. Sure, the operating systems aboard the quadronium craft were programmed to allow only Kin’kithal or Kith’kineen-based DNA inside, but if there was one thing he’d learned in only ten years back in the middle of things, it was that this far-flung future –while being broken in a zillion ways- was home to people and things that defied logic. Anyone not him breaking into Bravo would be –to the OS inside- of sufficiently high levels of brilliance and violence to pick up the where he’d failed.

  Bravo held the final answers within out of contingency. The Universe of the Unreal would be saved either way.

  “What,” Herrig said after having gotten over his own vehemence, “does this have to do with Oscar and him dying?”

  “Ah, well.” Garth flashed Herrig a quick smile. “The other Universe –don’t worry, I won’t call it the ‘real’ universe- is … different, more vibrant. Less implausibly chaotic. There are things in this place that could never ever be over there, things that make it … better, more … proper. Anyway. I digress and besides, explaining to you how that other Universe is different pretty much requires me to harangue you on the differences between real and unreal, so I’ll just say poor Oscar is gonna die of a broken heart.”

  Herrig wanted desperately to understand, but his mind wouldn’t be able to grasp the corners of what Garth was saying unless he could get the man to speak more pla
inly and openly; even though it was obvious he was pushing Garth, he tried a different tactic. “What does this other Universe have? What makes it so special?”

  Garth smiled wistfully. It had things like Derek Bishop and Sparks. Nevertheless, it wasn’t just about that. “It isn’t what it has that makes it real, it’s about … so many things. It’s about what it doesn’t have, for one.”

  “What’s that?” Herrig asked, curious.

  “People like me.” Garth caught Herrig’s frown and sighed. “It’s true. In a rational, sane, semi-logical Universe with consistent physical laws, a dude like me couldn’t exist. The things I can do, they ain’t proper.”

  “Well, I …”

  Garth cut Herrig short. “Pal, you were one of the first nice people on this planet, but talking about all this stuff is depressing as fuck.” Especially since he’d burned away all chances at defeating the Heshii to save a guy that was only going to live –at best- another week. Herrig went to deny that it was gloomy, but Garth shooshed him and pointed at the Sheet the fat man had been carrying like a high-tech shield since they’d started talking. “Now why don’t you tell me what you’ve got there?”

  “I… er …” Herrig slumped. He handed it over and waited for the temper tantrum. It was inevitable. He’d had a bit of a fit half an hour ago when the flash had hit their private ‘LINKs and then another one just before meeting with Garth; the … the state of the commercials and digital flyers for this new style of Game made Garth into a buffoon. They’d resurrected political caricatures from hundreds of years ago, slapping the man’s head on a slack-jawed local yokel-type they’d named Uncle Trinity. Disgraceful.

  Garth read the first page. “Fight stuff, hey?”

  The Game was about the only thing he had left to focus on. Finding Naoko was a virtual impossibility and he was beyond pleased no one had really thought to bring it up to him; unless he’d been on the kidnappers’ asses right from the start, like literally in a jet-powered space car, there was no way he could’ve prevented them from getting to wherever they’d gone.