Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “You can call me Fenris.”

  That was so funny Garth wound up laughing his ass off. In the end, after a choking, gasping wheeze that made his lungs hurt, Garth decided to sit up. He placed the towel around his shoulders and stared at the man.

  “You don’t look like a Five.”

  “And you don’t look like a man who spent ten or fifteen years in the Real Universe.” Fenris admitted dryly. “And you certainly don’t look like the man who is going to open Bravo.”

  “Aren’t we full of information.” Garth stretched his neck muscles. The regenerative capabilities of his augments were running a bit faster, but not fast enough. He rubbed his bruised chest. “Next time, I wear armor.”

  Fenris coolly gauged N’Chalez. The man hardly seemed to be the solution they’d all been waiting for, but they had it on the absolute best authority that he was their only chance. “As far as I can tell, sa, you are armor.”

  “Okay, look.” Garth tossed the cool towel at the far wall, where it struck with a wet splat. “I’m having kind of a rough … life … right now, so let’s just get this all out in the open. You are clearly one of the first God soldiers, making you five thousand years old. You were built using Harmony technology. Which begs the question, why aren’t you bootfucking this system into submission for your Heshii masters?”

  “Priorities, sa.” Fenris located a chair and sat down opposite N’Chalez. “Priorities. Why didn’t you use the last of your paradox to locate and enter Bravo when you had the chance? If you possessed any such thing.”

  Garth thought about Sabellik and whatever it was that he’d done during the showdown with al-Taryin. With a head stuffed full of paradoxical hy-tech dreams fueled by a tenuous connection to the extra-dimensionality, the man could’ve done anything at all, especially if he’d built something to absorb or redirect the massive energy spill from that last ex-dee burst and whatever it was that Chadsik himself had done to disappear. “An innocent man was going to die. Because of me. And I couldn’t let that happen, I guess. Why are you here? I mean, like, here, in this room, playing twenty questions when I feel like you know all the goddamn answers.”

  “Sentiment.” Fenris chuckled. It’d been a long time since he’d felt sentiment. Nearly five thousand years, to be precise. It’d been one of the reasons he’d volunteered to climb into the bizarre chamber in the first place. He’d wanted so very dearly to offer his life in return for a chance to help protect the men and women of that young system. “I am here to see if you really are N’Chalez.”

  “And if I’m not?” Garth demanded pugnaciously. If the guy was a Five, he had no chance, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try and kick his ass.

  “Then, as you so eloquently put it, me and mine are going to … ‘bootfuck’ this system into the dust. Then the next one, and the next one, and so on, until we dismantle every galaxy in this broken down pre-Sphere. But only after I pull your head from your shoulders. I may choose to eat your heart. I have not decided yet.”

  “Wow, you really are full of information, ain’t you?” Garth hopped off the table and walked slowly towards a large fridge that he really hoped was full of ice cold, delicious soda. He opened it. Water and the weird Latelian version of carbonated beverages greeted him. He stared angrily at the carbonated ‘almost-apple juice’ that everyone in the system drank by the gallon and grabbed a bottle of water.

  “We are a product of modified hy-tech science, sa.” Fenris nodded when Garth held out an unopened bottle of water, catching it deftly. “The first of our ‘kind’ in twenty-five thousand years. We have had five thousand years to learn.”

  “Modified?” There was no food in the fridge, because, of course, God soldiers never ate during combat. “I would murder someone for a Slappy burger with fries. And a root beer float. With vanilla bean ice cream.”

  Fenris continued watching Garth, with both his regular eyes and the fully enhanced senses of a Harmony soldier with five thousand years of life under his belt. He doubted the man understood fully what he’d done to himself, of the repercussions his actions meant for himself, for everything. It was why, in the end, they were having this discussion in the first place; that he was Garth N’Chalez was, strictly speaking, not the problem. It was evident that the man was who he claimed to be.

  No, what was of dire import was the depth to which he was N’Chalez. If he was not yet in … in ‘contact’ … with that part of himself that’d spun this ancient web of trickery and deceit so long ago, then everything was at risk. Garth needed to be close enough to knowing his true plans without being consciously aware of the direction he’d been running all this time that the answer, when it came, came freely.

  “Even before slow saturation of ex-dee contagion afflicted Latelians with an abnormally heightened creativity and ingenuity, sa, they were intelligent.” Fenris drank some water. “And not nearly as … incautious … as they’ve become of late. They saw that the chambers were rife with loyalty programming. In the process of learning that they couldn’t defeat that programming, or subvert it in anyway, they instead discovered that they could, ah, ‘reverse the polarity’.”

  Garth snorted. “Deus ex Machina bullshit. ‘Our weapons aren’t working against these shields, if we invert the polarity, we can shoot right through them’. That doesn’t work in the real world.”

  Fenris stared blandly at Garth until the other man realized the foolishness of that last comment. When the embarrassment faded, the Five continued. “Why have you come here?”

  “Bravo. But you know that.” Garth commanded his eyes to scan the alleged Five, to do something q-circuity. Nothing. Had he endured that phenomenal pain for nothing?

  “Indeed, I do.” Fenris watched Garth try to corral the phenomenal operating system he’d embedded into his very soul. It was like watching a hundred million slender fiber optic wires trying to light at once. The man’s extra-dimensional profile was just that; a dizzying display of a hundred million, two hundred million, a nearly infinite procession of slender quadronium fibers puncturing an identical number of neural sheathes and into the endless plane they all called ‘the extra-dimensionality’.

  The Five feared it was too much. Even if N’Chalez was far enough along the path, it was all too probable that there wasn’t enough power in the Unreal Universe to fuel what he’d become, what he’d need to become. If he even bothered to recognize what needed to happen once he’d achieved that potential.

  Fenris moved. He grabbed Garth by the throat and slammed him against the wall before the man even knew what was happening. He gazed deep into the man’s bright blue eyes, watched the coiling and uncoiling circuits burn and flare with fitful spurts of energy. “Tell me what you know of the Harmony.”

  Garth tried to struggle free, but it was like fighting against the Universe. Fenris was a fully augmented Harmony soldier and he wasn’t anything special anymore, not in comparison. “Towards,” his throat clicked and the grip lightened a bit, “towards … towards the end of the conflict as we knew it, the M’Zahdi Hesh realized that they … they couldn’t win with their Kith and Kin. We … the Kith’kin and Kin’kith, were … were too effective in countering their activities. The … the Heshii panicked, I guess. They realized that the Kith and Kin had become too … alien. Too distanced from the Humanity they were trying to destroy. And the Heshii? Well, their worldview hardly even meshed with ours at all in the first place. It was why they’d decided to monkey with the ‘appropriate’ DNA sequences.”

  Fenris smiled encouragingly. Garth’s internal systems continued to flicker and buzz. “Go on.”

  “They … they got … they risked everything. To … to design a new kind of soldier, a new kind of threat.” Garth struggled again, but only briefly. After a few seconds of pointless kicking and slapping of hands, he focused on his breathing.

  “Did you ever bother to tell the Armies of Man any of this? Any of them? About how the Harmony Soldiers came to be?”

  Garth shook his head. “It w
as bad enough I’d already told them that we weren’t, strictly speaking, real. Telling them that there were six other Universes out there that were already real, that they formed actual Spheres of Existence … wouldn’t … have gone well.”

  “Continue with the birth of my kind, sa.” Fenris had heard the story already, from someone he trusted and believed, but this man, Garth N’Chalez, had been the first to know it. “If you please.”

  Garth dipped his head mockingly at Fenris’ pleasant nature. “Bathed in the sea of creation that they’d been siphoning off since the birth of this place umpty-quadrillion years ago, the Heshii had just enough power to burn a tiny hole from where they hid into the actual fabric of Existence, just enough pull a tiny, slender thread of what I call the Music of the Spheres through and into this plane.”

  “And so?”

  “And so,” Garth ground the words out, “and so every Harmony Soldier who fought in the war was more real. The Heshii had figured out a way to make people like me, only they tainted the Harmony, twisted it into something that made them loyal to their paradigm. Instead of wanting to assist in the creation of a new sphere, they sought only to destroy.”

  Fenris squeezed hard, so hard that he could feel the quadronium in Garth’s neck tense, rushing idiot-blind to counter the sudden, intense pressure. “During the Year of Silence, when the Heshii were programming and creating an unstoppable legion of Harmony Soldiers, you developed your plan. You went to the Armies of Man and said ‘We will lose this war, and so we must prepare. We must surrender the Earth for a time. We will return, and retake it after a hundred years’.”

  “That… that is a gross oversimplification.” Garth gasped raggedly for air. Fenris was polite enough to loosen his grip for a second, just enough time for sweet, sweet oxygen to rush into abused lungs.

  “Also a lie.” Fenris persisted, squeezing harder. Quadronium swelled and his titanic grip met a resistance he couldn’t defeat. Miraculous. The system was learning, only slowly. The fibers running through ex-dee gleamed a bit brighter. “Why are you here? Why are you here, now?”

  “I … I needed to get … get far enough … far enough away from my point of return.” Garth stammered.

  “Why?” Fenris squeezed hard enough to shatter a planet. “Why sacrifice a power that you could’ve used then to save the Universe? We know it would’ve been easy. Why come to this now, when everything is so run-down, so ragged, so broken that there is no real hope? Why do to yourself as you have?”

  Garth gasped for air, struggled for freedom, tried to howl for help. He was helpless, useless, trapped. Everything he’d fought for, everything he’d tried to plan for, all of it was coming apart right here and right now because of an enraged Five’s thirst for answers that he couldn’t give. “I need … I need … the people … they deserve to live. I came here to d …” A word caught in his throat. “I came to save them.”

  “Lies!” Fenris knew the shout would echo through the auditorium and he did not care. Out there amidst the hundred thousand bored, disappointed fans, nine hundred and ninety-nine men were preparing themselves for pointless destruction. Unless N’Chalez answered properly. Fenris modulated his tone, spoke quieter. “Tell the truth as it tried to come out just then, N’Chalez. I saw the word in your eyes. Tell the truth. Why are you here?”

  Garth shook his head, slammed his eyes shut. “No. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. It doesn’t.”

  “Answer or you will see this false dawn burn.” Fenris smiled. “We will ensure you live until the End.”

  “I … I …” Garth opened his eyes, blue glistening with tears. “I came here to destroy everything. But that doesn’t make sense.”

  Fenris gently lowered Garth to the ground and released him from a grip that could shatter continental plates. “Not yet, it doesn’t, N’Chalez. Not yet. But it will.”

  xxx

  Lisa Laughlin wept, as she always seemed to do these days. Poor Garth, confronted with the knowledge of what he was doing before he understood the need. To know you’d come to the future, not as savior, but as destroyer without understanding why … what torment.

  But it was necessary.

  So very necessary.

  Music of the Spheres, Part II, or, How Ute Gets His Groove Back

  “I don’t get it.” Garth massaged his throat. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “As I said.” Fenris took a deep breath. “It will.”

  “You know what’s going on, though, don’t you?” Garth demanded angrily.

  “Of course I do.”

  “But you aren’t going to tell me, are you?” It was driving him bonkers, how people were suddenly crawling out of the woodwork with all sorts of answers he didn’t have. Worse, not one of them was willing to explain where they were getting their info. If there was an old guy sitting on a rock somewhere spilling the secrets of the Unreal Universe, oh, would he be pissed.

  “No, I am not.”

  “Why in the fuck not? You just choked the shit out of me, forced me into saying something I am not entirely sure I believe and now you’re just gonna stand there lookin’ at me?” Garth shuffled away from Fenris, expressly concerned that the Harmony soldier would get it into his noggin to get all choke-y again.

  ”It is enough to know that buried inside that head of lies you have some access to the truth.” Fenris smiled wolfishly at N’Chalez. “If you survive your encounter with Sa Gurant, we will be that much closer.”

  “I don’t like this at all.” Garth sniffed bitterly.

  “It isn’t for you to like or dislike. It is the nature of things.” Fenris tilted his head to one side. “Tell me, how do you propose to defeat Gurant?”

  “I was planning on waving my ass in the air. While he’s busy laughing, I thought I’d sneak up to an orbital missile plateau and shoot him in the brain with all of the missiles.” Garth waved his hands around. He was so frustrated. There was zero indication his q-form was going to do anything more exciting than just … hang out inside his body being boring.

  “Or you could consider the nature of the quantum field emitters.” Fenris replied cryptically.

  “I fucking hate cryptic.” Garth spat. “And I got no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

  “And you claim to be Garth N’Chalez, orchestrator of the war against the Heshii.” Fenris sneered. “Pathetic. Trapped inside your body as they are, unable to access external phenomena for power and requiring power before you gain access to the extra-dimensionality, what in this Unreal Universe exists that can reach inside?”

  Garth wracked his brain. He couldn’t think his way through the riddle. It made no sense. The QFE’s needed to be powered up before they could access the extra-dimensionality to be fully operational, but what else was there?

  Fenris shook his head. “This is … disappointing. You have very little time to discover the truth, ‘N’Chalez’. Facing Gurant without answers, your life will be over in seconds.”

  “It’s a fucking paradox.” Garth shouted hotly. “It’s impossible.”

  “No.” Fenris replied on his way out. “It isn’t. Remember where we live.”

  Garth flipped Fenris the bird and sat down.

  He was screwed.

  xxx

  Ute poked Huey in the forehead and, when nothing happened, looked around. Nothing in his entire life had prepared him for a moment like this. There was no training available to God soldiers or otherwise for when a body –remotely operated by an AI- stopped talking and moving. Everyone around him was too busy dealing with their own personal crises, things that the ex-God soldier had absolutely no concept of; from the sounds of the panic and the anger evident in the multitude of voices, a Dark Age was descending.

  Fenris stepped out of Garth’s dressing room, ignoring the two stupefied Onesies.

  Ute focused on the door behind Fenris. “Garth … What is he to you?”

  Fenris chuckled, a deep sound. “Oh, he is everything to me. And to you. And to everyone else. He w
ould just prefer it otherwise.”

  Ute dipped his head. Garth tried to paint himself as the eternal loner, the mysterious traveler, but he craved human contact. “Why are you here?”

  Fenris looked back over his shoulder, eyes looking through the door to see how Garth was progressing. As expected, the answer was ‘poorly’.

  “N’Chalez must survive, sa. He must always survive.” Fenris turned back to a man he considered friend. “That is, if he is who he says he is.”

  Ute’s broad forehead contracted into a frown. “Sa?”

  “The enemy is great, the enemy is powerful, the enemy is tricky, Sa Ute.” Fenris said this without irony. The enemy was great, was powerful, was tricky. “That man in there has all the appearances of the man we’ve been waiting for, of the man needed to finish things. He has even passed several tests, but that is not everything. He could still be an agent of the opposition, and if that is the case, Sa Ute, then I have failed miserably and eternal destruction shall rain down upon our heads.”

  This wasn’t the first time Ute had heard those words fall out of Fenris’ mouth. In the aftermath of destruction at the edge of their solar system, when the Five had risen up to deal with an ancient trap, Fenris had uttered a parallel sentiment; Ute, young and borderline moronic at the time, hadn’t known how to respond.

  Now, with everything he’d learned from Garth, Fenris’ mood seemed eerily equal.

  “Surely…”

  Fenris raised a hand, cutting Ute off. “The future is for the future, Sa. I have a question for you.”

  It was an oddly surreal moment, having a polite discussion with one of the mythological Sigma Fives while around them, men and women tried to figure out how best to soothe an unruly audience.

  Ute had dreamed of meeting with Fenris again, to beg explanations for about what’d happened that day, to demand answers as to why the rest of the horde had needed to be Sigma’d while he got to roam free and now that it was happening, now that Fenris stood right in front of him, all he could do was worry about Garth. He snorted. “As you wish, sa.”