Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  The Harmony God soldier took another jerky step forward.

  Garth took another deep breath and ignored the fact that the tickle in his throat was turning into an itching. Apparently, even the q-form couldn’t handle the excesses of vocalized Harmony. “Kneel.”

  Ironically, the pressure pushed Garth to his knees. He bit his tongue. The Heshii Paradigm drew closer. Garth was aware that Fenris and his Four Horsemen were on their feet, watching intently.

  Gurant’s muscles trembled. They struggled against the colossal force of the simply spoken word and he tried to rail against the fact that his muscles obeyed the will of another. He dropped to one knee, his howl of anguish a guttural roar.

  Garth closed his eyes. The crystalline madness of the Heshii Paradigm glittered in the dark between planes, neon green wasps swarming through the cracks of Unreality. He took a few ragged breaths. “Yield to me.”

  Across the solar system, every God soldier watching the Game, some with the stupefied grins of Onesies and others with the cold, calculating eyes of a Foursie and everyone in between, looked up from one knee and whispered, in systemic unison, “We yield to you, Garth N’Chalez.”

  xxx

  Fenris and the others shouted, their voices lost in the tumult. He was the one. Garth N’Chalez was who he was and now, deliriously, unbelievably, joyously, the End was Nigh.

  xxx

  Gurant howled. He refused to let the words out. He would not yield. He would not. Muscles in his arm ripping themselves from the bone, tendons flaying and blood flying, Gurant reached into his mouth and grabbed hold of his tongue.

  No traitor, he. He would never yield, could never yield. Gurant pulled with all his might and the tongue came free even as his mouth tried to whisper the words. He threw the blob of flesh at Garth and laughed wetly as it bounced off his great enemy’s forehead. Spitting out nearly a gallon of blood, Gurant channeled the pain he felt into furious motion. He struggled, fought, and then rose.

  Garth wiped absentmindedly at the blood on his face. He’d never seen someone tear his own tongue out rather than say a few words. It was much more disgusting than he’d imagined. He considered his options. There was enough mojo for one last phrase in Harmonic before he passed out, got brain-fucked by the Heshii or Gurant got close enough to stomp his entire body flat.

  Gurant would never stop. There was enough paradox saturation in the soldier’s body to continually –barely but continually - resist virtually every Harmonic command and Garth had no desire to continue fucking around. Yielding was the same as winning and it would’ve been nice to not have to kill someone to get into Bravo, but killing was something he’d always been at home with.

  “Sa Gurant,” Garth commanded, throwing as much oomph into the words as he could, “give me your head.”

  Instant silence descended, a system-wide, abhorrent silence as the crazed, blood-drooling and wildly delusional God soldier stopped in his tracks, body trembling as if he was en route to a seizure.

  Cameras, spEyes, and recording devices of all kinds swarmed Sa Gurant, relaying the God soldier’s mute, desperate and hysterical rolling of the eyes as his arms reached –of their own accord- upwards to grab hold of his broad, craggy jaw. Fingers hooked cruelly into the jaw and Gurant’s body set itself into a classic weightlifter pose; with his legs set wide, shoulders set square, the entire solar system watched as Gurant –eyes whirling madly in their sockets- twisted, jerked, and lifted his head clean off his body.

  Sa Gurant fell to the ground, neck spraying blood and other substances in a gory arc, covering the earthy soil with the last vestiges of his life. Cybernetic and mechanical systems clicked and clacked and then went offline.

  Gurant was dead. The Final Game was won. Garth N’Chalez had earned the right to open the Box.

  Pandemonium hit the audience, hit the planet, hit the solar system a full count of twelve solid seconds later as everyone, everywhere, realized what had happened.

  xxx

  Alyssa howled into her proteus. Her ever-loyal BioChimeric Units heeded her commands.

  xxx

  Fenris and the others moved suddenly, a vicious, swift departure from their chairs that pulled no less than thirty people in their wake as they leaped for the center of the arena where Garth sat, slumped over, hardly even aware he’d won.

  As they fell towards their commander, they twisted like cats. As they twisted, they grew. As they grew, they landed.

  Five hands caught five FTL bullets less than a fraction of an inch from Garth’s head; the opposite hand of each Fivesie shot straight up. The crushing power of each bullet traveled down one arm and up the other to spiral upwards, towards the ceiling. The gesture was one of the last times the Five would do anything … altruistic.

  xxx

  Vasily snorted. “Size is relative indeed.”

  He cleared his throat, nudged another of Alyssa’s BCU freaks to see if it was dead, and decided it was time to go to The Peak. Once Nickels realized that the Box he was about to open was a fake, he and his new friends would march on the last bastion of sanity on the entire planet.

  It wasn’t until he got out of the Arena and into his vehicle before he remembered that every single motherhumping God soldier every fucking where had apparently just sworn fealty to a motherhumping ex-Specter with an extreme penchant for overreaction.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Vasily called U-Ito, Salms and Harredad.

  The three faces stared down at him from the smart glass windows of his vehicle. All three looked like they’d spent the last half an hour throwing up, crying, shouting and losing their minds like every other citizen in the system. He threw up a hand, cutting them short. He didn’t have time to field their questions. He wasn’t even certain he had any answers that’d make any sense.

  “Launch the OIPS at The Peak.” Vasily ordered. With Alyssa’s stupid command of a Goddie on every corner of every street, virtually every God soldier within range of Hospitalis was awake, but … he’d held over a thousand OIPS in reserve. A good commander always had an ace up his sleeve.

  With luck, whatever … magic … Nickels had done to corrupt his Goddies would keep them numb for a while longer. Long enough to take The Peak. Vasily sketched the plan out, pleased his colonels nodded their understanding and that, for once, they didn’t try to argue or offer their own opinions. They were smart enough to understand what’d happened, and what would happen.

  “And,” Vasily swallowed nervously. His next idea would earn him a death sentence, possibly even a Sigma Order. “And,” he rallied, “shut the planet down. Do whatever it takes. No one goes anywhere. No one does anything. The only vehicles that operate are ours. Understand?”

  “Sa.”

  “Sa.”

  “Sa.’

  The three colonels disappeared.

  xxx

  Alyssa tried to struggle against the armor-plated arms holding her tightly. A soft, seductive whisper –carrying a strange, lulling accent- filled her ears.

  “Ya’ll got somethin’ Ah need, darlin’.” Griffin squeezed tighter when the Chairwoman resumed struggling. “An’ it’s hidden somewhere in yore city.”

  “I … I … can give you what … whatever you want.” Alyssa tried not to cry, but tears came anyway. It was all going wrong. It had already gone wrong. She needed to get out of the arena. Undoubtedly, the Promoter’s Guild had gotten over the shock of watching Gurant pull his own head off and were, even that second, gearing up to deliver the Box to Garth Nickels.

  Oh, how she needed to be out of the Arena.

  In fact, she needed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten miles away.

  “Ah want yer HIM … er,” Griffin wanted to smack himself in the head, “er, well, ya’ll call it the First Main. That’s what Ah want. Gimme that, an’ Ah let ya’ll live, Miz Chairwoman.”

  “Do you have a way of getting us to where it is quickly?”

  Griffin smiled beneath his helmet. Flight capacity had been restored. “Oh, Ah reckon Ah
do, Chairwoman. Ah do indeed.”

  “Take me to my office, then, Enforcer, and I will give you what you deserve.”

  Griffin didn’t need his Suit’s onboard linguistics programs to tell him the Chairwoman thought she was being devious. He knew shifty like his own damn name, yes he did. “Ah reckon you will, Miz Chairwoman, Ah reckon you will at that.”

  xxx

  Uncle Sa took a deep, ragged breath. He was crying, he couldn’t stop crying. Granger had passed out at the controls. The poor old man hadn’t been able to take the stress. More than half the people in the audience had followed Suit, the sight of five unnamed men leaping twelve hundred feet straight down and turning into literal giants to save the victor from … assassination, it seemed.

  He didn’t know why he was crying, only that he seemed … relieved. Forever and for the rest of his days, Uncle Sa knew that the right thing had happened, even though it seemed to be the wrong thing.

  “L…” Uncle Sa took a hitching breath, then redoubled his efforts, “Ladies and gentlemen, sis and sas, the … the Final Game has been won. Sa Garth Nickels, not really a filthy foreign devil or evil incarnate or any of the thousand mean-spirited things I said, is victorious. There …” even as he prepared to say the words, he wanted to laugh, they sounded so ridiculous, and then, “there will be a ten minute break while we prepare The Box. What … what a … what a game, eh, sports fans?”

  To Bravo, Or Not To Bravo?

  Historically speaking, once everyone –including the contestants and the Promoter’s Guild- realized that nothing and no one was ever going to open their Box, the wrap-up for the Game had become the most boring thing in the entire solar system. No one save the winner and diehard fans cared about the ‘opening ceremony’. Everyone waited for the Box to show up, everyone did their obligatory oohing and aahing and then everyone tried to outthink everyone else by leaving early, promptly and irrevocably turning the entire planet into a gigantic parking lot full of screaming assholes infused with extract of homicidal Game Rage.

  Not … not today. No one wanted to go anywhere. No one wanted to do anything. The people who’d fled their seats were making their way back, embarrassed and ashamed they’d missed such an unequivocally pivotal moment. Snack vendors had to be cattle prodded into action, and even then, they just stumbled down the stairs, giving anyone who asked whatever they had, not even bothering to charge.

  No one could believe what they’d seen. What they’d witnessed. What they’d heard. Their much beloved previous Game Winner announcing he was a god had been shocking, tearing him immediately from the collective bosom of Latelians everywhere. Latelians as a whole were willing to forgive and forget an awful lot of stuff, but standing there on systemic television and announcing that, not only were you a god, but you were a god who planned on pounding worshipful behavior into people wasn’t something you got away with.

  Then, their second most beloved systemic icon, technically speaking not even a real Latelian but very heavily approved of in any case, opens his mouth and says … things, strange things. No one anywhere had understood a single word of the fluted, musical sounds issuing out of his mouth, but everyone, everywhere had seen God soldiers kneeling, had witnessed God soldiers yielding to Garth Nickels and probably even Trinity Itself had seen Sa Gurant pull his own bloody head off immediately following what had undoubtedly been a direct order to do just that.

  After three thousand nine hundred ninety-nine years or just under eight hundred Games, everyone decided they were going to stay where they were or opted not to switch over to channel 6 to see what else was going on in the world.

  Because nothing was. Nothing was going on anywhere else.

  Not, many felt, in the entire Universe.

  They weren’t far off.

  xxx

  Garth looked up at Fenris and his Horsemen and feigned absolute indifference as they shrank back down to people-size. It didn’t take much effort; he’d only just done it himself and kind of understood the principles. Besides which, much to his disgust, the bastard q-form was letting the pain trickle in now he wasn’t fighting to save his life.

  He did, however, catch Fenris by the eye. “You and I have a lot of talking to do.”

  “Talk when the stars die.” Fenris replied coolly.

  “Not …” Garth twitched as a swathe of pain radiated up from his torso and tried to shoot out an eyeball. That first Hulk-smash punch should’ve turned him into a splatter of gunk against Gurant’s hand. “Not where everyone can hear you, you giant asshole. And no.” He said firmly. “Not when the stars die. Sooner than that, because it is about this whole bullshit destruction thing that we need to talk. About. Fuck. You know what I’m trying to say.”

  Fenris nodded before displaying the massive bullet fired from the portable FARS-gun. Solgun, Stride, Nalanata and Lokken held up the rounds they’d stopped from destroying N’Chalez. “We do. And perhaps, in time, there will be time. But for now …” He pointed.

  Lead Promoter and Master of Ceremonies Diselm Haabs walked nervously up to the six men, eyeing Gurant’s self-decapitated corpse, convinced that it was going to shake itself to life and run rampant through the streets maniacally trying to find itself a new head. Then he self-consciously eyed up the five eerily similar men –they were in no way similar to one another but if you looked at them for too long, they sort of … blurred … into one another- before focusing on the winner.

  “Er. Ah. Er.” Diselm bowed. “My name is Diselm Haabs. I am …”

  “Wait, what?” Garth laughed. “That is the worst name ever. Can I call you Diesel?”

  Diselm flinched. No one had ever said his name was bad. He’d grown up with it. It was … it was … it was … “Diesel. Yes. That sounds … better. Allow me, on behalf of the entire solar system, to congratulate you on that most stunning victory. There hasn’t been a game like that in thousands of years.”

  Lokken spoke, a rarity in a universe of rarities. “There has never been a game like that one. And it is but a precurs-“

  Garth elbowed the man in the gut, even though he suspected he and the other four were the closest things to actual Gods this side of the Universe. Gods … supremely upgraded men tied into the fundamental quantum wellspring that was at the bottom of all things … it didn’t matter. It was the same. “You were saying something about me being awesome?”

  Diesel shook his head to clear it of cobwebs. They were already off-book in terms of timing. More than three-quarters of the staff were passed out or blind drunk and the remaining quarter wasn’t that much better off; emotionally drained, psychically battered, everyone was more than content to sit around in their comfortable break rooms staring at the floor. Since he didn’t drink and had only been paying peripheral attention at best, he was standing in the middle of the Arena being watched by trillions … of … people.

  Garth reached out and grabbed Diesel before he hit the ground. “Easy there, chief. Just ignore all those eyes staring at you. You’ll be fine. There we go. Who’s a big boy? You are! Focus on my eyes. Pretend I’m not holding back tears of pain and that I’m saying incredibly macho things.”

  Diesel took a deep breath, found he was instead focusing on the soft grey eyes of the five men standing arrayed behind Garth like knives, and found the strength to speak, if only because it would get him away from them. “The … The … The Box arrives.”

  Indeed, The Box was arriving; the earth was shaking, Gurant’s corpse started skittering, the crowd started cheering.

  Because if there was anyone in the Universe who could open their Box, it was this man, this … hero.

  xxx

  This was it. This was why he’d come to Latelyspace, why he’d endured insane levels of manipulation and machinations from very nearly everyone he’d spoken to since landing on Hospitalis. It was why he’d fled the relatively comfortable embrace of Special Services, why he’d abandoned men and women he could’ve called friends, why he’d done everything he’d done.

  It�
�d been a hard damn path to travel. From the very moment he’d met with OverSecretary Terrance to about five minutes ago, the only time he hadn’t been hassled by agents, hunted by madmen, stalked by crazed and deceitful businessmen had been when he’d been stuck in the hospital, and then he’d been poked, prodded, folded, spindled, mutilated and generally abused by a doctor who couldn’t have been bothered to do the dirty work himself.

  In the end, that guy had turned out to be a colossal dick anyway.

  He’d been shot, blown up, stabbed, beaten nearly to death. He’d done himself serious harm every time he’d reached out with his power because there’d been nothing else to do and now he was stuffed full of bizarre technology that he no longer understood.

  Latelyspace wasn’t a friendly place, and his presence had made it worse.

  But, as he stood there, watching the ground beneath his feet shudder and shift, Garth reflected that it had kind of been worth it; in recompense for all the pain and suffering, he’d met Herrig, he’d had the pleasure –relatively speaking- of hearing Turuin’s story, he’d made fast friends with Ute, and, of course, fallen in love with Naoko Kamagana,

  Thinking on the tall, jasmine and orange scented EuroJapanese/Latelian super hacker extraordinaire filled him with a brief but furious spasm of loneliness. He would’ve given anything to have her by his side instead of a pile of super-enhanced quasi-trustworthy Harmony soldiers of suspect loyalties, but things happened the way they happened.

  It was as simple as that.

  The plates moved, hard-packed earth soaked with Gurant’s various, vital essences fell into the gap, and the top of the ‘Box’ appeared.

  Garth smiled. He was … happy? Complete? He was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Fenris and the others fanned out, and up in the stands, the silence was so profound you could hear a pin drop. Even Uncle Sa and Granger were keeping their mouths shut for a change.

  He’d come hundreds of trillions of lightyears and thirty thousand years into the future for this moment. He’d lost almost all of his connections to the past with the deaths of his brothers and sisters inside Pluto’s core, he’d wasted ten years of his life fighting in Special Services, he’d nearly lost himself to the darkness and madness of what a Kin’kithal could become, all for this.