Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral
Page 29
“No,” said Vincent between sniffles. “She’s not there. She’s not a part of her. But when we find her, we can make her a part of us. Wouldn’t that be nice? She wouldn’t be alone, and neither would we.”
Helen stared over his shoulder. The creature, part human, part car, now had smoke entwined within its workings as well. She could see her husband’s black billows flowing throughout its engine. Its pistons emitted a metallic cough with each rise and fall. Her eyes grew wide as it stepped towards them.
“Stop, you greedy pig,” Vincent shouted as he pressed his body down on hers. His long, prismatic hair whipped around her head, wrapping into a cocoon that smothered her face. “You still have to breathe, somehow,” he whispered in her ear. “I have to, I know that you do too. Even Julia still does, in her own way. Breathe me into your lungs, and let Asher’s children rework us. We can be husband and wife in a way that you and Roger never were. Let’s show those bastards what it’s like to feel this way, to feel cut out.”
She thrashed beneath him, desperate to be free. Jagged razors sprung from her features. They circumnavigated her head in a tornado of steel. Vincent screamed as they slashed through his hair. Something wet and hot sprayed her face. He leapt off of her, and she gasped for air. He staggered towards the line of trees, his hands clutching his head.
She sat up as the sharpened points of her flesh receded. Thousands of glistening hairs lay in the street around her. Had she cut off one of his extremities? She felt sick. For all her confusion and fear, she had never wanted to harm anyone.
The strands writhed like thousands of thread–thin worms. They wriggled and squirmed a few inches before they collapsed motionless to the asphalt. Vincent turned towards her, and Helen saw that whatever had covered his face and head had not been hair after all. Perhaps they were cilia, or even thin, stringy fingers. Whatever they were, their roots within his flesh bled.
He roared, and dove for her. He seized her throat with both hands, and squeezed. The eyeballs embedded within his palms and fingers pressed against her neck like slimy grapes. He dug his thumbs into her windpipe, causing fireworks to burst throughout her field of vision. He cried with an incoherent roar, and she could see that clear, fine hairs filled the inside of his mouth as well. Her features resharpened, and sliced at what remained of the beard that dipped and swung in her face. He reeled in agony, but still he held on.
She shook. Her entire body transformed, erupting into a whirling mass of blades. They slashed into his hands, arms, legs, and stomach. He let out a gurgling scream, and rolled away. He curled into a fetal position as he sobbed and wailed. She could see the swarm within him as they struggled to hold together the twisted form that characterized his existence.
His blood churned and frothed as it seeped onto the pavement. It spread from his wounds, until it covered the scattering of silvery hairs that surrounded them. Upon contact, the tubular strands squirmed back to life. Their fattest sides took root amongst the tar and grit, and stood on end.
A burbling, agonized moan escaped his lips. He reached towards her, the sides of his mutilated arm flapping like a torn sleeve. She rolled to her knees and scampered away, the twirling knives of her flesh scraping the pavement. He propped himself up on one arm, while he wrapped the other around the shreds of his body. Then, with a groaning sigh, he fell.
His gangly frame split open upon impact, unraveling from every laceration. His insides, devoid of bones, organs, and muscles, were a nest of waving cilia that wormed inward from his dermis. At their center lay cluster upon cluster of blinking, roving eyes.
His wrinkled skin dissolved, melting into the street. The road became a pathway of wiggling, silvery hairs, and glassy eyeballs. Embedded within the pavement like pebbles, they rolled in unison to stare at her.
She tried to crawl away, but the syrupy asphalt seized her as well. The tar congealed around her hands, feet, and knees, like thick, oozing taffy. She pulled and pulled, her spinning razors slow and useless in the muck, but the roadway refused to let go.
“Helen.”
The automotive monstrosity loomed above her. It took her middle in its claw, and yanked. Her blades, beyond her control, scraped and sparked against its steel. It tugged harder. The street refused to give her up. Her mind cried out in pain and fear. Any more, and the car would rupture her stomach, or her captured extremities would tear. The person–shaped vehicle seemed to understand this, and loosened its grip.
Please, she thought, please, I don’t want to be with him. I don’t want to be trapped in the ground. Please, I’m going to smother and dissolve, please help me.
“Helen.”
Yeah, her mind whispered, that’s me. That’s who I am. Now what?
“Helen,” the car repeated in a voice that was an oily, smoky mixture of both Julia and Roger’s. “You are Helen. Trust me. You control the wasps, they don’t control you.” It dropped to one knee, impervious to the ravenous demands of the pavement. “It’s your fear and certainty that is doing this. As long as you’re certain that the street will devour you, it will. You have to control Asher’s insects, his children. You are Helen. Think it, over and over. You are in control. You are Helen.”
The knives that composed her face combined to form a jagged throat, lips, teeth, and tongue. “I’m Helen,” she said in a raspy, flanged voice. “I’m Helen.”
Another hand of steel reached down to stroke her back. She looked up into the conglomeration’s chrome grill. All she could see in it was the reflection of a razor–skinned golem whose flesh was constantly in flux.
“Focus, Helen. You can control them. You are Helen, not the road. You are Helen, not the asphalt. Don’t let it claim you. Control them. Remember that you are Helen.”
She forced herself to concentrate, to try to quell her all–encompassing sense of dread. Remember what, exactly? Who was Helen? Was she a mother? That was the first thing that came to mind, how much she loved Tish, how she had once pushed her daughter out of her body, crying out in pain while holding on to Roger’s hand. Or was she a wife, an elementary school teacher, or even a junkie? Were the contents of her soul defined by other people, or by the things she had done? Was she her thoughts, her feelings, her actions, or her memories?
She had parents, of course. She could clearly remember her mother, but not her father. Her father… had been like every other father, she supposed. There was a seventy–eight percent chance that he had been a blue–collar worker, based on her having grown up in a classification–B7a1 environment, with a classification–D3k9 income, combined with —
Her newly formed mouth dropped open, and she began to talk in clear, precise syllables, enunciating each word in a crisp monotone.
“Cole, Helen, maiden name: Brady, citizen Q39B–a94. IQ: 98, as per WAIS–XXI. Openness to Experience: negative 2.4, subset alpha. Neuroticism: 7.8, subset foxtrot. Contentiousness: 9.1, subset tango. Extroversion…” The voice from her mouth rattled off categories, statistics, and probabilities as the movements of her sharpened flesh began to subside.
Images flashed through her mind in quick succession. Here was a boy with a pathetic, peach–fuzz moustache, pressing his lips against hers and trying to push his hand up her blouse as she punched and clawed at him. Here was her mother, wearing the same yellow dress as she, holding her hand on the church steps as they posed for an Easter photo. Here she was at twenty–three, sticking a needle into her vein, and floating towards a cloud of nothingness. Here was Roger, holding newborn baby Tish in his arms, and crying with joy. Here he was, throwing a coffee mug at her head and calling her a worthless addict. Here was Mrs. Wineland, her fifth grade teacher, dumping everything in Helen’s overstuffed, messy desk onto the floor in front of her entire class, the harpy’s horn–rimmed glasses barely hiding her glee at her pupil’s humiliation. Here she was twelve, playing with her cousin Charlene, banging away at a keyboard and singing into a microphone, laughing so hard that tears ran down their cheeks. Now she was nine, hiding under the covers and
reading by flashlight, lost in short stories about crystal ships that glided across the deserts of Mars. The cascade of snapshots flowed into one another, and she realized that she was not reliving a lifetime of memories, just the highlights. Just as the stream of classifications and demographics that came from her lips was not really Helen Cole, née Brady, but enough data to plug into a matrix of algorithms that could procedurally replicate her. Enough to smooth over the gaps with the spackle of a projected arc.
“Helen?” A tinge of worry crept into the car’s smoky voice. Although it was still morning, the sky had darkened to a deep navy blue. “What are you doing? Something’s wrong.”
She shook her head. She had to keep reaching. She had to fight through all the technobabble and psychological jargon to find the truth. Who was she? Who was Helen? The sound of three ascending bells, forming a major chord, cut into her thoughts. She ignored it. She had to concentrate, had to find —
Why did she smell burning pork?
A searing needle of purple light exploded through her brain. She disintegrated into an avalanche of bright red Sand that cascaded to the asphalt. The swarm of microscopic wasps that had been desperately trying to knit her back together fell dead to the pavement. A man with skin the color of midnight that burned in streaks of violet smoke stood in her place.
The Magistrate had arrived.
Agony shot through Julia’s headlamp–eye, as if it had been stabbed with a glowing poker. She spun away, wrapping her steel arms around her head.
Roger shook within her pistons. He did not understand. Helen was dead. Had he done that to her, somehow? Had his instructions gotten her killed? We have to see what’s happening, he thought. Please, you have to look.
I can’t, it burns.
Try keeping your eye on the ground, just don’t look into its face. Please, Julia, we need to see, or we’ll die too.
Julia complied, and turned her gaze to the street. The sun, though still in the darkened sky, could not compete with the being’s flickering, lilac radiance. It stepped forward, its pitch–black heel brushing Helen’s crystalline remains to the side. It turned to face the patch of tar that had once been Vincent. The roadway’s cilia waved and twisted at the creature’s approach, its dozens of tiny eyes blinking in anticipation.
The figure spoke, its voice echoing throughout the ashen plumes of Roger’s mind. Its rich tones resonated in every component of the vehicle’s body, both metal and bone.
“Corrupted sector. Reformatting.”
A fan of violet light burst from between its fingers, and raked the deviant patch of spongy blacktop. Within seconds, the eyes and minute tentacles had been reduced to a handful of Life Sands that glinted like rubies. The spot where the asphalt had been was now a featureless, flat plane of gray.
Roger looked at the scarlet grains that had once been his wife. He felt empty, as if there were a gaping hole at his center. He wanted to scream. I don’t have a heart anymore, he thought, so how can it hurt like this?
I’m sorry, Julia thought. He felt the tendrils of her mind entwine with his. I’m so sorry.
I’m… I’m sorry about your husband too, he sent back, though I guess I shouldn’t be. You must have loved him once. What he did to Helen was unforgivable, but I’m sure that you never wanted to see him die.
There was silence for a few seconds. I’m scared, she thought. I don’t want to die alone. These others… I don’t know them. Even though they’re a part of me, I don’t know them the way that I knew you.
He began to churn, flowing back and forth within the workings of her engine. Julia, he thought, you have to let me go. I have to find Tish.
The velvety, smoking thing turned towards them, bathing the auto–human hybrid in its glow. Do you really think you can save her from something like that?
Stop it, his mind cried as his billows picked up speed. I just lost my wife, I can’t let that happen to my daughter too. For God’s sake, let me go!
The violet light intensified as the creature raised its arm.
Without a word, all of Julia’s valves, pistons, hoses, and caps burst apart, revealing the sun.
Roger tore through the nearest opening, and shot towards the clouds. He had nothing that could be called a body any longer, he was merely smoke upon the wind. A flare of purple from beneath him lit the sky, and he heard the thousands of grains that had composed Julia and the others fall pattering to the pavement.
He soared, spreading himself as thinly as he could. He dared not turn around. To look into the smoking eyes of that thing was pain. Besides, if it saw him and judged him to be more than just exhaust, all it had to do was shine its light in his direction. He heard, faintly, the buzzing of Asher’s children that were spread throughout his wisps and curls.
Tish, he thought. He tried to bring up the image of her face, but his memories were fading fast. All he could do was think and feel. He concentrated on his emotions, on all the love he had for her.
Tish.
He wafted on the breeze. Was he changing course? It was hard to tell, but it seemed as if he was. He snuck a peek at the ground. He could not see the creature any longer, or its smoky, lavender glow. The cityscape of skyscrapers, houses, streets, and apartment buildings swooped by below. He could see the steeple of a stone church in the distance. He could not think of its name, but it did not matter. He sent feelings of gratitude towards his wasps, and felt them respond in kind. Find her, he thought, help me save my daughter.
Chapter 18
“Malachi, open your eyes.”
Matthew did as instructed. He was lying on the same cot as before within the same laboratory, its tiled walls illuminated by his flesh’s amber glow. His grandfather’s doppelganger was nowhere to be seen. The sound of ticking, soft and rapid, echoed from behind him. He tried to raise or turn his head, but his neck muscles refused to work. He could feel movement within his skull, though it was not painful. It was the kind of numb sensation that one felt while being operated upon under a local anesthetic. His head felt as if it were an open bowl, and someone or something was stirring his brain with sticks.
Or feelers.
A woman looked down at him, and smiled. She was the same person who had called herself Zeta, but her appearance had changed. For one thing, she looked about twenty years younger, though the bitterness in her expression made her youth come across as a facade. For another, her features were softer, their imperial angles less harsh. The more that Matthew looked, the more subtle differences he noticed. Her eyes were wider and set further apart, while her nose was longer and more aquiline. The color of her hair, now straight and long, had changed from platinum blond to a silky, jet black. It hung to her shoulders, framing her oval face. But despite these cosmetic variations, he could tell that she was the same woman. Her smile was devoid of any kindness or humor. It was the smile of a patient, loving mother whose sad duty was to discipline a willful child — with a belt, if she must.
“Facelift?” he asked, slurring the word.
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you remember me now?” she asked. She spoke with a slight Russian accent in a voice a few tones higher than the one she had used before.
“No.”
She barked out a tiny laugh, and rolled her eyes. “Why are you here, Lyubimiy?” She tilted her head, and brushed her hair from her neck. “Did you come back for me?”
Matthew tried to understand, but the word meant nothing to him. “No,” he said. “I came because…” His voice trailed off. Something that felt like an egg whisk whirled within the soup of his mind, scraping the sides of his cranium.
“Never mind,” she said. She pulled up a chair beside him, and sat down. She took his glowing hands in hers. “There was someone else, once, wasn’t there? Someone else you loved?”
Someone else? It had become impossible for him to focus. Whom had he loved? His mother? His grandfather? Or…
“Yes,” he said at last.
“Who?”
“Sigma.” The word escaped
his lips. He did not know what it meant. He could feel the creature parting and probing the folds of his brain. The shadow of a memory of this insectile exploration happening to someone else danced just out of reach. “I’ll always love her.”
The woman’s face froze. Her hands squeezed his until her fingertips turned white. She swallowed. “I see,” she said. “I remember her. Another one of your second–generation children.”
“She wasn’t a child,” he said, each word harder to pronounce than the last. “She was older than me. Now I’m older than her, I think.”
The woman closed her eyes, and shook her head. Her breath came out in a long sigh. “Why are you here, Malachi? Did you come looking for your precocious Zeta? Why are you dressed in a different skin? Why did you make yourself young again, like you were before your Ascension? Did you not think your child bride could love you for the monster that you are?”
Something tapped at the inside of his skull, like a woodpecker digging for beetles. He glanced at his leathery, glowing skin. “I don’t look young,” he said.
“I fixed you. I remade you as you truly are. I stripped away your false vanity. Do you know why?”
He groaned with exasperation. Why did this woman refuse to understand? “No.”
“Because there was another who loved you. Before Zeta, before this other child, Sigma. You abandoned her, Lyubimiy, just as you abandoned your young and lustful Zeta, just as you abandoned the righteous purpose that you shared with your brothers and sister. Did you abandon Sigma as well, when she got too old for you?”
He looked at her, but said nothing. His mind had become a quicksand pit that sucked down and smothered every thought.
“This other woman — not a girl — this woman who loved you… When you were on separate missions, she foolishly held on, every moment of every day, waiting for you to return. Would you have come looking for her? I think not.” She shrugged. “But now, you are here. You came disguised as a younger man, though you’ve committed some bizarre atrocity against your arm. But I know you. I would always know you. Why did you sneak in? I would have welcomed you.”