Deus: The Eurynome Code, Book Six

by Gorman, K.

  Then, she backed out and moved onto the laboratory.

  Bingo.

  The Cradle nestled into the closest wall inside the door, sticking out like a giant, bulbous white thumb. The whirring, computerized tank vaguely resembled one of the luxury hot tubs she’d seen advertised in hotels over the years, albeit more medical in its equipment and casing. Inside, the lights were on, and the translucent, aquamarine water rippled with currents. Tia’s analytical mind kicked in as she examined it, noting the expanse of its curves and the odd, cushioned cot that appeared inside.

  Meant for longer periods of connection?

  This must be it, she thought to Tia.

  Possibly, yes. It looks different than what I’m used to, but seventy years is a lot of time for innovation.

  Yes, it is. She glanced over it. Though she’d seen a more recent version of a Cradle back in Seirlin’s abandoned lab on Nova, this had a different look to it―which was logical. The Corringhams, from what she’d gathered, had broken from Seirlin, and the lab in Nova was Seirlin’s attempt to recreate their experiment.

  I hope the Alliance sues the pants off of them.

  Several Shadows followed her as she skirted around the Cradle’s foot, and once again, she felt the shift of awareness from her own Shadow inside her. She hesitated a moment, then wedged the tip of the sword into the crease of the Cradle’s lid and splintered it, setting the sword aside to use her good hand to pry it the rest of the way open.

  It looked roughly the same as the one they’d picked up from the Macedonian complex a week ago. Newer-looking, of course, with a more-finished design on its prefab, and entirely lacking an undead baby―for which she was both relieved and confused. Without a Cradle base such as the Sasha clone in the other Cradle, how did it work? Had Bernard found a way around it?

  Maybe Tia was right. Maybe he had made a discovery that negated the need for a base.

  She tilted her head, squinting at the slots in the side of the center console.

  There was only one active implant in its side. The rest of the slots were empty.

  Shouldn’t there be more? she asked.

  In theory, she would have expected a couple hundred inserted into its hub.

  Maybe he squished everyone onto a mass hard drive, Tia mused. Not recommended, but technology has progressed quite a lot since my day.

  Where’s the base? she asked.

  Maybe Bernard is using himself as one. Either that, or he’s found a way around it.

  Or maybe he’d found a way to use a digital base.

  She shook her head. It was confusing.

  But, it was there.

  They’d found it.

  Thank the fucking gods.

  Now, all she had to do was switch over to the real world, pop the top off, and crush the single implant stuck in its hub.

  It would likely crash the entire structure down on itself along with whoever it was inside―if they were connected―but, given all that Bernard had done, imploding his mind just seemed like poetic justice.

  If she could do it.

  Fuck, she thought. You ready?

  Neither of us is ready, Tia informed her. You have a broken arm, and he’s got all of the power in the universe.

  Yeah, well, we don’t exactly have a choice. If we wait any longer, he’ll just move. Then we may never find him. And the universe will continue to be his.

  She took a big breath and let it out, resisting the urge to roll her shoulders.

  With her current injury, that would be inadvisable.

  Then, she looked up at the Shadows watching her. There were ten of them, now. And hers was still inside.

  “Well, wish me luck, guys.”

  With that, she grabbed the sword, tugged on her power, and ported herself to the other world.

  The air changed, and the ambience shifted. Warmth touched her skin, along with the light from the tank. Inside, she felt the smooth touch of the Shadow world slip from her grasp.

  She was moving before she was fully over, lifting her blade and aiming it awkwardly for the crack in its top where she could pry the lid off.

  But―this time, there was someone in it.

  She halted, her attention snagging on the body.

  Bernard?

  It…didn’t look like Bernard. Whoever this was, they were an emaciated wreck. A Caucasian male with pale skin that practically glowed in the tank’s lights, the top of the water’s surface lapping at a shrunken, starved abdomen. Ribs stuck out from his chest, and she could see every bone under his skin. His legs were like sticks, the muscles withdrawn into thin caricatures of themselves, and his dick was a flaccid, wrinkled splotch that swayed listlessly in the water’s current.

  His head floated under the Cradle’s computerization, one leg of the nanoinjector visible from her angle. The lower half of his face was obscured by a breathing mask.

  A moment ticked by, then another.

  What the fuck? she thought.

  That’s…Tia hesitated, a growing sense of clarity mixing in with the disgust. That’s Elliot.

  Karin looked down sharply, her mouth slackening as she examined the body again. Thoughts came to her, and memories. Naked memories. Memories she hadn’t known she had.

  Surprise bloomed through her.

  She’d never given much thought to memorizing someone’s body, nor had she given much thought to Elliot Corringham being naked―for obvious reasons. But Tia, at one point, had. And with Tia’s memories, and her mind’s new thought processes, she could take certain body ‘landmarks’ from Tia’s memories and match them to the person in the tank in front of her.

  There was a thick mole just on the side of his belly button. And another, smaller one by his nipple that had always annoyed Tia. And a dip in the skin along his shin from where he’d injured it playing on the docks as a child―he’d liked to tell that story.

  This was Elliot.

  Soft footsteps sounded in the hallway outside.

  Fuck.

  With a smooth move, she adjusted her sword, switching it onto the backhand and aiming its tip at Elliot’s throat just as Bernard appeared in the doorway, his eyes curious and amused.

  And predatory.

  She could see it now, just as she could see the wrongness of the world around them.

  “I thought I felt someone tip-toeing through my house,” he commented, taking in the scene.

  “Stay back,” she said, pressing the blade closer to Elliott’s throat and holding it at a steeper angle. “I’ll kill him.”

  He chuckled. “Go ahead. He serves no purpose for me anymore.”

  Her jaw muscles worked. “You’d kill your own brother?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But you killing him would serve a most poetic bout of justice.” He let out a soft chuckle, and his lips curved. “Do you know what that is? Why he’s in there?”

  She narrowed her eyes, resisting the urge to glance down at the Cradle, to take her eyes off of the man standing in front of her. “It’s a Cradle.”

  He made a tutting sound. “No, that’s not a Cradle. It’s similar, I suppose, but it doesn’t serve the same purpose nor have the same uploading facilities. No, that is a long-term simulation device.”

  A what?

  She hesitated. A door slid open in the hall outside the room, and another pair of footsteps came toward them. Grace―Bernard’s Eurynome clone―appeared just behind him on his left, her dark eyes catching the lights. She crossed her arms over her abdomen, as if she were cold.

  Or hurt.

  Bernard watched her gaze slip and glanced back. “She’s part of this, too. Part of what my fucked-up brother did. And you, Tia, should know. You were all what started this whole thing.”

  She was staring at Grace, trying to process. She shook her head, her mind sliding into a mix of denial, shock, and confusion. “What?”

  “Elliot was so obsessed with you that, when you died, he took a copy of your brain and began to run it in a computer. Only, you weren’t exactly as he
imagined it, especially since you dumped him, so he kept adjusting you, scraping off all the things that he didn’t want until he created a you that he liked and a you that would stay with him for all eternity.” He jabbed a finger toward the Cradle, and she flinched at the movement. “That’s your chip in there. His copy of your mind that he dumbed down enough to suit him. And he’s been living in there for five years.”

  Inside her, Tia had gone utterly still. It felt like the bottom had dropped off her mind.

  “He didn’t like me,” Grace said, hugging herself harder. She was beautiful, she realized, and younger than Karin had thought. “He made me, and he didn’t like me.”

  “Not your fault. You couldn’t have pleased him unless you were a robot he could program.”

  Grace gave a shrug. “I didn’t like him much, either.”

  Karin stood there, stunned.

  What the fuck?

  “That is some of the weirdest, most fucked-up shit I’ve heard, and I came from one of your compounds,” she said. “He didn’t like his ex, so he created a version of her that he did, and that would accept him? Fuck. He basically lobotomized her?”

  And created a living, breathing clone. Don’t forget that part. Inside, Tia’s speech faltered.

  “So, go ahead,” Bernard gestured. “Kill him. It would save me a lot of shame and hassle.”

  In that case, it sounded like something she shouldn’t do.

  He might be lying, Tia’s words came in a rush, bubbling up like gas in the ocean. It might not be true.

  But, even as they thought it through, the evidence was too damning. Grace was standing right there, looking like a young, beautiful version of Tia. And Elliot was in the tank, wasting away.

  He could still be lying, Tia said, stronger this time. He’s lied to us before.

  Elliot is going to die anyway. Does it matter?

  Tia considered that.

  No. No, it does not.

  Karin looked down, her upper lip curled in disgust. Then, Tia’s strength surged through her arm, and she stabbed down, slicing the tip of the sword through Elliot Corringham’s neck and watching the blood gush out into the water.

  The body beneath her jerked, an arm coming up and slapping harmlessly against her elbow. She brought the sword up a second time and stabbed down again. And again. And again.

  When she was done, the water ran red, and Elliot Corringham’s body was a brutalized mess of flesh.

  Then, she used the sword to pop the lid of the not-Cradle, pulled it away, and stabbed its tip into the chip inside until she heard it crack and splinter.

  When she turned her gaze back up, Bernard was watching her with predatory eyes. Behind him, Grace had taken a step back.

  Karin spared her a glance, reaching out with a touch of her Eurynome power.

  She didn’t notice.

  Neutered, Tia diagnosed. A Eurynome in name and face only. No powers.

  Good.

  Go, Tia urged. Go now.

  She lifted the sword tip from Elliot’s neck and switched her focus to Bernard.

  She had a feeling she wouldn’t be getting out of this one alive. Not if he was so calm about it. Not when his own power slid through every molecule of the room, including the air that she breathed. Not with that knowing expression on his face, as if he were waiting for her to do something.

  “Where did you get that sword?” he asked.

  “The Goddess Athena gave it to me,” she said, her tone clipped and sardonic. “We use it to kill monsters.”

  He grinned. “Then you’ve found a good target.”

  She also had second and third blades in sheathes hidden in her pants, and a fourth at the small of her back. If she was going to bring a blade to a fight where her goddess powers were already being outgunned, then she was going to be extra redundant about it.

  He was still just a man. If she managed to stick a knife into his neck, then she could save the world―and herself―a whole lot of trouble.

  “It’s not from here,” he said, taking a step forward.

  No, it isn’t. So you can’t touch it. That is the whole fucking point of it.

  She retreated, wariness in her blood. Her heart pounded in her throat, the dull roar of blood overwhelming her ears. The pain from her arm had started to peek back, but a new rush of stimulants knocked it down.

  She was ready to fuck herself up to get to him.

  Her gaze slid from him to Grace.

  “He’s using you, you know. You’re a copy of a woman he killed over seventy years ago. He cut me open, put my brain in a tank, used me for his research, then left me to rot.”

  Come on, she thought. You’re smarter than this. You’re me.

  “He never loved you,” she continued. “He only loved himself.”

  Bernard’s lips twitched in amusement. “I raised her from a child. She’ll never go with you.”

  Karin wasn’t so sure―Grace had an uncomfortable look on her face that made her think that the woman had come to many sorts of conclusions about herself years ago―but it didn’t matter.

  She was using the conversation as a distraction.

  She smiled. “Have you not learned anything in all your years studying myths, raising kids?” She smiled. “Children rebel.”

  As if on cue, something shifted in her bones. The Shadow erupted out of her, straining through her skin in a dissolved black mist.

  She threw the sword and staggered back.

  The tip missed, just as she thought it would, but her Shadow had caught Bernard’s attention instead―as an otherworldly being, he did not have control of it, and she had not told him about her connection to the Shadows.

  She grabbed the knife at her back and lunged forward, the bulk of her body crashing straight through her Shadow to catch him in the side. Light exploded from her skin. She stabbed the knife in, catching him in the hip, and felt the blade turn as it hit bone. He cried out, and fingers clamped down on her hand, crushing her grip into the hilt.

  Then, the Shadow grabbed them both. The dimensional boundaries pulled at her, already shifting across.

  Her mind clicked as they landed in the Shadow version of the lab, the world’s hushed quiet floating down around the roar of her mind.

  She took advantage of Bernard’s momentary confusion, stabbed the knife harder into his hip, activated her Eurynome powers, and pulled all three of them into Tartarus.

  His blood hit the warm stones of a courtyard on Mount Olympus.

  Bright sunlight filled the air around them, its heat and light driving into her blood with purpose. She staggered back, yelling as she ripped her grip away from him. Her boots slid on the stone, and she sank down.

  At the side, her Shadow also backed up, its form rippling under the sun.

  Shaking with pain, she watched as Bernard Corringham jerked the knife from his body and straightened, eyes squinting as he looked around.

  Medical patches, Tia diagnosed. He has at least three. His bleeding has already stopped.

  Though blood soaked through the fabric of his jeans and he still listed in that direction, the rest of his posture and body language showed no signs of pain.

  Well, she thought. We got him over. Now what?

  So far, Bernard did not seem at all concerned with his new predicament.

  “That was well done,” he said, slowly rotating to take in his new surroundings. “Where am I?”

  “Mount Olympus,” she said. “In Tartarus.”

  An alarmed shout came from the side. In her peripheral vision, several figures ran out from one of the buildings―Marc, Soo-jin, Reeve, Takahashi, and Baik.

  She’d taken Bernard into the main courtyard of the temple complex, and they were several levels below. Over a mile away.

  No help from them.

  As Bernard completed his circle, the knife in his hand caught the sun in a blinding gleam. She bent to one knee and removed the knife from her right leg’s sheath.

  She gritted her teeth.

  Fuck
.

  “Tartarus,” he said, musing the word.

  Then, Tylanus was there, kneeling at her side, helping her balance. “Don’t move. It’s all going to be okay.”

  “We need to kill him,” she muttered, pitching her voice low so that it wouldn’t carry. “We need weapons. Guns. I―”

  He restrained her when she tried to get back up. “Shhh. It’s okay. Stay down.”

  She glanced over to him. “What? But if he gets to the Cradle―”

  “He won’t,” he said simply.

  She frowned.

  Then, they were no longer alone.

  There was a ripple in the air, and the wind shifted. Like someone lifting the veil of a curtain, the former Eurynome Programs appeared, clumping in loose groups around the courtyard, lining the balconies of the second and third stories, coming up from the garden path below. Hundreds of children, close to a thousand, all making their way to the same area.

  The breath went out of her.

  Layla strode forward from the rest, her head tilted in a predatory way that she recognized from Nomiki, hair bunched up on either side of her head, her small body lithe and strong.

  “Hello, Bernard,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Bernard frowned, his expression shifting from wonder to confusion. “Athena?”

  Layla’s jaw worked, the rage barely contained. Karin felt power fluctuate. Above, the sun shone down, pushing its heat into her skin, strengthening her Eos energy. The wind mixed in, strikingly cold. She caught the scent of warm grass and wildflower, and lake water from the large pond below.

  “No,” Layla said. “My name is Layla. And we are not your pawns.”

  And, with that, power ripped through the air, and the entire population of children surged forward. Blood splattered on the stone, and Bernard gave a pained shout.

  He was strong. He fought hard. Energy clashed, blasted apart. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  But the children were stronger, and they were already dead.

  When they were finished with him, only a pile of bloody flesh and bone lay smeared across the stones, along with the shreds of his clothes and the golden knife she’d stabbed into him, which lay a few meters away, gleaming against the red.

  She stared, her mind processing it.

  Then, she closed her eyes.