DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

by Andrew Seiple

  I mulled on it.

  “STILL NOT CLEAR ON HOW TIME TRAVEL WORKS, OR WHAT LAWS GOVERN IT.”

  “That makes two of us, man.”

  “Three,” Vorpal added.

  The door opened and shut. “Four,” Martin said. “I miss something? Why we counting?”

  Vorpal filled him in on the deal. He whistled. “A time machine for plugging this dork? Not bad.”

  “Easy man. She’s the one who’s got to do it.”

  “I wonder what else future you’s installed on this time machine?” Martin looked concerned.

  I frowned. “DON’T KNOW. THAT’S A WORRY.”

  “You don’t trust yourself?” Vorpal asked.

  “PAST DIRE MESSED UP DIRE’S LIFE PRETTY WELL WITH DO-IT-YOURSELF BRAIN SURGERY. NO TELLING HOW CRAZY FUTURE DIRE’S GOTTEN. ESPECIALLY IF SHE THINKS RULING THE WORLD IS A GOOD IDEA.”

  Martin stared. “What?”

  “LONG STORY. VORPAL CAN FILL YOU IN LATER.”

  Vorpal shrugged. “The parts I know, anyway.”

  “ALL RIGHT. WELL, THE POTENTIAL GAINS OF THIS BARGAIN ARE TOO MUCH TO TURN DOWN. GIVE DIRE A BIT TO EXAMINE THE TIME MACHINE.”

  I decanted from the armor, taking my mask with me. Timetripper didn’t seem surprised, just sat on the stairs and lit up another joint as I scrutinized the frame. I regretted not having my toolkit with me. I hadn’t managed to get it packed up before the Kaiju interrupted my departure. I needed to build tools into the armor. Maybe in the gauntlets. Hm, shift the particle cannons back toward the wrists, pack them into the fingers, enlarge the hands themselves a bit... yes, then make the—

  “Dire?” Martin asked.

  “RIGHT, RIGHT.” I looked over the framework, cautiously ran a finger down along a contact port. If I were to build in a diagnostic port, I’d put it right there.

  With a rustle and the sound of steel on steel, the framework blossomed open, and flickering holo-images blurred by, almost too fast to read even for my enhanced comprehension. Keyword there being ‘almost’.

  “Woah,” Timetripper drawled. “Colors, man. Nice.” Again he cackled that stoner’s laugh.

  “Jesus. Epilepsy warning, maybe?” Martin muttered, shielding his eyes.

  “SHE THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING,” I muttered. “ALL RIGHT. INITIATE THE BOND.”

  The framework rattled, reformed into a humanoid shape, walked across the floor to my armor, and flowed through the open hatch in the back. I heard it rattling around inside, then a faint crackling noise, as fumes wafted from the hole where my mask went.

  “YEAH, DON’T BREATHE THOSE. NANITE DUST.”

  “I had not planned to,” Vorpal said, glancing uneasily from me to the suit. “You are certain you can trust yourself?”

  “NO,” I said, donning the armor again, and initiating an operating system reboot. “BUT THE GAIN IS WORTH THE RISK RIGHT NOW.” I watched my HUD boot up, and saw new icons on it. Simple interface, shouldn’t be hard to initiate. It did look like I had to remain still for thirty seconds in order to time travel. So it wasn’t something meant to be used in a fight, good to know that beforehand.

  Two trips through time, not counting my return trip from Timetripper’s errand. What I could do with two trips through time. But caution stirred my mind. “TIMETRIPPER. IS DIRE VULNERABLE TO PARADOX?”

  “I don’t know man, probably not. It’s worse for me because I’m kind of like a fundamental part of the universe or some shit. You? Time would probably roll with the punch, you dig?”

  “NOTHING HERE TO DIG.” I shot the concrete a look.

  “Old slang. Anyway, you ready? Got your gun?”

  I popped the inset holster, pulled out my Colt. “READY WHEN YOU ARE.”

  “Hey,” Martin said. “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “OKAY WITH IT? THIS IS ONE OF THE THINGS DIRE PLANS TO FIX. VOLUNTARY ASSISTED SUICIDE SHOULD BE ALLOWED WITHIN THIS SOCIETY. IT FIXES MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT CREATES.”

  Martin gnawed on his lip. He didn’t look okay with the idea, but he nodded, and waved anyway. “Aight. Guess we’ll see you soon.”

  “First trip’s on me,” Timetripper said, standing and wobbling, before he managed to plant his cane and laugh. “I am so fucking high right now.”

  “LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH.”

  He shambled over, and took my arm, like an old-style gentlemen escorting a lady to the ball. Well, if said lady was wearing a ton of steel and better-than-military grade ordnance.

  BIP!

  Darkness, save for the stars wheeling overhead. A tall plain of grass, with stone tables and columns laid out in patterns. No lights for as far as I could see, save for the stars above and a thin sliver of moon.

  The moon was in the wrong place in the sky. I flipped through several star charts, found nothing.

  “TIMETRIPPER? WHERE ARE WE? WHEN ARE WE?”

  “It’s called Sora’s Lament,” he said, moving toward the nearest plinths. He fumbled, pulled out a book of matches as he arrived. “Wait. Shit, I need to be younger for this. Eh, I’ve been saving it anyway, what the hell.”

  And in the dim green of my nightvision, his wrinkles smoothed out, his body straightened up, and he gained muscle tone until he was identical to the Timetripper I’d first met, save for the clothing.

  “There we go. Oh man, bladder control! Sweet sweet bladder control, I missed you so.”

  “WON’T THIS CAUSE PROBLEMS? USING YOUR POWER LIKE THIS?”

  “Nah man, it’s too small a use to count.”

  Rrrrrrrrip.

  We watched a long, white tear open in the starry sky above, as thin as a hair and twisting, shedding brilliant light on the ground below. After half a minute it faded.

  “Uh. Maybe it’ll cause some small problems. Fuck, I bet some assholes make a religion from this.”

  “ENOUGH!” I stomped toward him, raising my pistol. He fumbled with the matches, touching them to what appeared to be old wax candles, huge and deformed from heavy use. One by one they lit.

  I watched tears leak from the corner of his eyes, as he lit the last one.

  BIP!

  “....holy fuck, man. I am so fucking high right now.”

  His voice, off to the side, a few hundred feet away.

  “Do it!” My Timetripper shouted. “Just fucking do it!”

  “Hey, what—” I glanced over, to see a version of the Timetripper, staring at me with horror. “Man, not cool!”

  I turned back to my Timetripper, “KNEEL, THEN, AND LOOK AWAY.”

  He did, and I put the gun to the back of his skull.

  “What? No! Hey! No! Nonononnono!” The new Timetripper was running through the grass now, but too late, far too late.

  My gun spoke, and my version of Timetripper fell.

  “Oh shit! Dude, why... no!”

  I aimed the gun at him, and he raised his hands... then glowed, brighter and brighter, until I could barely see his outline.

  BIP!

  And then I was alone, in that field of monuments, with candles the only light. Timetripper’s body sighed out its last breath in the grass. It didn’t disappear, or turn to dust, or fade into light, or do anything beyond persist in being a corpse.

  “WELL, THAT WAS ANTICLIMACTIC.”

  There were none to hear me. I opened up my interface, fiddled with it, and found it fairly easy to use. Thanks to the timestamps and GPS in my armor, I could narrow my departure point down to the second and the exact coordinate. For a moment I contemplated returning to a point before my jump, but I decided against it. Too much risk of paradox before I had observed the process fully. Without knowing the exact mechanics of altering the past via time travel, it was dangerous to randomly experiment. I’d save something like that for a last resort.

  Instead, I punched in the travel point for five minutes after my departure, in the same room.

  Instead of a ‘bip’, there was a delightful hum, followed by a corona of winking lights around me. With a shudder and a twist, I left that s
tarry field behind—

  —and returned to the sickly yellow emergency-lit room of the power station. Noises from the floor above me, and I heard Martin’s voice rise up.

  “I’ve seen worse, I guess. We’ll have to run out for blankets and shit, but from what I remember there’s an All-Mart six streets over. Uh, you might want to make that run, our disguise kit kinda got blown up. Or something.”

  I decanted from the armor and took my mask off, following the narrow stairwell up. “Do you need money for the run?” I asked Vorpal.

  “You're back. Good.” Martin said.

  “You doubted?”

  “You I trust. Timetripper? Hell naw.”

  “Well, he came through. This time. Vorpal? Money?”

  She shook her head. “I still have my wallet and a few hundred in it. So, what did I miss? Martin has told me some of it.”

  “Well, good news and bad. He told you of the flowers?”

  “Yah.”

  “Morgenstern Inc. isn’t willing to pay for their return. Their best offer is that if we destroy them, they’ll forgive our treachery.”

  She snorted. “I have not forgiven theirs.”

  My grin was wide and probably looked very toothy. “Nor has Dire. Unfortunately, this leaves us in the position of not getting paid.”

  “What about the other party?”

  “Professor Vector.” I stopped grinning. “Quite a piece of work, according to Mags.”

  “Yeah. No way in hell we can give him those flowers,” Martin said.

  Vorpal looked askance at him. “And why not?”

  “Dude unleashes plagues! That shit’s not good.”

  “Neither am I,” Vorpal said, tapping her chest. “Villain, remember?”

  “As it is, Dire agrees with Martin.” He smiled in relief. I continued. “Besides, it is unlikely he could pay the price we would need to recoup our losses and risks thus far.” Martin’s smile faded a bit.

  Vorpal sighed. “I suppose he would be more likely to try and take it, too. If he has several Kaiju, under his control. Oh, and Chaingang, too. Did we ever confirm his betrayal?”

  “No, but Dire would be surprised if he hadn’t at least alerted Vector. That Kaiju in the lake was no coincidence.”

  She shrugged. “So Morgenstern Inc. will not pay for its return. Vector cannot pay. Morgenstern has the money. Easy, then.”

  “It is?” I asked.

  “We blackmail Morgenstern. Why did they have these flowers to begin with? Everything they have done points to the fact they do not want people to know of them.”

  I gave it some thought, nodded. “That’s not a bad idea, but we have no proof. The contract was through a third party, and the shipping has all been through deniable subsidiaries.”

  “So we sneak into their headquarters and find the blackmail information we need, then.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure it’s there?”

  “You said you could not hack their headquarter servers?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, either the information we need is there, or we find some other information that we can sell or ransom. There’s got to be something valuable in there.”

  “Risky,” I muttered. “Risky, but...”

  “At this point, why not?” Martin said.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Thought you were having a crisis of conscience.”

  He flushed a little, I think. Hard to tell in the dim light. “It’s one thing hurting people don’t deserve it. It’s another to hurt someone who’s doing something bad. You know?”

  I nodded. I’d had a few moments of reflection myself, these last few days. But what he said rang true to me. Whatever Morgenstern Inc. was mixed up in, it wasn’t good. They needed to stop. And if making them stop got me the money I needed, then hey, bonus.

  I stifled a yawn, and glanced around. The upstairs room was a bit dirty, but secure enough. “Vorpal, please go on that bedding and supplies run.”

  “As you wish.” She smiled, and gave me a pat on the shoulder as she passed me, headed downstairs. I put my hand on the shoulder where she’d thumped me. What was that about?

  “I think she likes you,” Martin said, grinning.

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice.”

  “No, like likes you, likes you.”

  “Well yes, you said that.”

  “Wait. Shit. Hold on, you’re like a kid with this stuff. Uh... how do I put this? She wants to have sex with you.”

  “What? Why?”

  He laughed. “She’s into girls, and you’re hot.”

  “Uh.” I didn’t consider myself hot. By conventional standards, my face was plain, my breasts were small, and I did not possess that attribute commonly known as ‘booty’. “She seems to be in error.”

  He chuckled louder. “Naw, you’re hot. It’s in how you carry yourself, you know? Confidence and shit. Don’t matter how you look, it’s all in how you act. Assertive. That appeals. Be lying if I said it didn’t.” He put his hand on the wall, twisted, cracking his neck. “Goddamn, what a long ass day.”

  “Was that why you kissed Dire back then?” I blurted out.

  He froze, midway through a torso twist. “Oh. Uh. Well... yyyyyyes? One of the reasons, anyway.”

  “Oh. Okay.” For some reason I felt flustered. I had more questions, but no frame of reference as to how to ask them. I’d watched many romantic comedies as a result of my popular culture catch-up program, but all of them seemed to indicate awkwardness was called for. And possibly sex. And I was far, far too tired for sex. That’s what I thought, anyway. I’d never tried the stuff. It looked messy, and the floor was really dirty, too.

  And to my embarrassment, I was getting aroused. “Um.” I licked my lips, trying to figure out a way to shift the conversation.

  Martin’s smile took on a hungry aspect, and he straightened up, took a couple of steps forward. He paused, and tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. “Yeah?” He asked.

  “She, uh. Doesn’t quite know much of... it’s complicated. Give her a second.”

  He nodded, shifted his legs. “Take your time,” he whispered. Was he aroused too? Great. Just great.

  And then, mercifully, my phone rang. We both jumped.

  “Oh! She’d better take this.” I turned around, headed downstairs at full speed, jerking the phone out of my pocket as I went. I think I heard Martin snort and mutter something, but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t recognize the number on the phone, and that worried me. I flipped it open anyway.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, Dire.” I knew that voice.

  “Arachne. Dire trusts the job is complete, then?” Arachne was an artificial intelligence. We’d been at odds, my first week after my new awakening. But we’d come to an agreement, after she’d had her techno-terrorist minions kidnap me and try some impromptu brain surgery. I’d helped her out of a tight spot, and she’d contacted me later. We’d established mutual terms of assistance. She wanted power, control, and prestige within her own organization, the World Evolution Brigade. I wanted answers.

  The last favor I’d done for her had been to leak word of a W.E.B base to Tomorrow Force. It got them out of my hair for a while, let me rescue Martin without their interference. In return, the base, which was under the control of Arachne’s rivals, would be thoroughly trashed by heroes.

  “The job went swimmingly,” Arachne said. “It took Quantum and company a few days to locate it, and I was starting to despair. But Schrodinger came through, like he always does for them.”

  “Yes. He’s annoying that way.” Schrodinger’s powers were some form of probability control. It made going up against Doc Quantum’s team a fool’s venture, most of the time. The man could simply choose a possible future where his team won. Ridiculously unfair, that.

  “On the upside, I think I’ve figured out one of Schrodinger’s limitations.” Arachne sounded smug.

  “Care to share?”

  “Actually, I don’t mind a bit. I’l
l be spreading it far and wide soon. The more villains that know, the better the chance that someone will kill that jerk.”

  Couldn’t fault that logic. I owed them a beating myself, though killing seemed counterproductive to my plans. At least at this point. “What is it, then?”

  “Thirty seconds. Schrodinger can only see thirty seconds into any possible future.”

  “Precognition...” That made sense, if it was true. “You’re sure that was what he was doing?”

  “Reasonably so. They spent all their time in Los Angeles going from location to location, just hovering there for about half a minute each. Combined with a few other things I’ve noticed over the years, I’m pretty sure that what they were doing was letting Schrodinger look through the possible futures where they got out of their jet, and searched for the base.”

  “Lazy,” I muttered. “But their laziness is our gain. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now, as to your price...”

  “Yes. Who is Dire? Who was Dire?” That was my price, for helping her with this scheme. She knew something of my true past, and I wanted that information.

  She sighed. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “What? You don’t know after all?”

  “At the time we made the bargain I thought I did. But some in-depth investigation revealed that to be incorrect. I’m sorry, you covered your tracks well. Too well.”

  I folded my arms, shifted the phone to my other ear. “That was not the bargain.”

  Some of my irritation must have gotten through to Arachne. A faint nervous tinge crept into her digitized voice. “All I can tell you is that we thought you were one of us. An agent recruited from academia, Doctor Dinah Aeris.”

  “Who recruited her, then?”

  “Well, it turns out that no one did. The records were forged, the recruiter tagged as your mentor has no memory of you. Basically you faked your way into our organization, grabbed a lot of gear, and ran. That’s what got you on our radar in the first place, the medical chair that you stole had a tracker in it.”

  The medical chair that I’d woken up in, so long ago. The one my past self had used to alter her brain, wipe her own memory. She’d created me from her, more or less.