Chapter Eighteen
The BOX, just outside Elko, Nevada; April 29, 2017
Mercury had just vanished through the portal when Suzy heard a woman’s voice to her left. “Drop it, Eddie,” the voice commanded. Suzy turned to see Tiamat approaching, rifle in hand. Eddie, still shakily holding Azrael’s gun on the FBI agents, hesitated.
“Look, if you’re going to shoot, shoot,” said Tiamat. “I don’t have all day.”
Eddie slowly set the rifle down next to the still motionless body of Azrael.
“Oh, hell,” said Tiamat, frowning at Azrael. “What did you do to Azrael?”
“It wasn’t me,” said Eddie. He glanced at the still-unconscious Burton.
“Why are you all out of your zip-ties?” Tiamat said, sounding more flustered than angry. “Why is the portal on? And where the hell is Mercury?” When no one answered, she held the barrel of the gun up to the nearest man’s head. “Somebody better start talking,” she said coldly.
Suzy gave a sigh of defeat. It had obviously been too much to hope for that the FBI would successfully storm the building and rescue them. The perimeter of the building was outside the reach of the Balderhaz cube, which meant the demons guarding the building had a huge advantage over the mere humans trying to get in. Evidently the demons had dispatched the immediate threat.
“He went to get help,” said Suzy.
“From Heaven?” said Tiamat. “Damn him. Balderhaz, shut that thing down.”
Balderhaz got to his feet.
“Wait,” said Suzy. “Tiamat, you’re not thinking this through. I realize you were desperate to escape the FBI, but we can’t let Lucifer run free on Earth. We need help.”
Tiamat sneered. “Lucifer gets all the press. He’s not so bad. I’ve come up with more elaborate schemes for taking over the world than he ever has.”
“That may be,” said Eddie, “but you of all people should know better than to trust him. You don’t even know where he’s gone. Do you really think he’s going to let you in on his master plan when he gets back? You’re smarter than that, Tiamat.”
“He needs me,” said Tiamat. “If it weren’t for me, he’d still be in prison.”
“You’re counting on Lucifer to be grateful?” asked Eddie incredulously. “Please, Tiamat. Think about it. His minions are loyal to him, not you. When he gets back—”
As he spoke, a figure began to materialize on the portal. It flickered for a moment, then became solid: Mercury had returned.
But it was clear that something was wrong. He was dressed oddly, in a torn, dingy gray tunic and matching pants that were a good three inches too short for him. On his feet were badly scuffed leather boots. And he was hurt—far worse than he had been when he had stepped onto the portal less than two minutes before. His clothes were stained with blood and his face was pale. He stumbled off the portal into Suzy, who did her best to keep him upright. Eddie rushed to her side, grabbing Mercury’s arm.
Tiamat watched with interest, her rifle still at the ready, but she didn’t intervene.
“Mercury!” Suzy exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“Shut it down,” Mercury gasped, his voice hoarse and barely audible. “Shut the portal down!”
“You heard him, Balderhaz!” Suzy said. “Shut it down!”
Balderhaz nodded and stepped back to the keyboard. He glanced at Tiamat, and she gave him a nod. Balderhaz began tapping at keys.
Everyone else simply stared at Mercury. Tiamat was doing her best to maintain an illusion of control, but she clearly had no better idea of what had happened to Mercury than anyone else. While she watched, Suzy and Eddie helped Mercury to the crate Azrael had been sitting on.
“What happened to you, Mercury?” Eddie asked. “Did you make it to Heaven?”
Mercury stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Heaven?” He asked. “No. Lucifer… coming here. Shut it down. This is what I’ve been… waiting for.”
“Mercury, you’re not making any sense,” said Suzy. “You’ve only been gone for two minutes. What do you mean, this is what you’ve been waiting for?”
“Seven thousand years,” Mercury gasped. “I’ve… waited. To stop him. Shut it down.”
“Lucifer?” asked Eddie. “He’s already here, Mercury. He just left a few hours ago.”
Mercury looked momentarily stunned, then shook his head. “No, different Lucifer. Alternate timeline. Lucifer in control… of everything. Coming… here.”
One of the FBI agents let out a yelp, and Suzy turned toward the portal just in time to see another figure flicker into being. For a moment, everyone remained in stunned silence. Tiamat’s eyes went wide with fear as the man’s features came into focus. But then confusion came over her face. This man was too tall to be Lucifer, and his hair was silver, not blond.
It was Mercury. Again.
Suzy stared at the man, then looked at the man sitting on the crate, then turned back to the man on the portal. The Mercury on the portal seemed stunned, as if he had seen a ghost. This Mercury was dressed the same as the Mercury who had just disappeared a couple minutes earlier.
“Mercury?” asked Suzy. But if this was Mercury, then who was the man sitting on the crate a few feet away?
“You need to shut that thing down,” said the newly arrived Mercury to Balderhaz.
“You don’t have to keep telling me!” snapped Balderhaz, who was furiously tapping at keys. He hit the Enter key with a flourish and the portal began to fade. An air of relief came over the group as those assembled realized no one else was coming through.
The Mercury sitting on the crate fell forward, collapsing on the floor. Eddie and Suzy, distracted by the appearance of the second Mercury, had released their grip on him.
“Mercury!” cried Suzy, dropping to the floor to help him. She and Eddie struggled to turn him over.
“That jerk was going to leave me behind,” the Mercury standing next to the portal generator said. He shuddered. “You should have seen that place. It was awful. Like the post-Judgment Day scenes from Terminator 2, but without the cool robots.”
“He has no pulse,” said Suzy, her fingers on the prone Mercury.
“Give him a slap on the cheek,” said the standing Mercury. “He’ll be fine.”
Suzy slapped him and checked his pulse again. She shook her head.
The other Mercury frowned and stepped toward the Mercury on the floor. He knelt down next to him, grabbed the front of his dingy tunic, and shook him. “Hey!” he shouted. “Wake up!”
The Mercury on the floor did not wake up. The more recently arrived Mercury gave him another slap across the cheek. Still the man on the floor did not stir. “Holy shit,” said the Mercury crouched next to his prone doppelganger. “I think I’m dead.”
“That’s impossible,” said Tiamat. “You can’t die. You’re an angel.”
“Also, you’re talking,” said Suzy. “Who is this guy? He’s not you.”
Mercury stood up slowly, regarding the corpse. “As near as I can tell, he’s another iteration of me.”
“Like a clone?” asked Eddie. “What do you mean, another iteration?”
“Well,” said Mercury, “you guys remember when you told me it was a really bad idea to go through the portal?”
“Yes,” said Eddie, Suzy and Balderhaz simultaneously.
“Turns out you were totally right,” said Mercury. “Something went wrong with the portal. I didn’t go to Heaven. I went here. But not here, here. Another here. Not a different plane, but a different version of this one. Lousy place. Zero stars. Do not recommend.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Mercury?” Tiamat demanded.
“Another Earth. Just like this one, but far, far worse. Imagine a place where the Star Wars prequels exist but the original Star Wars trilogy doesn’t. A place where all the chocolate chip cookies are actually raisin cookies. A place where the Beatles don’t exist but Wings does, and all the dental floss is unwaxed.”
“You were o
nly gone for two minutes,” said Suzy. “How do you even know all that?”
“I’m extrapolating,” Mercury replied. “Point is, it’s not a nice place. Somehow Lucifer took control of the whole plane a long time ago and nothing has been the same since. Not our Lucifer. An alternate Lucifer. I’m in charge of the resistance. I mean, not me. Him.” He pointed at the other Mercury. “Was in charge. Somehow he knew I was coming. Lucifer knows too. He was right behind us. He wants to take over this plane too.”
“But why?” asked Eddie. “Doesn’t that Lucifer already have his own plane?”
“Yeah,” replied Mercury, “but as I think I mentioned, it’s kind of a shithole. He wants a new one.”
“So this is a completely different Lucifer?” asked Suzy. “Not the one who just left here?”
“Yes,” Mercury said. “I think so? I haven’t really had a chance to process it all. But we have bigger problems. We need to stop Lucifer. Our Lucifer, I mean. I know what he’s after. Some kind of artifact that he plans to use to travel back in time.”
“How do you know that?”
“Mercury told me. The other Mercury. He was kind of rambling, but I got the gist of it.”
“Why does Lucifer want to go back in time?” asked Eddie.
“He plans to rewrite history. Undo everything that’s ever happened, ever since the dinosaurs climbed down from the trees.”
“Dinosaurs never lived in trees, Mercury.”
“Gaaahhh!” Mercury cried, overcome with panic. “It’s happening already!”
“Calm down,” said Suzy. “Think it through. Nothing has happened yet. What is Lucifer trying to do?”
Mercury nodded, taking a deep breath. “All I know for sure is what he—” Mercury motioned toward the other Mercury, dead on the floor— “told me. That our Lucifer is going to try to go back in time and erase history. It makes sense, if you think about it. Lucifer knows his days are numbered. Eventually somebody is going to reestablish contact with Heaven, and he doesn’t have the organization or clout to resist the authorities for long. It’s just him and a handful of minions. So he’s going to erase it all and start over—with him in charge.”
“Time travel,” said Suzy, shaking her head. “Is that even possible?”
“Of course it’s possible,” said Balderhaz. “If you can travel in space, you can travel in time. Time, space, it’s just different ways of looking at the same thing. Otherwise, how do you explain him?” He was gesturing toward the dead Mercury on the floor.
“What do you mean, Balderhaz?” Eddie asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Balderhaz said. “Lucifer’s already done it. The alternate timeline is the result of Lucifer having gone back in time and changing history.”
“But…” Eddie said, with a frown. “If Lucifer did rewrite history, then why are we still here?”
“I’m not entirely convinced we are,” Balderhaz answered.
“Of course we’re here!” exclaimed Tiamat. “Don’t be foolish. Evidently, there was an unknown plane where alternate versions of Mercury and Lucifer existed, and somehow by damaging the portal generator we managed to access it. The portal is closed now, and there’s no need to worry about it further. It was a fluke, that’s all. Time travel is impossible.”
“So the alternate reality wasn’t the result of Lucifer going back in time?” asked Suzy.
“That’s right,” said Tiamat. But Balderhaz was shaking his head.
Eddie turned to him and said, “You think Lucifer did go back in time, Balderhaz?”
“Yes and no,” replied Balderhaz. “All possible realities exist in theory. Somehow the damaged portal generator opened a rift to a different reality. The same reality that Lucifer created by going back in time.”
“None of this makes any sense,” Suzy groaned.
“However the alternate reality came into being,” said Mercury, “the important thing is that we stop Lucifer before he does the same thing here. Tiamat, you have to let these people go. We need to join forces to stop Lucifer.”
Tiamat shook her head. “No,” she said after a moment. “This is one of your tricks.”
“No trick, Tiamat. I’ve seen a universe where Lucifer is in charge. And unless you want this place to turn into that place, we need to stop him.”
“How can you stop him from doing something he’s already done?” Suzy asked.
Mercury shook his head. “I don’t know. But why would the other Mercury tell me to stop him if it had already happened?”
“Maybe you can undo what he already did the same way he’s trying to undo everything else,” Eddie suggested.
“How did the other Mercury even know what our Lucifer was going to do?” asked Suzy.
“And how do you know you can trust him?” said Eddie. “You only knew him for two minutes.”
“I have a good feeling about him,” said Mercury. “He has a trustworthy face. Had. Can somebody cover him up? It’s a little creepy.”
Suzy nodded and walked to a tarp that had been thrown over a piece of equipment. Tiamat gave her a nod, and she pulled the tarp off and covered the body.
“I don’t understand how he could die,” said Eddie. “If he really is you, he should be immortal.”
“Maybe he was a mortal version of me,” said Mercury.
Suzy shook her head. “He said he’d been waiting for this for seven thousand years.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mercury.
“I have a theory,” said Balderhaz.
“Let’s hear it,” said Tiamat.
“I think our Mercury killed him.”
Chapter Nineteen
“I didn’t kill him!” Mercury protested. “He was already shot when I met him! He was in pretty rough shape, but I assumed he would be fine in a few hours. Because, you know. Immortal.”
“Ordinarily he would be,” said Balderhaz. “But when an angel’s body dies, its spirit has to connect with the source of his energy, the Eye of Providence, in order to regenerate. In this case, that circuit was already busy.”
“You mean because there was already a Mercury here,” said Eddie. “The other Mercury’s spirit reached out to the Eye, but couldn’t make the connection because this Mercury was already connected.”
“That’s the theory,” said Balderhaz.
“Well, I didn’t do it on purpose!” cried Mercury. “How was I supposed to know there could only be one immortal version of me at a time?”
“You couldn’t have known,” said Suzy.
“And I’m not sure what you could have done differently even if you had,” Eddie added.
Mercury nodded glumly, regarding the sheet-covered corpse. He turned away with a shudder. “I guess there’s nothing to do now but try to stop Lucifer from doing what he was warning us about. Balderhaz, what would Lucifer need to convert your portal generator into a time machine?”
Balderhaz thought for a moment. “The main thing he’d need is much more powerful batteries. He’d need a thousand times the power we have here.”
“Our batteries take up that whole section of the BOX,” said Mercury, waving at a massive bank of dozens of metal cylinders, stacked three high, each of them the size of a large refrigerator. “So unless Lucifer’s got several truckloads of batteries socked away somewhere, there wouldn’t seem to be much danger.”
“Not necessarily,” said Balderhaz. “Our batteries take up a lot of space because we’re using xenon difluoride-based cells. It’s a rather inefficient way of storing interplanar energy. There are substances that are better for this purpose, but they’re extremely rare. The rarest of all is ubiquium.”
“Isn’t that what the Eye of Providence is made of?” asked Eddie.
“The Eye of Providence is the only known source of ubiquium in the multiverse,” said Tiamat. “Lucifer would have to go to Heaven and crack a piece off. Impossible.”
Eddie nodded. “If that was his plan, he would have used the portal to get to Heaven.”
“He wo
uldn’t stand a chance of getting near the Eye,” said Mercury. “That can’t be his plan. You said there were other substances that would work, Balderhaz. What are the other alternatives?”
“Any sort of compound comprised of tightly bound three-dimensional metallic network structures would work,” said Balderhaz. “But they’re all extremely rare, and none of them has anywhere near the potential of ubiquium. He’d need a truckload of any of the others.”
“We’re missing something,” said Mercury. “He’s got to be after ubiquium. But where would he find a piece on Earth?”
“The shard,” said Eddie.
Mercury rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Tiamat scowled. “It’s a myth,” she said. “There is no shard.”
“The what?” asked Suzy. “Can somebody tell me what the hell you’re all going on about?”
Eddie pulled a wrinkled bill from his pocket and unfolded it. He pointed at the pyramid on the reverse. “The Eye of Providence,” he said. “Source of all the interplanar energy in the multiverse. It doesn’t actually have a big eyeball on it. That part is symbolic. Like if I wrote a book about angels and put wings on the angels on the cover, even though—”
“Yeah, I get it, Eddie,” said Suzy. “I’m a little behind on my metaphysics homework. I’m not retarded.”
“That story is bunk anyway,” said Tiamat. “If there really is a piece missing from the Eye, and if Lucifer was the one who broke it off, why doesn’t he still have it?”
“The story is that he lost it,” said Eddie. “He had a special sword commissioned, with the shard as the gem in the pommel. It was still being fabricated when he was kicked out of Heaven. The sword was given to the angel who guarded the entrance to the Garden of Eden, but at some point it was lost. It’s never been recovered.”
“He must have figured out where it was while he was in prison,” said Mercury.
“This is all pointless theorizing,” said Tiamat. “Whatever Lucifer’s up to, it’s not time travel. We’ll find out when he gets back.”
“When he gets back, it will be too late,” Mercury snapped. “You think he’s going to take you back in time with him? He’s going to rewrite history without you in it.”
Mercury Shrugs Page 12
