Mercury ran past the fleeing vehicles and down the dirt road to the facility, reaching the door without incident. As he entered, shots rang out. He was ready for this; it was no great difficulty to cause the bullets to alter their trajectory around him. The Balderhaz cube was now far enough away that he could once again perform miracles.
Ignoring the surprised minions who continued to fire ineffectively at him, Mercury ran down an aisle toward the center of the building. The light was dim here, but there was no time to slow down. He kept running, trusting his memory of the maze to get him to the portal generator without incident. Behind him he heard one of the minions in pursuit, but a loud crash followed by a moan indicated the demon had made a wrong turn. By some miracle not of his doing, Mercury managed to avoid running into anything, and he emerged into the open area just as the portal flickered to life. Drekavac stood at the controls of the portal generator, and Lucifer was a few steps away.
“You again!” exclaimed Lucifer, taking a step toward the portal. “How do you keep showing up just as I’m about to go back in time and rewrite history?”
“It’s kind of a funny story,” said Mercury, sidling toward the shard receptacle. “After the last time I stopped you, I returned before I left and—”
“I don’t actually care,” said Lucifer. “Anyway, I owe you a debt of gratitude. While I was unconscious, Drekavac managed to get a few more weeks out of the portal generator. So whatever damage you may have done by going back, I can undo by going back even further. Anyway, I should get out of here before the FBI blows this place.” He stepped onto the portal and vanished.
“Drekavac!” Mercury said. “I need to go stop Lucifer. Take the shard and—”
But as he spoke, Drekavac turned and ran away, disappearing into the darkness.
“Son of a bitch,” Mercury growled. He could go after Lucifer, but if he carried the shard through the portal, there was no telling what would happen. Something pretty bad, considering that Lucifer had deliberately left it behind. And if Mercury went after Lucifer without the shard, the feds would blow it up—and something else, also pretty bad, would happen.
“There he is!” a voice yelled in the darkness behind him. “Shoot him!”
Mercury ducked down, flipped open the shard receptacle’s lid, and grabbed the shard. It was cool to the touch but still glowed bright orange with interplanar energy. Automatic weapon fire rang out and Mercury ducked and ran down an alley, gripping the shard tightly. Overhead there was a sudden barrage of explosions, almost masking the hum of an approaching airplane. The FBI was getting ready for the grand finale.
Mercury ran through the maze, dodging gunfire and trying to get to the nearest exit. Explosions continued to sound all around him. He made it to door and threw it open, barely slowing down. He could hear the bomber overhead; it would be releasing its payload any second. He didn’t know how much longer it would take for the bomb to reach its target, but he suspected it was a matter of seconds. He could only hope he was clear of the blast area in time.
Flickers of light in the distance signaled the ongoing launches of RPGs at the facility; the poor saps behind them had no idea Lucifer was already gone. Mercury heard gunshots behind him and was vaguely aware of bullets thwicking into the sand just ahead, but he didn’t dare expend any energy trying to repel them. All his effort was channeled into running as fast as he could away from the building.
Then, suddenly, he realized the RPG firing had stopped, and the men firing them had taken cover—preparing for the imminent detonation of the bunker buster. The split-second warning of a flash of light on ground around him gave Mercury just enough time to dive to the ground and throw up a barrier of interplanar energy between him and the building.
The sound of the bomb was like a mountain punching another mountain. Wind whipped past Mercury’s face, pelting him with sand, rocks, and occasionally a small chunk of the building. But after a few seconds of this, Mercury realized that he was still intact. The shard was still in his hand, undamaged—no thanks to that Special Agent assface Burton. The shard’s orange glow began to fade as its stored energy dissipated.
Mercury got to his feet and brushed himself off. The desert sand flickered with light, and as he turned, he saw dozens of small fires flickering amid the rubble. Pieces of sheet metal and machinery lay strewn across the ground in every direction. So much for all their hard work—not to mention most of Mercury’s fortune. People today have no respect for private property, he thought. You can’t build anything these days without somebody coming along and wrecking it.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Now Lucifer had gone back in time to rewrite history, and there was no way of stopping him, because the portal generator was in a million pieces thanks to the overzealous efforts of the FBI. Mercury sighed. It was shit like this that made him want to just throw in the towel. At least he could sort of understand Lucifer’s motivations. Evil you could work with. But there was no reasoning with bureaucratic stupidity.
But as he wandered through the ruins, surveying the extent of the destruction, the familiar blue glow of the portal appeared once again. “How the hell…?” Mercury murmured, staring at the glowing ellipse. Had Lucifer gotten bored with the prehistoric past and decided to come back? But that was impossible. He’d have to have built another portal generator—and found another shard.
A man materialized on the portal. He was tall—taller than Lucifer. Another, shorter man materialized right behind him. The tall man surveyed his surroundings in apparent horror and then turned to the shorter man. “What the hell happened?” he said. “It looks like a bomb went off.”
“Uh-oh,” said the shorter man. “I think it did.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The BOX, just outside Elko, Nevada; April 29, 2017
“Heads!” Balderhaz announced.
“Great,” said Mercury. “Just to be clear, that’s the option where I try to prevent myself from going back in time?”
“Correct,” said Balderhaz. “Good luck!” With that, he turned and ducked down a side alley.
“Where are you going?” Christine called. But Balderhaz was already gone.
“Should we go after him?” Jacob asked.
Another explosion sounded somewhere to their right.
“He’s fine,” said Mercury. “Just keep going that way until you hit the outer wall, then turn left. You’ll come to a door. Go outside with your hands up and generally do your best not to get shot. I’ll catch up with you shortly, assuming I don’t tear a hole in the space-time continuum.” Mercury turned and went back the way they had come, threading his way through the maze in the near-darkness. He emerged into the open area to see Lucifer standing a few feet away from the portal, facing away from him.
“You know,” Lucifer was saying, “if you had any sense, you’d be miles away from here by now.” He was addressing someone Mercury couldn’t see.
“I got to thinking about that,” said an eerily familiar voice. “It occurred to me that it doesn’t do me any good to be sipping piña coladas in the Azores if I’ve never existed.” Chills went down Mercury’s spine as he realized who was talking.
“You won’t feel a thing,” Lucifer was saying. “One moment you’ll exist, and the next you won’t.”
“Is that what you told Tiamat?” said the voice.
Lucifer chuckled. “Tiamat’s fine.”
“Of course she is. But she’s not going back in time with you, is she?”
“No,” said Lucifer. “Tiamat’s not very good at playing second fiddle. I hit her over the head with a pipe and tied her up.”
“I figured. Azrael has abandoned you, you know.”
Lucifer shrugged. “Don’t need him. Where I’m going, there will be plenty of potential converts.”
Another explosion sounded overhead.
“Can’t let you do that, Lucifer,” said the voice. “You had your chance at world domination. You lost. No do-overs.”
“I’ve changed the ru
les,” said Lucifer. “Try to keep up.” He launched himself toward the portal, but someone dived out of the darkness, tackling him around the waist. The two crashed into the steel shelving unit behind the portal generator, knocking tools and other equipment to the ground. Lucifer’s opponent took a swing at his face, but missed. Lucifer backed away and then altered his trajectory, heading back toward the portal.
It occurred to Mercury, watching this scene unfold, that he could help his alternate self apprehend Lucifer, thereby negating the need to travel back in time in the first place. He wasn’t certain his actions weren’t somehow going to cause what happened the first time to happen again, but it was worth a try. He ran to Lucifer, barreling into him just as another explosion rocked the ground. They fell to the floor together. Mercury managed to get to his knees while Lucifer was still stunned; he punched Lucifer hard in the jaw, and his head struck the concrete with a crack. Lucifer lay motionless on the floor.
“Thanks,” said Lucifer’s opponent, who was leaning against the shelving unit, trying to regain his footing. “I had him on the ropes, though.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Mercury. “In five seconds he would have knocked you back seven thousand years. Trust me, I’ve seen this movie before.” He got to his feet and regarded his double in the near-darkness.
“Hey!” cried the other man, with sudden recognition. “You’re me!”
“You really are a genius,” said Mercury. “I don’t think I tell you that often enough.”
The two Mercurys stood regarding each other for a moment.
“I suppose you’re another alternate version of me?” said the other Mercury. “Don’t tell me you’re the evil Mercury, because that puts a lot of pressure on me.”
“Not evil,” said Mercury. “Just a bit more experienced. You were about to go back in time and try to stop Lucifer from getting the shard. But you failed. In fact, your actions caused Lucifer to get the shard, allowing him to convert the portal generator into a time machine. So nice going, dickhead.”
The other Mercury thought for a moment. “If that’s true,” he said, “then you did that, not me. That makes you the dickhead. I’m completely innocent. An ingénue, really.”
“An ingénue is a girl,” said Mercury.
“What’s the male version?” said the other Mercury.
“Dope, I think,” said Mercury.
“I like ingénue better.”
“Suit yourself, sweetheart.”
“So what do we do now, dickhead?”
“Look, if you get to be Ingénue Mercury, then there’s no way in hell I’m going to be Dickhead Mercury. I want to be Red Mercury.”
“No fair!” cried Ingénue Mercury. “I want to be Red Mercury.”
“Of course you do,” said Red Mercury. “Red Mercury is a badass name. But I called it. Anyway, you already have a name.”
“Ingénue Mercury is stupid. I picked that when I was just a naive young lass. I want to be Blue Mercury. It keeps the symmetry.”
“What about Green? Then we’d be like Hulks!”
“No, we’d be like Christmas angels.”
“Oh,” said Mercury. “Good point. Okay, I’m Red, you’re Blue.”
Mercury nodded, and was suddenly struck by the weirdness of having his identity split in two. From now on, he would no longer be just Mercury; he would be the Mercury who stopped the other Mercury from going back in time. Part of him wanted to insist that he was the Mercury, but that claim implied that the other Mercury was some sort of impostor or knock-off, which wasn’t the case. The other Mercury had just as much claim to be the real Mercury as he did. On the other hand, thought Mercury, I created him. He wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for me stopping him from going through the portal. This realization made him feel a little better, but somehow he doubted the other Mercury would see it that way. So, for now at least, he would resign himself to being Red Mercury, in deference to his counterpart.
“So what do we do now, Red?” asked Blue Mercury.
“Beats me,” said Red Mercury. “This is all fresh territory, now that I’ve fucked up the past. But it would seem we no longer have to stop Lucifer from getting the shard, since I knocked him out cold. I like it when things resolve themselves without logical paradoxes.”
“Except for the part where you both did and didn’t go back in time, and now you’re talking to yourself.”
“Well, yeah. Okay, I’ll watch Lucifer. You go find Tiamat. We’ll drag them out of here and turn them over to the FBI.”
“The FBI?” said Blue Mercury. “Really?”
“It’s the best we can do for now. Hopefully Balderhaz can reset the portal for Heaven and we hand the demons over to the appropriate authorities, but I’m mildly terrified of using the portal right now.”
“Fine.” Blue Mercury left. While he was gone, Red Mercury removed the shard from its sconce and put it in his pocket. Blue Mercury returned a minute later dragging Tiamat behind him by her ankles.
“Good, she’s still out,” said Red Mercury.
“Um, yeah,” said Blue Mercury. “‘Still.’”
Lucifer groaned and began to get up.
“Here,” said Blue Mercury, handing Red Mercury a foot-long piece of iron pipe. Red Mercury rapped Lucifer on the top of his skull and the demon’s body went limp.
“There, now he’s still out too,” said Blue Mercury, with an approving nod. “Let’s get them out of here.”
Red Mercury led the way, dragging Lucifer through the maze of equipment, and Blue Mercury followed close behind with Tiamat.
“Hey,” said Red Mercury as they made their way down an alley, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Christine.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Blue Mercury, as Tiamat’s head clanged against a shelf support. “What happened with Christine?”
“Nothing,” said Red Mercury. “I just meant that it’s too bad about her being stranded seven thousand years in the past. I think you had a real shot with her.”
“What has gotten into you?” asked Blue Mercury. “I’m an angel. We’re an angel. We can’t… you know, with humans.”
“Well, we could. We just generally don’t.”
“In any case, it’s not like that with me and Christine. She’s just, like, some girl. You should know that.”
“I did,” said Red Mercury. “I mean, I do. Of course. Sorry, time travel is doing weird things to my head. Obviously you have no romantic interest in Christine.”
“None.”
“Good,” said Red Mercury. “Then we’re on the same page.”
Blue Mercury furrowed his brow but said nothing. The two Mercurys made their way toward the exit.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The two Mercurys reached the end of an aisle. The outer wall was a dozen or so paces away, and to their left Red Mercury could see the green glow of an EXIT sign. There was no sign of Lucifer’s minions, but they could be anywhere along the perimeter. The two Mercurys turned to face each other.
“I’ll drag them to the door,” both Mercurys said in unison. “You cover me.”
Each shrugged in deference to the other. “Okay,” they both said. “You drag them to the door and I’ll cover you.”
A long pause followed. “It doesn’t matter to me,” they both said. “But we can’t…” They broke off, revealing they were at an impasse. Red Mercury regarded blue Mercury, knowing exactly what the other was thinking.
“Buridan’s ass,” said Red Mercury.
“Duck,” said Blue Mercury.
“No, it was an ass,” said Red Mercury. “It starved to death because it couldn’t decide between—”
“Duck, asshole!”
Red Mercury ducked. As he did so, gunfire rang out behind him. Blue Mercury put up his hand and for a moment, glancing over his head, Red Mercury saw a series of bullets hanging in mid-air. The bullets came to a halt and then fell to the ground, clinking on the concrete.
“Thanks,” sa
id Red Mercury. “Nice of that guy to break the impasse.”
“Take cover,” said Blue Mercury, grabbing Red Mercury’s arm and pulling him back into the aisle. “I was barely able to stop those bullets.”
“The Balderhaz cube,” said Red Mercury.
Blue Mercury nodded. “It’s getting closer. The FBI is about to make their move. We need to finish this, quick.”
“Did you see where that guy was shooting from?”
“Yeah. I’m going to flank him. You stay here and draw fire.”
“Oh, good,” said Red Mercury. “I love drawing fire.”
Blue Mercury disappeared in the darkness. After a moment, Red Mercury leaned out into the open space, but couldn’t see anyone. He tried creating a burst of light in the direction the shots had come from, but Blue Mercury was right: the Balderhaz cube was nearby and getting closer. Now that the hostages had gotten free, the FBI had probably received the green light to storm the building. They’d win the firefight eventually, by virtue of superior numbers, but a lot of them were going to die in the process. The good news was that if the FBI was going in on foot, then they weren’t yet considering an airstrike.
Shots rang out in the darkness, and then somebody was moving toward him. It was Blue Mercury, holding the demon’s rifle.
“Nice work,” said Red Mercury. But then Blue Mercury stopped about twenty feet away and leveled his rifle. Red Mercury began to think maybe Blue Mercury was the evil one after all—or at least he’d had a very bad reaction to finding out he wasn’t one of a kind.
Red Mercury winced as Blue Mercury let loose a burst of gunfire. The bullets were so close, Red Mercury could hear them zipping past his ear. Behind him someone yelped and fell to the floor. Opening his eyes, Red Mercury saw the demon, who had been approaching from behind him. It was the one called Gurien.
Mercury Shrugs Page 19
