Monsters : I Bring the Fire Part II (A Loki Story)

by C. Gockel

  “Cera’s strong enough to handle this thing?” says Steve, backing away from the wall of shimmering scales.

  Loki smirks again. “Oh, yes.” Turning southwards, he shouts to Steve. “Come!”

  Swallowing, Steve follows Loki and the ball of light just before him. They turn eastward on Adams and run two more blocks when Loki stops, turns northward and shouts, “Mr. Slithers! Come and get us!” He turns to Steve and starts to hop. “Start jumping up and down. It should be attracted to my light, but it will feel your vibrations, too.”

  Steve follows Loki’s motions without thinking, although all he sees to the north is empty tunnel.

  Only moments later, he’s soaked through from water in the tunnel splashing beneath his feet.

  He’s telling Bryant where he is when he sees a glint at the end of the tunnel beyond Loki’s light.

  “Here comes, Baby,” says Loki.

  Steve freezes. A snake head taller and wider than him is moving down the tunnel. It’s been a long time since Steve has been frozen in terror. This has to be just a nightmare...if he just wills it to end...

  “Run!” says Loki, backing up. Steve blinks at the ginger-haired alien and remembers nightmares are real now.

  Steve follows Loki as he tears down the Dearborn street tunnel, and then west down the Jackson tunnel towards Cera. Cera is sitting on a raised coal platform above the actual tunnel proper, lit from within with eerie blue light. The Promethean containment sphere around it is now just under 20 centimeters from touching the ceiling at the center of the platform. It’s still growing, but only at a pace of a few millimeters a day now. The guys in tech say they’ve only got a few weeks before they have to worry about it touching the ceiling. And then what no one knows. It isn’t sucking the ground beneath it away...

  In front of him, Loki, jumps the half meter wall up to the platform; Steves follows. Steve is closer to the tunnel, Loki is closer to the wall. Loki turns. Steve spins around next to him. The opening to the tunnel they just emerged from is about 20 meters away. He can’t see the snake from where he stands, but he knows it’s coming. He sees the gentle waves in the puddles at the bottom of the tunnel and the absolute pitch black of the tunnel where the reptile’s body blocks all utility lights.

  “When it strikes,” says Loki, “dive.” He nods with his head towards the edge of the platform and the wet tunnel shaft about a meter to Steve’s left. “And then grab hold of the ladder on the far wall, lest you be pulled into the vacuum of the In-Between.”

  Steve looks over to Loki. “In-Between?”

  Loki doesn’t answer, just keeps his eyes focused on the tunnel opening.

  Steve hears a hiss, and turns his head. It’s too late at that moment to reflect on the wisdom of following the plan given to him by the so-called God of Mischief.

  The head of the wyrm-snake-monster emerges from the tunnel. It has yellow eyes with round pupils set into the gray-green scales of its face. It slides its head up onto the platform, its long gray body still stretched out into the tunnel.

  Steve takes a breath. Something long and pink flicks from the wyrm’s mouth to just a meter before Steve’s feet. He almost runs, but Loki says calmly, “Wait for it.” And mutters. “Damnable thing cost me a lot of money, now it’s going to die...”

  Loki is here. If he can do this, Steve can do this — he has to do this....

  The snake’s head draws back. There is a flash of white that later Steve will piece together is a bit of its underside.

  “Now!” says Loki. Steve dives from the platform into the tunnel. There is a rush of air and his hands are hitting a puddle, fetid water is splashing into his mouth, and air whooshes over his head.

  “Get to the ladder! Hold on!” screams Loki. Steve crawls towards the ladder on the wall, and air rushes past him, nearly knocking him over. He glances back for a moment and see the wyrm’s mouth is stretched over the Promethean Sphere. For a moment Steve wishes the snake would devour it, and take the thing to the In-Between-vacuum-wherever. But then he feels air rushing faster and sees the snake’s coils writhe as its head begins to vanish, the containment sphere and Cera remaining firmly in place. Cursing, Steve crawls forward, pulls himself upright, face to the wall, and wraps both arms around the ladder.

  The snake is being sucked forward. It’s ridiculous, but it reminds Steve of the automatic wind of a vacuum cleaner cord — a vacuum cleaner cord that is thrashing and is nearly 7 feet tall. As the wyrm disappears equipment from the platform and bits of trash from the tunnel get sucked forward into the...whatever.

  Loki is standing right in front of him. Steve feels increasing force pulling him towards the sphere. Loki can’t possibly withstand it.

  On instinct Steve reaches out. “Loki!” His voice is almost drowned out by the sound of air whooshing past him. His hand would have landed on Loki’s shoulder but it passes through empty air. Loki looks down at its path and then up to Steve.

  Steve’s mouth drops. Of course. Loki was never here, never in danger. As that thought runs through him, he is ripped from the ladder. He lands in the puddle again, but this time he feels himself being lifted from the ground. Closing his eyes, he searches blindly in the water, trying to find anything beneath his fingers to grab hold of.

  And suddenly something comes down on him, something solid and cold encasing his whole body. Is he gone — beyond...wherever? There is the sound of more air rushing past him and then there is a loud crack. The air stops moving. Suddenly, over the sound of his own labored breathing he hears Bryant shouting through his headset.

  Steve shivers. He’s so very cold. And there is pressure on his back and sides. He opens his eyes, tries to move, and then realizes the puddle he was lying in has frozen solid and he’s frozen in it.

  Loki is standing above him. “Thank you,” he says.

  Steve stares at him uncomprehending and then Loki smirks. “It’s the thought that counts, Steven.”

  As Bryant and the other agents race into the intersection he smiles tightly. “Now get surveillance on those locations I mentioned.”

  And then he disappears.

  x x x x

  ADUO’s offices are a little dark the next morning when Amy comes to work. It takes her a few minutes to realize they’re running on emergency power. The rain must have damaged some power lines. She sits down at her computer and opens a browser. The T1 line is still up. She smiles. That’s all that matters.

  ADUO headquarters has changed a lot in the few weeks since Steve has been in charge. There are a lot of deliveries of new equipment, and a lot more employees. As Amy sits at her desk researching the hypothesis she formed the night before, a man who is the new department physicist goes by, then a woman who is an astronomer, and a doctor and two nurses who are setting up a trauma center on the floor above the main office. Apparently ADUO is worried about having to explain troll wounds to doctors at the local hospital.

  She peers around her monitor. She can hear Laura Stogdill, the department’s legal counsel, yelling over her phone through her office door. But where are the new agents she pegged as more muscle than brain? And where are Steve, Brett, Bryant and Hernandez? She checks her email. There is nothing about Steve being late.

  Shrugging to herself, she goes back to her internet searches. It’s nearly 10 a.m. when Agent Bryant comes over to her desk. He is wet, and dirty, and smells funny. He also looks a little pale. He’s carrying what looks like Steve’s gym bag. Leaning on the reception desk he says, “Meet Steve in the trauma center in 15 minutes for debriefing.”

  “Trauma center?” says Amy. “What happened?”

  Walking away from the desk he says, “Ask your friend.”

  Amy’s brow furrows. “Which friend?”

  Bryant grunts and disappears down the hallway. 15 minutes later Amy is in the trauma center. She can’t see Steve, but from behind a curtain divider at the end of the room she can hear him.

  “With all due respect, Sir, I made an executive decision.”

&nb
sp; There is a pause, and then Steve’s voice again. “There was no reason to believe Loki would want to destroy Cera — the World Seed.”

  There is another long pause and then, “One of our agents is dead, and we’ve got reports of a maintenance worker and several homeless people missing. Frankly, I am not particularly sorry that the football-field-long snake responsible isn’t still around for scientific inquiry!”

  Amy jumps and her eyes go wide.

  There are a few noncommittal grunts. She thinks she hears a phone snapping shut. And then Steve’s voice, “Where is Lewis?”

  Stepping towards the curtains, Amy clears her throat.

  The curtain divider is pulled away by Hernandez, and there is Steve sitting on a bed in a tight gray t-shirt that says Marines, loose pants, and gym shoes. His workout gear, Amy realizes. He looks a lot better than the guys standing around him in dirty wet suits.

  Hernandez checks a magic detector and says, “Clear.”

  “Are you alright, Sir?” Amy says to Steve.

  “I’m fine,” he says in a bored voice. “Just got checked out for frostbite. Standard procedure.”

  “Frostbite?” says Amy.

  All of the guys shift on their feet. Steve just raises an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell us about your run-in with Loki yesterday.”

  Amy nods. “I learned something really important, maybe the most important thing.”

  Steve sits up a little straighter and tilts his head.

  Taking a step forward, Amy says, “The elf queen’s name was Galadriel.”

  The room goes absolutely silent.

  And then Bryant says slowly, “In the Lord of the Rings.”

  “In real life, too!” says Amy, turning to him with wide eyes.

  “And this is important because...” says Steve.

  “Because it means that there may be truth to all of our myths, modern as well as ancient! That’s...” Amy lifts her hands, “huge!”

  Everyone is quiet again.

  Steve blinks, and then in a very slow voice he says, “Did you ask him the questions I gave you?”

  “Sir,” says Bryant turning quickly to him. “I think if what Amy says is true that it...” He swallows.

  “That it could be bad,” says his brother Brett.

  Steve and Amy both look at the two brothers.

  Slipping his hands into his pockets, Bryant says, “We got a shiny glowy power thing underneath our feet, and Loki is trying to get it...”

  Steve and Amy both stare at him.

  “Have you two seen the Thor movies?” says Brett.

  Hernandez whistles low.

  “It’s been a while,” says Amy.

  “It’s been never,” says Steve.

  Shaking his head, Hernandez says, “I’ll paraphrase. An angry, entitled, arrogant, bat-shit crazy Loki steals a shiny glowy power thing and tries to take over the earth from the humans he declares ants on his boots.”

  Wringing her hands, Amy says softly. “Loki likes humans.”

  Bryant tilts his head. “In the movies, Loki is capable of astral projection...and he turns blue because he is a frost giant...like our Loki.”

  “He says frost giants aren’t blue,” says Amy weakly.

  “Loki doesn’t think we’re ants,” Steve says quietly, looking at something on his phone.

  Everyone turns to him.

  “He used you as wyrm bait and froze you in ice!” says Bryant.

  Steve rolls his eyes. “We’ve been over this.” There is silence in the room. Nodding his head in the direction of the door, Steve says. “Why don’t you guys go find out how those homeless people managed to slip into the tunnels. I’ll debrief Ms. Lewis.”

  No one moves for a minute, and then Steve fixes them all with what Amy thinks he should patent as a death glare. “Dismissed.”

  After the other agents file out, Steve pulls on a zip up sweatshirt.

  “Did he really freeze you in ice and use you as wyrm bait?” Amy says in a small voice.

  Steve raises an eyebrow. “He froze me in ice to save my life.”

  Amy lets out a breath of relief and smiles.

  Not matching her smile, Steve tilts his head towards the door. “Let’s walk, Miss Lewis, and you can tell me everything that happened.”

  They walk outside through a walkway that goes beneath the Board of Trade building and up Van Buren beneath the ‘L’ tracks that run through Chicago’s downtown. They come to a stairway, and Steve leads her up to a wide open courtyard. There are pots of colorful cold-hardy plants, and a fountain of black stone, now drained for the season.

  Steve sits down on a stone bench and looks up at the empty sky. He motions with his head for Amy to sit down next to him. She notices a few stares from businessmen walking by. It strikes her they must make an odd couple, Steve in his forties, in his gym outfit, Amy in her business attire. She even catches a few glares, which is really surprising — is it because Steve’s black? She gives him a sidelong glance, his eyes flit to the glarers...but his face remains impassive. Amy’s got to hand it to him, the guy is a rock.

  Looking upwards Steve says, “So you didn’t get a chance to ask him why he suspected visitors from Vanaheim when we ran into that troll.”

  It isn’t a question but Amy answers with one. “No?”

  “Hmmm...” Steve raises an eyebrow at her, and then is absolutely silent.

  Amy swallows again. “Well, he did say that the sphere thingy surrounding the World Seed Cera thingy is Vanaheim technology?”

  Steve’s eyes narrow a little more.

  Amy bites her lip. “And then there are the magic detector doohickies; they are from Vanaheim, too,” Amy says in a soft voice.

  Steve raises an eyebrow. The question is implicit. Amy says weakly, “Loki told me?”

  “But you didn’t tell me,” says Steve, his voice light, a faint smile on his face. “Maybe because Loki told you not to tell me?”

  “No! It’s not like that!” Amy says. “I was afraid of Bryant!” Before she knows it, she’s telling Steve all about her adventure to the microbiology lab, about taking apart Bryant’s precious magic detector prototype, and even about Loki turning blue.

  He doesn’t say anything the whole time, but his eyes narrow considerably more and a frown settles onto his features.

  By the time she’s done, she’s sweating despite the chill weather, and she’s wondering if he’s going to fire her.

  Looking off into the distance he says, “Ms. Lewis, next time you do something like that, you tell me.”

  Amy starts to stammer, the sweat on her skin going cold. “But...it is a $30,000 dollar piece of equipment and I took it apart with a nail file...and Bryant...and...”

  Steve lifts an eyebrow at her. “You tell me, Ms. Lewis.” He smiles. “I need to pass this on to higher ups, but don’t worry. I can handle Bryant — and the rest of them.” He winks. “They won’t take away your nail file.”

  Amy’s body sags with relief. At that moment her phone starts to buzz. Pulling it out of her pocket she sees a text from an unknown caller. Accepting it she reads: Tell Steve I have disabled the gate Mr. Slithers used.

  She hands the phone to Steve. He blinks at it and then types back with surprising speed. It is her phone, so Amy doesn’t feel too bad peeking over his shoulder.

  Did u close troll’s gate 2? Steve asks.

  A text comes back. No.

  Tilting his head Steve types. Why not?

  Bye-bye, Steven. Loki responds.

  Steve hands the phone to her. “Any idea why he would close one gate and not the other?”

  Amy tilts her head. “Where is the wyrm gate?”

  “I have no idea,” says Steve, looking at the sky again.

  “Do you have the troll gate under surveillance?” Amy asks.

  “Of course,” says Steve.

  Amy looks at the phone. She remembers Loki staggering into her car after closing the gate to Alfheim...or redirecting it...or whatever. “Maybe he’s afraid.
I think it exhausts him. Maybe he thinks you’d try and catch him?”

  Steve doesn’t respond. Amy finds herself shivering.

  He’s quiet for a few long moments and then says, “So, your theory about all stories being potentially true —”

  “Partially true,” says Amy. “Maybe.”

  “Is there anything in them about Loki that seems...consistent?”

  Amy looks down at her shoes. “Well...he’s a thief. And he brings about the end of the world.” She bites her lip. Okay, that doesn’t sound good. “But I’ve just really begun to research this...so maybe...I dunno.”

  Steve nods. “Why don’t you continue to research it.” He smirks at her. “Since you hardly answer phone calls and spend most of your time reading veterinary journals.”

  Amy reddens. He knew about that? “Okay,” she says.

  Looking away again he says, “Thank you for your insight, Miss Lewis. You’re not our typical government agent, but I’m glad we have you.”

  A compliment? From Steve? The man of the patented death glare? She scratches the pavement in front of her with her shoe. She’s actually flattered. But she doesn’t quite feel like letting him know. Trying to sound plucky she says, “Just trying to earn enough money to get back into vet school...you know, if I don’t get my scholarship reinstated.”

  Steve laughs at that for some reason. For a few moments they sit in companionable silence and then two of the biggest ravens Amy has ever seen land in the empty fountain.

  One starts to bob and squawk. “There you are, Steven! Rawk...Rawk...”

  “Hey, Muginn,” says the second one. “Is that Loki’s girlfriend he’s flirting with?”

  Amy’s eyes go wide and heat rushes to her face.

  Bobbing, the first one says, “Remember what happened last time someone messed with Loki’s girlfriend. Rawk, Rawk....Loki cut him to pieces and flushed him down the river!”

  Scowling, Steve stands up. “Let’s go.”

  But Amy’s petrified...in absolute fury.