The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

by Chris Strange

  Part of me wanted to tell him, but it was too risky. I knew Desmond, he’d either try to stop me or try to come with me. Neither was an option. I’d hurt enough people already. Hell, if I hadn’t gone meddling, the city wouldn’t be in nearly as bad a state. I was going to finish this by myself, or give it my damnedest shot.

  “I’ve got to go, Des. Thanks for all your help.”

  “I swear to God, man, if you’re doing something stupid—”

  I hung up. I wouldn’t allow myself the chance of being talked out of this. I was balanced on the edge as it was, being pulled one way by my guilt and the other by my fear. I didn’t trust my moral compass to not send me running in the opposite direction.

  I got back in the car and pulled back onto the road. Traffic was light in the darkening evening.

  There was nothing else for it, no more delays, no more hesitation. Time to wrench the city from one madman’s claws and hand it over to another.

  Andrews’ mansion wasn’t hard to find. Everyone in the city knew where it was. I passed several groups of armed suits stalking the streets on my way, but none of them gave me much more than a glance. The sounds of gunfire were distant; Andrews’ gang were fighting their war away from home.

  I stopped the car a block from the mansion and walked the rest of the way, using the surrounding cars and houses for cover. The mansion was set on a spacious section, surrounded by a tall iron fence topped with vicious spikes. The rain didn’t seem to have affected the grounds much; the lawns looked neat and perfectly trimmed with a dozen tastefully-placed trees set around the place. You could practically smell the blood that paid for the place.

  I ducked behind a parked car and watched as several men and Vei in suits patrolled inside the fence, submachine guns slung over their shoulders. There were another two or three at the iron gate, giving hard stares to the cars that occasionally passed. A pair of security cameras watched the gate, and a few more were scattered around the grounds, raised up on white poles.

  I could just make out the mansion itself behind a row of high hedges. It was implausibly white and big enough that you’d need a map and a team of Sherpas to get from the bathroom to the kitchen.

  I crouched down and rested my forehead against the cool, wet car door. My stomach twisted itself into knots just looking at the place. Jesus, how the hell was I supposed to get through all that? I was a Tunneler, not a superhero. There had to be at least a dozen armed guards in the grounds, and who knew how many more inside the mansion.

  What the hell was I doing? Todd knew damn well I couldn’t take the Chroma back by myself. Andrews had doubled his territory in a matter of hours, and I didn’t have a hope in hell of dealing with his insane, Chroma-enhanced Tunnelers.

  A bell rung in my head, a low, mournful sound. It came to me in an instant, what I had to do. A wave of nausea washed over me. It was stupid, dangerous, suicidal. The thought of it made me sick.

  And I had no other choice.

  I reached into my pocket with a reluctant hand and pulled out the little vial of Chroma. It was such an innocent-looking thing, with a dozen colors shimmering in the light from the street lamp.

  “You little bastard,” I said to the Chroma, well aware how crazy it would have looked. Hell, madness ruled the city now. Maybe it was time to let madness guide me.

  I didn’t have a needle, but I was a Tunneler. A Tunneler made his own. I flipped open my knife and scratched a quick circle in the paintwork of the car I was leaning against. Someone would be pissed tomorrow, but I wasn’t expecting to be around to deal with it.

  I splashed on a decent helping of Kemia. It wasn’t going to be a perfect Pin Hole, but it would have to do. I kept my humming quiet. No point announcing my presence early.

  As I opened the Pin Hole, it occurred to me this might be the last time I’d do it. At least with my sanity intact. I would’ve liked to go to Heaven one last time. There were whole regions I’d only heard about, places I could get lost in, free of other people’s meddling. But that was all pissing in the wind now. I had promises to myself to break.

  Energy drained from me as I blew open the Pin Hole. The knife didn’t morph into a syringe, it just was a syringe. I sucked in a breath and shook the fatigue from my head.

  The syringe’s needle gleamed in the streetlight. I pushed it through the vial’s diaphragm and drew back the plunger. The Chroma seemed eager; it flowed toward the needle and up into the syringe. I drew up the entire contents of the vial. No point doing things by half, not anymore.

  I rolled up the sleeves on my left arm and pulled it tight around my bicep to act as a tourniquet. The vein in the crook of my elbow bulged. It wouldn’t have if it knew what was coming. I cast one more look at Andrews’ mansion as I pressed the tip of the needle against my skin, then closed my eyes. Vivian’s face appeared to greet me.

  Fuck it all.

  I shoved the needle in, angling along the vein. Blood flowed up into the needle and swirled among the shifting colors of the Chroma. It was kind of pretty, in a screwed up way.

  I pushed down on the plunger. The Chroma went in smoothly, sliding down the syringe like oil. A tingling sensation rolled up my arm, away from the puncture site, and within a couple of seconds the Chroma was inside me.

  I hurled the syringe to the pavement. I released the Pin Hole and there was a crackle of energy, then the syringe became a knife again. I felt sick, I felt like I’d betrayed myself, I felt like I’d betrayed everyone.

  And then I didn’t feel anything.

  The Chroma hit me like a truck. It must’ve been a gasoline truck, because a second later my brain burst into flames. I can only assume I fell, because the next thing I knew I had a mouth full of stones and dropped cigarette butts.

  I screamed. My skull burned and froze at the same time, my eyes were bleeding, every conceivable sound was being pumped directly into my brain, nails were driving into every inch of my skin. The world shimmered, sparkled, twisted and writhed, became shredded and shattered, all of reality stripped away around me.

  I scrambled to my feet, but I couldn’t escape. The Universe closed in around me, imploding, sucking me outward at the same time. It was inevitable, it was everything. Every atom of my body flew apart, becoming everywhere at once. I lived. I died. I ceased to exist.

  I was born. I came screaming into a world of chaos, my arms shooting out of a space below my eyes. The rest of me grew into being a moment later, shifting into existence from some un-place.

  There was a castle in front of me, a white castle surrounded by iron walls and snaking forests. Something evil lived in there, a King that wanted to hurt me, to kill me, to take away my sanity. For I was sane now, I knew that, saner than I’d ever been before.

  Before? An odd thought. There was no before, there would be no after. There was just the now, and the me, and the castle, and the King.

  I had legs now, I realized. It took me a moment to work out what they were for, and then I remembered. They were for running. I grinned.

  I hurled myself at the castle, the stone barely touching my feet. Reality broke around me like water over the bow of a boat. I could taste the flutter of a butterfly a million miles away. I was flying, invincible. I was a mother-fucking God.

  I was almost at the wall when I saw the monsters. Dozens of the green, misshapen creatures loped through the castle’s surroundings, their jaws snapping, their limbs twisting in impossible ways. Each of them was different, each of them was hideous. A yammering escaped my throat, an involuntary screech of pure fear. They were going to destroy me.

  One of them turned his five unmatching eyes toward me. My heart vibrated like a hummingbird. His jaw fell open, exposing a black abyss inside him. The vortex spun, his festering chest expanded, and he let out a primal alarm call.

  The monsters snapped toward me. They knew me. I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t run. There was only one way I could survive.

  Something tingled at the edge of my consciousness, an awareness that’d been tickl
ing at me my whole life. An awareness of possibility, an unbelievable sense of control. I rolled my eyes backward into my head and let improbability reign. I saw everything that could be, everything that might have been. I saw the earth shifting, becoming rivers and mountains and volcanoes. I saw buildings collapsing and rebuilding. I saw entire species evolving and dying.

  And I saw what I needed. I fixed the monsters in my vision, grasped a plane of reality, and punched a hole in it.

  And then I set the air on fire.

  An inferno roared from my fingertips, a giant cone of fire so powerful the heat of it blistered my face. The iron gates burst open in an explosion of force, one of them coming off the hinges entirely.

  My legs carried me forward, the fire gushing in front of me. One of the monsters let out a rage-filled scream before the fire engulfed him. Another pair of monsters bounded toward me on insect legs, sparks flaring in front of them.

  Some strange voice—a voice that was me and yet not me—shouted for me to stop. It didn’t want me to kill them.

  It was trying to trick me. The monsters wanted to kill me. I had to kill them first. I turned the cone of flame toward the monsters, leaving a trail of burning grass. I was screaming, I think. I could smell rancid burning flesh.

  Pure fear, thick as honey, pounded through me, even as I destroyed my enemies. Every time I killed one, I made them more angry. I didn’t understand. Why did they want to kill me?

  “Leave me alone!” I screamed, engulfing another monster in fire. The words didn’t come out right. Some creature was in my throat, playing my vocal cords like his own guitar. I gave a gurgling cough to get it out, but it clung on, and then I couldn’t remember what I was doing.

  A burst of lightning came from the window of the castle in front of me, and grass and dirt flew up into the air around me. Pain exploded in my forearm, the sting of a million angry wasps.

  My concentration dropped as the pain struck me, and my cone of fire slipped back out of existence, leaving nothing but a bitter smell behind.

  I hurled myself to the side as another crackle of lightning flew from the window. The monster’s sorcery seemed familiar, but my mind was thick with rainbow fog.

  No, not sorcery. A machine. A machine that spat thunder and lead. I grinned. A shadowy memory of a failing thunder machine formed, and I grasped it before it could slip away. I twisted the chaos in my mind, punched a hole in reality. The monster’s machine clicked once more, then exploded. A scream and a splash of alien blood flew from the window.

  I was unstoppable. I would destroy anything that tried to hurt me.

  A tiny flicker of anguish sobbed inside me.