The Disciples of the Orb

by Marshall Cobb

  “Go ahead,” said Matt, “but hurry up.”

  “Can we come in?” asked Eli.

  Matt frowned. “Why?”

  “Can we please come in, Matt?” pleaded Jenny.

  Matt rolled his eyes, opened the door a bit wider and used his free hand to usher them in. “You’ve got two minutes. Watch your step on the marble floor, it’s slippery.”

  As they entered, carefully, Irene called out, “Who is it, Matt?” as she appeared at the other end of the entryway. Steam rose off her chiseled, perfect body, which was clad only in an extremely small bikini which just managed to cover the more delicate aspects of her anatomy. “Oh, hey guys, what’s up?”

  Peter forced his eyes to look somewhere other than at Irene, but had to avoid looking at the equally distracting Matt. He settled for looking at the water pooling at Irene’s perfect feet.

  “Orb needs us all to do a few things,” Peter fibbed.

  “Right now?” Irene asked, stomping her right foot in a mild show of disapproval.

  “I didn’t hear anything about it,” said Matt, who reluctantly closed the door.

  “He just came to the bank. It’ll only take a minute, but we need all of us.”

  Matt frowned, completely put-out and uninterested. “Sorry, man, I’m teleported out. It was a long day of crushing.”

  Peter risked staring at Matt, and his bristling set of muscles, and found it hard to believe that he could ever be tired. “That’s ok. Orb showed me how. I’ve got it.”

  Peter held out the large coil of rope to Eli, who looped it around his waist, holding the loose end in his right hand. Peter made a loop out of the rope, which he let fall over Jenny’s head and farther down to her waist, then did the same thing for himself before handing the remainder of the coil to Matt.

  Matt stared at the rope with a confused expression. “What gives?”

  “I can teleport all of us, but Orb said it would be safer if we used a rope. Please put it around yourself, then Irene. All you have to do is concentrate on flying with me and I’ll do the rest.”

  Matt made a face that conveyed how little he cared for all of this, and how likely he was to revolt, but looped it around his perfect abs, then Irene’s.

  “Um,” Jenny said, looking down, “maybe they want to put on a shirt or something?”

  Irene laughed. “Oh, we don’t get cold anymore. You guys should really get Orb to fix you up. I’ve got super strength now too,” she said as she struck a pose to flex.

  “Uh huh,” Eli muttered, trying somewhat successfully to keep his eyes focused on the floor.

  “Ok,” Peter said, dread filling him that Orb would appear at any moment, “everyone grab the rope and hold on tight.”

  Where are we going, Peter?

  You’ll see. Just hang on, Jenny. You too, Eli. And think of the closest place with guns.

  What? they replied in unison.

  Peter counted down, “Three, two, one,” and the only thing left on the marble floor were the small puddles of water.

  Peter felt the rope bite around his middle as he held on as tightly as he could with his right hand. The cold of the void bit him even more deeply than usual, which Peter supposed made sense with Eli and Jenny helping a little but Matt and Irene relying strictly on his talent for transport. It’s a good thing we had all that practice, Peter thought as his count reached five.

  The end of the worm-hole Peter had opened appeared at the edge of his vision, and he willed his small group to land there.

  They found themselves bathed in darkness, standing in tall, wet grass. Bits of light leaked out from cracks in a wooden cover, or door, set in the ground in front of them. The door, hidden in the grass, was all but invisible to anyone not standing next to it. Peter, fighting to contain the sickness now brewing in his stomach, held his breath and concentrated as he tried to listen. There was no sound besides the breathing and shifting feet of his group. He moved his index finger up to his lips to warn his friends to be quiet, then slipped out of the rope and let it fall to the grass.

  When they were at the lip of the cover, rays of light illuminating parts of all of them, Peter mouthed, “Get the guns” to his group and pointed at Matt, then the wooden cover.

  Peter had forgotten that Matt had absolutely no ability to read lips. “What?” Matt hissed.

  Peter made a shushing motion, grabbed Matt’s shoulder and pulled him down so that Peter could whisper in his ear. “Orb said that there are guns here. We need to get the guns.”

  Matt’s overall confusion with their mission remained, but he nodded as he stared at the wooden cover—steam rising off his shoulders. He leaned over and whispered to Irene, who mumbled back.

  It was then that they noticed all insect noises, particularly the chirping of crickets, had stopped. Minus the light leaking from the cover, it was darkness, silent darkness.

  Matt pulled Irene close to him and waved the others back. He leaned down and stared at the door, looking to see how it opened. Eli started to object but Matt waved him off and pointed to a spot about five meters from the door, or hatch. Matt pointed at Jenny and Peter as well and motioned for them to join Eli.

  “Somebody out there?” a gruff, man’s voice called out. “You don’t want me to come and find out. Believe me.”

  Matt gently steered the bikini-clad Irene to a spot a little farther back, then reached over and knocked on the wooden door before sinking face-down into the grass beside it.

  “Are you kidding me?” There was rustling and bumping from below. “Ok, here I come. You were warned.”

  The wooden door was lifted a couple of inches and then flung open, the hinge on one side securing it as it flopped onto the grass nearly on top of Matt’s position. A hand emerged and gripped the grass on the side of the opening. The light from below also showed the barrel of a rifle slowly edging up. Irene shifted her position slightly so she was even more obvious to whoever would emerge. The steam coming from her body mixed with the light from below.

  They watched as the tilted bill of a baseball cap, followed by the crown of the cap and a mountain of unruly hair spilling out from under the rim, emerged from the hole. The man slowly brought the rest of the rifle out in front of him, his eyes shining with excitement, as he scanned the area and quickly stopped at the bare, shapely legs of Irene.

  “Well, goodnight! What’choo doing all the way out here, girl?” He pushed himself up so that he sat on the edge of the hole, his rifle now pointing straight up. “And, not that I’m complaining, but where exactly have you been swimming? It’s not like there’s a pool.”

  Irene smiled, said nothing, and curled her index finger, encouraging him to come closer.

  Peter held his breath as he, Matt and Jenny watched this man, who had survived on his wits and back-country skills for nearly seven months, get to his feet and take a step towards Irene. He had not made it this far without a good sense of caution, but Irene in a bathing suit was all he could see. Racing hormones outpaced his sense of reason, and his curiosity at this strange appearance of a goddess.

  “Not much of a talker I see. That’s ok.” He closed the remaining gap and stood, smiling with his bare toes pinching the wet grass. “Why don’t you come inside and we can get you warmed up.”

  Irene smiled as Matt rose to his feet and ripped the assault rifle from the man’s hands. The man screamed at the trap he now saw but could do nothing about. Irene bunched the top of his thick shirt in one hand and his belt buckle in the other as she tossed him into the air. Peter watched as the man performed a series of spins and then landed with a dull thud about fifteen meters away. He groaned, and then lay still.

  A few minutes later, each of the teens had an assault rifle slung by a strap over their shoulder. Peter and Eli also had grenades clipped to their belts. The light from the lantern in the chamber below still played out of the hole.

  “Everyone wrap the rope around them. We need to go,” extolled Peter.

  “Go where? What’s the rush?�
�� Matt asked.

  “Orb told me that one of the guardians of the Cube receptacles has betrayed him. We need to destroy the guardian so it can be replaced.”

  Irene crinkled her nose. “So why the stop for guns? Matt and I can handle a guardian. Did Orb say what it was?”

  Peter shook his head. Sweat ran down his back as he tried to find a way to persuade them to move. “Orb didn’t say, you know how he is, but he did tell me that our powers don’t work on guardians. It was his idea to grab guns from one of these survivalist types.”

  Matt stared at his rippling bicep as he flexed it. “I don’t need my crushing power to win a fight.”

  Peter sighed. He supposed it would be hard to stop looking at your body when your body looked like Matt’s, or Irene’s, but it was getting old for him and the others who had not been enhanced.

  “I’m just doing what Orb said. If you want to kill the guardian with your pinky that’s fine, but we need to go.”

  Matt looked annoyed but stopped flexing. “Whatever. I guess Orb told you where this guy with the weapon stockpile was hiding for a reason. Let’s take out this guardian so I can get some sleep.”

  Peter nodded, happy that Matt believed Orb had directed them to this spot versus the reality—which was that he had simply wished to be teleported to the nearest cache of weapons. Orb had, for reasons he did not share, left a number of these survivalist types alone in various spots around the world. Peter dealt with them from time to time when they caused problems in one of the districts. Orb likes a little bit of chaos and uncertainty to keep his followers on their toes.

  Eli, head still spinning from their stop for weapons and the ever-present risk that Orb could appear at any moment, reached out to Peter and Jenny. Where are we going? What should we concentrate on for the teleport?

  Nearest guardian. Just focus on the nearest guardian.

  What is it? Jenny asked.

  I wish I knew.

  Eli tried hard not to roll his eyes and said, “Ok, everybody grab the rope and Peter will take us to this guardian.”

  “What about the other weapons, and ammo?” Irene asked as she inclined her head towards the hole.

  Peter, who could not have cared less, said, “Clear it, Irene, so Matt can crush it.”

  Irene nodded, closed her eyes for a moment as she neutralized the gunpowder and other explosives, then whispered to Matt, “Your turn.”

  Matt, now so well-practiced that he did not bother using his hand to focus, squeezed his eyes together and smiled as the ground below them shifted and vibrated. The light went out, and the shaft disappeared. The area where the underground bunker had been collapsed and formed a grass-covered bowl.

  “Done.”

  “Ok, hang on.”

  Peter shut his eyes, and his hand gripped the rope tightly, as he concentrated on the nearest receptacle of Cube. The void felt different this time, still just as cold, but also hazy, obscured as if they were moving through a cloud. Peter fought to follow the thread he pursued. He could sense Cube, but each time he reached for it with his mind it slipped away. The time in the void built, the cold beginning to seep away his strength.

  Help me! he cried out to Jenny and Eli. I can see it, but I can’t grab it.

  Peter felt Jenny’s presence, then Eli’s as their minds, their focus, joined his. A few heartbeats later, a contrail of blue light passed them in the darkness. The trio reached for the blue light with their minds, and they pulled their way out of the void.

  The pain of the icy void left but was replaced by pressure inside their heads that made them drop the rope and frantically reach for their ears. They were no longer in the void of teleportation, but they were floating down an expanse nearly as dark as the void. Eli screamed from the pressure in his ears, then choked as sea water rushed into his mouth. His hands flailed as he coughed out bubbles of air, his gun falling off his shoulder as the grenades worked themselves loose from his belt and disappeared into the depths below.

  Jenny, hands still clenched against her ears, watched the bubbles from Eli’s mouth as they tracked upwards towards blue water, and light. We’re in the ocean. An ocean! We need to swim up. Swim! Swim!

  Peter heard Jenny’s command, opened his eyes and saw the last of the bubbles float up and away from them. He pulled his hands away from his ears and tried to swim, his gun and grenades also falling away from his twisting as the rope tangled around his knees. The pressure from the depth was unrelenting. He looked to his side and saw Eli floating in the coil of rope, lifeless. He looked to his left and saw Jenny making a small amount of progress towards the surface, slowed by the rope wrapped around her waist.

  Matt and Irene, their enhanced bodies handling the depth without the pain it created in the others, began to swim up as well, dragging the rope with them. As Peter watched, Matt pointed at something behind Jenny. It was a cave, a darker spot in a wall of stone obscured by the darkness. A blue light flickered from within the cave, and a delicate spark of hope sprang from within Peter. We’re close to a receptacle. It worked! But where is the guardian?

  As if on cue, a shadow passed in the clear waters overhead. Peter looked up and let out a burst of bubbles as he stared at a smooth, white belly juxtaposed against the dark water. Fins flexed on either side of the giant cylinder of a body as a giant tail ripped slowly back and forth through the water. Water did strange things to dimensions. A fish seen from a river bank was often significantly bigger than it appeared. Within the water the reflected light made it even harder to gauge sizes, but Peter thought what he was looking at was at least fifty feet long.

  A whale shark? Those get that big, but they don’t eat people.

  Any confusion about whether the beast above him was a man-eater disappeared when it turned, and dove straight at him, a full set of teeth stretched open more than a meter wide.

  Peter looked over to the others and saw Matt pause his powerful swim strokes as he calmly swung the strap holding the gun around and clenched the metal butt against his bare shoulder.

  Do guns work underwater?

  The answer to Peter’s question came when Matt pulled the trigger. There was a small click, and a poof as the bullet limped out the end of the barrel and, hung, spent, after traveling only two feet.

  To me! Peter screamed in Jenny’s mind. Grab tight and swim to me.

  Jenny, who had been looking in the other direction as she tried to swim up while keeping Eli’s body wrapped within the rope, looked over to him in alarm, then followed his eyes up to the cavernous mouth of the rapidly descending shark. A large set of bubbles escaped her mouth as she tried to swim to Peter.

  Peter yanked on the rope and caught the attention of Matt and Irene, who looked like they were about to try to defeat the odds and outrace the shark.

  Peter made a show of grabbing the rope and gripping it and, thankfully, since there was no lip-reading involved, Matt understood and gripped it as well as he reached over to pull Irene closer.

  Ignoring the shark, which was headed straight for Matt and Irene, Peter embraced the void and thought about a safe place. A place where no one could hurt them. He screamed into the nothingness as he willed the entire group along. He had never tried teleporting when underwater, and their group was spread out along the length of the rope. Am I going to fry myself teleporting all this water in addition to all of us? As his mind slid down into the endless depths of the void, he felt a certain sense of comfort that they would at least not be eaten by the shark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Reckoning

  When Peter awoke, he felt a warm, gritty stone against his face. He tried to move but found only pain as a response. His head pounded. His stomach roiled. He body was finally compelled to move when the seawater he had ingested decided to leave and he retched what felt like gallons of it onto the stones next to him.

  He opened his eyes, which were bloodshot from the pressure he had experienced and, probably, the strain of teleporting his friends. As his vision slowly gain
ed focus, he saw Irene cradling Eli’s head between her hands to keep it steady while Jenny performed CPR. Matt straddled Eli’s body as he compressed Eli’s chest in between rounds of Jenny using her mouth to push air into Eli’s lungs.

  Peter tried to push himself up but found his muscles had turned to jelly. He winced as he tried again, only to hear Orb’s laughter as it bounced around him.

  “That was excellent, Children! Quite the show.”

  Orb slowly descended over the limp form of Eli and the others working on him and said, “Allow me.”

  A spark flew from Orb into Eli’s leg. Eli immediately sat up, his head colliding with Jenny’s mouth, and threw up seawater all over Matt’s chest. Matt jumped back, got to his feet, and glared at Orb as the watery vomit trickled down his stomach.

  “You nearly killed us!” Matt yelled at Orb. “There’s nothing wrong with that guardian, and what was the point of the guns?”

  “Calm yourself, Matthew,” Orb chided. “I’m not the one who nearly got you killed. Am I, Peter?”

  Peter finally managed to push himself up, but still had to use his good arm to keep from collapsing. He saw the outlines of the large church he knew very well behind the hovering Orb. We made it. We’re back at Real de Catorce—not that it does us any good.

  Matt looked over at Peter, then back at Orb. “What’s Peter have to do with it?”

  “Would you like to tell him, Peter, or shall I?”

  Peter ignored Orb and instead looked over to Jenny, who supported Eli by cradling his head against her chest, a bruise already forming on her cheek where Eli had accidentally struck her. Jenny shook her head.

  “Very well, I’ll tell you. Your friend Peter, along with his brother and, of course, Jenny, tried to pull off a coup d’état.”

  Matt looked over to Irene, who shrugged.

  “Ah, my beautiful specimens, it’s a pity you did not ask me to augment your mental capacity as that truly might have been useful.”

  Irene scowled, which still looked quite attractive coming from her perfectly shaped mouth. “We’re not idiots. You were always more interested in what we could do for you than you were in helping us.”