Ascension (The Circle War Book 3)

by Matt King

  “I think that went well,” Cerenus said.

  August kept his stare on the hallway. “Pretty sure she hates me now.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. After all, what have you done to her besides ignore her feelings and dismiss her concern for you as nagging?”

  “That’ll be all, Cerenus.”

  “I’ll see you on the bridge,” he said as he lifted off the floor and phased through the ceiling toward the upper deck of the ship.

  Left alone once again, August sat down on the platform with the back of his head resting against Ion’s open capsule. These were the moments he could never get used to, after he’d given something the rest of the team saw as an order. All they saw was him laying down the law. They never saw the hours of agonizing after, wondering if he’d made the right choice.

  “You know, I never thought I’d say this, but part of me kind of feels a kinship with what Coburn used to be,” he said to Ion. “Not the monster he became, I mean, but the man I knew back in the early days of Phoenix. I used to bitch about his orders constantly, never once stopping to think what kind of pressures he was under when he made them. Don’t get me wrong, he was still a colossal asshole, but I’ll give him this: He never once gave an order that felt flimsy. He believed in what he was doing, even when what he was doing could get people killed.”

  He imagined his eyelids closing and left them that way, cutting off his image of the room.

  “I wish you could tell me if I’m doing the right thing,” he murmured.

  Behind him, Ion’s droning hum filled the room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Arriving on the Tria’s world was like stepping into a nightmare. August didn’t bother learning the name of the planet they called home. As soon as he saw it, he knew he never wanted to go back. Why anyone would choose to live in a haunted snot lake was beyond him. He took a sniff of swampy air and recoiled. The green water smelled like corn dogs.

  Worse than the smells were the memories the swamp brought back of his time spent at the bottom of Coburn’s bog. It had been a while since he’d thought about that torture—the constant loop of death and drowning. He tried not to think about the taste of silt in his throat as he stepped down the ramp of the ship.

  “You’re having flashbacks, aren’t you?” Bear asked. He stopped at August’s side.

  “Well I am now.”

  “Liar.”

  “This is what the Coburn man buried you in?” Aeris asked. She sneered as she looked around. “I can see why you wanted to kill him.”

  “It was something like this. Anyway, can we stop talking about him, please, and focus on the Tria?”

  Cerenus phased through the ship’s cockpit to hover a few feet above the ramp. His cape, normally flowing in the breeze, hung like a damp rag in the dead air of the swamp. “Ion’s map says they’re close,” he said. “They’re beyond those trees, in the direction of the sun.”

  August raised his head to the clouds and spotted the hazy circle of sunlight rising above the horizon north of the ship. “Ion couldn’t be bothered to join us, huh?”

  “I suppose he’s calculated again that he’s not needed.”

  Convenient. Still, there was some comfort in knowing a computer thought their odds were pretty good. “Does everybody remember what they’re supposed to do?”

  “You just said to attack them all at once,” Bear answered.

  “Yeah, but the why was the important part. Since none of us know what the Orsix is, I don’t want to allow them time to give a demonstration. When we find Mordric and his lab experiments, we take them down immediately. Don’t hesitate.”

  “Quick and easy,” Cerenus said. “Like it always is.”

  “Your sarcasm is noted and ignored.” August took in the sight of his Alliance standing on the ramp. It wasn’t a group he’d want hunting him. For once, he didn’t feel like they were marching off to have their asses handed to them.

  “We are ready,” Aeris assured him.

  God, I hope so.

  He led them down the ramp and into the mossy trees of the bog. Each step came with a sucking sound as the ground tugged at the soles of his armored feet. Cerenus avoided the slog by gliding above the wet earth. August could have sworn that the sun was coming up when they entered the swamp, but the farther they went, the less light came through the towering trees. The gnarled limbs wove through each other, forming a nearly solid canopy. Long arms of moss hung down. Creatures with two sets of thin membranes for wings soared through the air, making chattering sounds as they snatched lizard-like animals from the trunks of the trees. The smell of rotting plants turned his stomach.

  “There, up ahead,” Aeris said. She glanced to Cerenus.

  He nodded. “I see it, too.”

  August looked in the direction of their stares but couldn’t see anything beyond the mists coming off the swamp. He temporarily switched to infrared. The landscape was an indistinguishable wash of cool blues and greens, save for a few red signatures of the animals.

  “Time to spread out,” he said. He switched back to his normal vision, trying to act as though he saw the same thing they did.

  Cerenus and the Horsemen veered left. August led Aeris and Bear around the other side. They fanned out, creating an arc. He pressed a button on the side of his mask to trigger the communications Ion had set up for them. “Can everybody hear me?” he whispered.

  The Alliance sounded off. The Horsemen responded by tapping on the inner-ear comms.

  It wasn’t until August found himself alone that he first saw what Aeris and Cerenus had seen. Ahead of him, on a platform between a nest of trees, was a small hut that looked like it had grown out of the surrounding bark. A pair of similar huts rested on platforms on either side of it, above a small clearing. A pile of burning wood surrounded by a ring of stones sat in the middle of the mossy grass. Green flames mixed with blue.

  “Wait,” August said. “I see something.”

  How he missed seeing her before, he wasn’t sure. He stopped moving and made sure the others had done the same. Sitting in front of the fire with her back to them was a small girl who looked like she couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her clothes were dingy rags, her hair matted and stringy with flecks of moss growing in it. A dozen ribbon-like bugs surrounded her, their bodies glowing yellow as they drifted through the air.

  She’s just a child.

  “Moving in,” Cerenus said.

  “No,” August answered. “Don’t.”

  “August, this is not how ‘attack immediately’ works.”

  “I said wait.”

  The girl lifted her hand. Like a magnet, her fingers coaxed the bugs into a column of swirling light above her palm. She stared at it, motionless as they danced. Then, moving slowly like she was afraid of scaring them away, she extended her finger and inched it toward the cloud of insects until she touched one. Its light went out as it fell to the ground, disintegrating into sparkling embers.

  Aeris’ voice came in next, commanding in her tone. “This is our enemy. She possesses a power we cannot predict. You said yourself, we should not hesitate.”

  “I’m not killing a child.”

  “Then I will.”

  “Aeris!”

  She stepped out from behind a tree and sent a bolt of white fire toward the girl. The fire shot across the clearing like a bullet, but never hit its mark. Instead, the stream of flames dissipated, breaking apart into tiny pieces as it approached the girl. The shards of fire morphed into ribbons, changing color until they were the orange-yellow hue of the insects the girl held fast above her hand. She joined the new bugs to the column already formed, creating a tower of light. The insects swirled higher until they left the clearing and flew their separate ways through the maze of tangled trees.

  The girl returned her stare to the pit of fire.

  Aeris looked at August with eyes wide and unbelieving.

  A voice rocked through his thoughts before he could say anything.

  Wher
e…is…he?

  August jerked back like he’d been punched. The question came from all sides of him like a chorus of whispers. He took out his swords as though he could fight off the intrusion that had already taken place.

  “August?” Bear said.

  “Bear, stay close to me.”

  Aeris’ shaken voice came through next. “What’s happening?”

  When he looked over, Aeris held both hands to her head like she was trying to keep herself from falling over. She stared wide-eyed at the ground. Then, she took her hands away and looked around the clearing like she was seeing it for the first time. “How did I get here?”

  “Aeris? Aeris talk to me.”

  “It’s Mordric,” Cerenus said.

  A man with a long, single braid of gray hair stood outside the opening of the large hut above the clearing. His dark green robe camouflaged him against the moss of the trees. Thin lips curved into a frown beneath flaring nostrils. His eyes focused on Aeris, growing milky white as she started to stumble around the wet ground.

  “Father?” she said. She looked to her right where a tree bent over the water, its branches scraping the surface. “Father, what’s happened to you?”

  “We’ve got to help her,” August said. “He’s doing something to her—”

  He stopped when he looked over at Bear and the Horsemen. They stumbled aimlessly, each staring at something, or someone, that wasn’t there. Mordric’s eyes followed them. Bear fell to his hands and knees on the ground, sobbing. He retracted his helmet and started digging through the muck with his hands.

  “Daddy,” he said. “Daddy, you’re sinking. You have to grab my hand.”

  Someone else came out of one of the smaller huts, a thin young woman wearing a black dress. She wore her blood red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had a predatory smile on her face as she scanned across the Alliance.

  “Cerenus?” August said.

  “I see her, but we have to take out Mordric first. He’s killing them.”

  Cerenus rocketed across the clearing, aimed at Mordric. Before he got there, the girl in the black dress formed a cloud of black smoke around her, spawning two winged creatures from the haze that looked like gargoyles with elongated mouths and orange eyes. One of them snatched Cerenus out of the air by his cape and tossed him toward its twin. The second gargoyle shot a stream of fire out of his mouth. Cerenus careened into a tree, splintering the trunk. The gargoyles streaked after him.

  All around August, the Alliance crumbled. Aeris fell against a broken tree trunk, crying and muttering something about her father and Dondannarin. The Horsemen had their knives out. They attacked each other in a violent melee. Bear threw himself to the ground, frantically digging into the earth. His face was nearing the water.

  August stepped out of his spot behind the tree to make a run for Mordric. As soon as he did, Mordric turned his gaze. The man’s eyes moved slowly, like a lighthouse scanning the ocean. When they locked onto August’s, Mordric’s milky haze turned to a searing white light. August mentally closed his eyes in a panic.

  When he opened them again, his legs felt like giving way. He was in a swamp, but it wasn’t the swamp of the…

  His mind seized as he tried to think of the word. We were searching for someone. The other champions. Weren’t we?

  The question faded, seeming less important as the seconds passed. Soon it was gone, replaced by the realization that he was back in the woods on the Phoenix Paramilitary base. He could smell the dank water of the swamp nearby. The overgrown path at his feet ran away from him toward the dirt road leading back to base. He knew what lay behind him.

  Building Z—the place where he learned to kill.

  Coburn’s Quonset hut stared at him from beneath the arms of mossy trees with two mold-covered windows for eyes. The swamp was silent, swallowing the sound of his feet brushing through the grass on his way to the building door. What pushed him toward it, he couldn’t say for sure. A thought bubbled in his head that he should run. It quickly passed, replaced with a weighted sense of calm. He had a sense of being caught in a whirlpool. No matter where he might try to go, all steps would lead to Coburn’s door. There was no reason to fight.

  His hand hovered over the handle. He tightened his fingers around the knob and before he could think to hesitate—

  Why should I hesitate?

  —he turned the handle and stepped inside.

  His eyes couldn’t adjust to the darkness. As soon as the door shut behind him, he was alone in a sea of black.

  No. Not alone.

  He turned around, unsure which direction he faced. Someone else was with him in the room. He could feel their eyes on him, watching him as he stumbled in the dark.

  “Where are you? I know you’re there.”

  The answer filled the room. “Welcome home, Mr. Dillon.”

  He followed the sound of the voice. A light appeared in the distance, one he hadn’t seen when he first stepped inside. It seemed impossibly far away, and yet he could still make out the eyes of the man sitting behind the bare wooden desk. Coburn. But not the Coburn he knew who ruled the mercs of Phoenix. What he saw were the red eyes and thin black pins that made up the face of the man he last fought on Earth, the one who was more machine than human.

  August walked toward the light, drawn like he had been to the building door. As he walked, he heard movement in the dark. He kept his eyes locked on the desk. Coburn’s mechanical eyes watched him come, deep crimson lenses that pierced him, unblinking.

  “Why am I here?” August asked.

  Up close, August could see the ribbons of skin left over from Coburn’s transformation. A bloody section of it fell as a smile spread across the cyborg’s face. Blood oozed between the pistons along his cheek.

  “You’re here because this is where you belong,” Coburn said. His deep, mechanical voice vibrated the air.

  “I never belonged here.”

  “We were predators in a world of limitless prey. You knew that when you signed up.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You’ve left a trail of bodies that says different,” Coburn said, rising. August saw for the first time the streak of silver running down the center of Coburn’s face from where he’d cut the man’s head in half. It shone like a metal scar.

  “You’re not real,” August said, but the words felt like they came from someone else, someone far away.

  Coburn grabbed the desk and threw it against the building wall. It splintered into pieces like shattered glass. “Aren’t I?”

  All around August, the whispers in the dark intensified. Killer, they said. Murderer.

  “You hear them,” Coburn said. “You know it’s true.”

  “No. That’s not who I am.”

  Coburn shot out a hand and took August by the throat. The pressure brought August to his knees. His breaths leaked out in quick gasps.

  “You were always the weakest,” he said. “A killer who wouldn’t admit to his purpose.”

  August swatted at the metal arm holding him down. Coburn didn’t budge.

  “I took you in as a pup and I trained you. I saw what you truly were. Death was always going to follow you, just as it did me, just as it did the Horsemen. Then the witch took you and gave you powers. Did you think you could use them to run away, Mr. Dillon? Were her powers so great that they could erase who you are?”

  Coburn’s stare drilled into him, a look of hatred fueled by disappointment. August could feel his life dwindling away under the relentless grip. “Don’t,” August forced out through a whisper.

  “Don’t what, Mr. Dillon?”

  “Kill me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you. They are.”

  Coburn tossed August into the darkness. He landed hard on his back. He clawed at his throat as though he could somehow undo the crushing pain from Coburn’s grip. When he finally gained his breath, he looked back. Like a candle snuffing out, the light surrounding Coburn flickered and disappeared. His red eye
s were the last to go.

  The building retreated to complete darkness again, but it wasn’t an empty darkness. The voices rushing around him sounded clearer now. Closer, like they were right on top of him. August got to his feet. He reached for his swords and found that they were gone.

  Taken.

  He had a claustrophobic feeling like the room was getting smaller, moving in on all sides of him even though he couldn’t see a thing.

  Killer, the voices spoke. Murderer.

  A hand grabbed his arm. Another took him by the hair. Soon he was held in place, arms outstretched, unable to move.

  Small dots of light appeared in the shadows. As they came into focus, he saw that they were eyes. The empty whites of the eyes cast only a faint glow on people’s faces. He didn’t know who they were, and yet—he did. Somewhere in his thoughts he knew even though he’d never met them. There were thousands of them. Thousands of disembodied voices surrounding him, glaring at him through eyes that were both sad and persecutory.

  Killer!

  A sharp pain exploded in his stomach. He looked down to see a hand pulling one of his swords from his abdomen. Blood streaked the metal blade.

  He caught the eyes of the person holding the weapon. At once, he understood. These were the people he was supposed to save. These eyes closing in on him were the people he left to die on Earth.

  Murderer!

  This time he felt the blade sink through the ribs in his back. Another stab punctured his lungs. (Killer!) The hands gripping his arms kept him from falling to the floor. (Murderer!) The eyes of his victims started to blur together as each wound stole his life, letting it slowly from his body.

  “August, can you hear me?”

  He heard the voice among the curses. The sound was familiar, a long lost recollection. His mind failed to connect it to a memory as the stabbings grew more frequent and more painful.

  “Turn around and look for my light.”

  “Can’t…” August said. The word came out as an unintelligible slur, muffled by pain.