Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  The pillar of lifeless flesh remained upright for a few moments before it gradually began to tilt. Once gravity seized hold, the creature’s empty shell pitched over like a felled tree. The lower portion of the trunk slammed into the floor, creating yet another tremor, but the upper half extended out beyond the edge of the terrace and kept going. Tarrant’s carcass slid serpentine toward the precipice, and in a matter of seconds vanished into the abyss below, where he joined his daughter and at long last delivered the price of his diabolical promise.

  NINETEEN

  There was no time to savor the victory. Mira snatched up the fallen chem-light and rushed to DiLorenzo’s side. “Follow me!”

  The detective fell in behind her without questioning her urgent command, focusing on the green lamp held over her head. She immediately led the way to the spiral stairs, which descended to the tenth level. As they started down the steps, DiLorenzo felt the first droplets of chilly water on his face.

  “It’s raining!”

  “Not rain,” Mira called back. “Tarrant melted the ice frozen in the rock matrix.”

  “Why am I thinking that’s a bad thing?”

  “At the risk of sounding like Chicken Little, when the ice melts, more than just water is going to start falling.”

  DiLorenzo looked around skeptically. In the limited cone of illumination from the chem-light, it looked as though Mira’s prediction had already come to pass. Rubble from Tarrant’s rampage and their own explosive weapons littered the stairs and had visibly damaged the roof and walls of the lone structure on the tenth level. Yet, as if to chastise his incredulity, a chunk of quartz the size of a bus broke loose from the central dome and fell majestically past them, a trail of ice and water droplets glittering around it like a comet tail as it sailed into the dark chasm. After that, it seemed as though a cork had been removed.

  Within moments, the floor was awash in several inches of water, and over the rushing noise of the deluge that poured down from above, they could hear the impact of solid matter letting go from the ceiling and demolishing in seconds structures that had stood undisturbed for ten millennia.

  Like Mira, DiLorenzo had a preternatural familiarity with Agartha, which Tarrant had exploited during the detective’s thralldom, wringing not only the layout of the city, but also the codes to release the gates to each successive level. Now, as he fled back through the changing landscape, down stairways and avenues that were as familiar to him as the borough of Manhattan, he found cause to question Mira’s navigation. Upon reaching the eighth level, she had veered away from the direct path through to the next tier and headed toward the outside wall.

  “This isn’t the way out.”

  “The front door’s been locked,” Mira replied, a hint of irritation in her tone.

  “But that’s the only way in or out.” He splashed to a stop beside her, facing the sheer cavern wall. He followed the line of her pointing finger to a dark recess in the wall. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  She fixed him with a wry smile. “That’s why you have to trust me.”

  The cavern continued coming apart as they threaded through the narrow paths of the yeti, and the devastation was by no means limited to the twelve terraces of the city. Seepage from the frozen slopes was flooding into the venous passages through which they fled, pushing them along like driftwood in the flood. The torrent was bone chilling, but the groaning of the cavern’s collapse supplied an adrenaline edge that kept them moving despite uncontrollable shivering.

  Beyond the tunnel junction where Mira had first deviated into the footsteps of Agartha’s new inhabitants, the journey ceased to follow any sort of intentional route; they simply traveled the path of least resistance. From that point, the subterranean channels never revisited the main cavern, but wandered ever closer to the surface, until at long last, they were vomited into the Himalayan night.

  The flow of water across the surface of the glacier had left it as smooth and slippery as glass. Yet even here, separated from the collapse of Agartha by tons of stone, the echoes of that disaster were felt. Monstrous crevasses were opening up along the glacier, while towering seracs broke apart and came crashing down all around.

  Mira managed to snare DiLorenzo’s pant leg and pull him into a shared embrace, but there was little else either of them could do until the slope leveled out. Somehow, they survived the harrowing journey and came to rest on a flat shelf overlooking yet another broken field of ice, scoured by the same monsoon that had chased Mira across Nepal.

  “We’re on the south face!” Even though she still hugged him closely in an effort to pool their body heat, she had to shout to be heard over the shrieking wind. The moisture in their clothes was already stiffening into ice crystals. “I think this is the Khumbu icefall!”

  “What’s the good news?” answered DiLorenzo through chattering teeth. He was trying to be flippant, brash in the face of this new peril. It was false bravado, yet his comment earned a faint smile. Before she could answer, however, they both heard a shrill cry that had nothing to do with the weather. It was echoed several times, and seemed to be coming from all around.

  “That was the good news,” she finally replied, drawing the Desert Eagle from its holster. Her flesh of her fingertips froze instantly to the metal grips and she abruptly realized that she might not be able to count on the weapon to protect them from the gathering of yeti that had likewise been forced out of the subterranean kingdom and onto the ice. She pulled loose from his embrace. “We’ve got to find some shelter!”

  DiLorenzo nodded, but when he tried to move his limbs, he felt himself curl into a ball, hugging his arms to his chest as his entire body was wracked with shivers. He opened his mouth to apologize, but the wind stole his words away. Recognizing that she would get no help from him, she reached down and gripped his collar with her own stiffening hands. The fingerless leather gloves she wore afforded little protection against the cold, but it was better than nothing.

  Crouching low against the wind, she pulled him across the new ice toward a sculpted ridge beyond the icefall. The upswept drift afforded some protection against the wind, but it wasn’t nearly enough. And another round of howls from the yeti reminded her that the elements were not the only enemy grouping for an attack.

  Through the descending fog, DiLorenzo was barely aware of being shoved into a niche in the ice, hidden from the storm. He felt strangely calm inside the shelter. Mira was still bent over him, blocking most of the wind with her body, and after a moment he felt her thrust something into his arms. “Think warm thoughts, detective.”

  “It’s M-M-Mike.”

  He thought maybe she was smiling, but he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. After a moment, he heard her talking, but not to him. “Get a fix on this loca—”

  Her sentence ended abruptly and was followed by the roar of a firearm discharging. The sound repeated and then there was only the wind. DiLorenzo struggled toward the surface of consciousness, but his efforts were in vain. Darkness overwhelmed him and he heard nothing.

  Several times he drifted back almost to alertness only to be turned away by the harsh reality of his surroundings. After a while, the wind died down and there was silence within and without. Still he did not wake.

  At some point, a sound like the beating wings of a dragon crept into his dreams. The noise grew and deepened, but the dragon failed to appear in his mind’s eye, and he dared not look with the eyes of his body, for fear of what he might find.

  “This is it,” a voice cried from the darkness. “These are the coordinates.”

  “That’s her sat-phone,” called another. “Look. Over here. There’s someone buried here.”

  He tried to shrink back so that they would not find him, but it was too late. Hands closed around his arms and drew him into sunlight.

  “It’s not her.” The observation was filled with contempt.

  “No, but I’ll bet it’s the guy she was chasing after.” He sensed the speaker drawing c
loser. “Where is she?”

  “Banks, look, in his hands . . .”

  The exclamation jolted DiLorenzo closer to lucidity, and he opened his eyes. He did not recognize the two men who held him erect, but their amazement compelled him to look down at his own hands. They were curled into frozen claws, holding an object tight against his chest.

  It was the remaining pieces of the Trinity, still joined, still faintly pulsing with energy.

  “Mira . . .” The name tumbled from his lips, but he couldn’t find any more words.

  “Where is she? Where is Mira?”

  “She . . .” He looked down at the Trinity again, but couldn’t remember how he had come to possess it, or what had happened to Mira. The awful realization of his ignorance washed over him like vertigo, and he sagged in their arms. Before he could speak again, the darkness swelled around him, and he couldn’t stop falling. . . .

  EPILOGUE

  Mira sped through the darkness, fleeing the pursuing yeti and the icy grip of hypothermia. There was a chance she might escape the former peril, but in doing so she had all but sealed her fate by the latter. She was lost now, and her intuition told her that every conceivable path led to failure.

  The Desert Eagle was gone, not that it would have made much difference. She couldn’t have pulled the trigger anyway. At some point during the night, as the cold stole the feeling from her nerves, the sheer weight of the pistol had ripped it from her grasp, tearing chunks of frozen skin from her fingertips.

  Dazed she staggered onward because there was simply no other alternative.

  Mira.

  The voice did not surprise her. In the context of her situation, it seemed perfectly reasonable that she would hear disembodied voices. But when it repeated again and again, it occurred to her to wonder to whom the voice belonged to. It wasn’t DiLorenzo. It certainly wasn’t the man she had always known as Walter Aimes. She didn’t believe in God, Jesus or guardian angels. So who did that leave?

  Mira, this way! Hurry!

  The voice was not truly audible; it would be impossible for her to hear speech. Even the howls of the yeti were indistinguishable from the shriek of the wind. Yet the words were nevertheless distinct. She could even tell from which direction they came and altered her meandering course ever so slightly in order to heed its call. His call, she thought. I know this voice. . . .

  And then she saw him, standing before her, perfectly visible despite the gloom of night and the impenetrable shroud of blowing snow. His arms were spread in welcome, beckoning her onward. Mira. Come to me.

  “Curtis.” The whisper was snatched away by the gale, and for a fleeting instant she felt a profound sadness. Her dead had come for her, which could only mean that . . . Well, it was a good ride.

  And then through the haze of her despair, she felt his firm grip as he pulled her into his warm embrace, and her fear fled away.

  Rest now, Mira, he whispered solemnly. You have begun to accomplish the will of the Wise Father, but there is much yet to do in the Great Work.

  To be continued…

  Enjoy this preview of…

  DESCENDANT—A Mira Raiden Adventure

  PROLOGUE: SILENCE

  The damage was catastrophic.

  The nine-millimeter bullet, deformed by the ricochet, was already tumbling as it slammed into his eye, smashed through the orbital bone, and burrowed a chaotic path through the temporal lobe of his brain. The shock of the injury left him almost instantaneously paralyzed, even before the real effects of the wound became manifest.

  The specific regions of his brain damaged by the bullet were not critical to life support; with immediate medical treatment, he might even have survived with only limited impairment. However, the secondary effects of the trauma—a hydrostatic shock wave that rippled through the surrounding tissue, the subsequent swelling of his brain that would in short order cause his gray matter to extrude through every orifice—would probably, under the best of circumstances, be fatal to an ordinary human.

  But then he was no ordinary human.

  How long he lay there without conscious thought, he could only begin to guess. He gradually became aware of maggots squirming in the ruined flesh of his eye socket, and assimilated them without conscious thought, drawing nutrition from their protein to begin the rebuilding process. It was all he could do; he could not move, he could not breathe. He could only lay in the darkness, trapped in the prison of his own rotting flesh.

  They came for him nearly a week later. He was aware of them, felt their presence and thereafter their touch, but they were closed off to him. Their speech reverberated against his eardrums, but the damage to his brain did not allow him to process the nervous impulses into something meaningful.

  Nevertheless, those impulses were traveling through him. His brain was listening to his nerves, and soon it would begin repairing the pathways that would allow him to communicate with and begin repairing his decaying corpse.

  A setback. Just as his remaining eye, began to interpret light—an intense glare filtered through the opaque membrane of his eyelid—the invasion began. His nerves flared with searing pain, then just as quickly were overcome with a chemical numbness. It was, he would later realize, formaldehyde.

  He was being embalmed.

  The darkness returned with a vengeance.

  Yet, the flickering flame of his life would not be extinguished. Even as the transfusion of embalming fluid ended, his body began to repair itself again. The preservative chemicals were broken down at an atomic level, and useful molecular components were redistributed to nourish the restoration process while toxic elements were shunted into the lipid cells that sheathed his torso and extremities.

  Time passed and his nerves began once more to transmit information, but there was no light to guide him. After days or perhaps weeks, he suddenly felt the impulse to breathe, but his lungs refused to inflate. At some deep intellectual level, he correctly recognized that he had been placed in a vacuum-sealed container—a coffin—but his reactions were purely primal, instinctual. Like a trapped animal, he began to kick and scratch and claw. His hands found the outer limits of his prison. The soft, silky cushioned liner swiftly fell to pieces beneath his clawed fingers, revealing the smooth unyielding metal of his casket.

  Without consciously thinking to do it, he brought his knees up close to his chest and placed his feet flat against the unseen lid of the coffin. Then, with a mighty, silent heave, he flexed his legs and pushed.

  It should not have been possible for the aluminum capsule, sealed with lead solder and negatively pressurized, to be opened by the mere brute force of a human, but then no mere human would have been alive under such conditions to begin with. After a moment of struggle, the metal buckled slightly and that was enough to break the seal. Air whooshed into the cavity and with the equalization of pressure, the thin line of molten lead broke free in several places. The lid, hinged on one side, banged noisily against the side of the coffin, then the stillness returned. The darkness remained absolute.

  Nevertheless, that first breath of fresh air—that first moment of true life—worked wonders for his cognitive faculties. His memories were still a mosaic of fractured recollections, but then that was to be expected when one’s brain held several millennia of life experience. He knew enough to recognize that his casket was situated in some kind of crypt, and that once he found the exit to his tomb, he would emerge once more into the light. He did not hesitate to begin groping for the walls of the enclosure, and after a few minutes isolated what felt like a doorway, blocked by slab of cool stone. Another violent shove broke the marble loose from the portal.

  Even as the barrier tumbled down the ornate steps leading from the crypt, light filled his world. It was night, and the sky was overcast blocking out the stars, but after months in absolute inky blackness, the brilliance of the orange-hued ambient glow—the lights of a distant city reflected in the low clouds—stung his eyes. Both eyes. No trace of his maiming remained.

 
He staggered forward, breathing deeply like a man who has just escaped drowning, and then was abruptly racked by a spasm of nausea. Vile green vomit erupted from his mouth and nose; a greasy mixture of body fat mixed with the toxic residue of the embalming fluid.

  In spite of the discomfort, as the chemicals were purged from his body, he felt stronger, more alive. He barely recognized his own flesh. The skin of his fingers, which had once been as plump as sausages, the result of centuries of unashamedly living well, now hung in great slack folds over bone and sinew.

  I have lived too soft for too long, he thought. That changes now.

  His sensitive eyes detected movement, an undulation of light and shadow; someone was coming. Animal instinct prompted him to shrink back into the darkness of his crypt, but his wiry muscles tensed in preparation as the approaching figure came into view. It was a single individual wielding only a flashlight; a caretaker, no doubt coming to investigate the tumult. He waited until the silhouette paused to examine the cracked marble slab at the base of the steps, and then struck with the swiftness of a wild predator.

  The smell of terror enveloped the caretaker like a miasma of poisonous smoke in the instant that his throat was torn open, but he did not cry out or struggle; he was dead before his conscious mind knew what was happening.

  Later, as the first gleams of predawn twilight began illuminating the sky, the man who had emerged from the crypt pushed away the remains of his repast. His heightened metabolism had sped the nutrients of his meal to every part of his body, restoring both the full functionality of his organs and muscles and his overall sense of vitality. His memories were returning, and with them his sense of purpose.