Ines slashed the sword until her right arm went numb. Kimberlton bled all over his body, but he showed no signs of stopping. As she watched him fight, the lust from the cave returned. Not now. That’s the worst possible moment for this. But, oh, that makes sense. I see.
“Everyone!” she shouted toward the guards. “Watch this!” She dropped off the lab coat revealing the hidden gems of her body. Her perfectly round tits. Her delicate, peppered with pubic hair sex. Wounds on her belly, thighs, shoulder, only added majesty to her body. Maybe she possessed another Gift? Who knew? The guards stopped, stupefied, mesmerized. Their weapons dropping. It wasn’t only them who were caught in her charm. Some prisoners were also captivated by the sight. Shit, what idiots!
She grabbed the lab coat and gracefully walked between the gaping guards and prisoners. The only person who resisted her beauty, for now, was Kimberlton.
She smiled as they passed them all.
“Come, Kimberlton.”
*
Ines
Cells on both sides of the corridor looked small and cramped and gave her the feeling of a toilet rather than a room. She hated this level. Suddenly, she wanted to return to the cave and grab Mab Quark and give him a good beating. Did these people even have a remote sense of guilt and conscience? How cruel people could get before they satisfy their fucked needs? Emotions boiled inside her as she watched cowering figures of children and adults alike in the cells. Was their only crime that they were different than the rest of the society? Government! I’ll come for you. I won’t only escape from here. I’ll destroy this place and make sure that any place like this will cease to exist. People aren’t your test subjects.
They stopped by the black door with white inscription in a language Ines saw on captain Kuran’s breastplate. What was it?
“It is here, Ines. Behind this door.”
“Good, let’s go.”
But Kimberlton didn’t twitch. What was wrong all of sudden with him?
“Kimberlton?” Ines asked not letting him get away with quirky behavior. “What’s going on?”
“The inscription on the door. These are the runes the Government decoded twenty years ago on the island beyond the Third Seafall. They allow controlling magic-imbued items.”
“What do you mean by magic-imbued items? Kimberlton, you must be more forthcoming, or we won’t get out of here alive.” Then she remembered Lord Red and his fire-spitting glove.
“The history of the Forbidden Gifts is a long one, though farther away you go from the present time the more unclear and hazier the history becomes until it melts into a jumble of legends and myths and then the history itself cut itself off. We have absolutely no record of what the world was alike beyond three hundred years from now. This is strange because many of the buildings and cities are way older than that. Why then there are no records? I don’t think anyone knows that, because if that would be the case why keep it a secret? Runes are one of such examples. They are dated a thousand years old, but they don’t exist in the Seven Seas. During the War of the Great Exploration, the Government and the Navy discovered the first runes and somehow someone made them work. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out that the holders of the Gifts possess magical power as well. This level is designed to extract that magic from these people. Their Gifts are quite useless, so the risk is low.”
Ines shuddered with anger. It was even worse than she’d thought. People here were belittled to the role of magical power. Was the Government even understanding their deeds?
“Fucking bastards.”
“That’s not all. This door and the inscription are very intricate and powerful.”
Ines sent him a chilling gaze that made him step back. Powerful he said? She’d see about it. She sensed a magic power of the runes as if she possessed another set of senses. The runes radiated temperatures, which weren’t exactly temperatures. Her perception must have been on another level, but her understanding of the phenomenon equaled zero. Until now she has acted with her heart and Pace’s instinct.
She placed her hands on the door’s surface.
“No!” Kimberlton shouted, but it was too late to back down.
Under her fingers, the temperature of the door seemed cold and hot alike. The runes brightened for a moment, but her hands reacted with the substance of this magic-imbued object. Her Gift was to repel the magic, wasn’t it? This confused her because it still constituted to be a magical power itself. Shouldn’t it fail to work on a magically-secured door? But what she expected to know? Her history was a lie. Her entire life has been one big experiment.
A strange current zapped between the door and her hands. Was it a defense? Nothing happened to the door or her.
She failed.
Kimberlton gasped.
“This is not possible. The runes are-were designed to stop any magical interference, unless… unless it’s the Soul Entanglement’s effect. If that’s the case, then. Oh, god, the implications are unbelievable. Ines, we can do it!”
She didn’t care about the implications, but it was nice to hear some optimism from him.
“How do I open them?”
“Begin with pushing them.”
Ines did as he’d said. The door didn’t resist. Ah, Kimberlton, you’re the smart one. She smiled thinking of the moment in the caves. She couldn’t understand where the sudden bouts of lust came from, but they offered her so much needed respite. Almost, like a door to fairyland.
The room behind the runes-inscribed door was spacious and confusing. Glowing bulbs and tablets, walls full of runes and lines that connected everything together in some sadistic quizzical way. This place was bizarre.
“How do I open the cells?” There were no levers or description, only codes that held no meaning.
Kimberlton stepped inside and winced. His reaction wasn’t reassuring. Ines braced herself for the harsh reality of their situation.
“This is way more complex than I’d imagined. Pronisium is a bloody genius. She designed this. I didn’t expect the Government to get such a good grasp on runic language so quickly.”
Ines’ expression soured, “who is Pronisium? And where will I find her?”
Kimberlton laughed, but his eyes remained sad.
“I know her true name to be Prona, but she is more of a phantom within the Government’s Science Arm. No one knows anything about her, except that she is very proficient with runes.”
“Is she still in King’s Valley?” Ines asked hopefully.
“As far as I know, she isn’t. Mab Quark doesn’t abide with rivals very well. To him, she is nothing more than a competitor, though their studies are unrelated.”
Oh, Mab Quark we’ll have another conversation again in the future. You won’t like it. I promise you that.
“You told me that my blood will be needed. How can use it?”
Kimberlton looked baffled. The complexity of this room overwhelmed him, but wasn’t he a scientist, too? He should be able to sort it out, somehow. He must. Ines couldn’t live with herself if she left these poor people and children here.
“I don’t know anymore…” he murmured. All the optimism that they’ve built up now evaporated in an instant. Damned idiot!
“Stop it, Kimberlton. Stop it,” Ines snapped. “Between the two of us, you have a brain. Use it!”
The scientist had puffed at her comment, then began darting his eyes all over the place. Ines left him be and searched for a way to drop some of her blood. Was it how they extracted the magical power from the Gift users? She shivered at the cruelty of this place. It must be stopped.
She left the sword behind because her arm was useless. It throbbed from exertion. As Kimberlton read the runic inscriptions, Ines walked to the first shining bulb and smashed it with her left hand. The light winked, but pain exploded in her hand. Shards of glass jutted from her skin.
“Hey! What the hell did you do that for?”
“I’m just testing things… isn’t this what the scientists do? Besides, I
needed blood and I ponder if I could open the cells by simply destroy everything in this room.”
Kimberlton shook his head, “it doesn’t work that way. If you destroy the power source, it only means that the door to the cells must be opened manually. So, destroying it is out of the question. I hoped your blood would work as a reverse magical power. That’s why I was shocked to see the runes on the door. If my first hypothesis was a correct one, then you’d never open it. You’d likely die in the process. But on the other hand, it means that your blood doesn’t reverse the effect of the magic, it completely blocks or destroys it.”
“You can’t open without a key,” a voice said. Kimberlton and Ines spun ready to fight.
In the doorway stood an old dried man Ines hasn’t seen yet. He wore a standard lab coat, though his collar was of a different color than the rest. It was blue and purple. He shivered on his wobbly legs. Giving them a toothless smile.
“Who are you?” Ines asked.
‘This is Gimo Ludon, doctor Mab Quark’s personal assistant,’ Kimberlton explained. “What are doing here?”
“Doctor had figured out that this escape of yours won’t succeed, so he sent me to help you out.”
“What?!”
Kimberlton shook watching the old geezer scramble to the pulpit in the middle and shoving a key into a hole. The old man’s fragility must have been superficial only because his fingers moved with astonishing agility and precision, typing a sequenced of codes into the tablet.
“That bulb you destroyed so happily,” he murmured to himself. “It controlled children’s cells.”
“What? What does it mean?”
“You can’t open them from here.”
“What?”
“Why is doctor Mab Quark helping us… his research. What’s happening?”
“Don’t complain, kid.”
“But—”
Daggers in Gimo Ludon’s eyes cut Kimberlton’s words off his tongue.
The buzz in Ines’ head reached critical mass, she covered her ears, but the noise didn’t come through the ears. It wasn’t physical. Ines dropped to her knees. Hands gripped her shoulders, but her senses exploded in her head. The world changed.
Colors reversed.
The smell appeared in the air and she saw screams of thousand throats. Her perception went nuts.
It ended abruptly, but the return to normality was rough.
“Ines, are you okay?” Kimberlton asked terrified. “What have you done to her?”
“We call it Sinoff-Harlt Resonance Magica. It’s the effect when three sources of power meet within one person or object. She’s a holder of Gift, she also possesses the Soul Entanglement and the shards from the bulb have runes inscribed on them. Add a powerful source of magic and you’ll end up with the resonance magica.”
“I’ve heard rumors about it,” Kimberlton murmured.
“Because you’re a pup. What you and the rest of the lead scientists doing here is dipping fingers in the monster-infested lake. Now, follow me. We don’t have much time before that annoying brat Red evokes the protocol Dome.”
“What’s that?” Ines staggered to her feet. The bizarre effect cleared itself returning her perception to a normal state. She still needed to know what they were going to do about children. He couldn’t leave them here.
“It submerges the entire island until the reinforcement arrives. Now, move your butts!”
Gimo Ludon led them with a startling pace. All over the place guards fought the prisoners. She thought about Umarau who had stayed to fight captain. What if he lost? Their chances to defeat that man were zero. And what about the children from Level Two?
“Hey, prune, what about the other prisoners?”
“Don’t prune me,” Gimo Ludon snickered. “Other prisoners? Didn’t you hear what I’d said? If Red evokes the protocol Dome, then no one will ever leave it.”
Ines stopped, her right fist balled, the left was numb from pain and lost blood. She couldn’t leave them. But how to save others when she had no strength to do so?
“Then we go to the top and beat the crap out of that fucker Red.”
Gimo Ludon’s eyes darkened. He turned away from her and crossed her arms. She didn’t care about his response. She made up her mind. No child would be left here.
“Didn’t that pup explain to you what means laying a finger on lords? You can fight the Navy or even the special agents and get away with it. That kid Carbon showed them all the hell in his prime. But even he didn’t cross the line. These bastards are off the limit, no matter how badly you want to punish them. If…”
“I don’t care about this. Even if the entire world shivers in the fear before these cruel monsters. I won’t abide and cower. I’d rather die trying than give up.”
Gimo Ludon dropped his head on his chest. Did he understand that there was no winning an argument with her?
“I’m sorry, pup.”
A light had come out of nowhere, then only darkness descended.
*
Kimberlton
“What the hell?” Kimberlton shouted as Ines's body fell to the ground.
“Take her and follow me,” Gimo Ludon ordered.
Steps sounded behind them. Kimberlton’s heart jumped to his throat. But it was the test subject Zero-Umarau with a group of other prisoners from the Level One and a few from the Level Two.
They looked beaten but still walked.
“What happened to her?” Umarau drawled.
“Nothing that concerns you. Now we go or the escape won’t be possible,” the old science assistant hissed.
Chapter 36
Admiral Sono
The contact sphere that connected admiral’s office with the Government Blue Room flashed. It was the most secure line that existed in the world. Admiral touched it.
“Admiral Sono.”
“Lord Nine.”
“How’s your health?”
“It’ll do.” Admiral didn’t return the courtesy. He despised Lord Nine the most. The worst, the humankind could produce. “What do you want?”
“I presume that your pet crew informed you of developments in Thousand Lakes island. Huh? No?” A cold sardonic laugh sounded on the other side of the connection. “Too bad then that you’ll hear it from me.”
Admiral gritted his teeth. Since the conversation with Pembroke, while captain was in Wild Peaks island, admiral hasn’t received any information from his special Navy crew. He wasn’t blind or deaf. Reports have kept coming. The Government had invoked the High Threat Contamination Protocol and wiped Blackport from the surface of the Seven Seas. Officially, an unknown highly contagious and deadly disease had appeared on the island and killed ninety-five percent of citizens within two days. Unofficially, things looked grimmer than that. Not a single marine got wind of the true events there. Admiral Sono wouldn’t be an exception if he didn’t receive a call from an old friend, who had hidden in Blackport’s abandoned mines with a group of unaffected civils. The fact that doctor Falander possessed a contact sphere to him was startling. What other surprises vice admiral Carbon left? Time would tell.
Falander explained the situation. Ines, an escapee from Kuro, which turned out to be an oversized testing ground for the Government, had accidentally caused the epidemy. But the Government refused any kind of help from the medical communities. Other admirals must learn about this. But even these events have lost their importance fairly quickly.
Pembroke’s crew, apparently without him, defeated Songless pirates led by Parime Dorado. A daughter of Ciron Dorado. A devil of the Sea. What the hell was she doing in this sea? Among all the Seven Seas, the Juno Sea was the calmest. People of this region rarely have seen a pirate with a bounty higher than ten thousand black pearls.
Admiral was aware that Lord Red sent a warship to Thousand Lakes island to interrogate Pembroke’s crew. Since then, the reports from the island have stopped coming. What kind of a devil’s game is played? Another special Navy crew left to investigate the a
ftermath of the interrogation. If such took place. So, what Lord Nine was going to tell him?
“Your precious captain died, admiral. His killer swears to stab his chest with two horns of the darkness. One through the heart.”
Admiral held a breath. Could it be? Did Pembroke meet his untimely demise at the hand of Agent X? There was a contingency plan to make the Government believe that he was dead, so they’d leave him alone. But this agenda had never been introduced to captain. No. It had to be connected to that kid Pembroke had spoken about in Wild Peaks.
If this is true, then it’s bad. Without Carbon and Pembroke… this world would stand no chance against the Government.
Carbon was like a younger brother to admiral. Full of mischief, but pure at his heart. When he’d passed away and his will arrived at admiral’s desk; Sono promoted Pembroke to the rank of captain without a second thought.
Now, both of these great people were dead.
I can’t get emotional about that.
“It’s sad to hear that,” admiral responded coolly. “I hope to deliver a similar message to you once Agent X loses his head.”
“I don’t care. I can deliver him to you if you wish. His job is fulfilled. I don’t need him anymore.” Piece of scum.
“Why the reports from Thousand Lakes island have been blocked, Lord Nine?”
“Oh, so we get to the main dish. Exquisite!” Lord Nine began chuckling. Wait, so Pembroke’s death wasn’t the biggest news? “There is some fine mess that your crew brought down on your little sea, admiral. It seems that the news of the capture of Parime Dorado reached her father.”
How? Ciron Dorado’s fleet was far beyond the Third Seafall. News of this would need months to get to him. Who could possess a contact sphere that connected directly to a devil of the sea? Only the Government, but no… the Government would never lure that man here. To close to their capital.
“I hope you’ll have a festive time explaining to other admirals why one of the Seven Devils of the Seas is approaching. It was a pleasure to talk to you… ah, and the last thing. The girl that Pembroke chased, she soon will be in my hands. I don’t know why you would need her, but I won’t let you have her, admiral.”
Bonded by the Sea Page 20
