by M. K. Gibson
And then, of course, there were the schools. Kingdom-sponsored Basic Ed for the young, Technical Advanced to assign a trade for the teens. Most schools integrated the hellion mutts with humans.
There were very few continuing education programs, like the old universities. You needed to be a pure-breed demon, or have enormous wealth or connections, even to be considered a candidate for those that did exist, like Solomon’s Folly in Lemegeton. Pure demons were afforded all the privileges and opportunities that only came with wealth. Pretty much like every eighties-movie, sweater-vest-wearing villain named Trip Vander-Smythe III. The one whose daddy was trying to destroy the local whatever-the-fuck center, causing the hero to undergo a training montage and beat Trip at his own game.
I shook my head. I’ve watched too many movies.
I flicked my smoke out the side of the outrider and lit another. Grimm took a breath, held it for a second, and then let it out. He was thinking of a way to talk about something uncomfortable.
After a while, when you spend enough time around someone, you begin to know their tells. Grimm, with all his wisdom and detachment, still took a deep breath when he felt a topic was too personal or sensitive.
“Out with it, old man. What’s on your mind?” I asked him. I knew it had to be one of the big three. My thoughts about Jensen, or how I treated Vali, or the assassination attempts on me.
“What do you miss the most from the old world?” Grimm asked as he passed another interchange and began descending to the lower street level.
I had to admit, the question was a bit of a shock. I wasn’t expecting to let my brain wander down nostalgia avenue. I’ve spent more of my life post G-Day than before. But mostly I didn’t like thinking of the past too often. It just hurt too bloody much.
I didn’t like remembering nicer times when all you had to worry about was bullshit politicians and climate change. Remembering the old days was like a burn victim remembering a time before the pain. All it did was make the present that much worse.
Remembering the old days of football and pizza on Sundays made the memories I carry with me more painful. Too many nightmares of long, cold nights. Freezing and shivering and starving. Too afraid to sleep for fear of being flayed alive by demons or knifed in the back by a human for the few meager cans of food I had.
Then, then there were the memories of the wars. Those I kept deep down. Unhealthy, sure. But better a little PTSD than remember what I saw then. And then there were the worse memories. The ones where I’d turned my back on humanity and decided to get rich off their suffering. Those memories were often the most painful.
Fuck me, I was depressing myself. I shook my head to clear away the craptacular thoughts and focus on Grimm’s question.
“I don’t know. Lots of things,” I non-answered him.
“Like?”
“Hell, I dunno. Denny’s. Yeah, Denny’s. I miss the breakfast food at Denny’s after a night of drinking.”
“Denny’s?” Grimm asked. I guess the ancient mage didn’t like my answer.
“Yes, Denny’s. You have a problem with that?”
“Yes. In fact, I do. IHOP was clearly the better breakfast establishment.”
Oh, hell no.
“You can bandy your mystery and wisdom around as much as you like. But don’t step to me with that IHOP bullshit.”
“It is not bullshit. It is fact. The ingredients were fresher, the omelets fluffier.”
“Oh, fuck your fluffy omelets. Mixing pancake batter into your egg mix does not a better restaurant make.”
“No, it does not. But it does bring a depressed friend back to his verbally acerbic form.”
“Fucking A it does.”
“Fucking A indeed,” Grimm responded. The bastard made me smile.
I looked at Grimm for a second or two and turned back to stare at the road. Just few months ago I’d seen Grimm’s brains.
Seriously.
They flew out of his broken skull from a gunshot wound when we assaulted the former archduke, Abraxas. The archduke of Lemegeton, Dantalion the Sloth Demon, was there. And he shot Grimm in the head. Shot him dead. Then, Ricky resurrected him right there on the glass floor using pure liquid light that rolled out of his eyes. I guess that was why he always wore those black sunglasses.
But it was Grimm who resurrected me. Brought me out of my self-centered little world and made me care again. About myself and others. He gave me purpose. I don’t think I could ever thank him in a way that conveyed what it truly meant to me.
That dick.
“You did the right thing. For Vali, that is,” Grimm said in an even tone.
I nodded, puffing on my smoke.
“We will recover your life’s work. We will discover who has hired the assassins to kill you. We will defeat them. And we shall continue to be the middle finger to the demonic populace.”
See! All that love and caring and compassion?! What a dick.
I lit yet another smoke and let Grimm’s words rattle about in my head. Two drags in, Grimm reached his right hand out and flicked my smoke out the window.
“You’re a dick,” I said.
“Yes. I am,” Grimm answered, smiling.
Sans smoke, I decided to close my eyes. Just for a moment or two.
************************
A long time ago . . .
Reynolds lit another cigarette while he began looking over Leraje’s corpse for anything of value. The hell-bow, arrows, and inferium warblade alone were worth major credits. A few other assorted items, like her personal house sigil stamp and a few blank free passes, could help several humans move about the ever-growing city with ease.
Provided they could pay.
Reynolds heard a rustling sound from the nearby bushes. He looked up to see a kid standing there, looking at him.
“Who are you?” the kid asked.
Reynolds eyed the boy. He was maybe 12 or 13, and he was wounded. A jagged piece of metal was sticking out of his thigh. It was clear to Reynolds the kid was one of the few, if only, survivors from the battle below.
“I’m Reynolds. And you’re bleeding, kid. Come here.”
The boy listened and came towards Reynolds, who was still kneeling. Reynolds looked over the metal stuck in the kid’s leg.
“You’re lucky. If this was a few inches over, it would’ve been in an artery.”
“I’m Richard Michael,” the boy said.
“Didn’t ask,” Reynolds said as he pulled the metal from the boy’s leg. The kid screamed in pain.
“Keep pressure on that,” Reynolds said as he ripped the boy’s pants open at the point of the wound. He pulled out a quick-clot pack from his suit’s inner pocket and opened the pouch with his teeth. Reynolds pulled the kid’s hands away and poured the contents onto the wound. The chemicals bubbled and boiled instantly when they made contact with flesh, searing the wound shut.
The boy screamed louder until Reynolds put his hands over the kid’s mouth. “Will you please shut the fuck up? There are still demons out here who will definitely hunt you down and enslave you.”
After a moment of heavy breathing, the boy calmed down. “Hmm ddn youn sunvvvv?” The boy asked.
“What?”
Reynolds removed his hand and the boy repeated himself. “How did you survive?”
“I wasn’t in the fight.”
“What?”
“Listen RM . . .”
“My name is Richard Michael. I was named for my two grandfathers who died in the first war.”
“Don’t care. RM is faster to say. Now listen, kid, you need to get out of here, now. The demons down below will finish mopping up soon. Do you have any family to go home to?”
“My sister Cara. But she’s only ten.”
“Well, that sucks for you. Here,” Reynolds said as he handed the boy one of the free passes. He then stamped it with Leraje’s seal. “This will get you out of wherever you are. But be quick. A cursory glance will work. But after it’s reported she�
��s dead, Leraje’s signature won’t mean shit.”
The boy took the pass and looked at it, then back at Reynolds. “You’re working with them, aren’t you?”
“I work for myself.”
“No,” the boy said. “I remember you now. You gave Commander Thomas that sniper rifle. It blew up in his face!”
“Look, kid. I was trying to save you all. He kept leading you, and kids just like you, into death. Better to live than die.”
“Race traitor!” RM yelled as he grabbed the jagged piece of metal from the ground and jammed it into the side of Reynolds’s neck. Blood sprayed as Reynolds fell to his side, grabbing the wound.
RM ran off, clutching the free pass. Reynolds pulled the piece of metal free and held a hand to the wound. With his other hand, he reached into his jacket’s other inner pocket, producing a small pen shaped object. Reynolds aimed the device and fired, hitting the boy in the back as he ran.
“Thank fuck I heal quick,” Reynolds said to himself as he maintained the pressure on his neck. Standing, he began walking to the airborne extraction point, wanting nothing more than to be away from there and back at his apartment in Lemegeton.
As prisons went, it really wasn’t bad. A decent view with lush furnishing and every amenity one could want.
And of course, Gh’aliss.
************************
Now…
Grimm jammed me in the ribs, jarring me awake. I sat up jerkily, wiping the drool from my mouth.
“Where to next?” Grimm asked.
I looked around, getting my bearings. We were in Razor Bay, surface level, not far from Dante’s. I pulled out a smoke, but before I lit it I glanced over at Grimm, who begrudgingly nodded.
“Thanks,” I said as I lit up and admired my smoke. There was something about a smoke. They always felt like an extension of myself. Like an old friend welcoming me home. I watched the smoke curl up my finger and around my hand. I took a deep drag and blew it out. But going back to one of my vaults was not like going home. Mostly the visit just reminded me of bad times, bad dreams, and the promise of a worse tomorrow.
Man, I should write greeting cards.
“Head north, until you are almost to the border of the Lost End district. I’ll guide you the rest of the way once we are there,” I told Grimm. I reclined back into passenger seat, enjoyed my smoke, and tried to ignore my dreams about the worst period of my life.
************************
An hour later . . .
I had over a hundred or so vaults guarding my hoarded treasures. Food, clothing, money, gold, weapons, tech, entertainment. If you can name it, I’ve probably got it. And over the years, I’ve accumulated, sold, bartered, traded, and stolen to keep myself relevant and secure. Of my vaults, Vault 47 was the most painful. I just couldn’t get rid of those treasures. I always had to know they were there. Like an old scar you can’t stop rubbing.
This was where I kept Jensen’s severed arm. Just like in Beowulf, it was my trophy. But rather than display it, I kept it in Vault 47. And why did I keep it here? Simple.
I didn’t want to know if I was Jensen’s father.
If the guy I drank and had fun with, but never let fully into my life, was just a guy, that was fine. But if the same guy I’d excluded from my life to keep my secrets had been my own son all along? Well, that was unbearable.
“Stop here,” I ordered Grimm, who obliged and pulled the outrider to a stop.
“A dump?” Grimm asked.
“Yup.” I nodded. “The Lost End Solid Waste Disposal Facility. Perfect place to burn garbage and store lost treasures. Buried beneath the cast-off crap from everyone else.”
“Did you not worry your vault would be located? A dump is a typical place for foraging.”
“True,” I admitted. “But my vault is deep below.”
“How did you get it there?”
“Easy,” I said as I packed a fresh box of smokes and lit one. “I own the land. Bought it years ago in another life. I lease it back to the city to use as a dump. The vault I built first, the dump came later. The methane gases of the decaying garbage get collected into micro-turbines and stored in fuel cells, which then powers the vault. Completely off the local power grid and out of sight of peering eyes.”
“Except for now,” Grimm noted.
“Yeah, except for now.” As the outrider came up to the main gate, I nodded to the guards. I recognized them and they promptly looked away as if there was something interesting in the sky.
Great. That meant a few more bribes I owed from my already dwindling reserves. But keeping my coming and goings quiet was worth the credits.
“Go ahead and pull around the back of the place,” I told Grimm. “There’s a spot to park that’s secluded around the old junk cars.” He did as I asked and he found the spot. It was dark. Even during the day there were no lights. That was the crappy part about doing things on street level of New Golgotha: All the high-rise platforms and communities above blocked out the sun for the poor below. Synthetic sun lamps were installed all over to give the masses a sense of time. They frequently broke and just plain sucked, but at least they made sneaking around easier.
We hopped out of the outrider and the overpowering reek of a demonic dump assaulted the senses. You could practically taste the garbage.
“What an interesting smell you have discovered,” Grimm commented. I had to smile. I lit another smoke just to breathe in something other than the power funk of the dump.
“Why did you not ask the gate guards if they had seen anything?”
“They don’t know what it is I do here. They just know I come here sometimes and that I pay them to ignore me. Also to divert any workers away from me while I’m here.”
“And the money you generate from the various dumps you own?”
“Bribe money, informant money, kickbacks, police donations, and various slush funds. A network of scumbags isn’t cheap, you know. I keep myself in the know by paying well.”
“Not well enough for someone to not know you were going to be robbed or that there was an assassination contract out on you,” Grimm countered.
“Touché.”
He was right. Now that I thought about it, I should have been informed about either or both. But nada. That meant that either my network was ignorant, or more likely, compromised. Someone either paid them more to keep quiet, or just plain deleted them.
Crap.
I motioned for Grimm to follow me as I made my way into the junk piles. The place was like any dump. Vast piles of rotten and discarded refuse waiting to be compacted, burned, or recycled into some kind of usable material. All around us things skittered and moved.
“Rats?” Grimm asked.
“You wish. Just maintain your walking speed and don’t look anything in the eyes or tentacles,” I said. Grimm scoffed. “No, dude, seriously. Lesser Deep sometimes burrow up into the dumps. Something about the decay attracts them. The burning fires piss them off something fierce. Sometimes when the lights are out, it is darker up here than down there. Get too close to one of the heaps of garbage and something might pull you in. Something hungry.”
Grimm stopped smiling and maintained his walking speed.
“We’re here,” I said as we reached the intended spot. I knelt down beside the crushed husk of an old Nissan and brushed the dirt aside to reveal a small wireless access port. I typed in the activation sequence, then typed in the password on my tech bracer. The ground shifted slightly, revealing a hatch the size of an old-fashioned storm door with an additional antiquated push-button combo lock.
I drew one of my blasters. Better safe than sorry. I tapped the access code to the hatch, which released the magna-lock, and the doors slid open. I switched my cybernetic eyes into the night vision mode so I could see the concrete steps leading down into the earth.
“Come on,” I said to Grimm as I started walking down into Vault 47, the place for my most secret of treasures. I took the next step down into the vault
and I heard the high-pitched whine of a charge activating.
And that was when the bombs went off.
Chapter Seven
Han Solo Joke
If you’ve never been in an explosion, there are a few things you should know. First, there is the concussive force that hits you. The best way to describe it is the force of the blast rockets through your mouth, into your lungs, down your spine, and out your asshole. Said asshole, if closed, will now be wide open.
Next, you lose control of your body as the following shockwave knocks you tits over teakettle. As the blast envelops you, the force squeezes your guts like a tube of toothpaste. If the G-force is high enough, it will rupture your eardrums, pulp your eyes, and kill you. If not, you pray that your guts and blood go back to normal and you don’t develop an embolism. Oh, and after all that comes the shrapnel and debris flying in all directions at MACH two-point-oh-go-fuck-yourself.
The fact that I was thinking about the ins and outs of explosions meant one thing.
“Holy shit, I’m not dead,” I said to myself as I mentally rebooted and took stock.
The blast had shot me backwards, up the stairs and into Grimm. My new shields had kicked in immediately, which locked me up, effectively and literally turning me into a human shield and protecting Grimm from the blast. We had landed in a pile of sludge and garbage. It took me a moment to find my bearings and for the ringing in my ears to stop.
Even though my eyes were open, I seemed to be blind.
Collective, is everything OK?
//AFFIRMATIVE HOST - CONCUSSIVE FORCE PERFORMED ONLY MINOR INTERNAL INJURIES AND HEAT BURNS - HEALING HAS BEGUN//
Why am I blind?
//HOST UTILIZED NIGHT VISION PRIOR TO EXPLOSION - EXCESSIVE LIGHT WAS DETRIMENTAL//
In other words, it’s my own damn fault.
