Flotsam Prison Blues (The Technomancer Novels Book 2)

by M. K. Gibson

I felt my jaw clench and my muscles tighten, fighting against his grip. His body began glowing red once more and his strength increased. His grip on my arm was crushing down on me with ever-growing power. I willed the Collective and a small shield of energy went up, stopping his display.

  We were locked like that for a moment or two, silently staring. And the smug prick just looked amused.

  “We done?” I asked.

  “For now. Good luck.”

  An explosion outside broke the tension. Gerhardt snapped his eyes to the window. “What was that?”

  “That would be phase two of Operation Scorched Earth,” I said.

  “Phase two?” Gerhardt asked. “What is that?”

  I smiled. “The homemade explosives I’ve been planting on your golems are going off all over the island and inside this complex. Knowing their movement patterns and how to jam their signal for a few moments made it easy to place bombs on them. Amazing what a demon, a cyber thief and a smuggler with only rudimentary knowledge of chemicals and guerrilla warfare can do when they have ample time on their hands and a hatred for this place.”

  As Gerhardt was distracted, I threw a hard right cross, connecting with the bastard’s jaw. He was unprepared for the close-range attack. I felt his jaw break. He released my arms and hit the ground in a heap.

  “We’re not done, fucker, not by a long shot. I’ll be back for you one day, and by God, you will not touch those children.”

  I ran before Gerhardt said anything or responded with his magic. Bad-ass sucker punch and tough-guy line aside, I knew when I was overmatched.

  Inside the complex, soldiers were coming out of everywhere to deal with the golems who were rampaging with murderous abandon. Every so often, one would simply explode when it encountered a group of soldiers. The homemade explosives I’d been cooking up with Twitch seemed to be working, thanks to the elements Gh’aliss managed to have smuggled in. She never told me how she did it, but if she really was a spy for Dantalion, then I guess they had their own supply line.

  Gh’aliss . . . damn it.

  No time. No time to think about her. I had to keep my mind on the present and move onto the next phase, which was getting my ass off this island.

  Following the same path the golems took me when I first left Gerhardt’s office, I found my way into the main courtyard beneath his window. Heaving the heavy metal lock bar aside, I stepped into the yard. The night’s freezing rain and cold wind hit me in the face. Everywhere I looked, I saw slaughter.

  The golems were just the tip of the iceberg. In the chaos they created, a prison riot was incited. All the anger and frustration, hate and rage each of the prisoners had stored up from the torture and monotony of Flotsam came roiling to the surface. For a brief moment, I flashed back to the First War, as the scene before me played out. Killing and death. Pain and suffering. Demons everywhere mixed with explosions and the screams of the dying.

  Amid the bedlam, I had the briefest flash of regret, mixed with resolve, for my time as Reynolds. Having lived and fought through the First War, this was what I was trying to avoid for people should the second ever escalate.

  I looked up for a quick moment, seeing Gerhardt watching everything from his window while rubbing his cheek. He looked down to where I was standing. Even though his lights were on, and he shouldn’t have been able to see me in the dark, I swear the bastard smiled and nodded his head.

  I gave him the finger regardless.

  Running into the night, I hauled ass to Chael’s tower.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  We Go To Kill The Light

  “What do you mean “no”?!” I yelled, pacing back forth on Chael’s beach.

  A rain was turning to light winter snow, but I was so mad I didn’t feel it. Chael lay on his kelp bed wearing only his patchwork leather pants, immune to the elements, singing a little tune that was part chant, part insanity.

  “I don’t want to go,” Chael said as more explosions sounded in the distance. “I like this song.”

  Then those kids would become prisoners here and be tortured and forced into clans. I rubbed under my chin, feeling the scar I refused to let the Collective heal. The kids would go through that indoctrination. They would suffer the hooks.

  Fuck that.

  Not an option.

  “But you said you could get off the island,” I said, frustration boiling up.

  “And you said you would give me a bunny.”

  “Fuck!!” I screamed. “You getting us off the island was the whole point on which this plan hinged!”

  “Bunny?”

  “Fuck your fucking bunny!”

  Chael rolled over, ignoring me. I could have cried right then. I was out of options.

  “You’re running out of time,” Twitch said as she came down from the tower. “Reinforcements are coming on from the mainland complex.”

  “We planned for that with Phase Three,” I said with a wave of my hand, while I tried to think of another way out of here.

  I could try and stow away on the transport copter Bathin and Maz used to get here. But that meant guards—guards with guns. That could quickly devolve into a firepower display and a dead me if I got caught within a hundred yards of that thing. Rampaging golems aside, I couldn’t risk it. I had to be smart to get to the kids on the mainland and get them the fuck out of there. So by air was not an option.

  I looked over the bay. By water, then? That option was worse than by air. There were things in that water that hated all life. Deep Ones. Angry, hungry Deep Ones. And since I didn’t have a boat, I would have to swim and risk primordial bug-squid things eating me.

  Damn it! There had to be a way.

  I kept pacing, racking my brain. Maybe if I had time to plan, and my usual resources, I could think of something. But I had a week to find these Tears of God—in the Temple of Solomon, of all places. I lit a smoke and stared at the water. Maybe the rune and sigils Grimm carved on my bones would shield me?

  I had to risk it.

  I took a step towards the water and Chael spoke. “Cyborg goes in, never to return. Deep down the cyborg goes, water so cold, he forever burns.”

  “I have to, Chael. I have to help my friends back home,” I told the giant, who continued to stare up into the drifting snow with his hands behind his head.

  “Home is here, there is death. Salt and tears, blackness and madness.”

  “Shit!” Twitch screamed. “Incoming!”

  I turned my head just in time to kiss two of Khlabra’s four fists, right in the mouth. The surprise attack put me flat on my back. The demoness was on me in less than a second, wailing all her fists in succession down on me. I raised a shield along my forearms, trying to absorb some of the damage.

  “What did you do to her?!” Khlabra roared. Over and over her punches came down on my face and arms.

  “Salem!” Twitch yelled.

  “Get to the tower!” I yelled amid the assault. “Phase Three, goddamn it! Phase Three!”

  Twitch hesitated a moment, watching me get pummeled, then took off running back to the tower. No matter how I got off the island, it was all for nothing if Phase Three didn’t happen. I just hoped the bastards on the other end of that call could do what they promised.

  “Dangerous world. Spinning spinning spinning. Only the will of the Deep keeps us here. Searching and yearning for a way to eat us in their sleep,” Chael said as he watched me get the shit kicked out of me. “Oh look! A kitty.”

  Between dodging Khlabra’s punches, I saw Yeela. Khlabra saw her as well. “Yeela, kill the cyborg in the tower!”

  Yeela smiled and took off in a feral lope, dashing off Chael’s beach and up the tower stairs. With Khlabra’s attack momentarily paused, I brought my legs up and wrapped them around the demoness’s head and neck, pulling her off me.

  “Chael, I know you’re seven shades of bug-fuck crazy,” I yelled, getting on the top of Khlabra, trying to find an opening through her four flailing arms, “but the Archduchess and Archbi
shop are threatening to send the children of my land here in seven days if I don’t find some mysterious thing for them. We HAVE to go!”

  “Mmm, children are delicious.”

  What the shit? Ow! I reeled back as Khlabra clocked me in the nose. I dropped my forehead down and slammed her in the mouth, breaking several of her fangs.

  “Chael, I have to find a way off the island now, if I have any hope of saving them. Do you understand that? People will suffer if I don’t!”

  “Hope abandoned us long ago. I watched him go. Where he went, no one knows,” Chael said as he rolled over to stare at us with those milky opaque eyes. “We were left to us to slaughter in the mire.” The giant’s voice deepened to something primal.

  He started to stand and despite it being nighttime, I swear the light around us darkened.

  “Gone the Creator went! Back into the nexus from whence he came. I Am That I Am, now to be Gone That Was Once Was! Present to Them, but not to us. A piece of creation cut away, chaff from the wheat! To the ravages of Adversary Dominion we were left! To whims of the seeping, sweet, putrid crawl of the They Who Came Before we were cast aside! Hope?! Speak not to me of Hope! Hope of is the core of Courage! Courage failed!”

  Chael screamed at me with such raw power, the land shook and the water writhed. Tangible power rippled from him, and I dropped to my knees. Everything in my being felt diminished. My lizard brain took over and I trembled in fear and the desire to flee or worship him as a god. I was naked in the presence of a Power. I did not know what he was and I did not care. I just wanted to live long enough to save my people.

  I feared him.

  Hell, I damn near wanted to worship him.

  Another explosion split the night. But it wasn’t far away. This one was from the tower. A second, bigger explosion sounded as the tower blasted apart in a massive fireball of concussive force. Stonework flew outwards and rained down on the beach and the courtyard.

  “Yeela!” Khlabra yelled.

  “Twitch!” I screamed.

  “Pretty,” Chael admired.

  I could just imagine what happened. Yeela followed Twitch up the tower. Based off the time, I imagined Twitch had just enough time to send the signal, then see Yeela. Twitch most likely smiled at the demon as she hit the detonator, blowing the tower to all hell with our last few batches of explosives.

  Damn it. Damn damn damn. So many dead. I had to take a moment’s solace knowing Twitch said she was never going to leave the island. And at least her death had a purpose.

  The moment was ruined as a couple hundred pounds of Khlabra slammed into me, taking us once again to the ground. “Everything! You’ve taken everything from me! My whole shitty life was because of you!”

  I wasn’t fast enough to roll away from the attack and once again I was on my back as Khlabra hit me over and over. Her punches rained down with reckless abandon while I balled up and took it. In the back of my head, I wanted to just let her punch me to death.

  She was right. Her entire life’s suffering started because of my actions.

  But then I thought of the kids. Their suffering was also because of me. And as much as I deserved to be beaten to death on that small, wet, cold beach at Flotsam Prison, I had a chance to save them.

  I caught two of her arms while the other two wailed on my ribs. Momentary shields went up, hopefully breaking her fists while I absorbed the impact.

  “Chael, nghh . . . we have to get out of here now!”

  “Bunny?”

  “No . . . we have to . . . nghh . . . find the . . . Tears of God.”

  Chael suddenly lit up and smiled like a child. The giant man calmly got up and grabbed Khlabra by her neck. “Really? The Tears of God?”

  I rolled to my side and gasped for breath. “Y-yes. We have to . . . find the Temple of Solomon and get the . . . Tears of God.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Chael asked. With a sudden jerk of his hand and thumb, the giant snapped Khlabra’s neck. And just like that, the once proud warrior and last reminder that Gh’aliss ever walked this planet was gone.

  “No!” I yelled, running to her body.

  “What?”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I held Khlabra there on the beach and hung my head. Just moments before she was trying to kill me, and rightfully so, for vengeance. For her mother. Twitch, bless her lost soul, was right. Nothing, and no one, is safe around me.

  “We go to kill the light!” Chael yelled, his arms wide. He almost sounded giddy. “But first we must find the temple, but you do not know, no you do not know know know!”

  “What don’t I know, Chael?” I asked, laying Khlabra down and saying a silent word of peace over her body.

  “Many, many things. The Temple, the Temple moves. Where it is, is not there. One in many. Impossible to find unless you know where it was, not where it will be. Along the lines of life it travels. Only they who have been there can find it again.”

  I just looked at the dead demon and hung my head, only half listening to the mad giant’s ranting. I laid her down and crossed her four arms over her chest.

  Standing, I heard the explosions and rioting all over the island, but took the briefest of seconds to say a little pointless prayer.

  “Chael, have you been to the Temple before?” I said softly, still looking at Khlabra.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you take me there?”

  “No,” Chael said sadly. Something in his face and eyes said his sadness did not stem from his inability to show me where it is, but from something deeper. “I am no longer able to find it. It was burned from me.”

  Damn it. Damn damn damn.

  A giant hand fell across my shoulder. I looked over at my shoulder and Chael’s giant dead eyes looked at me. “I can no longer find the Temple. But I can find someone who can.”

  Again, in the briefest of moments, those white eyes flashed a brilliant and clear blue. And I knew, I knew, he was telling me the truth. Like there was another Chael beneath this one, trying to come out.

  “How do we get off the island then?”

  Chael smiled, his eyes back to their dead white. “Inside the beast.”

  What?

  Chael released me and walked into the green-black waters of the Chesapeake Bay until he was chest deep. He raised his arms and began murmuring.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled at the big idiot.

  “Calling.”

  “To what?”

  “To them. They Who Came Before.”

  “The Deep Ones?!”

  Chael looked over his shoulder at me, his coal-black hair clinging in wet clumps to his white skin like tentacles from a beast. “Yes.”

  “Dude, NO! Bad idea, bad idea! We can find another way.”

  “No. We must find and remove the Light. Tears are meant to Fall.” Chael turned back towards the open water. His arms high into the air began to sway like a hippie’s at a jam-band concert. The oil-slick, polluted water roiled in concert with his arms as if he were a puppet master controlling the invisible strings of something that was never meant to be seen in this world.

  The fear I’d felt in Chael’s presence came back. I stood on the beach in awe of the power he was projecting. The water of the bay was rippling away from him as the elements obeyed his commands.

  The darkness once again began to thicken around us. But this time, it was more intense. Grander. Instead of making it darker, Chael was repelling the light.

  Something horrid breached the water briefly as Chael raised his arms higher. In an explosion of water and spray, a giant swirling mass of tentacles and crustacean-like legs heaved up from the bay and then smashed back into the water as the summoned creature found its footing and stood up from the deep.

  The thing was monstrous, larger than a giant whale. The creature was segmented in pale white, almost translucent chitin while blubbery patchwork flesh was visible in patches across its body. It had no eyes, just
antennae-like feelers that sprouted from the head and continued all along the body. The creature didn’t open its maw as much as it unhinged it. Two sets of barbed pincers unfolded, tasting the air, while jagged rows of clear, wet teeth glowed in the darkness.

  “In we go,” Chael said as he swam out into the bay. As he approached the creature, it lowered its open mouth into the water, and Chael grabbed on to one of the beast’s pincers and stepped into the mouth. “Come,” he called after me.

  A Deep One. Chael had really summoned an actual fucking Deep One and just crawled into its mother-freaking mouth.

  And he wanted me to join him. There had to be another way.

  As if fate were trying to hasten my decision, sirens began blaring all over the island. Then I heard the sound of weapon fire close by.

  Shit. The golems must have all either blown up or been put down. Which meant my window of escape was closing by the second. And since I heard response soldiers closing in, I had to make a choice. But how did they know to come here?

  As if on cue, the Deep One let out a maddening scream like a dying whale. Ahh yes. I guess a summoned storm of pure darkness and a sea monster from the beyond tends to draw attention.

  A plasma round hit the beach right next to where I was standing. More rounds came in. I looked down at Khlabra’s body, then to the bay. Stay here and fight, or run and be eaten by a sea monster?

  Lord, please don’t let this be the dumbest prison break in history.

  I ran into the water and dove in, swimming towards the giant waiting maw and my insane giant ally, whom I now realized wasn’t actually insane. He was possessed. Possessed by the Deep Ones who empowered him. I guess that explained his madness and desire for death and destruction.

  I reached the beast’s mouth and Chael hauled me out of the water like I was a child. He looked at me and smiled. “Now . . . we go to kill the Light.”

  The Deep One closed its mouth, sealing us into foul, pungent darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  In The Darkness

  I was inside a Deep One.

  It was madness incarnate. Chaos. Hatred. Vile loathing on an atomic level. I felt the creature’s base desire to unmake reality with every ferociously violent lashing at the creator possible.