by Brian Trent
But after several seconds, the bodies were still there at the edge of the waterfall. Blood had squirted out so forcefully it had painted the tunnel ceiling where it hadn’t flung out from the cave in long red gouts against the microshielding.
Then the microshielding itself came down as someone deactivated the controls.
A man formed out of nothing and stood at the cave entrance, gazing straight at the Mantid. The viewscreen zoomed in on his glower.
“Subtlety,” Gethin whispered. “Thy name is Enyalios.”
* * *
They hopped from the Mantid and landed on the viscera-soaked cave entrance. The waterfall washed some of the remains away. Enyalios strode into the tunnel, halted at the tramline.
“Enyalios!” Celeste called after him. “Can you analyze security detection systems?”
The Warlord frowned. He fixed her with his hazel gaze – for the first time he really seemed to see her as more than an obstacle or annoyance. “No,” he replied, and his tenor said he understood her point.
“Let us go first then,” she said. “Bryce and I will perform stealthy takedowns. We don’t want alarms going off, not if they have a doomsday weapon, right?”
“True.”
Celeste and Gethin vanished under CAMO activation. A dozen Stillness guards, mid-rank, were congregated at the tram station; foldout tables opened for an in-progress poker match. The tram tracks ran east to west. The stash of tradenotes in play made Gethin’s jaw drop; the terrorists were in the middle of a big bet. Crazily, he was tempted to stall to see the outcome.
For her part, Celeste moved throughout the chamber, taking note of two security cameras. She pinged Gethin; he let Id hack them with false looping images of the poker game, forever on the verge of the bet’s outcome.
“Stand back,” she messaged. “I’m calling Enyalios.”
“Wait,” Gethin said.
“What’s wrong?”
He considered the troopers. The poker game was a study of spring and winter. There were young soldiers and old veterans crowding the table, chummy and tense at the fate of the cards. The youths were in stiff-looking new cloaks of the same sheen and odor of rubber (though it was not rubber but woven layers of nanomesh sandwiching impact-gel). The elders wore cloaks several shades darker. A few smoked cigarettes, their aged-leather hands affectionately rubbing shoulders like grandfathers and grandsons at a family reunion.
“What are we waiting for?” Celeste demanded in outrage.
Gethin sighed. “Never mind. I just—”
The poker players exploded, strangled by the invisible monstrosity that had rushed into the tram station like a mad poltergeist; Gethin actually felt the wind of its arrival.
Enyalios reformed by the security door. “I have other ways into the base,” he said, jerking his head towards the vents above their heads.
Gethin choked on the stench of carnage – the ammonia of vomit, odor of bowels loosened at the attack, the suffocating copper-stench of blood. He drew a hand to his mouth and asked the Warlord, “It was you in Tycho Hospital, wasn’t it? You interrogated Kenneth Cavor and then charred him to pieces when you were done.”
“Yes.”
And then the creature was gone. The grate of the vent melted, dripping into black puddles.
* * *
They rode the tram into the heart of the mountain. Gethin sent Ego to latch onto the local security grid, and sightjacked the real-time datafeed directly to Celeste’s sensorium.
The lower tram station was unguarded, and Gethin and Celeste climbed aboard the transport. Its run was brief, and they exited unseen into the mountain’s chalky interior. Music resonated in the airy space.
Celeste tugged him to a sloping corridor. He glimpsed a white banner on the wall, scrawled with red: PURITY FOR ALL.
“Remember,” said Celeste, “there are antimatter missiles down here. We plant the grenades, grab King D., and get the fuck out.”
“I’ll remember,” he promised.
Pressing onward, they arrived at a hewn stairway leading into a lower sanctum. Celeste halted so abruptly that Gethin crashed into her.
“You okay?” he sputtered.
“Shh! Look! What in the holy hell is that?”
He looked.
The Midas Hand machine was there.
Gethin sucked in his breath, committing it all to his digital memory. Perhaps reacting to his stricken gasp, or anticipating his query, his Ego Familiar began describing what it could discern of the eccentric device. He silenced the speculations. There would be time for analysis later.
But still…
A Midas Hand? Was it really possible?
“That’s King D.,” Celeste whispered.
But Gethin had already noticed the StrikeDown prince. He looked past the thug…to the other being in the chamber.
* * *
“Are my terms acceptable, King D.?” demanded Apophis.
The StrikeDown leader hesitated. When he spoke his teeth chattered as if in a Siberian chill. “They are acceptable,” he whispered.
Apophis laughed richly and uproariously. “Glad to hear it! Long ago they called me Pharaoh. They cried my name in glory and fear when I swept over the plains of Sumer and Mongolia. Together, we will melt the Republic for the bricks of a new empire. All shall be equal beneath my throne. Equal subjects to the supreme power of my divinity.”
Apophis changed his form. Suddenly he was a multi-armed blue-skinned goddess with human skulls displayed around his neck.
The abomination began a stomping dance. “But first, the wakeup call! Apophis versus the Republic. Signal your ships, my friend. Tell them to strike all Save centers now. When the IPC responds, I shall light the heavens with flame.” He clapped his four hands together and took a bow.
Effortlessly, he shapeshifted again. A Roman despot this time, in Tyrian purple cloak, a wreath of gold oak leaves encircling his head.
King D. licked his dry lips and touched his ear. “All Save centers?” he asked of the shapechanging creature.
Apophis’s patrician face tilted. A third eye blistered and opened on his forehead. “Getting cold feet?”
“No!” King D. said quickly. He licked his lips again and realized his tongue was even drier than before, like a wad of sandpaper. “I want this. I’ve wanted this all my life.”
“Then strike the world down!”
King D. conjured his command screen. His fleet of criminal ships appeared in a tight grid throughout the world. They had their orders. All he needed to do was kick off the unholy bonfire.
He stiffened as someone touched his back.
A voice whispered into his ear. “This isn’t the way we want it,” the voice said.
His eyes widened. “Celeste?”
“We’re here to rescue you.”
Apophis floated up into the air, as if lifted by invisible wires. “Have you given the order?” he demanded.
King D. turned away from Celeste’s phantom presence. “Yes.”
“Good. I expect honesty from my apostles. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear allegiance to the new order?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me,” Apophis growled, “who else has joined us in this room?”
The floating creature held his arms. At once, the room’s illusory projections began fluctuating, cycling through dozens of environments too quickly for Gethin and Celeste’s CAMO processors to match. There were eccentric green cities like termite mounds; shorelines crowded with tentacled pink flora, Martian valleys, crystalline geodes…
In that explosion of color, two
humanoid outlines appeared.
“Unmask yourselves!” Apophis cried.
He didn’t wait for compliance. Celeste and Gethin were blown back against opposite walls. Their suit circuits crackled and fizzled.
“Celeste,” Gethin panted, tearing off his dead facemask. “Run!”
She stripped her mask but remained, feet planted like tree roots. Apophis descended from his floating posture, landing between them.
“Well, well,” the creature said, grinning. “Is this your doing, King D.? Do I face a Judas on the eve of our new age?”
“It’s my doing,” Gethin snarled, sweating furiously as he held the creature’s gaze. “And Horus shall banish the Devouring Serpent, and chase him back to the Halls of Judgment, where the Eater of Souls shall feast on his ichor and the world will know only gold and lapis and the throb of life!”
Apophis’s grin fell slightly.
Gethin’s heart palpitated wildly as he began to circle the entity. “Apophis, right? Refreshing to think I can sneak up on a five-billion-year-old god.” He shivered, hoisted a smile he didn’t feel, and added, “Are you the same Apophis who started the Final War in the nuclear silo, beating that American woman to death? The Apophis of ancient Egypt, devourer of the sun?”
The creature’s eyes shone like silver coins.
“Mother Eris is dead!”
A pained expression filled Apophis’s face. “I will sacrifice a million lives to her memory.” He bowed and began muttering. With sudden dread, Gethin noticed that the beast was standing suspiciously close to where he had quietly placed one of Celeste’s bombs, in CAMO mesh, against an antimatter missile’s carapace.
“Who are you?” Apophis demanded.
Gethin swallowed the lump in his throat. “I was hoping for a chance to—”
The bomb materialized from invisibility.
Apophis made a lassoing motion with his hand and pretended to harness the explosive. It leapt off the missile as if shot from a cannon. Sailing into the air, it whirled about, flew past their heads, up the stairs and into the room above. There was an explosion and wild screams from the Stillness crowd. Apophis hopped about like a joyous goblin.
Gethin withdrew his multigun from its sheath and pulped Apophis with a storm of fleschettes. The needles mulched the creature’s head, spattering tissue and brain in a wet supernova against the sandstone walls. The torso bifurcated as if by an invisible zipper. King D. and Celeste ducked the mess, but Gethin noticed the StrikeDown leader was not trying to escape. Didn’t the man know what he was dealing with here?
What deal did he make?
Apophis’s body collapsed. A fountain of blood emptied from its headless trunk like champagne from a bottle; it formed a strange, scorpion pattern on the ground that, slowly, was rising as an actual scorpion of massive proportions.
Gethin screamed at the StrikeDown duo. “Get out of here!”
Celeste tugged again at King D. The StrikeDown leader hesitated, staring not so much at the arachnid but at the machine and the promise that it held. Celeste saw him make up his mind.
“We don’t want it this way,” she told him.
The great man looked pained as he said, “Agreed.” Then he followed her out of the chamber.
And burst into flames.
The fire shot out from King D.’s flesh, peeling the skin and tissue away from his bones. The man screamed and flailed, forcing Celeste to duck his fiery arms.
“No!” she shrieked.
King D. missed the doorway and slammed into the wall, bounced off, flopped on the floor, burning and sizzling. Celeste tried to throw herself upon his body. The flames shot up in terrific splendor, blasting her back. King D.’s howls died.
She recoiled from her leader, gaping in horror at what remained of him: a glowing skeleton, white-hot, steaming in a bed of ash.
“Goddamn you!” she screamed. “Apophis!” She stalked around the chamber, face wet with tears. “Fight me!” She hurled her multigun aside. “Fight me!”
An invisible force snapped her head back. She toppled, rolled over once, scrambled back to her feet, eyes wild.
“Fight me!”
The next blow sent her headlong against the rock wall. A ribbonlike trail of blood streaked from one nostril to her ear. Gethin darted to her side, impotently scanning for a target.
Celeste laughed hideously. “Beautiful dreamer! Wake unto me! Starlight and dew drops are waiting for thee!”
Her body twirled into the air like an ice-skater.
Gethin fired below her, hoping to score a hit that would, however temporarily, release her from the demon’s grip.
Then she was hurled against the far wall. There was a snap like a wooden broomstick breaking over someone’s knee. Celeste crumpled.
Apophis appeared again in human form, crouching over her. Gethin put his rifle against the creature’s head when, as if by magnetism, the weapon tore free from his grip. Two fingers came out of their sockets; Gethin was suddenly cradling a disfigured stump.
Celeste glowered weakly at her assailant.
“Sounds of the rude world heard in the day” she managed.
Apophis cradled her face. “Lulled by the moonlight …”
“Have all passed…”
“Away,” Gethin said, and blurred.
His uninjured hand formed into a fist and came down like a hammer on Apophis’s skull. The bone collapsed with the sound of a smashed grapefruit. There was no blood in the damp cranial cavity, no pulpy mass of brain tissue. The monster fell like a stringless marionette.
And vanished.
Gethin dropped out of his blur, not wanting such a sensitive system running for any length of time near an entity that could easily char the circuits of his body. He scooped Celeste into his arms.
He saw at once that the impact with the wall had killed her. She just didn’t realize it yet. Her head hung limply from a neck twisted in a peculiar direction.
“Behind,” Celeste muttered wetly, “you.”
A powerful viselike pincer crudely seized his neck. With Celeste still cradled in his arms, Gethin was yanked into the air, his feet cartwheeling over his head. He was abruptly fixed in place, upside down, a fly ensnared by a spiderweb’s translucent tethers. He clutched Celeste to avoid dropping her.
Apophis glided below. The ancient god had shed his Roman form and was once more dressed in sumptuous Egyptian linens, serpent-crowned and terrible.
“Was it Doros Peisistratos who talked?” the monster asked, halting and running long fingernails through Gethin’s black hair. “Did he let you in on our secret, plaga?”
“Maybe it was Enyalios,” Gethin challenged. He could feel the pressure pound at his temples. “You gonna take him on? I just watched him rip Eris apart over the Sea of Japan.”
Apophis hissed with mere inches separating them. “He’s here, isn’t he?” Not waiting for a response, the creature snapped his head back and issued a squealing howl.
Gethin never learned what had delayed Enyalios. He didn’t bother asking Ego if the mad Warlord had taken it upon himself to butcher every living thing in the mountain on another of his psychotic rageaholic frenzies. But when Apophis issued that shrill alarm, the war god streaked into the control room like a meteor once again, eager to battle his nemesis in their final confrontation.
A switch on the machine flipped as if of its own accord. A phalanx of red lights shot from the mechanical quills, piercing Enyalios in mid-flight.
The war god didn’t look like the jellyfish shape that had devoured Eris. He looked, instead, like an inaminate chunk of meaty, volcanic eruption, marbled and ugly, crisscrossed with flaming eyes and claws. He boiled in place, pin-cushioned by merciless rays of energy.
“Ha!” Apophis yelped, giving an oddly majestic twirl. “Look what I have reeled in! Sy’hoss’a!” His eyes radiated, though h
e kept a respectful distance from the festering wad of white-hot matter. “My, my, my. Ragnarok arrives at last!”
Gethin strained against his immobilizing levitation.
Celeste breathed shallowly in his grip. Blood slimed her face, dripped into Apophis’ greedy mouth that was shifting into the scaly maw of a crocodile. His eyes turned opulent jade.
The monster extended his hand, and Celeste was jerked sideways out of Gethin’s grip. She collapsed in a broken, ghastly heap.
“It’s hot in here, don’t you think?” Apophis taunted, showing scimitar teeth.
Gethin held the monster’s stare. “It’s about to get hotter.”
He waited to burst into flame, or be hurled against the rocks. Waited to be squeezed until he popped. But then a remarkable thing happened. Celeste was moving! She had been paralyzed, neck broken…but now her head lifted, and she was pulling herself to her feet. Her neck popped back into place, healing as if she had arky-grade nanites flooding her system.
Even Apophis seemed surprised by the resurrection. Before he could react, Celeste dashed to the Midas Hand machine.
And threw the switch.
The red beams transfixing Enyalios flickered and disappeared.
Apophis’s crocodilian visage filled with terror. Gethin, forgotten now, dropped out of the air, struck the ground, scrambled to his feet.
And Enyalios collided with Apophis in the air above his head. The control room was bathed in blinding luminosity. The gods wrestled, while he scrambled to Celeste, seized her hand, pulled her towards the corridor.
“We have to stop them!” she insisted. “Kill them both, now!”
The two creatures were as intermingled as a pair of storm cells combining into a typhoon. Gethin pulled his sidearm. He aimed at the nearest of the antimatter missiles.
“Nice knowing you, Bryce,” Celeste whispered.
“And you,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.
Gethin blurred as he did, scooping Celeste into his arms one final time to bear her in a hyperaccelerated dash from the chamber of death and—
