Agent of Equilibrium

by N. J. Mercer

  Neither Johnny nor Baccharus had to do much to ready themselves. Johnny considered taking the hatchet and chainsaw they had brought from the hangar, only to decide, several minutes later that he was better off relying solely on his innate, newly improved, psychic ability; anything else would be a distraction – psychic combat was all about concentration. One item he would not be without though was his trench coat: not only did it keep him warm and waterproof, it also provided useful camouflage on nights like this; more than that, it was a charm that had seen him through numerous scrapes and without it he felt naked. He put it on after changing into the dark outdoor clothing he had brought along.

  “Your turn!” said Johnny to Sascha, for whom preparation was a more complex affair, mostly because he was not psychic. As Sascha dressed up in his own layers of dark clothing, he gave Johnny careful instructions on selecting gadgets from his rucksack to perform final checks on. For a few moments, the motorhome was alive with flashing LEDs and the noise of twittering electrics. When this job was done, Johnny took a step back; he asked his friend if he was ready, Sascha shook his head, and looking rather reluctant, he commenced a search through Boyd’s bag.

  “I feel like a trespasser,” he said as he did this.

  “Do what you have to,” Johnny replied.

  Sascha seemed to know what he was after; he eventually located some rounds for the revolver and then distributed the ammunition amongst his many pockets. “That crazy bastard must have felt bad about leaving me defenceless. He left his gun and showed me how to use it too; can you believe it!? I didn’t even realise he was going to disappear at the time!” Sascha said. He was about to close the bag when a wooden box from within it caught Johnny’s eye. He stood up, took it out and opened it. Inside were smooth stones, each one wrapped in muslin.

  “Psychic grenades! If I remember correctly – I think that’s what Boyd called them,” exclaimed Sascha.

  Johnny remembered seeing Boyd use these powerful artefacts earlier in the hangar. He passed them over to his companion who carefully placed as many as he could into the deep side pockets of his trousers and jacket.

  Finally, hesitantly, Sascha picked up the revolver from the table; he held it away from his body as if it was dirty. Johnny noticed.

  “You comfortable with that thing?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Sascha, fixing the gun with an intense stare.

  “Good,” replied Johnny. “That’s the best way to be with those.”

  “Well, it’s either this or the chainsaw. Do you think I should take it?” Sascha asked without taking his eyes off the weapon.

  “Hell, yes!” Johnny replied.

  Sascha looked at his friend; there was a wicked smile on Johnny’s face, but he meant what he said.

  “I guess if there are too many of them then we will need all the help we can get,” Sascha said, rationalising the need to take this lethal weapon.

  “Baccharus and I have got our psychic powers; you, on the other hand, are going in as a man with only his wits and courage about him. You know I would prefer it if you stayed behind, old friend. I also know that abandoning companions is not in your nature. Keep the gun, and blow the brains out of anything that comes near you in that house.”

  The decision was made. Sascha slipped the weapon into a large buttoned pocket on the inside of the jacket he wore and finished his preparation by securing any loose zips and catches on his clothing.

  They were ready sooner than anticipated.

  “A strong coffee before we head off might be helpful …” ventured Sascha.

  “Yes, please!” replied Baccharus.

  “Hmm, good idea,” added Johnny.

  Minutes later, it was time to leave the motorhome. The vehicle had been their cocoon. To step out of it was to vacate a place of safety and it wasn’t easy. Johnny led the way, Baccharus followed while Sascha, who came last, locked up.

  The fresh, crisp night air was filled with the rich aroma of damp bark and leaf litter; it had a reviving effect on Johnny, and any fatigue was soon forgotten as adrenalin-fuelled anticipation took over. He felt a healthy fear, one that sharpened the senses; it was a fear of both the known and unknown.

  “I reckon we’re about seventy-five metres from the perimeter wall of the house,” said Sascha, interrupting Johnny’s thoughts.

  They stayed close together as they made their way through the woodland. Johnny, who carried the Qrwshan amulet in his long coat, had stressed the importance to each of his companions of staying within a few metres’ radius of it. The rain had ceased long ago and patches of silvery cloud cover remained overhead. There were enough evergreens around to ensure that it was dark beneath the canopy despite the shed autumn leaves. The team’s progress through this environment was slow and difficult.

  On nearing the house, Johnny’s mind became clouded by the intense psychic activity from the building; it was the perceptual equivalent of hearing many musical pieces being played together at once. Ignoring the noise, he tried to reach out with his mind to detect Boyd’s tune but could not; Boyd always said he was psychically blunt and difficult to detect, so Johnny wasn’t overly perturbed by this.

  Pressing on through the woodland, the three soon reached the perimeter wall. They stood before the great brick obstacle with no idea about the existence of the iron gates within it. Sascha scratched his head as he considered how they were to cross into the garden; Johnny, not wanting to waste any time, placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Brace yourself,” he said simply. Sascha gasped as an icy, tingling sensation emanating from Johnny’s hand gripped his entire body. Johnny concentrated hard as the world around him fell out of focus. He lifted himself and Sascha off the ground without the aid of any discernible force; his surroundings appeared blurred. He managed to look down and see the top of the wall pass beneath him; it rippled as if it were a reflection in a pool of disturbed water. Steadily, the ground on the other side, which also appeared fluid, came up to meet him, and as soon as it made contact with his feet everything returned to solid normality. Johnny stood there with his hand still on Sascha’s shoulder.

  It took Sascha a few moments, and a few double-takes, to realise that he had been transported by Johnny, over the wall, on a wave of distorted space–time. Johnny, anticipating that he was about to be barraged with questions, gave Sascha a look that told him now was not the time to ask. “I’ll analyse this later,” promised Sascha.

  To Baccharus, the wall was never an obstacle, and he flew over it to meet his friends on the other side. All three looked warily around the large garden and the grand old country mansion at its centre.

  There was one entity that had managed to remain hidden from Johnny’s perception, its psychic signature lost amongst the torrent of aberrant energy; even without this cover, it would in all probability have remained undetectable, purely because its aura was so massive and so downright alien.

  **

  Hello! What is all this, then?

  The Bar-Shiyq took less than a second to sense their vital signs. Heart rate, respiratory rate and surface electrical charge gave Johnny and his friends away as intruders.

  The master has never invited them before. Hang on; is that a bird with them?

  In all its years underground, with its network of hypersensitive limbs that stretched out for many metres through the soil under the garden, the creature known as the Bar-Shiyq had never been surprised; that was until tonight. These three had seemingly materialised out of thin air without so much as a vibration.

  Oh well, that makes three unwelcome visitors … a veritable feast.

  **

  “Sascha, move!” screamed Johnny suddenly, he did not wait for his friend to respond and sent him tumbling sideways with a mighty shove. Sascha, still a little disorientated from the space–time manipulation, was taken aback by the violence; it was nothing compared with the shock he had when a thick, leathery tentacle burst out of the ground where he had just been standing.

  “What the heck
!” screamed Baccharus, instantly using his will to energise a psychic bolt; he held the glowing linear streak in his left hand like a javelin ready to be hurled.

  “Be still!” warned Johnny, and they all froze. The leathery tentacle flicked from left to right, trying to locate its target, which in this case was Sascha. None of them moved. The groping limb closed in on Sascha as he lay on the ground, forcing him to roll away in an evasive manoeuvre which the creature detected and reacted to by suddenly sending three further tentacles bursting out of the ground around the unfortunate man. One wrapped itself around his waist, the other his leg, and the third had his arm. The tentacles immediately tried to yank his body underground; Baccharus had already unleashed his psychic bolt. The energy weapon sizzled through the air towards the tentacle around Sascha’s waist, producing the scent of ozone as it homed in on its target. There was not much margin for error. The familiar’s aim was true, and the bolt made direct contact with the terrible limb, burning it in a miniature explosion that smelled of charred, rotten flesh. Baccharus had to fire two more bolts in quick succession at the same section of tentacle to bisect it. Sascha continued to writhe and struggle against the remaining alien limbs which increased their pressure on his arm and leg.

  Johnny tried desperately to reach his friend; more tentacles appeared in a shower of soil around him. He managed to psychically sense their approach and avoid them; he could see that time was running out for Sascha, who was being pulled into the ground.

  “Fire at any new tentacle that emerges, Bach, before it gets anywhere near me!” Johnny cried, and the familiar duly redirected his psychic bolts, allowing Johnny to aid Sascha unimpeded.

  Surrounded by giant flailing tentacles and with his familiar’s energy bolts exploding around him, Johnny reached Sascha, and in each of his hands he grabbed one of the limbs that had wrapped themselves around his friend’s arm and leg.

  Maintaining a firm grip on the hideous appendages, he reached deep within his psyche to draw upon his newly awakened powers. In the obscure, dark regions of his sentience, he found concentrated psychic energy which he channelled through his hands, into the substance of the creature beneath the ground. On receiving this surge of energy through its tentacles, the beast felt true pain for the first time in thousands of years and released Sascha, who deftly rolled away, desperate to be beyond the reach of that crushing hold.

  Johnny still held on, unleashing megawatts of energy into the creature, electrocuting it with the power output of an urban substation. The Bar-Shiyq tried to withdraw its two limbs that were in contact with the human, it could not; they were paralysed by the current rushing through them. Smoke started to waft from Johnny’s hands, and the sickly smell of burning flesh and keratin from the creature gradually filled the air; and still, he would not let go.

  More tentacle-limbs burst out from underground and thrashed wildly about Johnny; Baccharus prevented them from causing any real harm by continuing to fire his bolts. The Bar-Shiyq was desperate to attack its tormentors. The surface of the garden, with its lawns, plants and trees, started to undulate rhythmically; the whole landscape moved like a choppy sea of soil and vegetation. Johnny and his friends looked on, wondering how this could possibly be before realising with barely suppressed horror that the tentacles they now battled actually extended underground throughout the whole of this massive garden. What they had seen already was only the tip of the iceberg. Johnny considered whether each tentacle was some sort of living organism in its own right or whether they were all attached to some appalling body. His answer came in the shape of a large mound emerging from the ground about fifty metres away. It grew like a giant molehill before his very eyes, soil rolling off its sides as it steadily increased in size, reaching ten feet in height. His companions watched in terror as a deep growl, which Johnny could feel in his chest, emanated from the great heap. He had been about to release his grip on the tentacles; now, nothing was further from his mind.

  Twitching movements from within the mound gradually dislodged more earth, revealing the form that lay beneath; a massive, quivering bell-shaped creature covered in folded, bulging layers of leathery hide. From the flared bottom edge of its bell-body emerged multiple thick tentacles like sinuous roots at the base of a tree; they disappeared into the ground to form the massive maze of subterranean limbs with which the creature detected and attacked its prey.

  The surface of this alien organism was featureless except for a large mouth, with teeth like steak knives, positioned half way down one of its sides which it opened so wide it almost unfolded its body. The beast, terrible though it was, seemed to be in trouble; it made rumbling sounds interspersed with an occasional roar while smoke billowed from its body and tentacles.

  Despite the urge to run from this awesome sight, Johnny continued instead to hold on. To release his grip on the tentacles now would be suicidal; the semi-paralysing effect of the psychic energy waves he was sending prevented the many lethal limbs from striking the three of them with their full force or even dragging them to that terrible mouth. Sascha helped Baccharus spot stray tentacles that might pose a threat to Johnny, and the familiar duly blasted them away with his bolts. Boyd’s revolver was in Sascha’s hands, ready to fire into the bell-shaped body should Johnny, who seemed to be just about in control of the situation, give the order; as it turned out, this was not going to be necessary.

  “Take it easy, guys,” Johnny said finally, when he felt the sustained psychic charge he was delivering overcome the creature. The once rapid motion of the tentacles slowed down into lethargic flops, and increasing amounts of smoke rose from the thing’s hide, which had started to burn in some areas and bubble in others. The deep rumbling from the monster ceased, and its body started to quiver more rapidly than before. Johnny hated seeing suffering, even in something as cruel and terrifying as the Bar-Shiyq, so he sent a last, massive surge of power through his hands to devastating effect.

  The entire mass of the beast, including its tentacles, began to spasm, uprooting trees and knocking over garden walls. There were small flames around the garden that originated from its burning skin and flesh. The Bar-Shiyq’s existence finally ended when its bell-shaped body burst open with a sickening splash, filling the garden with wet chunks of flesh. The writhing tentacles became inanimate, and the whole garden lay still once more; the grounds around the house looked like they had been shelled.

  Even a fool could tell that the operation, which had started covertly enough, had now lost any element of surprise. After all, there was little one could do to hide a fight with an extraterrestrial beast that was as large as a building.

  Fifteen leather-suited Disciples had gathered at the edge of the garden, near to the house. The cultists had arrived on the scene following the disturbance, and they had wisely decided that crossing the grounds whilst the beast was still alive and churning up the lawn with its tentacles was going to be seriously hazardous. Despite this caution, two of them lay dead, unable to escape the wildly thrashing limbs of the tortured Bar-Shiyq. One of the deceased had a tentacle still wrapped around his body, and the other’s neck was twisted at an impossible angle. Now that the creature had expired and the tentacles lay still, there was no need for the rest of the Disciples to hold back. Producing a collective barking sound, they charged at Johnny and his friends, brandishing pistols and knives, not really knowing who or what they were up against, and in their fanaticism, not really caring.

  Johnny was wiping pieces of the Bar-Shiyq from his clothes when he heard Sascha’s warning. “Get lively, boys! We’ve got company.”

  He looked up to see his friend crouching with Boyd’s revolver in hand, the enemy was closing in. Sascha fired three shots, each one brought down a charging cultist. Sascha couldn’t have missed – there were fifteen fanatics running straight at him; as long as he aimed in their general direction he was bound to hit. Some of the Disciples started shooting back in retaliation, running as they fired; they all missed. Johnny could see that it was not accurac
y they hoped to achieve, only to overwhelm the three of them with their greater number.

  “Go for it, Bach!” Johnny ordered, refusing to be intimidated, and his familiar was upon them in an instant, blasting away with psychic energy bolts as he flew around like a maddened bumblebee. Between the two of them, Baccharus and Sascha had dispatched half the enemy before they were even within twenty metres. Of the remaining cultists, three had automatic pistols, and they stopped mid-charge to aim them. Johnny saw two of them target Sascha while the third aimed towards the sky to exchange fire with Baccharus. Despite having little opportunity to recover from his recent exertions, Johnny was able to use his will to curve the trajectories of the enemy’s bullets away from his companions.

  Four of the Disciples did not have guns and continued their rapid advance with long-bladed knives drawn instead. They were getting dangerously close. Sascha was reloading. His unpractised hand fumbled with the bullets, dropping some in the process. The instant he completed the task and snapped shut the drum of the revolver, the first of the knife-wielding lunatics was almost on top of him. Seeing the danger, Johnny launched a tackle at the leather-clad enemy, reaching him before he could bring the knife down. The move sent them both sprawling to the ground, and before either one could get up, Sascha finished the job with two rounds. Johnny looked at his friend gratefully; Sascha appeared disturbed, and he knew why, it was the first time he had killed.

  “You had no choice,” Johnny said.

  As Sascha agonised over his actions, a bullet grazed his arm, and he fell backwards, clutching his wound. The three remaining knifemen were closing in quickly. Johnny could see that he was not going to have enough time to do anything about them. At that moment there was a shower of glowing energy bolts. To aid his keeper, Baccharus had diverted his attack from the gunmen (one of whom he had already taken out with a head shot); in doing so, he had exposed himself to the enemy’s fire which came at him thick and fast.