Demorn: Soul Fighter (The Asanti Series Book 3)

by David Finn

  They didn’t appear too clever. They hadn’t tied her legs or taken the locket, still pressed against her neck. She was in a small dark room. They didn’t ask her anything she could understand.

  ‘Oh please come and get some,’ she breathed. The biggest one lunged and she struck him full in the face with her boot, her stomach muscles pulling up hard. Thank you, Winter, and those yoga poses we spent three weeks doing.

  He fell back. The other two came at her, tongues clicking, clubs out. Her legs swung and their clubs smashed into her body and gut. She could hear a man howling in pain nearby. Wolf. Poor Wolf. One of them tried to hold down her legs, cursing in his clicking tongue as she thrashed.

  ‘It’s a beautiful language when you break it down,’ a man said, before communicating a few quick words in their language. The two thorn-heads stepped back, hissing. A slight figure stood in front of her, dressed in a black turtleneck and tight jeans. A bejewelled domino mask completed the package. Great, a hipster torturer. This mission just got better and better.

  Demorn sneered. ‘Yeah, it’s poetry. Robert Frost might get bounced from the Hall of Fame if this catches on.’

  The boy shifted in his posture. Demorn was groggy with pain and shock but she was vaguely aware she should know who he was. He tore off the domino mask with a flourish. Bad eyes gleamed with excitement. His face was reedy and thin, hair too long and badly cut. Demorn read plenty of comics and he was a WIP master super-villain. There was an awkward pause between them.

  ‘I feel like I should know who you are,’ she finally said, wearing a broad smile.

  He bristled but kept his cool. ‘Jason Aloquin, Founder and CEO of Aloquin World Designs.’

  Demorn arched an eyebrow. It came back to her in neon red as she focused on his snide face, the eyes that strove constantly to avoid direct contact. A thin, unattractive brand of desperation. She felt the years slide away. For a moment she was back in the Grave again, where hope died cold and lonely and cursed.

  ‘Oh, you. Jason. The moody teen, however could I forget?’

  His lip curled. ‘Inserted memory blocks, that’s a way.’

  She arched her head with a slight smile. ‘Or I’m just so much better at remembering your much hotter half. Founder? Didn’t your parents run the company? I thought you were a trust fund baby.’

  He snarled. ‘They were using my designs, and they’re both gone now.’

  Of course they were. Problem child had escaped the maze. The kid probably wasn’t lying about the memory blocks. She’d seen similar things in the War, mostly with prestige cover ops. Memories triggered on sight with a host face. The scary part was the mystery of who had done that to her.

  Demorn had tangled with Jason once before, years ago, in the Grave Dimension. He was the weak human half of a lab-bred superhuman, born out of a bad shotgun marriage of controversial genetic science and dark magic. Aloquin Designs had been pushing all the big buttons. Aloquin Designs with zero oversight. Aloquin Designs had to be stopped, for their way lead to ruination and the Grave.

  This all flashed through her head as she spoke, conscious of how she still hung in the air.

  ‘Where’s Wrecking Ball?’

  That sneer. His voice was high-pitched, on the edge of hysteria.

  ‘Wrecking Ball is history. He’s dead in his own video games. He’s a zombie now, mostly evil. He’s dead in the Grave but I made it out, when nobody else believed I could!’

  She shut her eyes to keep from crying, to find some measure of balance. Let this all pass away. Mostly evil.

  Demorn said, ‘I’ve played those games! And I know he can come back and cleanse himself! Don’t paint the devil on the wall, Jason! You are a liar and a fraud!’

  A bitter pill to swallow. Wrecking Ball had been a powerful meta human, with a fame that spanned the Parallels, his achievements celebrated through multiple video games, echoes of the epic challenges he chose to fight. Even though they had met only briefly, on the back end of his career, with Wrecking Ball trapped in the Grave, weighed down and doomed to fight the legions of undead, Demorn felt sadness at his passing. Why did everything that was good and solid and filled with hope just die, wasted, leaving worms and filth in their wake?

  ‘You look defeated, Demorn,’ Jason said, grinning.

  She smiled. ‘I’m still alive and kicking, hon. And you’re very clever, Jason. How did you get out?’

  ‘Every world we designed had a back door. An escape for the designers. My exit point is hidden deep in the reality codes. I dug my way out through them as the dimension collapsed.’

  Demorn spat blood on the floor. Watching him this close, with his nervous habits, an inability to maintain eye contact, shaking hands and nervous voice, Demorn didn’t know if she bought his story but she did buy the general concept of this kid being a total creeper.

  ‘I hope they are keeping your Nobel Peace prize warm, kid. You’re a benevolent soul.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re alive and the pattern didn’t break. We got no leakage.’

  She snapped the binding with her left hand. ‘What is this anyway? Your personal torture chamber where you get to be a James Bond super-villain? You’re going for rock bottom. What’s next, drowning puppies?’

  There was a sudden howling outside. Gunshots. Jason clicked his tongue, speaking to the thorn-heads. They exited slowly, running their eyes across both of them. She could tell by the way Jason held himself he didn’t have infinite power over them. This was a negotiated arrangement.

  He got closer, running his hand over her hard abs under her blood-soaked t-shirt. ‘You’ve taken a few bad hits, Demorn. I wouldn’t want to leave a permanent mark.’

  His hand rolled across her body, toying with the locket. Curious, she watched his face, but he betrayed nothing. The locket seemed dead in his hands. The Pain Goddess was exhausted, like Demorn herself was. She could smell a weird peppermint on his breath.

  ‘What is your power, Demorn? How do you survive the passing of worlds? You’re just a lonely killer whore . . .’

  He kissed the locket and pressed it against her lips. ‘You’re so dead and so damned,’ he hissed, some new species of evil in his eyes. This kid was long gone. She could hear the soft sigh of dying Mictecaciuatl, deep in her nest of pain and suffering, her offering less a gift than the last desperate cry of the soon to be gone. The howling grew louder. Jason glanced at the door.

  ‘What the hell is it now?’ he yelled. No response, the occasional gunshot. He moved toward the door, letting go of the locket which knocked back on her breast, slick with sweat and blood.

  Demorn lashed out with her right foot, catching Jason in the jaw. She heard bone crack as he smashed into the door. Demorn snapped the binding with her left hand, using all the force she had gathered from the pain god, every last part of it, her metal fingers wrenching the strap from the wall. But there wasn’t much power left. She was exhausted, running on fumes.

  Jason stumbled, dazed. He fired from a snub pistol. She felt her shoulder go, flooded with hurt. Another bullet buzzed her ear. He lunged. With a backhanded slap she struck him across the face with full force. She ripped the binding from her right hand away with her metal fingers, dropping to the floor. Jason was slow, scrambling across the floor for the pistol. Demorn caught him on the floor, tears flooding her eyes as she hit him, holding his too long hair, blood spreading across her shirt. She beat him, feeling nothing but the yawning emptiness, the transience of life and death.

  Jason looked up to her, hurt. She kicked his gun away. Another howl. The door rumbled.

  Jason spluttered, ‘You don’t understand, bitch! You DON’T understand. This universe has gone to shit, you’re supposed to be dead, how much of your soul is even left—’

  She pulled the snub pistol on him and shot just above him, barely missing.

  ‘There’s plenty left. Stay down, creepoid. I have other plans for you.’

  She pressed herself against the wall of the torture chamber, exhausted. The howl
ing again, loud, right outside the door. Jason shivered in fright. He looked pathetic.

  Jason said, ‘You can’t win. The comet is about to hit Bay City. We are all doomed, it doesn’t matter what you have planned!’

  She shot him a smile. ‘Oh, be quiet, Jason, or I really will kill you. Thirty seconds ago I was tied up and you were copping a feel. Now look at me. Where there’s life there’s hope.’

  He kept looking up at her, nervous.

  ‘Although in your case, pessimism might be warranted.’

  The door shook hard as somebody pounded on it from outside.

  ‘Where’s my Athena Gun?’

  Jason’s response was a further widening of the eyes, a terror that she guessed was only partly born from her and the pistol.

  ‘It is pointless, it is useless . . .’

  ‘I said, “Where!”’

  The door was splintering. She pointed the pistol directly at his head. Tears were flooding the boy’s eyes. The game was eating him alive.

  ‘Tell me, Jason. Or I will kill you now.’

  ‘Triton Corp has it. Josie is trading ancient items to the Bankers. She seeks to reset everything, to begin again, to reverse the extinction of her race . . .’

  His words fell in eerie silence. Demorn had to wonder what that goal even meant. Josephine had become a law unto herself, her motives murky. If Josie was doing this to survive, she had taken the code of survival too far. Demorn’s memories were fragmentary but she knew there were limits to any change. The universe would push back. In all her attempts to rescue Kate, she’d only ever been dragged deeper into a mire of parallels, death the only constant, sickening and filled with curses.

  ‘Okay, enough. Open the door.’

  12

  * * *

  Jason flung open the door, cowering. A tall black figure stumbled through, blood all over him. Demorn rushed forward to grab him. It was Wolf. Jason ran off, tearing past them.

  Wolf was hurt, but functional. Black fur covered his face and his shirt was ripped. She saw the claws on his hands, gripping tight to her shirt as she lay him down. He looked up at her, the fur vanishing from his face, claws retracting. A line of soldiers and thorn-heads were strewn across the room.

  ‘You’re a werewolf!’

  His laugh was a throaty chuckle. ‘Yeah, it’s in the genes. On my mother’s side.’

  ‘Is this a secret?’

  Laughter as he leant heavily against the wall. ‘My name is Wolf. It’s no secret. There were a couple of legions of us in the War.’

  Demorn nodded. ‘Were-creatures always fight hard.’

  ‘Yeah, for everything except a fair deal. Iverson saved me from being cannon fodder. In exchange, the Order kinda owns me.’

  She was busy looking his body over for wounds. There were some deep cuts but nothing too bad. As she watched the cuts closed into fine scars, and energy seemed to flow back into him. Wolf got up from the ground, brushing himself off. He looked fit and ready to go. If anything, he looked younger than ever, his dark face radiating raw positivity.

  ‘You heal up fast.’

  ‘Perk of the change. I won’t be able to turn back into the wolf for a while though. How’s your shoulder.’

  Absently she rubbed it. The blood was dry. It didn’t hurt much, the last of the locket’s power soaking up the damage.

  ‘It’s one more scar.’

  She rapped her hands against the wall. ‘Fucking Jason, what a little creep. I never would have guessed he had the balls to run this deep.’

  Wolf growled. ‘He doesn’t control the thorn-heads, they tolerate him. That sulky brat is just another pawn. He locked you down here in a dungeon, but he’s just fresh out of one himself.’

  Demorn put her jacket back on, instantly more comfortable. ‘That creep said Josie has my gun. I don’t like anybody else touching my gun.’

  ‘Lets assume that’s true. Can you fight on?’

  She smirked. ‘You damn well know I can.’

  ‘So we fight on.’

  She rapped on the wall with her steel fist. ‘Cool.’

  Wolf gave her a serious look. He looked embarrassed. ‘Hey, Demorn, before we go play hero, I’m sorry about Winter. She was just a friend really. We mostly just played video games and smoked pot. Iverson plays long angles for big odds. Most of the time I don’t even know what he wants from my reports.’

  Demorn giggled lightly. ‘It’s all good, Wolf. This isn’t reality TV. You’ve been on deep cover, and I don’t believe anybody owns somebody else. Winter’s great and I love her, but we haven’t exactly exchanged wedding vows.’

  He chuckled. ‘To have and to hold.’

  She punched him lightly in the shoulder. ‘Till death do we part. Let’s go waste this Josie chick and her bunch of goons.’

  They had been moving for roughly half an hour by her watch, Demorn letting Wolf take the lead. He’d been a couple of levels higher, guided by whatever feral instinct he had that she could barely understand. There was a grim feel to proceedings as they moved through the dead bodies in cramped spaces, passing other prisoners held in the tiny cells, most drugged out or strapped to the torture machines. Demorn and Wolf did not talk of freeing anybody. With each step they seemed closer to the edge.

  ‘Whoever runs this place is a believer in discipline,’ she said.

  ‘I busted out of my hold pretty easily,’ Wolf replied. ‘The idiots didn’t factor in me changing into the wolf.’

  She said, ‘You would think people who try to control the universe might go over a few more of the details. But they’re strictly second rate.’

  The floor sprang alive with a web of interlocking lasers. Demorn froze, Wolf was half a step in motion. As his foot came down, his body buzzed. Demorn heard an audible snap in the air, his form shimmering from green to red, his body contorted in agony, then vanishing with one last horrible scream.

  Demorn crouched. Alarms were ringing everywhere. She heard distant shouts. She grasped the locket but there was no response. Mictecaciuatl was cold and lifeless, not even a shadow of pain crossed into Demorn. The voices got closer. Xalos too seemed to have deserted her, the sword’s purple fire dormant inside her.

  Demorn jumped across a subsection of the lasers onto the opposite wall. She clung to it for a moment, then clawed upward, forcing herself to be at one with the blackened pipes that ran above. She heard the voices get closer and then more distant again. She let out a deep breath. She was down to basics. That was okay. Basics often suited Demorn. And hey, she thought, these guys aren’t such second raters after all. They probably do want to change history and kill the universe, damn the consequences, and all that other stuff. It made her feel more committed. It drove her on. Demorn kept hustling across the ceiling pipes, heading toward a connection point that she could feel rather than see. She focused again on the intel Iverson had given. A God Point. When he had said it, she had almost laughed, so absurd did it seem.

  It was a long grind. She focused her mind to keep her fingers from turning into steel as she travelled along the pipes. Below her, the lasers had finally died out. She was out of the prison complex, into a light industrial area. A few human guys prowled beneath her. She was high up now. The locket brushed against her neck, but she knew the power was gone, either dead or long dormant. A fall would most likely kill her. She spotted a housing for an air-duct pipe connecting to an upper platform ramp and she crawled over to it, hauling herself onto the ledge.

  Her arms ached, biceps that had been given an easy ride in Bay City had been overstretched. For just a second she could have curled up and gone to sleep on the cold metal platform. But to hell with that, Demorn thought, as she raced along the platform, a shadow within shadows. There would be time for sleeping when she and everyone else was dead. Jason was running and this whole operation was in the wind.

  13

  * * *

  She snuck toward the entrance point. No guard. She heard voices. Low chatter. Getting close, she saw it was just a TV ch
annel reporter winding his way through a weather update. Empty room.

  She went to the computer console. It was Babelzon tech, super high grade. She saw amber lights on a screen, lighting up a section of what looked like an enormous vessel, close to her location. Green lights covered most of the ship.

  She placed her invisible watch against the console. She was on edge, aware of each passing moment and her actions as she started the hack, trying to let it run through. Smile had given her five seperate codes when she left Babelzon, five lines of attack on Triton—he had long speculated and theorised about Triton having links to the Master Rooms and the Fracture Event.

  She counted seconds as the first run was unsuccessful, the hack aborted.

  The second started.

  The phone chimed and the golden image of Smile’s face appeared.

  ‘Hi, Dee!’

  ‘Hi, bro. Waddup!’

  She knew it was a program. Smile couldn’t normally get a read on her this far into the vortex, so distant from Babelzon, but the programs installed inside the watch were a hacking masterpiece. At least this hologram smiled and had a surface personality.

  ‘You went farther than last time, Dee, you’re improving.’

  She rapped the counter to a steady beat, aware that she hated these waiting moments. They were far harder than the action for her.

  ‘Thanks, “computer version” of my brother. I hate this computer stuff.’

  ‘Touchy, touchy.’

  There was an awkward pause.

  She said, ‘Sorry. Normally when I use the auto program there’s people shooting at me and a ticking time bomb. Makes it more dramatic.’

  The watch phased with the system network. She just kept her eyes on the calculation.

  20% 30% 40% 60%

  ‘There’s a time limit here, Dee. A big one. Maybe the dirtiest bomb of all.’

  She looked up. The voice had become more humanised, less sanitised. A voice that sounded like it gave a crap what happened.