by David Finn
Josephine said, ‘No, not yet.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Demorn shouted. The soul flames burnt high around them. Her ruby heart was singing a song of death. The spectral hand released. Demorn kept looking at Kate’s soul, wrapped up with a pretty bow. So much bigger than any soul Demorn had ever fought for. So much bigger than her own soul.
Josie said, ‘This has been a long game, a marathon. I need you to run the final lap hard. I need you to reach that holy room at the end of everything. I need you to kill the ancient evil and restart.’
Demorn frowned. ‘What do you mean? A Master Room? Didn’t exploding one of them start all this?’
Josie shook her head. ‘It’s not a Master Room. This predates that. For this ship truly landed in the Source Core, the original stronghold world of the ancients, before they grew up and left. It’s just what I was telling the courtiers all these years.’
Demorn tilted her head. ‘I’m an assassin. I sell my blade. This feels like a lot of risk without return. What will you be doing in exchange? You gotta sweeten the pot if you want to stop me breaking Jason’s neck and catching the last train out.’
‘I’ll be granting Ceron the use of my lizard army, to push the Prussians back. They number in the thousands, freshly hatched, a legion of fresh blood to inject into a stalemate war. He could finally overwhelm the Prussians with my support.’
Demorn eyes widened, was almost floored. They both knew it had gone past stalemate. Ceron City teetered toward defeat. ‘You would help the Baron’s cause?’
‘We were lovers, Demorn, for a long time. We loved each other very much. How was that ever in doubt? I was without my army these last long years, years spent in the wilderness without true hope, dependent on my connections and the kindness of strangers. But now I am here, and my army has been returned to me.’
Demorn felt herself blush. Josie’s words were powerful. A heat rushed from her body. Close as they were, the Baron did not broadcast his romantic inclinations or his affairs. Many times Demorn had slept in his bed as a longtime friend, and from her perspective Santos gave every evidence of being almost completely uninterested in sex. This was proof that despite all her faculties, equipped with eyes that could pierce souls, Demorn could still be surprised by the actions of others.
Josie continued. ‘And of course, you can have Kate’s soul back. And then doubtless, regain your own.’
‘Cool,’ Demorn said, trying not to choke on her words, wanting to show strength, never weakness. Straight sword, clean heart.
‘Yeah, that’s cool, tell me what I have to kill.’
Josie smiled. Lightning cracked, lighting up her face. ‘Any killing will be incidental, as it always is. There’s a button I need pressed. A button at the end of everything.’
Demorn chewed her gum for a moment, thinking. ‘Do you have a map?’
Josie nodded. ‘It’s an old map, but I do.’
Demorn held out her hand. ‘Then we have a deal. Send the details to my watch.’
Josie shook hands with a disarming smile. Demorn didn’t need her magic eyes to recognise a fellow predator behind them.
6
* * *
‘Come on, Wolf, leave the loser to his mistress.’
Jason went to respond but a growl from Wolf kept him quiet.
Demorn tapped on her watch, the map popping on-screen as they walked.
‘Do you trust them?’ Wolf asked.
‘Not a great deal, no. But she was right, I can’t go into a soul fight that outnumbered. It would be suicide, and I don’t do suicide. Rather take my chances with whatever bullshit is in front of us.’
Wolf shrugged, the eternal shrug of the grunt soldier who follows an order.
Demorn asked, ‘How’s Jackie, by the way? Still wearing the black fishnets and packing a fringe?’
Wolf spluttered a denial mixed with an apology.
‘Relax, I’m only teasing. My eyes can read souls, y’know. It’s not just empty press.’
Demorn slowed down, slipping her glasses off. She could see where the map was leading, an antechamber out of main cavern. She looked back toward the ship. It wavered in and out of existence. She looked around the arena.
She put a steadying hand on Wolf’s shoulder. He was rambling an apology about his cover and Winter. She lightly touched his face, drawing his eyes to her.
‘Don’t worry so much, kid. You aren’t talking to a general telling you to go over the top, no matter what the cost. You’re a soldier, I’m a mercenary. I work for cash. I’ve seen what this mission has done to you, exactly how many pieces it’s taken out.’
Wolf laughed, brushing his chest where the silver bullet had been.
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you tried to run out the chamber door and take your chances in the desert above. Maybe you’d find a way back home, wherever that is. Of course, I’d have to gun you down, but I’d understand why you did it. How long have you been mechanical?’
‘A year or so. I was caught by a bomb at Blitzan. Suicide bomber in our own unit. Took out the team, blew me in half.’
‘Where was Iverson?’
Wolf shrugged the grunt shrug again. ‘Above, in the command vessel. He got me out in time.’
‘Gracious of him.’
Wolf rapped his legs. ‘They replaced everything from the waist down. I don’t feel the usual kind of pain.’
Demorn popped a mint. She had been soaking up battle damage for years, healed by the bittersweet pain of the locket. All these shortcuts to keep them in the field had a cost.
She said, ‘Iverson made you his power chess piece. That’s the Order for you, always looking for a silver lining in their battle to survive. It’s how a gang of old men hanging out in Satellites survive and prosper. At least you’re still moving up the ranks.’
Wolf was looking into the middle distance, way past the shimmering doorway they were closing in on, following the map. He was looking to places only he could see. His voice was beyond weary.
‘It’s been tough playing cover with Josephine. The worst was the ageing in the Prison. It was a savage loop. I barely made it out.’
Demorn nodded. Wolf had caught all kinds of crazy, bad beats.
She said, ‘But a least you’re still here, still punching. We can win this. I’ve got a feeling.’
‘How can you say that? You don’t even know what we have to do.’
‘Sure I know. I have to press a button.’
Demorn smiled her scary smile, checking her watch. The target had stabilised.
‘How’s the sex?’ she asked off-hand.
Wolf laughed. ‘The girls aren’t complaining.’
She gave him swift smack on his ass. ‘I bet! My girlfriend clearly voted YES PLEASE MORE SIR!’
Laughing, they crossed the shimmering doorway and exited the cavern, her invisible watch pinging with their departure.
7
* * *
PING! PING!
Her watch was shuddering.
‘Wake up, wake up, Demorn!’
Somebody was shaking her shoulder. For a moment she was back in Babelzon, her brother waking her up after a late Saturday night of games and music, the late morning sun blazing in through the wide bay windows in her room.
Planes roared above her, shuddering the glass in the window, as Smile awoke her . . .
Demorn jerked to full wakefulness. It was Wolf not her brother. A light sleeper normally, there was an instinctual reflex in her to strike out when she went deep under. Her hand was around Wolf’s throat. He wasn’t Smile. But he wasn’t the enemy. She released him. Wolf stumbled back, gasping for air.
‘Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to almost kill you!’
He waved a vague thumbs up as Demorn leapt to her feet. The scene was magnificent. Above the tiny outcrop of a green hill she stood upon, a huge black ship sailed through the air, just above them, full sails billowing. Although it was far higher than it seemed, Demorn felt she could almost reach out and touch th
e ship’s hull. She could see magic symbols scrawled upon the base of the ship.
Other huge trading vessels moved through the air, some Banker Ships higher in the neon blue sky, and larger automated battle-ships, the huge screaming whine of super motors churning in the air. Demorn felt tiny as an ant, impossibly small for such a dire mission.
‘Where are we?’ Wolf asked, staring at the blurred black star portal, that both swallowed and disgorged the vast vessels. They were at a terminus, another version of the Portals of Babelzon, a dimensional epicentre of trade and transport. Only difference was, these people traded in souls. This was an endpoint.
She said, ‘I don’t know what you would call it.’
The ground shuddered under the power of the vessels above, being swallowed or disgorged by the hissing dimensional portal. She was surprised to see they were in a grassy meadow that sloped gently upwards to buildings at the far end. It was curiously peaceful, the sun bending through the air.
‘How did we get through?’
Demorn shot him a smile. ‘Thank Josie.’
‘Where are we?’
Demorn checked her watch. ‘We’re just about sitting in the target. The Banker ship entombed in the Pyramid almost made it home. They were so close, only one last jump away. Josie was useful for something after all.’’
Wolf said, ‘I’m so fucking confused. This doesn’t seem like a secret base.’
Demorn cracked her neck and flexed her fingers. ‘Shit’s about to get real, Wolf, so I hope you packed your big boy pants.’
Demorn started walking through the tall grass. After a moment’s hesitation as he stared up at the monstrous portal, an unblinking tear of darkness in the air, Wolf followed her.
Demorn was wary. The soft sunlight and perfume of the flowers served to somehow increase her tension. The grass grew long where they walked. An ambush seemed inevitable.
She could feel the rattle of the Soul Skulls around her neck. Seventeen. She wondered if it was caution or pride that made her choose that number. But try as she might, counting every soul skull she had pocketed away in more than one dimension, she couldn’t hit a number where she truly felt she could have challenged Josie with ten thousand souls. Whichever way she looked, that number seemed insurmountable, an obstacle that made this choice the only choice. Demorn had fought enough Soul Fights to know that inside the Circle anything could happen, rank underdogs became dominate and nobody got out clean. It was what the public wanted, why there was a Tour that grew bigger each season, clamouring for more blood and action, begging for each Soul Fight to go the distance. It sickened Demorn and was the primary reason why she had left the Tour at her peak. Selling her sword to Santos and his local war was preferable to the insanity of the Soul Fights.
They came to the edge of the grass. Demorn crouched. Scattered low level buildings. No movement. Demorn felt a haunting pang of déjà vu that came as quickly as it went. All those people who had said she had seen the end of the Universe, glimpsed Armageddon. Demorn couldn’t remember anything. The future was a void to her, and the past so often served to just make her sad.
There was a an awful tearing in space. They looked behind them. The glistening portal was closing, crushing a battleship. Her watch was pinging. She looked down at the screen.
NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, in a chain across the screen, overriding all the normal functions. Alarms rang.
‘NOW!’ she hissed, and she ran, hurtling towards an anonymous low building that matched to her pinging watch, lit up in neon, even as the ship crashed behind them with sickening noise and thunder, torn in half on the portal. She saw robots running out of the buildings, huge sexless corporate prototypes, towering above Demorn and Wolf on powerful metallic legs that slammed into the earth. The group of huge robots passed Demorn and Wolf as if they were nothing, moving en masse to the crippled battleship, fluid and focused.
Demorn slithered between their powered legs, careful not to touch their metallic bodies. It was as if Demorn and Wolf did not exist, and Demorn wondered how long it had been since living, breathing humans had walked these green fields.
The alarms kept ringing as Demorn ran into the building entrance that the robots had come from. With a deafening noise, the ship exploded, torn in two by the blinking black portal, air turning to rubber as the reactor went off, singeing their faces as it went down. The immediate blast caught at least two of the robots as the others rushed to contain damage, foam and other liquids spurting from their forms, dampening the fire. Demorn watched it from beneath her heavy purple sunglasses, the anti-glare focus going up automatically to max as the black portal imploded. She tugged at Wolf, who was lost, shocked by the disintegration. His eyes were rolling in his head.
‘Move! Keep moving!’ she shouted, tugging at his clothes. She dragged Wolf toward the opening. She could see a long concrete tunnel, lined with flashing lights across the walls. She ran across the threshold, dragging him. As Wolf crossed, an electric screen slammed down, jerking Wolf as he was fried by the system, his body convulsing with shock as she slipped through the net.
He fell backward onto the ground outside, spasming. A metallic door slammed down over the force-shield, trapping her inside and Wolf out. Her watch pinged. She was getting sick of that. Lettering ran down the wall in flowing red text.
SUBJECT: DEMORN OF ASANTI HAS ENTERED THE FACILITY—SUBJECT: DEMORN OF ASANTI HAS ENTERED THE FACILITY—
She wanted to smash it on instinct. But instinct could be misled by the heart. She took a deep breath, calming down. She was on a solo mission again. She couldn’t help Wolf now. He would either help himself or die. Demorn moved fast down the tunnel, completely alert. The old debate in her head. Sword or gun. She kept her Athena gun in her hand.
8
* * *
The alarms stopped ringing as she ran down the corridor and it split into a crossroads. Antiseptic corridors, total 50/50 chance of picking the right way. Eerie silence as the pounding in her ears subsided. The flowing text was mostly bizarre symbols that meant nothing to her. She cut right, moving fast.
Demorn stumbled across a huge 3D wall presentation that stopped her in her tracks. It filled the space around her, showing multiple globes running parallel to each other, the images overlaying each other. Many of the globes were burnt out.
Her audio implant cut in, the connection perfect like it rarely ever was. ‘Demorn? Can you hear me, Dee?’
Her mind spinning, she flicked the implant. ‘Yep, Smile, I’m here.’
His voice sounded panicked and jumpy. She couldn’t take her eyes off the map.
‘What are you seeing?
‘Some kind of map, I think. Parallel worlds.’
She held the watch up in the air, letting the data flood in. Smile was unusually quiet. She could his breath rattling down the line.
‘Normally you love this kinda shit.’
Smile was anxious. ‘You’re not supposed to be there, Demorn. How the hell did you even get in that deep?’
She shrugged, watching as the globes kept burning. Her eyes kept seeing more, dragged further and further into the map.
He said, ‘I know the facility you’re in. You’ve hit the real Source Core. You’ve gone too far. Get out, get out!’
She rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no going back, bro. We may as well make a final play. One of these spinning globes is bound to be Babelzon.’
‘Aren’t you worried, Demorn?’
Demorn said, ‘I’m scared for you, bro. What have they done to you? Why are you sounding so weak?’
There was a hissing in the air. The map fell away from her eyes, snapping the close connection, and suddenly there was just one giant wall screen in front of her. Smile lay beside her, looking sick, dressed in a white jumpsuit that was scrawled with messages from well-wishers. His face was half robotic, while the other half was lit in a monstrous smile. She rushed to his side, forgetting about the mystery of the spinning worlds.
‘Jesus, what happened, bro? A
re you all right?’
His body was warm to the touch, even though she could tell he was only partially here. He shook his head slightly.
‘This has taken everything, I’m operating on the Spire’s power, not my own, to stay alive and in the frame.’
She brushed his face. ‘Screw the frame, bro. Go to bed, let the Sympaths relax you. I can handle this bullshit.’
‘Look, look up.’ Smile groaned, pointing at the screen.
She turned to look.
The many globes no longer spun in graceful parallel arcs. A giant, evil red sun shone in the middle of everything, messy and indistinct, and the giant mass sucked the globes into it, consuming them into sun-fire. The globes spun in wretched arcs, their equilibrium gone, fated to disaster. Demorn thought she felt the ground sway beneath her feet. Was this where it all led to, a disaster from which there would be no escape, no hope, no comeback? What is it, she wondered.
Smile said, ‘It’s the Future, Ultimate Fate. The nightmare who will consume us all.’
Her eyes widened. She knew in the pit of her stomach that Smile was right, or so close to right it didn’t matter.
‘How far in the future?’
His grin looked sick as hell. ‘About ten minutes. I’ve been there, I journeyed there in the Spire . . . Fate knows no mercy, a malignant terror that has crept into all our lives . . .’
She kissed his brow. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll come and wake you up. I’ll fix it.’
He laughed. ‘I love your confidence, but not everything can be fixed up, sis. This has gone too far for too long . . .’
She gave him a slight smile and another kiss on the forehead.
‘Ten minutes is still ten minutes, bro,’ she whispered. Smile vanished.
The watch started pinging again. She ran towards the source, heart beating fast, ready for anything.
