Norel had seen all he needed to see.
He did an about face on the horse, and galloped at full speed out of the district.
The horse plowed forward with such ferocity his hooves were sending cracks along the asphalt road beneath his feet. He didn’t have room to fit himself and his rider through the portal to the adjoining district, and the guardian at the gate had been one of the casualties of the wizard wars on this side, so the war horse opened the portal himself as he leapt through.
For now, Norel would just add that to the list of what-the-fucks the day had in store for him. His mind was too filled with bigger concerns, but eventually he’d circle back around to find out just how much magic his war horse had been infused with.
Outside Chinatown, beyond the barrier wall, the rest of the world was enjoying nighttime. It only then dawned on Norel that at least one of those wizards in Chinatown had thrown up a spell to keep the night out—and with it, the appearance of still more fearsome creatures of the night. The wizards were long used to battling at night, when their magic was needed most. Many of them may well have been weaker during the day, possibly even dormant, like vampires—evolved over centuries so that their circadian rhythms were more in tune with the darkness than the light. The spell may well have been cast to cut down on the wizard wars underway—not that it was doing much good.
As the black stallion galloped through the streets of Victorian England, attracting barking dogs who charged at his heels, the hooves started to flame where they made contact with the street, spooking the canines, and causing them to retreat.
It was time for Norel to upgrade his assessment of his war horse yet again. Not just genetically altered, but seriously magically endowed as well—specifics yet to be determined. Norel visualized where he wanted to go next—Victor’s, not Soren’s, as Soren would be slow to engage in battle until he had gained sufficient mastery with his cabbalistic nanites—but Victor could well benefit from Norel’s findings. The horse corrected his course instantly. So, Norel and the war horse shared a psychic connection. If this kept up, at the rate his affection was growing for the animal, bestiality might well become a thing for Norel.
FIFTEEN
Victor pulled his fingers away from the laptop and groaned in frustration. Gesturing widely with his hands, he shouted, “What’s wrong with this thing!”
“You’re getting frustrated and disturbing the space-time continuum, which is rattling the AI,” Ramon informed him.
“Well, no shit. It deserves to be rattled, considering how much it’s rattling me.”
“Stand back.” His apprentice pushed him out of the way, and took charge of the keyboard. The next thing Victor knew he was looking at a holographic wall—filled with pictures and bios of potential candidates—projected from a lens on the back of the laptop’s screen.
“Now, we’re talking.” He went up to the holographic work space, making sure not to stand in the way of the projecting lens, and put his hand up to it, flicking images and bios out of the way as he discarded them to make room for the others. “I told these guys to screen out the losers. A lot of good that did.”
“Those are the best mathematicians and physicists the Earth has in space-time geometries, you insolent fuck.”
“Like I said, losers,” Victor said, continuing to whisk through images. “Oh, here’s something promising.” He enlarged the post by grabbing its edges in a picture-frame he formed with the thumb and index finger of each hand and pulling back.
Victor ran the video showing the woman flying a barely-visible, translucent jet fighter that flew through buildings and landed wherever it wanted to, largely owing to its ability to slice through space-time.
When the pilot landed in a CEO’s office and stepped out of the jet in that fetching flight-suit of hers, Victor liked her for all sorts of innocuous reasons. Her blond hair danced behind her, as if feeling the pull of the space-time warping effects of the parked jet in the penthouse suite. Her bird-of-prey blue eyes were accompanied by no less hawkish features. The CEO—a balding man with a wrinkled forehead, big bags under his eyes, and pink lipstick on his lips, perhaps because they were young lips that distracted from the rest of the landslide happening above them, and so was a perfect distraction if properly highlighted—rose from his desk indignantly. He got treated to a tractor beam she emitted from her hand that was used to suspend him overhead. “You’ve been judged for screwing with the environment and found wanting, fuckhead.”
“Oh, no, not another greenie. I swear you tree huggers are the worst,” Victor mumbled, though he had no doubt the CEO was thinking the same thing; his mental energy was just too dim for Victor to actually read him.
Wonder Woman sent the CEO flying into the jet thrusters of her space-plane, which on idle, were more than enough to dust him, the one engine in the rear flaring briefly as it fed on his body.
In the wake of his sudden disappearance, she scouted his desk for evidence of his dirty work, and then, with it in hand, hopped back on her plane and was off.
“Looks like we found our first recruit,” Victor said. “Don’t know how long she’ll last against the Dark Matter Man, but so long as it’s long enough to learn something from her mistakes about how to bring him down, I’m cool with that. Besides, this mission’ll never take off the ground without a few fools-rush-in types.”
Victor turned to Ramon, “Hold down the fort, Captain Useless, until I get back.”
“There’s someone coming up the stairs,” Ramon said, ignoring him, his eyes vacant, as he tracked the intruder. “It’s a Frankenstein’s monster on a flaming horse.”
“Of course, it is.”
The intruder kicked through the door and galloped into Victor’s penthouse apartment. Victor glared at him with a sense of indignation that brought back fond memories of the CEO getting flambéed just seconds prior, who’d greeted his guest in the same manner. “How does Soren stand for this shit? Really, it’s beyond me.”
The intruder jumped down from his horse, which Victor had to admit, was one impressive fucking horse, if he went in for animals, which he didn’t. Considering that his rooftop suite was warded with magic that the horse had to get past, it earned points just for that.
“I have some intel for you on the Dark Matter Man,” Norel said, lowering his hood.
“And suddenly the incongruous alien grey, trying to pass himself off as a Frankenstein’s monster, ceases to be entirely annoying and anachronistic and is suddenly my new best friend. Welcome, friend.” Victor stepped closer and whispered in his ear. “How long am I supposed to pretend to like you before we’re entitled to our first falling out? I’m new to all this friend shit.”
“I’m Norel, Soren’s friend.”
“Okay, reason enough not to kill you for bringing King Arthur’s war horse into my apartment after raising him from the dead and giving him a supernatural makeover. But talk fast. My charity knows all sorts of bounds.”
“The Dark Matter Man has neutralized all the tech-savants in the Transhuman district, all but the ones in the hotel Atlantis, the city within a city, where he makes his residence. The scientists inside the Atlantis he has simply recruited. And he appears to be going after the wizards at the top of the food chain in every other sector.”
Victor sobered on a dime, and paced, picking at the stubble on his chin. “So, which is it, magic or science that he fears most?”
“I was hoping you could tell me, but I have my suspicions.”
“And they are?” Victor said, stopping his pacing and making eye contact again. “Don’t make me pull it out of you, unless you prefer having your tonsils removed by a mandala magician who will use a black hole to extract them.”
“I suspect that the Dark Matter Man is a man of science, an artificial intelligence designed to do its computing within the dark matter that gave rise to it. But I also suspect that his science works more like magic on our world, by virtue of the space-time warping pressures natural to dark matter. Having no simila
r matrix in which to house himself, he nabbed the next best thing, Dracus’s DNA-computer brain. But this must feel like wearing a straight-jacket to him. The science of such a mind would seem virtually impotent to it. Perhaps not like science at all. As it would leave him next to no room in which to be creative, by the laws which govern its sense of creativity.
“Still, he chose one of the Transhumans, when he could as easily have chosen a master wizard of another district to implant himself in. I suspect if he can make little of our science, he can make even less of our magic. He neutralized the Transhuman sector almost with a single stroke, but the wizard wars are ongoing—in every sector. He’s studying them, I suspect, to understand better how it is they do what they do.”
“Perhaps to forge a superior fusion between our best science and our best magic to better approximate the power he’s used to in the dark matter realm,” Victor said, running with the thought, and gazing out his penthouse window at the metropolis, using the flickering lights of the city lit up at night to help him think.
“Thanks, Soren, I mean….” Victor turned to face his guest.
“I gave Soren some tips on how to master the cabbalistic nanites infesting him, in hopes it would bring him back to the fight sooner.”
Victor’s eyes went wide. “Thanks,” he said, limply, the words foreign to his lips.
“I suspect I’ve done all I can do. I will ride into the proverbial sunrise, now, and the sunset to follow, to try and see as much of my world as I can before the Dark Matter Man ruins what’s left of it. Or what he hasn’t destroyed already.”
Victor nodded to him, feeling genuinely appreciative, and angry at the same time; he didn’t like to feel indebted to anyone.
Norel was back on his horse when Victor found his mouth moving against his will, and his tone almost pleading, “I wish you’d change your mind. Considering how much you’ve done already, I’m sure you can still make yourself of some use. And I, well, I’m told I need sidekicks.”
Norel glanced at the holo monitor, at the strange take on Wonder Woman, with her invisible plane, the video running in a loop. “Like this lady you’re getting ready to sacrifice in one of your experiments to get over on the Dark Matter Man?”
Victor went to say something in his defense, but Norel held up his hand. “Save it. I actually wish you the best of luck with that. We’re all sacrificial pawns now, whether we like it or not. Besides, you were willing to sacrifice yourself, first and foremost. I think that constitutes a fair amount of character growth, from all I’ve heard about you. Good luck, Victor; I’m banking on Soren to save us, but he may well need you and your mind, which I hear is second to none, not even to the Dr. Frankensteins.”
Norel galloped out of the apartment, headed straight for the warded window wall, which morphed for the horse. It wasn’t supposed to do that; only for Victor was it supposed to morph.
Victor dashed to the window as it rematerialized and peered down. “Holy shit!” That thing is galloping on air—without sprouting wings. Its hooves flame where it makes contact with the air. “It’s dialed into the Akashic field better than those monks that fight on air. Maybe I should get myself one.” He thought about it more, then shook his head. “Nah, Victor. You, walking around with a pooper scooper? Not happening.”
“God forbid you should be burdened with its beastly nature; only yours do you entertain.”
Victor grunted absently before catching the sarcasm and turning back toward Ramon. “Have I tried to kill you lately? I’d hate to think I was slipping.”
“Don’t look now, asshole, but you just got your ass handed to you by the Dark Matter Man. Slipping is when you go downhill gradually, not all at once.”
Victor snorted. “I think I’m starting to like you. I’ll have to try and kill you more often; it’s a promise I only make to my closest friends.”
“Since sparing anyone your presence could be considered a mercy killing, I can well believe you.”
Victor smiled despite himself, thinking, that rogue’s gallery of endlessly devious expressions Ramon put on show with each crack he made indicated layers upon layers of subterfuge. No two of Ramon’s smiles meant the same thing. Just as well, Victor couldn’t possibly bond with someone less calculating. But the sentimental moment passed in a heartbeat, and he switched back to stern mode on a dime. “Don’t you have a pendant to figure out?”
“Yes. Let’s hope one of these things dating back to the earliest mandala magicians have something to teach us about dealing with an enemy possibly no less ancient.” Ramon had already put his attention back on the first amulet he’d tasked himself with, whose code he’d yet to crack.
He missed Victor’s eyes going wide again. The kid might well be on to something with his idea of coming at Dracus with ancient magic. For right now, though, it was one more clue he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with.
As good as this Norel was, he wasn’t as good as Soren at fitting the clues together into more workable insights Victor could run with. And of late, Victor’s own ability to put two and two together had been failing him, perhaps secondary to his ego taking a beating at the feet of the Dark Matter Man.
“You liking our chances any better after talking to Norel?” Ramon asked, gazing up from the pendant.
Victor was already lost in thought, more accurately, lost in despair. “No. Yes, he exposed potential vulnerabilities. But inside the most sophisticated DNA mind on the planet, the Dark Matter Man will learn from his mistakes a lot faster than we will. This game was over before it even began.”
ACT THREE
END GAMES
SIXTEEN
“Now, where are we in our search for sidekicks? Because pursuing pointless quests beats drinking.” Victor glared at Ramon as if he’d better have a good answer to that question.
“Victor.” Ramon nod-gestured toward the window with his latest overdetermined-with-layers-of-deviousness smile. “Ask and ye shall receive.”
Victor eyed the sorry lot of fans that had accosted him earlier in the Transhumanist sector, plus a couple new faces—all hovering beyond his windows waiting for a chance to enter. Well, two of the transhumanists were along for the ride on Surf’s hoverboard, one seated in front of him, and other in back, both flicking their legs over the side as Surf stood staring back at Victor—with his eyes closed. He must have been the one to provide the others with the homing signal, using some way of feeling dark energy. Surf gestured for Superman to fly over the roof, and as he did so, he shattered the windows to Victor’s—from their perspective, invisible, and magic-warded—rooftop penthouse.
“Look, guys,” Victor said, “I’m sorry to break it to you this way, but you just didn’t make the cut. I’m assembling a far more—”
Victor was rudely cut off by Airy, the aerogel lady, drifting into his abode on her own recognizance. “I’m afraid we’re it. I got my tweak into my friends in time, but the others, whom I didn’t know and didn’t think would trust me enough….” She was evidently bemoaning her approach to whatever problem she had yet to communicate. “They’re gone. There is no one left in the Transhumanist district, I’m afraid, who either hasn’t been already neutralized by the Dark Matter Man, or sufficiently protected against him to be interested in joining your little posse. The last holdouts united into a group mind that, for now, is withstanding the Dark Matter Man’s influences.”
Victor took a deep breath and held it for fear he would blast them into another dimension in a burst of rage before he could get the rest of his questions answered. “How did you lot—” The bitch cut him off again.
“I’m an archeologist, specializing in cabbalistic images,” Aerogel Lady explained. “I downloaded just enough of what I know to the mindchips of the others. It seems to have acted as a kind of immunity from the Dark Matter Man’s influences.”
Victor grunted. “Well, you, at least, might be somewhat useful. Can the rest of you do anything besides fly around and look pretty?”
The new arriva
ls tensed and glanced at one another. “Don’t even bother answering, meathead,” Victor said to Superman. “It’s Lex Luthor I could use, not you.”
Superman took it on the chin, smiled wearily, and lowered his eyes.
“Enough with the browbeating, you fucking egotist,” Ramon said, speaking up from the back of the room. “Like it or not, they’re what you got. Deal with it. I’m Ramon, by the way,” he said, taking a step toward the flying group, still levitating a foot or so off the ground, probably in case they had to make a fast exit to escape Victor’s wrath. The two that were formerly seated on the hoverboard were now standing. “Never mind Dickhead, here; it’s his own impotence in this matter that really has him rattled. And your names are?”
“I’m Ry and this is An,” Ry said, pointing to her partner, as they both stepped off the hoverboard. Both seemed to be both sexes at once. Though possibly An had had her morphing arrested by the Dark Matter Man while reverting to female form before the archeologist’s immunity took hold; so for now, her dick wasn’t nearly as prominent as her partner’s. Though the breasts of both were about the same size.
“Please tell me you can do something other than look weird,” Victor said, speaking to Ry and An.
“We’re both nanite engineers,” An said.
“Even better,” Ry chimed in, “we have a lab with equipment which should come in very handy for both containing Soren, if it comes to that, and for studying possible approaches that might work to lessen the beast’s influences on him.”
“Glad to see you two are not a total waste.” Victor turned to take in the aerogel guy, who’d yet to speak up; Victor let his accusative glance speak for him.
“I’m Aeros,” the male aerogel figure said, “and my wife here is Airy. In addition to being an archeologist, Airy is also a biochemist with a specialty in astrobiology. She can synthesize chemicals on the fly and extrude them from her body that might incapacitate Soren for long enough….”
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