King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2)

by Grist, Michael John

  He gestures at the mirror, where the parts of me float, held apart like clothing out to dry on wire.

  "Do you find yourself repulsive, now? This is what you are made of, after all. Your constituent matter. I believe these parts have a beauty of their own, in the way they combine to create a living, sentient thing."

  Looking at him in the form of Yena, I think about the horrors I saw in her, the skyscraper tombs filled with buried-alive bodies. I think about the moment she stabbed me in the gut.

  "This hand is attractive, that's true," says King Ruin. "But this is not Yena. It only carried her engrams, for a time. The true Yena lives in the parade, one part of it anyway, a glass-walled zoo I keep for special occasions. She has her body, enough space to move around in, but all she can see are the others around her. Naji is next to her, as are a dozen others. Do you think that sounds pleasant? Perhaps it seems tame, compared to my other works. You saw Memphen, of course. But can you imagine what life in the glass zoo might be like? It would not end in a day, with the air crushed from your ribs as in Memphen, or in a week after you starve, or in a month after all the meat you've feasted on goes rotten. In the zoo it goes on and on, because I keep them alive. They are a hundred little test tubes, conducting a grand experiment. Of course they come to hate the sight of each other. Some of them blind themselves to avoid it. Others dig their fingers into their ears so hard they deafen themselves, just to escape the sound of their own breathing."

  I hate him. I envisage my boneless muscles wrapping around him like a Lag snake, slowly throttling him to death.

  "That is the life for Yena and Naji, and all others like them. They suffer the slow, gentle horror of proximity, faced with the truth of their own existence, just as you are faced with yours now. It is gentle horrors such as these that cut the deepest, I feel. In the glass zoo, they are all quite mad. It takes time, as they strive toward hope, toward dreams of some possible escape, but at last they all succumb. So will you."

  If I had a mouth or a throat I would gag.

  "Not cheerful, I agree. Very potent. And all the memories, I keep. It's another kind of collection, in engrams, which I use when I need. Would you like to see them? I may put you with them, in a new body, for a time. Would you like that?"

  In my mind, I force my entrails down his throat, filling him up so he chokes.

  "Enjoy this brief reprieve, Mr. Goligh," he says. "Hope that I find what I want in Mr. Ruins. Because if I do not, I will take you apart piece by piece to find it. You will become the full-time work of my life, and I have so many wondrous plans. In the meantime, another taste of what will come. I feel you've been holding to those subglacic days a little too firmly. Let them go, Mr. Goligh. Stop clutching so tightly, it's unseemly. Let's say farewell to them together, shall we?"

  He Lags me. They are gone.

  He smiles. "Who will you talk to now?"

  I don't understand what he means. I begin to panic, as the scope and scale of the ebbing frame of whatever he just took is enormous. It is vast, and I feel it like a scoop taken out of my middle, like my skin has been pulled away and all my bones extracted.

  He leaves, and I am left hanging in the liquid alone, unfeeling, unable to close my eyes, staring at the exploded pieces that make me up and wondering what remains.

  He boils me down.

  "You don't need this anymore," he says, as pincers reach into the artificial womb and snip away my left leg. It is muscle only, tendon and gristle which I could only twitch, but to watch it cut away in the mirror still sickens me.

  "We can do this a thousand times," he says, "and it will always feel like this. Do you imagine you could get used to it?"

  I hardly have the will to think about killing him. It is such a distant fantasy now, and I don't know why I have resisted this far. Perhaps there was something in the memories I've lost, some solid ground to stand upon, but I can't feel it anymore.

  "Do you feel like weeping?" he asks, as the pincers move over and cut away my right leg. "Do you feel like calling out for your mother?"

  I never had a mother.

  not this

  says the voice.

  "There it is," says King Ruin. "I heard it. Now can I find it?"

  I feel him shuffle through the gaps in my Molten Core as though I'm a filing cabinet. His touch is cold and hard.

  "Maybe it's this," he muses. He brings the memory up through my transponders, forcing me to relive it. It is me as a child, when my parents were diving me day after day. "Is then when you learned to partition yourself? I suppose it is. Look at you, Mr. Goligh. So small, but so resistant. You would have been a perfect candidate for one of my experimental Courts, but I suppose your that other one sheltered you. Never mind, I have you now."

  He begins the Lag, and the memory tears away like skin, like the sheep's skull ripping back and shredding a thousand connections. He scrapes away the straggling lines of thought with the thumbnail of his mind, molding the screaming mess I am left into some new shape.

  I have no mouth but I scream for long minutes. I stare at my exploded body in the mirror and scream as some new conception of what I must be takes hold. If I had a body I would sob and pant, vomit and shake.

  In the viscous oil of my artificial womb, I twitch.

  ritry

  says the voice,

  me

  but I don't know what it means, other than as a label that has applied to this creature I am within. I don't know where it comes from, but it steadies me.

  "Still?" asks King Ruin. "That is truly inconceivable. Were you born with this voice, Mr. Goligh? Is this how you have succeeded in diving the bridge so many times?"

  Please, I think, stop. No more.

  "I can stop, but why would I? Will you dive the bridge for me?"

  No, I think, yes, no.

  no

  I am torn between them.

  "Even, could you?" he asks. "Would you know how to do it, now? I think I may have taken you too far. Now there's so little of you left."

  He waves at the mirror. Even as he does it, the pincer slides in again and cuts off the purple loops of my internal organs. I feel it as a short sharp pain, but the sight of them dropping away to the bottom of the tank is worse. It is horrific.

  "Perhaps you could dive," he goes on. "Perhaps you could not. But I am deep into your ebbing friend as we speak, an old friend of mine too, and there is some trace of you within him, I think. You left your tracks to the bridge, and I will find them. That leaves you as, what, a curiosity? You are not protected, Mr. Goligh. You are not special. You will ride for me, without end."

  I feel madness beckon. I cannot control myself. I cannot control my thoughts. I watch as the pincer snips away the muscles of my arms, my shoulders, my chest.

  "Even this?" asks King Ruin. "Yes, even this."

  He cuts away my heart. Its pulse stops and it drifts to the floor of the tank, leaving only the soft seven tones of the womb. He cuts away my neck, strips back all the muscles and fat of my face as though some obscene haircut, until only my eyes, my ears, and my brain remain, hanging from wires.

  "Now we are down to the truth," he says. "This is what you resolve to, Mr. Goligh. This is what all that pretense was for, a heap of shivering meat in a pool. Do you feel foolish now, for ever defying me? Do you wish to defy me more?"

  There is no place for me to feel sickness within, not anymore. There is no blood to run cold. There is only a deep, intrinsic sense of horror and dislocation. I am dizzy for what I was. I am terrified for what more might come.

  ritry

  says the voice, and I want it gone. I want the King to take it too, to free me of this incorrect desire, this aberrant wish to instate my own will. I am plainly not my own. Take it, I call. Please.

  He smiles. "The slow horror of proximity. You feel it even within yourself. A mirror is all you required. Mr. Goligh, do you understand me now? Do you know why you are here?"

  I don't. I no longer know anything. Everything I have done so far
was a mistake. It can only be a mistake.

  I'm sorry, I say in my mind. I'm sorry.

  "I know. I know that you are. Here is your forgiveness."

  He Lags more. Chunks of my life evaporate, sucking out of me to feed him. More and more, and each one making me more alone in this empty mind, more ignored, more unwanted.

  "You were never wanted," he says. "Who amongst us truly was? None. We are vainglorious efforts at eternity, and we deserve to know the truth. No one truly loves us, no more than they love themselves. I show this to you, Mr. Goligh, I share this with you until you learn it. This I what I show to the world, by shoving its face in its own rectum until it learns what it truly is. Wanton filth, Mr. Goligh, enlivened by sucking, grubbing hunger. That is what all of you are. In such company, there is only truly room for one."

  ritry

  I think of something then, something that is not a memory because all my memories are gone, but more an echo of a learned fact, perhaps once a memory. There is a voice, something I trust, and it is telling me what I should be.

  let it go

  the voice says.

  be what you can

  It is no hope. It only makes the horror worse to point out what I should do, when there is no hope of it. There is no moment in which to be myself.

  Except there is. The moments go on, one after another, and I am still here. I am only eyes, ear, and mind, but I am still here. I exist, I think, I live. The horror doesn't go, but what other way to be is there but to live with it, and through it?

  I watch as King Ruin's mouth opens in wonder.

  "Are you transcending even this? This is stunning, Mr. Goligh. You have nothing, yet you are relentlessly resourceful."

  Why? I ask, a single question in my mind. I repeat it, again and again, because within it I find some sense of purpose. It is unanswerable. Even with an answer, it is unanswerable. Within it I find who I will be now. I do not know Ritry, or Mr. Goligh.

  What I am instead is outrage. Less than that, what I am is justice. I am rightness, and I judge this wrong. I exist only to judge it. I have no way to influence what it becomes, I only watch. But in watching, I judge.

  This is wrong, I think. Why?

  A long time passes, as King Ruin's body, a beautiful dark-skinned woman, goes still before me, her face slack.

  Why?

  He comes back.

  "Very well, I'll debate you," he says. "We are down to the essence, and it intrigues me. Why? Because I live for the essence. I'll boil this whole world down, in time. All the people in its seas, all the minds sunk beneath the everyday meaninglessness of their lives, I'll boil them all down, and at the end I'll be left with the true, pure essence of what they are, and it will be shit."

  Why?

  He chuckles. "Would you like to understand me, Mr. Goligh, to better judge me? Was I perhaps abandoned as you were, when I was an infant? Was I abused some way, mistreated? Even if I was it would explain nothing. Souls are abandoned every day by those who should care for them, by the gods who should have prepared for them. I was not special in that regard, nor were you. But we are here now."

  Why?

  "You insist. Very well. It is trite to give the answer, because I can. It is also meaningless to say, I am hungry, because I am not an addict. I enjoy the suffering, I enjoy the power, but I could give them both up."

  Why?

  A long moment. He looks at my eyes searchingly, as if he might divine the answer in me. "I suppose it is because I am angry, Mr. Goligh. I am angry about so many things, but most of all that I was ever born. Yet here I am, so I must make the best of it. To that end, your suffering helps express my anger. Diving the aetheric bridge will help me express my anger in ways I never felt possible before. It will help me show to all of your people out there what the essence that makes them up is. Can you understand that?"

  You hate to live, I think. So die.

  "Oh, I think I will. When all the minds are gone and all that's left in my hands are a few grains of purest shit, I expect I will simply wink out of existence. If I do not, well, I think it would be the worst thing imaginable, to go on living after that point, wouldn't you agree? Hell is other people, but no people at all? I think that is the greatest hell. My anger would be so meaningless. So, perversely, perhaps I will remain like that for a time, alone, as my own punishment. It seems fair."

  I judge that. Within it I find understanding, and what I will be now, something named Ritry Goligh that stands for the opposite of King Ruin, for as long as it can. This too is an essence, boiled down from all its constituent parts. I meet his mind and judge it with sympathy. He is damaged beyond repair, in ways I will perhaps never understand, but he is like me. I want to help him, but I cannot, because I do not know how. Instead I offer him my pity.

  He laughs. "Ah. If only they were all like you, Mr. Goligh. None of them grasping so hard, none of them so desperate to not be hurt, to just keep their son, to just keep their daughter, to just please not have their tongues pulled out, perhaps then I could learn to live with you people. But I don't think that will ever happen. You are always so hungry, always grasping, always reaching your sticky little fingers out to take things that don't belong to you."

  I'm sorry it hurts you.

  "You're sorry. Thank you. Now if only they could all just lie back. If only they could all be quiet and stop talking so much, stop wanting so much, stop breathing so much, and take what I'm going to do to them without complaint. Perhaps then I could accept them."

  You punish them.

  "I simply hold up a mirror. I show them what they are. I don't force them to cannibalize each other. I don't force them to lie, cheat, manipulate, steal, though I admire the destructive, reductive capacity of all those traits. I only wind up the clock, Mr. Goligh. The choices remain with them, and they tick out the seconds very gladly."

  He is placid, half-smiling, as if this is a pleasant conversation we're having. From his face, from his mind, I define what I am.

  You are a cancer, I think.

  He nods. "I am a cancer. Or you are. One way or the other, one of us will be consumed, and it does not look too promising for you, Mr. Goligh. I don't think you can last much longer. I see you have made yourself in the reverse of my image, and in that I see you are still hungry for something, so you steal it from me. I will put an end to that."

  I watch as the pincers drift through the tank towards me. Coolly they snip away my ears, and the tones of the womb are replaced by nothing. Next they snip away my eyes, leaving only blackness.

  What essence will you become, comes his voice in my mind, when there is nothing to judge? When you are only yourself in an empty, echoing void?

  The Lag that follows is complete. He erases me to the moment of my birth and beyond. I am…

  RAY F

  Ti explodes, and Ray beats the console before him so hard something clicks in his wrist.

  "Fuck!" he shouts.

  Looking down into the spreading smoke and crater she has become, he curses the whole fucking Sunken World, for what it has taken from him. They shouldn't have to die like this, none of this should be happening, and that just makes him more angry. He looks up and out to the sky of this Sunken World, now collapsing inward like the Molten Core moat, black mud tinged with the twin suns' red, and shouts into it.

  "Fuck you!"

  He hits the console again. Then he stops fucking around, because Doe needs him now, and he won't let her down. He yanks back on the control stick and the helicopter's rotors whine into overdrive, chopping him higher into the air so hard it drives him down in the seat.

  Soaring upward to a falling sky of blood-veined black mud, he readies himself at the controls. The White Tower's walls rise with him, higher than they ever seemed before, up to the top where a white-slate roof sits atop it like a bicorne hat. He holds his fingers over the triggers.

  "Alakazam," he whispers, and fires every missile in the machine's battery at once.

  BOOM

  The T
ower wall disintegrates in the inferno explosion, sending molten white brick out and down like strange rain. Through charcoal clouds of atomized stone, Ray's HUD reads the living figures inside, recognizing the prone figures of Doe and Mr. Ruins by her side. They are lying next to a purple vortex in the wall, which must be the bridge.

  Blasted back against the far wall are the marines of the Suns' chord, already shouting orders through the noise, aiming their QCs at Ray.

  He unleashes the helicopters howitzers upon them. The noise is deafening in the echo-chamber of the Tower's smoky interior. One by one their bodies pop apart under the raking line of bullets, like blades of grass lined up for the scythe. Their upper bodies fall to rest amongst their legs, and Ray keeps firing until the last of them running up the stairs is shredded and torn.

  There is a thunder from above. He spins and sees his cab is on fire, pock-marked with a dozen QC bites. Beyond that the collapsing world is roaring toward the final implosion, the red-black tsunami wave moments away.

  The helicopter sputters, and Ray springs up from his seat, takes one step across the passenger door, and dives. In the gap between the Tower and the helicopter, in the seconds before it too explodes and drives him down, he fires his grapnel into the smoke.

  It bites. He falls, and the elasteel line catches him, brings him swinging back like a pendulum to crack against the White Tower's wall, below the hole he blasted.

  Newly bonded bones break with the impact. Ray cries out but bites his teeth against unconsciousness, as the blades of his stolen helicopter tilt and chop at the tower wall just to his side. He stiffens his suit just in time for the explosion, which hammers him against the wall again.

  It's all pain. It's all good.

  "Fuck yeah!" he grunts through his teeth, gives the finger to the surging tsunami tide, then rides the grapnel in-coil up the wall and through the blasted hole.

  Inside it is all black smoke dappled purple by the light of the bridge. There is a figure inside, so faint, which he recognizes at once, though it seems impossible.