Sync: Caulborn 1.5

by Nicholas Olivo

  “Hey,” I called. “Where am I?”

  His head tipped to one side as he regarded me. “Well, well,” he said with a hint of a Southern accent. “Vinnie Corinthos. The Tempus always promised me this day would come. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” His eyes darkened as a predatory grin split his face. “Where are you? You are at your end,” he said.

  Who the hell was this guy? “Look, I don’t want any trouble—” I said as I snapped up a shield.

  The sand behind me whipped up and blasted into me. It hit with such force that my bomber was torn to shreds. My jeans ripped, and the skin on the backs of my legs and back was sandblasted away. I screamed as I pulled the shield around me in a bubble. My body temperature spiked as my healing fever kicked in. Guys like Wolverine have a healing factor that instantly closes any wound. Me, I have the equivalent of mutant allergies that somehow fix me up, but it’d take hours to heal this. My eyes teared as I growled at the man.

  “Don’t know what the hell your problem is, pal, but I’m going to—” The soles of my feet suddenly burned. Looking down showed me the sand was glowing red, slowly turning to lava. My assailant hadn’t moved. I telekinetically pushed against the sand, sending myself into the air. I angled myself so I’d land right on top of him. I stopped in mid-flight. Bands of telekinetic energy encircled me, pinning my arms to my sides. I was rotated and held upside down, my face inches from my adversary’s.

  He flashed a sardonic grin, and I was abruptly flung backward into the air. I flew thirty feet and face-planted in the sand. I scrambled to my feet and roared, spitting out sand and curses. I flung fireball after fireball at this psychic jackass. He just sat there, radiating calm, as the fireballs winked out around him. I sent lances of telekinetic force, spears that would impale the side of a tanker truck, and he turned them aside. Hell, this guy’s breathing hadn’t changed, and I was panting like a dog.

  I started toward him again. There was another blast of telekinetic wind, another flash of intense heat. As I lowered my elbow from my face, I saw a wall of glass had appeared between us. Another pair of bursts. Then another. The bastard was encasing me in a glass prison, and in this heat, I’d bake in seconds. I slung fire and bore down on the glass. It was thicker than I’d expected, and it was taking too long to burn through. In that time, the glass prison was completed, and I felt the temperature spike fifteen degrees. The sand beneath my feet heated again, and I increased my burning. The temperature suddenly dropped, and ice crystals formed along the glass. I didn’t have time to stop my own fire before the glass exploded into me; the change in temperature had been too fast, and the glass had shattered. I curled into a ball and brought up a shield, but not before dozens of shards of glass burrowed into my arms and thighs.

  I coughed up blood. My fever was in full swing now. I could feel the original wounds on my back and legs closing, but it would take hours for my body to eject all the glass. I needed to get away. It was cold again. Too cold, even accounting for the blood loss I’d suffered. My fingers were covered in frost in spite of the desert sun bearing down on me. I flopped over to face my adversary. He was still sitting cross-legged, his expression still one of mild disappointment. He sighed and stood, taking his time as he walked over to me.

  “Damn, Corinthos, you’ve gotten sloppy. Where’s that smug disposition now? For someone who prided himself on being clever, you’re sure off your game today.” His brow furrowed. “You start coloring your hair? Vanity is not becoming, boy.” He let out a breath. “Can’t say as I’m surprised, you always were a cocky one. But you’ve lost your edge, hoss. I’ve spent the last thirty years out in this desert, killing every psychic the Chroniclers send my way. I’ve been practicing, see. Practicing for the day they would send you to me. My whole reason for being is to prove that I’m better than you. It’s not noble, it’s not worldly. Hell, the truth of the matter is it’s petty and small, but it keeps me warm at night.

  “But you know why you’re going to die now, son? It’s because I’m smarter than you. Look at yourself, at how you attacked me. All about throwing fire or pushing things around. Do you know how I changed the temperature? Have you ever thought about what makes something give off heat?” He shook his head wearily when I didn’t respond. “Everyone thinks temperature is how hot something is. It’s not. It’s how fast something’s molecules are moving. Faster is hotter. And if you shuck off a ton of heat from something using pyrokinesis, and then slow its molecules down even further using telekinesis, you get cold. Maybe you get all the way down to absolute zero. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, ’cause you’re dumb.”

  Who the hell was this guy? My mind raced, but I was positive I’d never seen him before. My Glimpse kicked on. Unlike every other time I’ve Glimpsed something, this was staticky and distorted. It was like trying to watch a scrambled cable channel. Through my flickering vision, I could see the Mentem, looking much younger, squaring off against another man. The static cleared around the other man’s face for a second, and I was staring at myself. I was wearing a black suede coat and held a glowing switchblade in my left hand. There were lines around my eyes and gray at my temples. A bolt of pain spiked into my forehead as I realized I was seeing both the past and the future at the same time. The partial Glimpsed abruptly and blessedly cut off.

  Holy shit. At some point in the Mentem’s past, he had fought me from the future.

  The Mentem kept talking as I tried to come to grips with this. “And really, the way you use your telekinesis is like a three year old throwing a fit because he can’t have chocolate for breakfast. Lemme show you something, son.” An unseen force clamped down around the pinky and ring fingers of my left hand and wrenched them backward. I screamed as they broke. “See? If you want to hurt someone with telekinesis, that’s how you do it.” He leaned in a little closer, as if he were about to share a secret with me. “Now, telekinetically pushing and pulling things is all well and fine. Hell, breaking bones is fun, but do you know what telekinesis is really good for?” He looked at me expectantly. He continued after a moment, his voice dangerously quiet. “It’s something wonderful for killing. Not because you beat someone over the head with bolts of energy; no, sir, that’s just plain sloppy. No, you crush someone’s heart or lungs from fifty feet away. It feels like this.” My lungs suddenly wouldn’t expand. I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded in my chest as panic started to spread, then it abruptly stopped. I could feel it trying to beat, but it was held in a vice.

  My vision started to narrow and darken at the edges. I couldn’t move, my limbs were frostbitten. I needed a weapon, but I knew that given how cold it was, my fire would just be extinguished. I might be able to deliver a telekinetic uppercut, but it wouldn’t have much force. My thoughts were groggy as it was, and it was nearly impossible to think as the thousands of tiny glass shards burned in my skin.

  Glass.

  I couldn’t take a steadying breath. I couldn’t think this through. If I did, I’d probably think myself out of it and then I’d pass out and die. I ground my teeth and focused on the shards of glass embedded in my skin.

  Then I telekinetically blasted them outward.

  The man shrieked as I became a living land mine of glass shards. Blood sprayed in the air, and I’d say it was probably equal parts his and mine. We were both screaming. Chunks of me were gone as I heaved myself up onto my knees, gasping in lungfuls of air. My heart was on triple overtime as my head spun. There was no time to think. My switchblade dropped into my hand, and I plunged it into my adversary’s chest. He gurgled and dropped to his knees as he stared at my knife.

  “Huh,” he rasped as blood ran from his mouth. “I’ve always been able to sense Olympian Steel. Guess you finally wised up.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I would’ve asked him, but just then he coughed up a great bubble of blood and fell onto his side, eyes staring at the sun. I retrieved my knife with sh
aking fingers and threw up before I could fold the blade into its handle. I’d never killed another human before. But as I watched, the man’s body elongated and swelled; talons grew from his hands and his face twisted into something with a snout and tusks. The body spasmed as it changed into a gray-skinned figure. Some sort of changeling?

  My Glimpse kicked on. This time it was clear as a bell.

  “What do you think, Mentem?” The Tempus asked. The Mentem, clad in a white shirt and blue jeans, turned slowly on the heel of his cowboy boots as he took in the view. He rubbed at his mustache absently.

  “It’s quiet,” he said softly as a smile spread across his face. “Thirty years, always hearing the thoughts of every living thing within a hundred miles. People, animals, hell, even bugs. You know what it’s like to hear the thoughts of a tick as it’s biting you?” He blew out a breath, ruffling his mustache. “This’ll do right nice, I do believe.”

  The Tempus was nodding. “Excellent. This desert will serve as a place where you can hone your powers. I will send you those psychics who sought to tamper with time. You will deal with them. Do we have an agreement?”

  “Sir, you just send whoever needs killing my way, and I’ll see to it they’re handled right quick. Just don’t forget about the second part of our deal.”

  “I will deliver Corinthos to you when you feel you have sufficiently developed your talents,” the Tempus told the Mentem. “Now listen carefully. The pool’s water will sustain you nearly indefinitely. Simply drink from it each day, and your body will remain in its current state.”

  The Glimpse faded and I was back in the desert. I stumbled to the small oasis behind the corpse and collapsed into the shallow pool of water. It was barely a foot deep, but I plunged my head in and sucked in the water, not even bothering to make a cup with my hands. The cool blue waters turned pink as my blood flowed into them. My body burned, partly in pain, partly in healing. I staggered from the pool and collapsed in the shade of the lone palm tree.

  I’m not sure how much time passed. I woke up, and the sun was in the exact same position as it had been when I’d passed out. The only way I knew that any time had elapsed at all was my healing fever had been working overtime. Between that and the pool’s waters, most of the cuts on my body were now painful, itchy scabs. I reflexively felt at my faith reserves. I was about a quarter full. Well, that was something. I hoisted myself to my feet and shielded my eyes against the sun as I turned in a circle. Desert stretched out in all directions, no sign of life other than the handful of scraggly plants at this oasis. I glanced at the stolen watch. Beyond lowering tachyon levels, I had no idea how to use the thing, so no help there.

  I Glimpsed back on the fight with the Mentem. The control he’d had over his powers was astounding. I regarded the remains of the glass walls he’d created. He’d actually combined telekinesis and pyrokinesis to fuse the sand into glass. It was too bad he’d been trying to kill me; I would like to have learned from him.

  I rubbed my face. No point in dwelling on things that cannot be. Priority one was figuring out how to get home. My answer came a few moments later. The watch started chirping wildly, and a hazy blue portal shimmered into existence just a few feet from where I sat. The Tempus himself stepped through. “I’ll collect the body now, Mentem. The demon wants…” He trailed off as he saw me. His eyes had barely widened when I punched him in the face. I was so pissed off at all these assholes that I’d never met before who apparently had years’ worth of bones to pick with me. My switchblade snapped out and I slashed the watch from his wrist. He screamed and grabbed his arm. I telekinetically launched him fifty feet in the air and then jumped through his portal back into the Citadel. Once I was on the other side, I tossed his watch on the ground and melted it. The portal winked out of existence with a pop.

  Take that, asshat.

  The room was empty; there was no sign of my earlier captors or Wheatson. I’d go looking for him in just a bit, but first, I wanted a look at the central clock. I approached it reverently. I ran my hands along its smooth surface, surprised at how cold it was. Time itself flowed through this thing. The sheer immenseness of that fact alone was staggering. I squinted at the clock. While I wasn’t using tachyon vision, I did see something: a faint shadow of the sands flowing within it. Then it hit me, the spectral sands were flowing down and back up again. Just alongside the central clock was the Entropic Glass Wheatson had spoken of; it was just a second out of sync with the rest of time. I reached out and touched where I thought the surface of the Entropic Glass would be.

  The Citadel vanished. It was pitch black. No, that wasn’t right. There was nothing around me. Literally nothing. I looked down and was standing on nothing. That was disorienting. I was standing on something, but that something was nothing. My head started to hurt. I hate paradoxes.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The rumbling voice existed only in my mind.

  I barely managed to not jump out of my skin in surprise. “Laplace’s demon, I presume?”

  There was a grumbling. “I hate that name. I have existed since time itself was born, I have seen civilizations grow and die, I have seen all the nations and worlds that will be, and you pathetic humans couldn’t even give me my own name.”

  “Uh huh. So, you want to tell me where I am?”

  “You are Nowhere.” I could hear the capital N. “As soon as the Entropic Clock has been finished, well, I don’t know what will happen then. But I do hope that the world looks more like this place.” There was a wistfulness in the voice.

  I looked around, trying to pinpoint where the hell the demon was. I sent out bands of telekinetic force, hoping I might brush across something invisible. After a few moments of fruitless searching, I realized this thing didn’t have a body; it was just an intelligence. A force. A consciousness of such intellectual depth that it didn’t need a physical form.

  “So you’re going to undo time and life just because you’re bored?”

  The disembodied voice sighed. “I knew you were going to say that. I know what you’re going to say next. And yes, I know that you are going to be flip and ask what color underwear I have on.”

  I pursed my lips. Hmm. That thought had only half formed by the time he’d said it.

  “You of all beings, godling, should understand what it’s like.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Oh, that’s right, I have to explain this to you. When the Chronicler removed your tachyon cloak, you gained true precognizance. You saw everything that was about to happen, and as the layers of tachyon were stripped away, you saw more than that. You saw what might happen. You saw possibility after possibility for just a few moments. My entire existence has been like that. Eon upon eon, I know every single outcome of every single possible decision. Nothing is new to me. Even this conversation is something I’ve seen and spoken time and time again.”

  I opened my mouth.

  “Yes, I’ve considered the innocent lives that will die.”

  I raised my hand and changed the approach I was about to take.

  “No, the universe won’t be destroyed. Time is much more fluid than you humans realize.”

  I smirked.

  “And spare me the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey crack.”

  Okay, this was bad. This guy knew everything I was about to say or do before I did it. The giant entropic hourglass suddenly shone like a beacon; it was so bright, I had to shut my eyes. The demon’s sigh sounded like Galactus after he’d eaten a particularly tasty planet.

  “Pound sand, asshat,” I hissed. “I’ll stop you.” There was a moment of silence.

  “You really think you can, don’t you?”

  Hey, hang on a second. He hadn’t known what I was about to say. The light from the hourglass faded. A light went on in my head. He didn’t know what was about to happen when the hourglass was lit up
. Time must be running purely on entropy when that happened, and the demon lost his omniscience. I could use that.

  The demon hadn’t stopped talking. “First you try telekinesis. You think because I don’t have a physical form, that energy can affect me. It can’t. Pyrokinesis can’t touch me, because there’s nothing to burn. I have nothing to Open, nothing to Glimpse. You are out of your league, Vincent Corinthos. I am going to end time as you know it, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  I rubbed my face. This thing wasn’t completely omniscient; it didn’t know what I was thinking. It only knew what my actions would be. Think, dammit, think. I stared at the hourglass, a weight forming in my stomach. It had systematically walked through my standard attack plans and shut them down. I knew it wasn’t lying.

  The weight in my stomach increased as I realized I couldn’t stop the demon. Time as I knew it would never have happened. The Caulborn may never have been founded; Megan never would have been assigned as my partner; Petra might never have been sculpted. I thought about the wyrmling Cather, one of the few other creatures out there who’d still remember the time we’d lost. I imagined the two of us sitting in a bar somewhere, reminiscing about a time that only the two of us knew about. To say my heart sank would be the understatement of the century. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was Petra. Whether we were fighting side-by-side or playing Diablo III, it had been so precious. And now I stood to lose all that because some fucktard demonic intelligence was bored.

  No.

  I ground my teeth and looked around at the nothingness in my surroundings. Maybe I couldn’t stop the demon; there wasn’t anything to fight. But the Entropic Glass was right in front of me, tangible and, more important, unguarded. Either the demon was cocky or it had severely underestimated me. I waited until the hourglass brightened and then rushed over to it. “What are you doing?” the demon demanded. “Get away from that!”