by Jacob Whaler
Finally, Matt’s eyes focus on his dad. Tears well up. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you in time, Dad. I should have stayed and healed you. But it’s not too late. You can come back with me. We can fight together.”
Kent looks down at the golden line on the floor. “When I crossed this threshold and walked out into the courtyard, I suddenly remembered everything from before.”
“So you know about how I left you to go after Jessica?”
Kent’s eyes come back up. “Son, you did the right thing.”
“Dad, will you come back with me?”
“I’m where I need to be now.”
“But Dad, I need you.”
“Matt, I’m needed here. There’s so much to learn. So much to do. So much magnificent work. I can’t wait.” He turns and glances behind him. “And there’s more.”
A beautiful young woman with black hair runs to them across the courtyard.
Turning, Kent bends down and engulfs her in his arms, lifting her body off the ground before setting her down beside him.
She looks up into his eyes and pulls his head down close to hers. “My Kent.” she says, and presses her lips to his.
Matt takes a step back, watching his mom and dad share a tender moment.
As their lips part, Matt’s mom gazes up at him.
“Matt-chan.”
“Mom,” Matt says. “It’s been so long.”
Tears roll down his cheeks as she embraces him. This time, Matt knows it really is his mother. For the first time since that day on the beach with his parents when he was a young boy, his world is complete.
“I know it’s been hard on you,” she says, with no hint of a Japanese accent. “But you’re strong. And you’re needed where you are.” She slips an arm around Kent’s waist. He drops his arm onto her shoulders. “We’ll meet you here when you’re done and it’s time for you to come.”
“It all worked out just as it should.” Kent shrugs and smiles. “I’ll be staying. But not you. You have to go back to Jessica.”
Before Matt’s eyes, Kent’s face and body change to that of a young man in his mid-twenties, close to Matt’s age, matching the look of his mom.
Matt can’t help himself. He moves into the courtyard and puts one arm around his mom and another around his dad. The three of them stand for a long time, saying nothing, hugging tightly.
At last, they are a family again. Tears of joy fall like spring rain.
A warm hand comes to rest on Matt’s shoulder, and he looks at the Woman and the Man, standing next to them in the courtyard. He hears the Woman’s voice in his mind.
Remember this place. Now you must go.
Matt nods and closes his eyes, hugging his mom and dad one more time. The brilliant light begins to fade.
Warm hands press against his back.
When he opens his eyes, he’s kneeling down, looking at the body of his dad, tears dripping from his face.
But something is wrong.
The body is bouncing up and down. Great red gashes rip and tear across the torso and legs. It’s quickly becoming a mess of blood, bone and raw flesh.
A high-pitched shriek rains down on him, drawing his gaze up.
Ryzaard stands a few meters away, flanked by soldiers in black armor on each side. With their pulse rifles raised, they fire a barrage of projectiles down on Kent’s body.
Jessica crouches behind Matt, her arms tightly wrapped around his chest, screaming just inches from his ear.
A blue light envelopes them both. It ripples as the pulse projectiles trace lines across its surface.
A voice yells behind him. “Take care, son. I’m on my way to see your dad!”
As Matt turns, he sees Jake without his sunglasses, standing up to his full height, two grenades in each hand. He tosses them on a high arc toward Ryzaard and the soldiers. As they leave his hands, dozens of pulse projectiles bite into his body, throwing him to the ground.
The grenades hit the grass just behind Ryzaard.
A blinding flash fills Matt’s whole field of vision.
CHAPTER 137
For the first time, Little John feels a disturbance around him. It’s only a slight ripple, but enough to draw his attention. Fighting back a raging current of pain, he rolls his body into a cannonball, curls arms around knees, and waits for the next burst of clarity so he can investigate.
When it comes, he releases his grip and rides the wave of momentum pushing him into a roll. Like a hundred times before, his arms and legs fling out into a spread eagle, and he executes a 180 degree back flip.
And sees them.
Two hulking black creatures with heads like great white sharks.
They float in space not far away, identical to the creature that rose up out of the darkness and swallowed him after Ryzaard attached the implant and sent Little John’s mind to this hellish alternate reality where emotions like pain and fear take on a physical manifestation like the monster head and the worm.
His stomach sickens when he sees the two bodies sticking out of the mouths of the beasts.
It’s clear what Ryzaard is doing. Collecting more souls to prey on, more tools of his Abomination.
Little John tries not to think about the terror and torment filling the hearts of these two victims. For now, all they can do is endure in a darkness devoid of hope, filled with despair and confusion.
The thought of helping them gives him new resolve. He waits patiently for the next surge of clarity.
When it comes, his focus is drawn to the worm inside his belly. He imagines its tail floating up through his throat and over his tongue, and the worm responds by doing exactly that. It passes his teeth and protrudes from his lips. By the time a meter of the worm hangs out of his mouth, he is ready to execute the plan.
Bringing his hands up, he wraps them around the slimy beast and digs in fingernails until he has a secure grip. At the same time, he bites down hard.
The worm immediately bristles. Its outer skin becomes scales of sharp metal with protruding needles. Its muscles flex like steel cables, and it fights to pull its body back inside Little John’s throat.
In spite of the pain, he keeps a strong grip on the worm and pulls it out, hand over hand, as it rips the flesh of his fingers and esophagus to shreds. When he can feel its head in his throat, two meters of the worm’s body dangle from his hands.
He’s never gone beyond this point.
Do it now, or remain a slave forever.
A fit of agony shakes his body. Nerves are on fire. The beast snaps at the inside of his mouth with knife-like fangs. Slashing. Tearing.
He keeps pulling.
As its head passes close to the back of his teeth, the creature flexes its body and darts back into his mouth to bite squarely into the soft red flesh of Little John’s tongue.
Ignoring the searing pain, he pulls on the worm and stretches his tongue out to an impossible length. The beast holds on, its teeth clamped down hard. The first strings of tissue rip away at the base of his tongue. Little by little, he keeps pulling, hands bloodied, arms trembling. Just before it exits his mouth, spikes shoot out of the creature’s head in a final attempt to stay in his body. His teeth shatter.
And then the creature’s head comes sliding out. Metal scales and needles disappear. The worm reverts to its smooth, slimy form.
A sudden looseness spreads through his body. For the first time since being thrust into this hell, his muscles relax and he can turn his head from side to side, up and down, without pain or restraint.
He is free.
Holding the creature in front of his eyes, he studies it. Twisting and wreathing, coiling and uncoiling, it looks like a night crawler on a hook, still biting into the quivering flesh of the long red tongue, dripping blood from where it’s been torn away.
With his left hand, he grasps the creature just behind the head. His right hand slides down the length of the worm’s body and stretches it out like a long rubber band, pulling it taunt until all the squirming an
d movement stops. In another few seconds, he will pull hard on each end and rip the beast apart.
But then he remembers a thought that passed through his mind hours or days ago.
The worm might be his connection to Ryzaard’s Stone through the green implant, the Abomination of his visions. If he severs that connection now, Ryzaard will be alerted back in the real world. Maybe it’s better to wait, investigate his surroundings and do what he can to rescue the other victims.
The huge burning star in front of him calls out. Releasing the grip of one hand on the tail of the worm, he reaches out to the sun. Through the depths of space, it moves closer. Great arcs of flaming gas break off from its surface. As it begins to shrink, he feels its power entering his body through the open palm of his hand.
Closing his eyes, Little John absorbs the power until it ceases to flow.
When his eyelids flutter open, the star is gone. He looks down into his hand and sees the claw-like Stone burning brightly. It’s back under his control, filled with the energy of the sun. He ties the worm around his waist like a belt, making sure the knot will hold. The creature is limp and shows no response.
With complete freedom of movement, he turns his attention to the two victims floating in space behind him.
The massive shark heads holding them in place are attached to long tails that extend down and disappear in the darkness below. Moving around to the side, he examines each of them. Their upper bodies are deep in the mouths of the heads. Rows of teeth clamp down on their chests and backs. Arms and legs shoot out at their sides, stiff as boards. An unrelenting force causes the muscles in their bodies to contract to maximum extension, without rest or change.
Little John shudders as he remembers the pain that came from that posture and the agony from fighting against it and rolling up into a ball.
As he looks closer, the horror hits him.
Both of them are children, one a boy in his early teens, the other a small girl not more than six. Her tiny legs protrude from the mouth of the monster like a seal caught in the jaws of an orca.
First, he has to get the beasts to back off and release their grip on the kids. He floats close to the one with the boy in its mouth, carefully brings his fingertips up to its hairy lips and tries to pull them apart.
The beast twitches and bites down harder on the boy. Blood oozes from his chest. Groans of pain come from his throat.
Little John releases his fingers, and the beast relaxes.
There has to be another way.
Next, he gazes down at the long tails of the beasts and wonders what he will find at the other end. Maybe he can find a way to disengage the beasts and free the children. Able to move in any direction he wishes, he slides a hand onto each one of the tails and follows them down into the darkness like a deep sea diver. As he descends, the tails change from leathery tubes to thin metallic cables.
After hours of effort, a planet-sized sphere comes into view, barely visible against the backdrop of space. The cables lead down to the planet’s surface.
He passes through a layer of monster heads that float above the planet as far as he can see like a massive dark cloud. In every direction, billions of heads are anchored in place by long cables, as if patiently waiting to be used on other victims, others who will receive Abomination in the form of the implant.
It’s just as Little John has feared, just as he has seen in his dreams.
Ryzaard plans to spread Abomination to every man and woman in the world.
Below this layer, he enters a jungle of vertical tubes dropping down from the floating heads. It’s like swimming through an underwater kelp forest with billions of stalks. He keeps a careful grip on the two cables connected to the monsters with the children in their mouths and moves closer to the planet’s surface.
When he finally arrives at the bottom, his feet touch down on the glass-like surface. Dropping to his knees, he peers at the interior of the planet. It’s filled with spheres of luminosity and flashes of color, a chaotic mix of organic shapes held together with a network of tubes and filaments. All of it is in constant flux, alive, growing, changing. A low hum comes up through the glass. His fingers detect vibrations that coincide with movement within the planet.
It’s some kind of massive machine.
With hands still wrapped around the two lines from the children far out in space, Little John scans his surroundings. A mass of identical cables protrude from the planet’s surface like hairs on a human head, separated only by inches.
His Stone glows intensely white, leaving the afterimage of an arc welder’s flame on his retinas.
He wonders.
What if I cut the cables? Will it kill the children, or free them?
Little John takes the Stone in both hands and closes his eyes. In his mind, a six inch scalpel of pure plasma rises from its tip. Looking down at the Stone, the blade of white energy is just as he imagines it.
Let’s see what happens.
He brings the blade to the base of a random line, slides the knife through and severs the connection at the base.
Half expecting the entire forest of shark heads to turn and come darting down upon him, he looks up and squints.
But there is no response.
He pulls hard on the cut line, and there’s still no response. Taking the end of the cable, he brings it close to the hole he cut it from. Without any effort, it reattaches.
Is it worth the risk to the children?
He thinks of their agony and decides it is.
Reaching close to the planet surface, he severs both of the children’s lines. He pushes off the bottom, leaving the dangling ends of the two lines and ascends back up like a deep sea diver returning to his ship.
The dark layer of monster heads ignore him as he passes through and shoots upward, the fingers of each hand running along the smooth surface of the cables. This time he travels much faster.
On the way up, he sees two monster heads descending toward him on the same lines and knows they have released the children. As one of the heads move past him, he readies the Stone blade, twists and slices at a needle-like fang that protrudes from the side of its mouth. A twelve-inch section of the tooth falls away and he grabs it with his free hand. There is no reaction, and the monsters fall away below him on a trajectory down to the planet. He tucks the dagger-tooth into the worm belt. It might come in handy later.
When he gets back to the children, his heart nearly bursts with pity. For the first time, he sees from the outside the agony he suffered.
Each of them floats in a spread eagle with their arms and legs splayed out in the shape of a large X. Each endures a worm as thick as a wrist crammed down their throats. The flesh of the children’s mouths is torn and bleeding. The beasts writhe visibly within their bellies. Their half-lidded eyes tell of pain beyond comprehension.
Yet Little John comprehends it.
He comforts himself by knowing that he has lessened their suffering by some small amount by ridding them of the monsters that held them in vise-like jaws.
Watching their faces from the front, he waits for the surge of awareness that always comes.
He feels it approaching.
Their eyes shoot open. They struggle for breath. Their arms and legs shake uncontrollably.
And they both see him.
He opens his lips to speak. Only unintelligible noises come out of his mouth-without-a-tongue.
Incredibly, he hears words in his mind from one of the children.
You want to help us, but you cannot speak.
Little John looks from the girl to the boy, nodding his head.
Please, think your words, and I will speak them. All of us will hear.
Little John focuses on the boy.
He is Leo. My name is Yarah.
And your name is Little John.
Little John unties the worm from around his waist and holds it up in front of their eyes.
You had one inside of you. You took it out. You want to take ours o
ut.
Staring down at the two children, tears well up in Little John’s eyes.
It will make us hurt more than we can imagine.
Do we trust you?
Little John watches the two children carry on a conversation in their heads. He has no idea what they are saying. All he can see is their eyes moving slowly from side to side.
Yarah’s eyes drift back to Little John, dark pools of agony. For a brief moment, he sees a flash of fear.
Do it.
CHAPTER 138
The white flash from the grenades fades from his eyes, and Matt looks up. He can feel Jessica’s arms around his waist.
Ryzaard stands in exactly the same spot, a thin blue light clinging to his body.
A half dozen soldiers are sprawled out on the ground at his feet, hands on their eyes, moaning from pain, their faces blackened.
Ryzaard opens his tweed jacket.
Matt sees five Stones.
Ryzaard stares down at him for a long time. “So, you think you’re indestructible?”
“I’ve learned a lot in the last few days,” Matt says.
“But your father is dead.” Ryzaard shoots two black pulses into the remnants of Kent’s body only a few feet from Matt. “And so is his loyal sidekick.”
Matt says nothing, and stands up on his feet, reaching behind and bringing Jessica up with him.
The blue skin on Matt’s body shines in the brilliant sun.
“You’re good at protecting yourself. Not so good at protecting others.” Ryzaard returns the Stone in his hand to the leather harness and draws the two new ones out, holding them on upturned palms. “You left the two children here, unprotected. What was I to do?”
Ryzaard’s fingers slowly curl around both Stones.
Two blasts of black lighting burst out, one from each Stone, arc over Matt’s head and strike straight down at him and Jessica. The blue aura flashes around them. Sparks fly from the point of impact, but they are unscathed.
Without another word, Ryzaard vanishes.
CHAPTER 139
How can I do this to them?
