The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  The fourth man was gone. He too had run out the back door.

  God dammit.

  Michael, I’m sending Wyatt in. There are some odd readings out here. I’m trying to make sense of them.

  Be careful, Preceptor. I disengaged the Wraith.

  “Looks clear.” Wyatt stepped into the room. He walked across the way and shut the door. Then he placed a spike on our side of the far door.

  WHUF.

  “Just in case?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

  Wyatt gave a devious grin. “It’s ’nother handy use for stasis spikes. Some ’Rat walks in and suddenly the hallway is blocked. No one will be coming this way for a bit.”

  I made a momentary adjustment to my untasked mecha, fumbling them as best I could. Moments later, soothing painkillers entered my veins.

  We have a target down. Injured, but not dead. I nodded to where the man lay groaning on the floor.

  Wyatt nodded once and walked toward the man. He kicked the machine gun out of reach and pulled the mask from his face.

  “Mornin’ buddy.” He glanced over at the window. “Or evenin’. What-the-hell-ever.”

  “Who—?” There were flecks of blood on the man’s lips. His eyes were wide as his gaze went between Wyatt and me. He was gasping for air. “You’re… them. Oh. Oh, God.” He looked as if he might start to cry.

  Wyatt gave the man his friendliest smile and set the mask back where it had been. The Irrat took a deep gulp of air.

  “Now. We ain’t that bad. Just looking for some answers is all.” He looked about. “Seems like there’s only one left who can give us those.”

  The man’s voice was a reedy whisper. “No. No answers for you. They’ll—” The man shut his mouth, as if realizing something.

  I gave the man a dark look. “You assume we won’t do worse.” I glanced over my shoulder at the man whose throat I had opened. “That is a dangerous assumption.”

  “I…” The man was trying to get a grasp on himself. “I know you’ll do whatever you feel is necessary, Michael Bishop.”

  A chill ran down my back at the calm certainty in the man’s voice. The world seemed to bend around me just a touch. The room smelled like rancid meat.

  You have a small spike in ambient Irrationality within that room. Anya’s voice was matter of fact. You are currently at negative one Rationality.

  Wyatt knocked the man in the side of the head. “Knock that shit off. You’re not doing anything that we haven’t seen a thousand times before.”

  I smiled, all charm. “The thing is this is probably your last day on the job unless we give you a hand.” I pushed at the man’s side. His clothing was sticky with blood. “So whoever you are protecting, he’s not really going to be able to do that much for you. On the other hand,” I shrugged, “a Facility hospital might be better than dead.”

  The man laughed. It was a winding, meandering laugh, made all the stranger by the gas mask.

  “I’ve known men who got re-educated, spook. They weren’t the same.” He coughed then, wet and rasping. “Seems like I’m dead here on the floor, or I go with a couple of black suits and get gentled. Then my gift is dead inside me, and I’m just another blind idiot.” He coughed again. “No. I’m a believer, asshole. I’ll die doing what’s right.”

  Watch it up here, Bishop. We have a zealot. He won’t be giving us shit.

  Agreed.

  This was often the case. Sometimes, it seemed as if all Irrats were the same. Give some hillbilly reality-shaping powers, and it became a religious experience. I could only try to convince this one that he wasn’t among God’s chosen.

  I sighed. “Last chance, friend. We detected irregular readings in the Mojave Desert. They were dangerous and executed with precision. Following up on those led us here. Do you have any information for us?”

  Even though I couldn’t see his face, the smile was in his voice. “Eat shit. You’ll know soon enough. I’ll die a free man.”

  I exchanged a look with my best friend and nodded.

  “That you will.” Wyatt pulled the mask from his face and hurled it across the room. Parts of it shattered against the wall. Almost immediately upon breathing the air, the man began to gasp.

  “It was your call, sir.” I nodded at him as he sank to the ground.

  We’re coming back, Anya. I glanced at my system time. We had three hours forty-eight minutes remaining.

  Copy that, Michael. I hated the way the secondary comm made the link feel so heavy and slow. I have some new data here.

  When Wyatt and I stepped back into the hallway, Anya seemed pleased with herself. “It’s as if they’ve built a new technology. It was axiomatically locked. Similar to the door at the silo.”

  Obviously, I had missed something. “What?”

  “The blue door.” She rested her hand against it. “I was getting odd readings in this spot. I thought they might be originating behind the door, but they weren’t. Someone has literally altered the way mass and motion function in the very small space of this door. It’s a lock of sorts.”

  “An axiomatic lock?” That was interesting.

  “Anyone could open it who knew how it had been done.”

  My smile grew wider as she spoke. I wondered if I would ever get used to hearing her speak out loud.

  “You didn’t even need me this time, princess.” Wyatt teased. “Next thing you know, you’ll be taking up the katanas and the tangler yourself.”

  She gave him an odd look. “I don’t have the requisite slot space, Wyatt. The Preceptor packet is a permanent installation—”

  He laughed. “Christ, Anya. This never gets old.”

  I cut in. “Do you know what’s behind the door?”

  She shook her head. “Dossier parameters indicate that I am to allow for escort and focus on my readings. Exploration without my cadre seems unwise, at best.”

  I smiled at her. “Fair enough.” I gave Wyatt a glance. “Shall we see what was important enough to try and keep this door closed?”

  He grinned and powered up Rosie. “Seems reasonable.”

  I reached for the door handle. It was still cold. As it turned in my hand, I had a sudden thought.

  “Let’s be careful. Our last two doors have led to different topias.”

  “It’s like an Irrat travel agency.” Wyatt chuckled. “Maybe we can collect souvenirs.”

  “I already have a bullet hole in my shoulder. That’s enough for me.” I gently pushed at the door. It slowly swung inward, almost ominously.

  I nodded at Wyatt and then at Anya, and I stepped into the room.

  19

  The first thing I noticed about the room was the overwhelming, horrific scent. Anya stepped up next to me, her fingers plucking and twitching.

  “Nothing new. The axioms within are the same.”

  “Good to know.”

  Inside, there were only twisted shadows and murmurs in the darkness. I reached behind me and opened the door completely, letting the light of the hallway splash into the room. From the doorway, all we could make out were the looming shadows of tall, cylindrical things scattered across the room. Some of them gave off the faintest bit of light.

  The room absolutely reeked. It was an earthy, sour scent that cloyed.

  “Oh, oh God!” Wyatt waved a hand in the air, as if he could fan it away, but it persisted.

  If there were people inside, they would have known about our intrusion by the light from the moment we cracked the door, making Wyatt’s interjections inconsequential. As I hadn’t been greeted by gunfire already, I felt relatively safe.

  “I’m switching to optics.” I accessed the infra- and ultra-spectrums through my Crown. As the data synched with my visual cortex, I blinked, trying to get things in focus.

  “Understood.” Wyatt powered the tangler back up, and the three of us crept into the room.

  Once inside, the shadowed cylinders became far easier to make out. They were metallic and uniform in size. On closer inspection though, I real
ized that they had a thick glass door in one side. Most were dark, but toward the center of the room, several of them shone with an odd inner light.

  “Do you hear that?” Wyatt’s voice was a sharp whisper. “It sounds like wet breathing.”

  I hadn’t heard it, but now that he brought it to my attention, I did. He was right. It was like the great inhale of some huge creature, looming in the darkness.

  “It’s like a bellows.” I looked up. My optics were having a hard time staying focused, but it seemed like it was in front of us. The more I looked, however, the more my visual readout seemed to jump and glitch.

  “Can you see anything?” Wyatt sounded irritated. He must have been having the same experience.

  “Optics aren’t working well. Must be some kind of interference. I’m altering my parameters.” No sooner had I begun cycling through the Crown’s settings than I saw it— a murky, somewhat circular area on the floor, hidden in the gloom.

  A liquid? From the way it seemed to shift and bubble, it might be.

  Wyatt walked around one of the cylinder doors. Shielding with his hand he peered into the soft, greenish glow.

  “It’s—” His eyes were wide. “There’s a person in here.”

  Anya and I stepped around to look. Sure enough, the vat was filled with what seemed like a thick, gel of some kind. From below the woman, a greenish light illuminated her naked form. Tubes ran into her nose, ears, and several points on her arms.

  Anya took her readings. “I can’t say what all of this is, but—”

  “I can.” I could hear the horror in my whisper. “Look. Look in the liquid.”

  As one, we all peered into the metallic cylinder. Wyatt and Anya saw what I had seen at the exact same moment. I saw the cold horror drift into Wyatt’s eyes; I watched as Anya’s breath caught.

  “Oh. Oh, fuck me.” Wyatt’s tone held the heavy weariness of despair. I watched him deflate just a touch.

  Inside the cylinder, swimming in the goo, were dozens, hundreds of pitch-black larvae, the largest no bigger than an earthworm. They undulated in the liquid, some of them winding around each other, forming impossible bodies before releasing and joining up with others.

  As I watched, a thick strand swam out from the woman’s nose.

  “She’s not the only one.” Wyatt peered into the gloom, looking at the other cylinders. “There are people in several of these.”

  “I’m reading an odd spike. It’s small, but—” Anya looked behind me. “Michael.”

  I turned and looked the woman we had first seen. Her black hair floated around her in the liquid, and her eyes were open. Open, aware, and filled with an alien blackness.

  She screamed.

  The sound was muffled, but it rippled into oddly shaped bubbles within the liquid. It was something I felt as much as I heard, a weight in my mind. The woman’s eyes were huge and dark. I couldn’t see any white within them.

  “Rationality negative two.” Anya looked at me. “That’s from the ambient Rationality, mind you. We were already sub-Rational.” She paused. “Negative three.”

  Then, the world around us rippled, undulated like a serpent.

  “Fuck!” Wyatt yelled as a dark tentacle writhed out of the gloom. I spun and saw it, all shadow and talon, rising from the shrouded center of the room. The eyeless, knotted strands of corded tendrils ended with wicked hooks or small, hungry suckers.

  He stumbled backward in a blind panic and fell against another of the cylinders. Within it floated a naked, Asian man with hauntingly pale skin.

  The moment Wyatt slammed against his small chamber, the man’s eyes opened. Like the woman’s, they were orbs of haunted midnight.

  The man’s mouth opened in a feral cry that bubbled through the liquid and sliced at my mind.

  I stepped toward the center of the room, pulling the katana off my back. Almost immediately, another pair of the hungry, shining tendrils appeared in the darkness. I swung with one of my blades but felt nothing.

  They were gone.

  It was the liquid in the center of the room, a viscous, bubbling pool. As I stepped closer, I could see that the tubes that ran from the cylinders all ended in the foul-smelling liquid.

  I could hear the Vyriim in my mind like the buzzing of furious hornets over the whispers of the long mad.

  “Negative five, gentlemen.” Anya’s voice grew tight.

  The woman and the man were still screaming; gurgling cries of anger and horror all rolled into one. I glanced at Anya, and then at the Irrats.

  “Can we shut them up?” Wyatt glanced at the odd dials and switches at the base of the male’s cylinder even as he watched the shadows.

  “We have no way of knowing what these do, Wyatt.” Anya was checking her readings.

  Then, one of the cold, hooked tentacles reached for me from the brine. I leapt back, swinging both katanas, but missed. As I watched that one, a second swiped at my leg, and I felt the hooks tear through the fabric of my slacks.

  “Fuck!” It was torture and deep, unreasoning terror. I cried out, rolling away from the tentacle even as it tried to curl around my leg.

  Engaging the Wraith. I had already begun the process as I linked.

  “Oh, fuck this.” The high-pitched whine of the tangler amped up, and I lunged again for the place in the shadows where the tentacle had just been.

  Again nothing.

  My leg throbbed in agony where those hooks had carved into my leg, sending coldness into my body. My heart thundered with horror as I wondered if those hooks had injected me with larvae.

  No time.

  I could feel the aberration laughing, mocking us. It was like knives in my mind.

  “I’ll stop her. You want to move, Anya,” Wyatt’s voice was gruff. I heard him typing. “Over here.”

  Then, WHUF.

  I didn’t even turn and look. I had eyes only for those strands of coiled darkness. I watched, my blades held high.

  Then I heard the woman’s scream.

  It changed in pitch, from rage to primordial fear. Wyatt keyed something up, his fingers flying. As he did, her screams choked off, liquid and wet.

  I knew I didn’t want to see what was happening. I had seen Wyatt boil blood, reduce the water in bodies to absolute zero, or force bones into a gaseous state. He was taking care of business; that was all.

  As the woman’s cries choked off, however, I saw the briny pool ripple; I felt the muttering in the back of my mind shatter into angry shards.

  Wyatt, that may not have been—

  I hadn’t even finished my link when the aberration exploded from the brine. It splashed its stinking filth across us.

  Much larger than the Vyriim we had seen before, it dragged itself from the pool and swam into the air, a vaguely squid-shaped mass of bundled tentacles with horrific grace. It screamed into our minds.

  With less than a thought, the Adept was already in play. I tumbled across the floor, aiming to be directly beneath the bundled mass. Perhaps if I struck at its center with my blades—

  But it was already moving, arcing through the air like some terrible denizen of the deep ocean. It writhed through the air with a few of the tentacles breaking off, forming smaller clusters before rejoining the whole.

  With an urgent intensity, it bore down on Wyatt, dozens of hungry, writhing tendrils.

  He didn’t have a chance.

  I watched in horror as one tentacle wrapped around his waist and two more grabbed a leg.

  You can fuck right off! I could feel fury and unreasoning panic in his link. The tangler whirred, and then it went off.

  WHUF. WHUF. WHUF. One of the spikes flew wild, piercing the side of another glass and metal cylinder. Wyatt’s link devolved into mental anguish as the barbed tentacles shredded both clothing and flesh.

  Then it swam back toward the pool of bubbling brine, dragging Wyatt along with it.

  I could feel the adrenaline in his body, the agony of the hooks, and the terror of death.

  Stil
l beneath the Wraith, I leapt forward, blades flashing. I couldn’t possibly reach the tentacles that held Wyatt, but I sliced squarely through another one, my blades cutting cleanly. A yellowish ichor splashed against the floor, and the severed tentacle continued to writhe, undulating where it lay.

  In my mind, the creature screamed. Its body turned toward me, several tendrils hungrily seeking.

  I had felt before that the aberrations could sense me through the Wraith, and I still wasn’t certain how that was possible. Now, however, when the creature turned toward me, it didn’t behave as if it immediately sensed me.

  Instead, it focused on Anya, swarming toward her, appendages hungrily writhing.

  No! I spun toward it, slicing as I came. Three more of the aberrant tentacles fell before my blade, spraying a mist of otherworldly viscera.

  I was swinging again when I felt Anya’s scream through my crown, like shards of ice, cutting me to the quick.

  Michael! The link carried with it shock and sensation. I could feel the pain as it wrapped itself around her, as it shredded part of her tactical gear and the skin on her arms and legs. The awareness was crushing, and I was horrified to realize that the hooks had a terrible purpose:

  They shredded any barrier between the creature and any orifices that it could use to claim a body as its own.

  It was all happening so quickly. My connection to my friends was so intimate that I couldn’t help but partially experience their pain and fear as smaller tendrils sought ingress to their bodies. I could hear Wyatt as a slender strand snaked its way up his leg—

  No. No! No! Nooo!

  I lunged forward, attempting to reach for the tentacles that had him, but the entire tangle moved, again swimming back toward the pool of mucous. In a shining moment of clarity, I realized what was about to happen. It would retreat into the brine, dragging my friends with it into those murky depths.

  Then, they would be truly lost.

  I only had a moment to think. Anya and Wyatt were across the room from each other; I couldn’t get to both of them. Every time I struck with my blades, more tentacles seemed to sprout in their place. No, I needed something different—