by JM Guillen
There is a significant shift in Rationality five meters below us, thirty-five meters to the northwest. As she linked, Anya placed a marker over my field of vision.
Coming toward us? Wyatt plunked a couple of his keys and then peered in the direction of the marker himself.
It appears to be stationary; however it is along our general trajectory.
It’s a trap of some kind. I looked from Anya to Wyatt and then accessed the dossier in my Crown. I knew that some of the building schematics had been provided by Liaison Stone, I just hoped…
Yes.
I grinned as I linked, We have this entire floor and several lower levels on blueprints in the dossier.
I’m looking at that now, Wyatt mused. Unless I miss my guess, our friends are planning some kinda party for us as soon as we get into the elevator.
Perhaps. I double checked the blueprint. I’d say they have something set up on the floor beneath us. Maybe they plan on dabbling in some kind of Irrational fuckery while we’re in the elevator and on our way down. I paused. Nice enclosed space, nowhere for us to run…
Local transmissions indicate that there is a rendezvous point being set, outside the elevator, one floor beneath us. Anya’s head twitched just a touch. They seem to be awaiting a single individual to get into position.
I don’t think this is a party we want to attend. I glanced at Wyatt. What do you think about this instead? I patched them both a quick image of the blueprints, highlighting a stairwell back the way we had come.
I still don’t love it, Hoss. There’s only so many ways down, and it’s easy for them to have them all covered.
Before I could respond, Anya burst into our minds. Rationality negative two! Her link stabbed into me, sharp with urgent purpose. Forty-five meters away, back in the direction we came! She placed a second reticule over my vision, showing the location squarely behind us, past the two large, double doors.
In that moment, it made sense to me. This was obviously the individual they wanted in position.
Not many people deal with supernatural threats well. I frowned, glancing from Anya to Wyatt.
Right. Wyatt spat on the pristine floor. Most folk’d take one look at an eldritch horror, an’ then beat feet the other way.
In this case, running away would take us squarely to the elevator. Then, one floor down, the true trap would be sprung.
I shared a long look with Wyatt, watching him come to a similar conclusion. Then I nodded to him. Toward it, right?
A rueful grin spread across his face as he nodded. You got it, Hoss.
We weren’t most folk, after all.
I kicked the Adept into full gear, held my disruptor in my right hand and one of my katanas in my left.
Even though I had cursed when a certain Raptor-class-Asset-who-shall-not-be-named had disintegrated my second disruptor pistol, I found that I rather enjoyed using the sword and gun combo. It allowed me a kind of fluidity that I never had when I wielded both katanas or both pistols.
Negative two is holding. Anya’s link came quietly but warily. Her blue eyes flicked to me, and then resumed scanning her interface.
I’ll take point.
Wyatt nodded as I linked.
I trotted down the hallway.
My cadre didn’t let me get nearly as far this time. At about fifteen steps ahead, they started moving along with me, Wyatt’s tangler already whining.
It’s not congruent. I heard the concern in Anya’s tone. It’s more than just blips in base Rationality, it’s as if there is a blockag—
The double doors exploded off their hinges flying down the hallway before she finished linking.
I scarcely had the nano-second it took to engage the Spectre to allow one door to blow through my ethereal body.
Spiking! Anya’s cry made my heart pound, even as I reclaimed solidity. Rationality negative five… negative nine…
“Fuck.” My eyes widened as I took a step backward.
I gaped at what had just burst through the doorframe, wreathed in swirling mist; I had never seen anything like it.
A feminine figure, clothed only in a diaphanous, wrap-around skirt that flowed as if caught in the current of a stream, posed there. Gracefully long and thin, the legs that showed beneath the incredible skirt bent backward at the knee.
Christ above! For all of its apparent blasphemy, Wyatt’s link filled my mind with horrified awe.
As the creature stepped closer, I could make out more details through the unnatural mist. Bare-breasted and buxom, her flesh wrapped with razor wire that writhed like a live thing, slicing into her even as we watched. Her skin ran scarlet with blood even as her huge eyes blazed with hatred. Sixteen centimeters long, her wicked fingernails looked more like eagle talons.
I think this one’s yours, Hoss. She looks like your kind of girl. I felt the legitimate horror in his link as the woman raised an obsidian blade in one hand, her white-blonde hair floating in a non-existent wind.
Um... okay.
She screamed, her jaw malforming into a predator’s snarl. It echoed into a sound of desolation, of hopelessness. Around her, arcane shapes burst into existence, flaring with a red and hateful light before fading out of view again.
Before I could breathe, the creature had launched herself toward me, raising her curved blade high over her face. The sharp wire sliced into her as she moved, and blood poured off her in rivulets.
If she felt the pain, she didn’t show it.
“Fuck!” The word burst from my lips as I raised my own blade to meet hers, shocked by how quickly she had closed the distance.
Her wide blade cleaved my katana in half, slicing the Facility-augmented steel as if it had been made of nothing more than rubber.
I scarcely dodged out of the way, rolling to the ground.
“What is it about today?” I screeched, dropping the now useless hilt.
I engaged the Spectre, dodging left as I did, reaching behind myself to pull my second blade. I couldn’t afford to keep losing weapons, but if I could just get behind—
She caught. My. Incorporeal. Foot.
I brilliantly said something like, “Urp!” as the Irrational creature grabbed me, my ankle solid as stone.
With a strength I never would have expected her slender arms to have, she swung my somehow physical form in a full circle around her head before smashing me into the side of the hallway.
Had the Spectre never engaged?
I didn’t have time to think about such things however. What with the orchestra of exploding sunbursts in my head and the sharp stabbing of agony through my neck and shoulders, I felt a bit addled.
I slumped to the floor and everything grew dim.
Michael! I felt the desperation in Anya’s link, but the connection slipped away from me. The entire world slipped away from me, like water through my fingers.
Then shadows, sharp and sweet, slipped silently across my mind.
18
Michael! Get up!
I didn’t recognize the voice in my head but immediately gasped. My Crown lit up, almost overwhelmed by the heart-pounding explosion of energy that coursed through my veins.
As if I’d taken a shot of lightning, neat.
I sat up with a start and looked around.
You need to get moving. Rachel’s link sounded intent, focused. I don’t think your boy is going to get out of this one by himself.
I blinked and gazed down the passageway.
How long had I been out? Perhaps only a few moments, but it had been long enough for Wyatt and Anya to find themselves pushed down the hallway, away from where I’d had the vinegar knocked out of me.
WHUF. Wyatt fired the tangler directly in front of the bizarre she-demon, and shimmering waves of hellish heat appeared in the air between them.
I dunno. Shakily, I stood. Looks like he’s doing all right to me. I squinted. It looks like… Does Anya have a gun?
Rachel ignored my astonishment. I can dull your pain processes, but you’re
going to have to watch it, cowboy. You landed poorly. You tore a rotator cuff.
I think I tore my spine in two. Rolling my neck, I felt the pain fade as Rachel tasked my viral mecha. Thanks, Rach.
You can thank me by not dying. Her link became surly, her go-to response to stress…
As well as Asset stupidity, coincidentally enough.
Nice to know you care. I smiled, knowing she would feel it over the link.
Then I ran at the creature.
I had no plan, but I hoped desperately I would come up with something in the five steps or so before I grappled with the Razor Princess of Despair. Perhaps if I leapt up at her and got my pistol close to her head…
Michael! Anya’s link burst in my mind, sudden and intense. The Irrationality variance is stronger in the hallway behind us! Go back the way we came!
I stopped in mid-stride. Hadn’t she said that the enemy had waited for someone to be in place before they sprung their little trap?
Wyatt linked, There’s got to be an Irrat there, someone who summoned this she-beast.
I turned. Hold her as long as you can, Wyatt.
I think I already have, Hoss. He keyed something on his keyboard, his gaze intent on the creature. She’s somehow—
Do better. I started sprinting in the other direction. I got a ’Rat to kill.
I reengaged the Spectre.
The passageway bent just as I remembered, past the now-blasted double doors. The air held the faint scent of jasmine and blood, something certainly inherent to this particular aberration.
A lone man, dressed in what I could only describe as flowing, traditional Chinese robes waited for me. He stood on one foot, his other leg extended to the side. A small stick of incense wafted pale smoke above his left hand.
“Hey.” I panted, a touch out of breath.
The man did not respond. His eyes remained closed as if meditating, and his lips moved as he whispered unintelligible words.
The Rationality variance is rippling, Michael. The source is three meters in front of you.
I see him.
The summoned creature roared her displeasure again, and I vaguely hoped that Wyatt had just torn the creature a new asshole.
I leapt toward the Irrat and brought my pistol to bear beneath his chin.
As I phased back into existence, his eyes opened and gazed squarely at me, serene.
Solid green, his eyes held the emerald of a thousand miles of forest. No white marred the purity of color, no iris, simply an eternity of viridian blankness.
“You want to call off your dog now.” I whispered, deadly quiet.
“My soul is secure.” The man’s voice came from a thousand miles away as he gazed placidly at me, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “Is yours, Facility coward?”
Fuck. A zealot.
Easily the worst kind of Irrational. It seemed like the moment you gave some idiot reality-shaping powers, suddenly they claimed to be holy, another chosen one.
“I don’t have time to play Irrational roulette, Chuckles.” I thumbed the switch on my pistol, letting it build its force into an audible hum. “Choose.”
“No.” His smile infuriated me. “This must be your choice.”
Distant thunder rumbled in my veins at the look in the man’s eye. My scalp itched.
“Fine by me.” I hardened my eyes and pulled the trigger, painting the wall behind him with blood and bone.
From down the hallway, a horrendous TWANG echoed, rippling through the air like the warbling of a kilometer-long steel cable.
I heard the sound, but it sounded as if it came from across the ocean. For a moment, I stood, entranced by the man’s blood writing ancient, primal truths all across the wall. An impossible distance away, I heard a low growl.
When the twanging came again, only louder, I started.
Hoss. Wyatt’s concern bled through the link. I need you back here.
Roger that. I took one last look at the Irrat’s corpse and the symphony of blood, then sprinted back toward my cadre.
What I saw confused me.
Oh. Oh fuck, I linked as I came upon the razor wire on the floor, broken and covered with blood. Her shattered obsidian blade lay next to the bloody metal.
The wires broke the moment you restored a portion of baseline Rationality, Michael. Anya held one of the Sadhana goon’s MK 23s and looked like she knew how to use it.
WHUF.
The aberration stood before Wyatt, her hand over her left breast and looked down where he had impaled her with a spike. As I watched, the bloody wounds where the wire had bound her healed right before my eyes.
Fuck. I swore to myself, remembering the Irrat’s calm smile. If the wire had bound the creature somehow, kept it under control…
“Come on, you bitch,” Wyatt spat as he stared at the creature. His fingers flew across his keyboard as if trying to win a golden fiddle off the devil. “Time to lay the fuck down.”
I saw the spike poke partially out of the creature’s back. A thin rime of white frost spread around it, greedily covering her flesh in a widening ring.
The creature stood stock still, gazing down at her chest as she screeched with outrage and horror.
I had to admire Wyatt. He never stopped inputting his calculations as the demonic thing loomed over him. He never blinked.
It didn’t matter how I made fun of his Alabamian heritage, Wyatt truly one of the most brilliant men I knew.
The lyrics to “The Devil Went down to Georgia” rambled in my mind at the thought of that golden fiddle: I’ll take that bet, and you’re gonna regret, ’cause I’m the best that’s ever been.
What? Anya actually looked over to me.
Nothing.
For a second, I actually thought he might pull it off. But then the creature screamed at Wyatt, and the thin coating of frost, now over half of its chest, began to recede.
He stared blankly, madly typing.
The creature reached for the spike and worked it out of her flesh. She took a step forward, her eyes burning with horrific desire.
She’s fighting it somehow. Wyatt’s link held equal parts anger and amazement.
It is possible that this creature is a Greater Aberration? Anya took a step backward, keeping the automatic pistol pointed at the thing.
You’re kidding me. The last time we had encountered anything like that, we had been near the Broodwell of Dhire Lith.
Axiomatic anchoring would explain its dismissal of Bishop’s packet as well.
Shit. If this horror could anchor axioms around itself, then our packets would be useless. We wouldn’t be much more effective against it than average soldiers.
I can’t hack something that anchors. Wyatt took a step back, his hands still pounding out equations. I’m open to new ideas.
Copy that. Time for my original not-quite-existent plan. I’m on it.
I drew my disruptor and kicked the Adept on. Sprinting toward the creature, I stretched forth my hands, reaching for her floating, silken hair.
Hoss? What the fuck are you doing?
I ignored him. In my plan, I would leap up and land squarely on her shoulders, my legs around her neck. The creature would be thrown off balance. I would fire my weapon, point blank straight at her skull, and down she’d go.
At that range, it would be difficult for even yon beastie to anchor my disruptor’s effects before it splattered her face against the wall.
It would be over in moments.
Easy.
I bet you didn’t know it, but I’m a fiddle player too! In the moment, I felt more like a rodeo cowboy, and the thought made me grin. Isn’t that what Rachel had called me? Cowboy?
Fiddle player? Confusion washed through Anya’s link.
I leapt.
After that, nothing went as I’d planned.
The Irrational horror didn’t stumble from my landing, didn’t even shift her footing.
Instead, she reached for me, arms scratching wildly even as I fired the disrupto
r I held against her skull, just behind her ear.
I might as well have hit her with a feather pillow.
I fired again and again, but the creature just tossed her head, as if shaking away a gnat.
Hoss! I scarcely had time to look up at Wyatt, but I heard his tangler’s WHUF and the automatic bark of Anya’s weapon.
Fall back! My wild words rambled as the creature raked long, yellowed claws along my right leg, trying to grasp me as I squirmed. I’ll hold her here!
Somehow.
The creature swung her arms, knocking the disruptor from my hand.
Fuck! Gripping her tightly with my thighs, I clutched at anything I could reach, finding an ear, barely keeping from falling off her shoulders.
Her claws raked at me, gaining purchase on my leg as she tried to pull me loose.
Hoss, there’s a door to the side. Get over here as soon as you can.
Roger that! It seemed like that would happen pretty quickly whether I wanted it to or not. This bucking bronco ride seemed pretty wild.
Time to end this party.
I managed to draw my katana while the aberration clawed at me again. It seemed like an obvious choice, even though she had shattered my other one. After all, a sharp piece of metal is an argument in and of itself; I didn’t need to change physics to use it.
Or to plunge it into her eye.
The wet cleaving sensation sounded sickeningly visceral as the blade slid into the orb.
The creature immediately went mad.
Her scream hammered me with horror and rage. She wrapped thin fingers around my leg.
Again I found myself airborne, hurtling down the hallway.
I kept hold of my blade somehow as I careened wildly through the air, and it pulled free with a spray of dark, sweet-smelling blood.
Agony exploded through me as I landed in a bone-jarring heap by my disruptor, which I wrapped my hand around in relief.
Michael! Anya’s link drizzled panic in my mind. Come on!
As the aberration slapped one hand over its eye and cawed horrifically, Anya dragged me through a mahogany double door off to the left.
Fiddle player? Wyatt chuckled without looking up, still working out something on his keyboard. The blue lens over his eye swam with numerics.
