Stranger Souls

by Jak Koke

  The weight on her grew unbearable, and she crumpled to the floor. Gasping for breath. None of her code worked on this system, whatever it was. Even her emergency Disconnect sequence had no effect. She tried to bring herself back into the physical world enough to actually reach with her real, flesh-and-bone hand and jack out

  No effect; her perception was firmly anchored here. She felt nothing but the constriction of breath in her chest. Pressing down on her, feeling like cold dirt on her grave as she was slowly, inexorably buried alive.

  Suddenly the faint burning sensation returned. Like someone was watching her. It was a hot itch over her skin, stronger than ever. A raw-edged scrape in the back of her throat.

  "What are you trying to do?" he asked, his tone harsh, the volume rattling her skull.

  I'm doing nothing. It's not me.

  The sensation grew, the tingling becoming burning. The burning increasing until it felt like napalm immolated her. Then it broke, like a fever, leaving only a coolness. And she noticed that a section of the floor had opened up. A swirling vortex of light and cloudy colors funneled down next to her.

  Then she heard a whisper, like a ghost in her mind. "Come." It was not Roxborough's voice. Someone else was helping her.

  What else could she do? It was suffocate or dive into the tunnel of light. She crawled, pushing herself with all her strength. Straining as she crept closer to the edge, the digital event horizon.

  A persona appeared behind her as she reached the rim—a human in a business suit, curly brown hair. It was an exact replica of the host's sculpture. His hands reached down to grab her ankles. "Alice! I will not let you take her," he yelled at the vortex. His voice was the deep resonance of Thomas Roxborough. "Why do you care about this one? Who is she?"

  But the whisper did not answer, and Jane pulled the code of her knees tight against her chest as she plunged over the tornado rim and plummeted into the vortex.

  11

  Latched to the old rusting ladder of the ancient amusement park tower, high in the baking night, he was a droplet of black ink against the darker palette of night sky. The burning smell of a summer fire drifted in the still heat as he brought the binoculars to his eyes. As he looked down upon the massive obsidian glass stone in the lake at the bottom of the hill. The black stone was veined with orichalcum, glowing brilliant gold as the powerful magic infused it with new life.

  Screams reached his ears then. Insistent, frantic screams of a lamb in human flesh. A child? Then the pleading cries went silent with the slash of an obsidian knife. A quick cut by a white-skinned human with dark hair and a beard. His smile was cruel and mocking, his eyes gleeful and drunk with power. He was familiar.

  The man held the child by the hair—a brown girl in the throes of puberty—pulling back her head so that the sanguine liquid of her life drained into a funnel. Her blood flowed down a narrow hose, a conduit from the child's neck, through the water to the obsidian stone at the bottom. Wispy, red clouds formed in the crystal-clear water at the end of the hose, billowing around the stone as the girl gave out, her gurgling cry dying in her throat.

  Watching from high above, he felt the knife as if it had struck him instead of the child. A searing pain across his neck, a choking spurt of blood gushing to fill his throat. Before .. .

  He woke, shooting up to a sitting position in his clinic bed. The cold, distant lights of the machinery along the wall to his right blinked at him in silent mockery of his nightmare. Breathe. Breathe. Sweat froze on his back.

  Where do these dreams come from? He couldn't remember anything like it. His memory was returning slowly, though. He knew his name. Thomas, he thought. My name is Thomas. Thomas Roxborough.

  It was the one truth he clung to, a rock in the shifting tide of erratic memories.

  The door clicked open then, and a technician entered. She was tall and broadly built, not one he recognized. Her wavy blonde hair hung around a smooth-skinned face that would have been pretty if her dark eyes had been softer, their expression less chillingly hard. Sharp-angled bulges under her lab coat sent warnings off in his mind as he watched her approach.

  Something was wrong.

  But what should he do about it? He didn't know.

  She had reached the side of his bed before he could decide to do anything. "Ryan, it's me," she said. "Axler."

  This woman knows me ? And she called me Ryan. Why not Thomas?

  He did not answer her, though she was obviously waiting for some sort of affirmation. Then he nodded slightly. Best to play along.

  "We're here to help you escape."

  We? Then he noticed that the door to his room had not closed itself completely. Something was keeping it open even though he couldn't see anything there.

  "You must be drugged," she said. "Can you move?"

  He nodded again.

  "Good." She handed him a black cloth bundle. "Hurry and put this on before the alarms go off and wake the whole place."

  He just stared at her, unsure of what to do. How could he just leave with a stranger?

  "Come on!" she hissed, her voice pitched low and threatening. "We're in danger here, Ryan! You scan?"

  Ryan again? Despite the hardness of her eyes, he could see that she was sincere. She cared about his safety. "I scan," he said, "but I can't go with you."

  Axler's hard eyes narrowed on him. "I don't have time for this, Ryan," she said. Then she reached under her lab-coat, and there was something in her hand when she pulled it out. Too fast to see, her hand a blur as she connected with his neck.

  Leaving a patch. A dermal drug patch.

  "Sorry, Ryan. I don't have time to argue just now."

  It only took a few moments for his muscles to relax. He sagged into her arms. His senses seemed to detach themselves from his body and he found he couldn't move.

  Axler lifted him over her shoulders; she was stronger than she looked. "Grind," she said, speaking under her breath as they passed out of the room into the hall beyond. "I can't raise Jane. Can you get through?"

  "No," came a gruff whisper out of mid-air. No one was there. Magic invisibility?

  "Frag, where is she?"

  Axler's shoulder hammered into his chest as she ran, out into the white and black-tiled hall. The guard at the first checkpoint looked asleep, and he did not move as they approached. His head jerked as one of Axler's invisible companions lifted it up by the hair. The man's eye was placed to the retinal scanner and the lock popped open.

  "That was the hard one," Axler said, then jolted through. They passed the elevators that had taken him to see the vats. Part of himself, part of Thomas Roxborough, still there in that tank.

  Or was he Ryan? Who the frag am I? And what am I escaping from?

  Axler stepped up to another door and looked into the retinal scanner that hung on the wall next to it, muttering under her breath. "I hope Jane's codes are still working," she said. "I hope you appreciate the drek I go through for you, Ryan."

  I guess I'm Ryan then, he thought. For now anyway.

  Ryan felt rather than heard the collective intake of breath by the other two accomplices. But the door clicked open and Axler led them through. Null strain. Beyond the doors was a wide staircase, switching back every level, with no windows.

  They descended two floors to level one, and Axler's retina worked again to get them through the door. And into a wider hall with several people moving along it. Ryan heard them more than saw them. His eyes were open and he could see, but he didn't have motor control of his muscles. His head swung loosely, swaying as Axler carried him.

  Axler's labcoat filled most of Ryan's vision, but the people he did see caused creeping waves of nausea through him. One was close, a dwarf woman once perhaps, but now her dwarf body had been almost entirely replaced by human-sized cybernetic limbs and torso. Everything external was artificial. Except for the dwarfs hairy head. The dwarf cyborg walked awkwardly, trying to gain control over a new center of gravity.

  I doubt that will ever be comple
tely possible, Ryan thought. And as he looked around, he realized that each of these people was barely alive; each was mostly machine and many were walking hulls. Their wills only a dim shadow. It was a sudden comprehension that came through a myriad of senses, a gut feeling fed by the smell of synthetic lubricant and the queer uniformity of the cybernetic parts.

  Axler ran for the double doors at the far end of the hall. Moving as fast as she could with Ryan's weight over her shoulders. Ryan upgraded his assessment of her strength and speed yet again. She is far more than she looks, he thought.

  Grind whispered from behind them. "I still can't raise Jane."

  "Jane," Axler subvocalized. "Jane, you copy?"

  She waited for a few heartbeats. "Jane must be off-line," Axler said, turning back toward her invisible accomplices. "I'm going to call in Dhin without her."

  "Copy," Grind said.

  Axler pulled a machine pistol from under her labcoat. "Go, Dhin," she said. "You got that? Launch now."

  They had reached the double doors, and Axler's retina released the lock. She opened the door a crack and propped it ajar with a foot. And waited. One beat. Two.

  The ground shook from a massive explosion. And at that precise instant, Axler threw open the door and lunged out into the early morning sunlight. She ran across a narrow open space, a courtyard perhaps, rectangular in shape and filled with sculpted gardens and trimmed tropical trees. The space was bounded by the clinic wall on one side and fencing on the other three sides. Five-meter-high cyclone fencing topped by mono wire. Ryan knew the fence was electrified just by looking at it, though how he knew was a mystery to him.

  Sound came crashing in on him as Axler's sharp shoulder needled his gut. Alarm sirens blared out a keening wail. Automatic weapons sputtered from off to the right as a combat-equipped helicopter engaged some ground troops who were trying to guard the clinic's perimeter.

  Ryan saw the results of the explosion. A missile or mortar shell had hit the fence at the far end of the courtyard. He saw fire and noticed that the fence lay like twisted foil. A ten-meter opening stood over scorched earth. But the gap was crawling with security, and Axler made for the opposite fence.

  "Ow!" came a voice that Ryan didn't recognize. A second later two people became visible. The one who had spoken was human, wearing blue jeans and MIT&T tee shirt. The other was Grind, a dwarf whose arms had been replaced with cybernetic attachments. A third arm, slightly different in shape, telescoped from the right side of his chest. Grind's afro hair was black, and his face was rough with scars. He knelt in front of the fence and produced a tiny circular saw; a machine gun was slung over his shoulder.

  The human looked up into the air, holding his hands out in a cryptic gesture. "There's a mage in the astral here. Just a sec." McFaren seemed to be looking at somewhere else as he made cryptic gestures in the air.

  Ryan concentrated, trying to figure out what the mage was doing. And suddenly he saw it. The world shifted for a second, shadows and light lengthening and contorting into a strange world that looked sort of the same, but very different as well. Rainbow hues and colors of light radiated in prismatic beauty from every living thing.

  Then he saw the mage, hovering in mid-air like a fiery phoenix. A flash of energy arced from McFaren and slammed into the mage. The phoenix shimmered under the onslaught, flickered, then winked out. Powerful spell, Ryan thought.

  "That one's gone, but they're more coming," said McFaren. "I'm through." That was Grind.

  "Let's haul hoop." Then Axler was dragging Ryan through the hole in the fence. Gunfire rattled off to his left; sirens rang out. Ryan caught a mouthful of dirt as Axler lifted him again. Her shoulder slammed into his gut as she sprinted across the thirty meters of clear dirt to the edge of the jungle. She pushed into the thick undergrowth, seeking cover, then dropped Ryan to the moist jungle floor, behind the trees.

  "Dhin, can you see us?"

  "Got ya clean in the sights, Grind. Want a missile up the yin yang?"

  "Maybe some other time, chummer. Now, how about a lift?"

  "On my way."

  The helo swung around toward them, rocking and tilting under its rotors as it dodged fire. It was nearly clear when a missile launched unexpectedly from somewhere on the roof of the clinic. It rocketed through the drifting steam and smoke of the battle. Ryan watched as the missile connected with the flying hull of the helicopter, catching it in the midsection and exploding, ripping away metal in a white-hot flash.

  "Dhin!" called Axler, watching from just inside the jungle.

  Gouts of flame blew away the engine casing. Smoke and fire venting like demon's breath as the helo faltered. Then a final attack hit, deadly fast, a magical hellblast centered on the cockpit, warping the macroplast shielding, incinerating anyone who was inside.

  The helicopter stalled and fell. It exploded before impact, jets of flame and shrapnel blowing out of the engine. Then the hull of the craft came down hard, bouncing against the clinic wall before crashing to the ground with the agonizing sound of ripping metal.

  Nobody could have survived that, Ryan thought.

  "Drek!" Axler said. "I sure hope Dhin wasn't in there, or it'll be a long trek home."

  12

  The spirit Lethe hung in astral space and looked down upon the Dragon Heart—a solid, pulsing orb of immense power that rested in the center of an ornately carved circle. The lines and shapes of the circle had been etched into the smooth stone floor of the small chamber. Intertwining runes formed the perimeter, while intricately designed dracoforms filled the interior.

  The physical design gave rise to a translucent blue and silver curtain in astral space. The hypnotic weave danced and moved, blending and shaping around the Dragon Heart. The item itself was made of a magical metal, a dull bronze color and shaped like a real four-chambered heart. Its surface was smooth and flawless, embedded into the stone, flush with the floor, right at the very center of the etched circle. The design immediately surrounding the heart was a petro-glyph of a great dragon. The image had been cut into the stone with such detailed strokes that Lethe recognized the dragon and knew him.

  Dunkelzahn.

  But Dunkelzahn was dead. Lethe had learned of his death by overhearing conversations. He had learned of the great explosion in a physical place called Washington FDC. But when he had gone to investigate, he had discovered a storm over the explosion site—a magical storm centered over the crater created by a bomb. At least that's what people said.

  The storm had looked like a vortex of purple lightning and magenta clouds. It spanned worlds, from the physical to the astral and into the metaplanes, as though the fabric of universal reality had been torn in that tiny spot. There was no sign of Dunkelzahn, no trace or echo of him that Lethe could detect.

  Now, deep in Dunkelzahn's lair, Lethe looked down at the Dragon Heart. It was his last hope to help Thayla. Perhaps Dunkelzahn's participation wasn't absolutely necessary, perhaps Thayla could use the Dragon Heart to stop the darkness from spreading.

  There was only one problem; Lethe could not touch the item. Since leaving Thayla, he had grown, learned that he had many abilities, many powers. Like when he slipped past the spirits and metahumans who guarded the lair. He could move through the hypnotic curtain and interface with the power of the Dragon Heart. And when he did, it felt something like the power of Thayla's song coursing through him. The same but different; the song of the Dragon Heart was rougher, coarser. And he could tap into its power if he tried; he could use it to expand his awareness. He could use it to manipulate the temper of the ward, the very nature of the magics that made up the dragon's lair around him. But Lethe avoided using the Dragon Heart; it was like wielding the sun. Awesome and terrifying.

  But despite all his new abilities, he still could not touch the smooth metal composite of the item. He had no way to physically manifest and pick it up. So it remained on the floor, firmly entrenched in the physical world. Useless to him. Useless to Thayla.

  Time passed as Lethe
considered his dilemma. He could try to enlist the help of another spirit or a metahuman with magical power, but he didn't know any who would come to his assistance. He didn't know anyone. Except Thayla. And she couldn't leave her place at the bridge.

  Maybe another dragon? he thought. But he had no way of knowing if the other dragons could be trusted.

  How much time passed before the group of metahumans entered the small chamber Lethe had no way of knowing. Four of them, tall and thin, moving quietly. Suspiciously.

  Two of them glowed brightly with jewels and flares, showing power in astral space. Mages or shamans, Lethe guessed. But the others were mundane, anchored in the physical. In fact, part of each one was transparent, patches of blank spirit as though they had lost parts of themselves. Lethe saw that they appeared to have metal and plastic permanently implanted into their bodies. He had seen a few others like that, but none so much as these two.

  The two mages surveyed the perimeter of the circle, stepping along the edge as they peered at the hypnotic weave of the translucent curtain. At the ripples in the fabric of space created by the Dragon Heart.

  "This is where the tracer said we should find it," one said.

  "Can you break the ward?"

  "I said I could, didn't I? Just watch the entrance, Liner."

  "How long?"

  "It'll take time, even with both of us working on it."

  The two mundanes stood by the entrance to the chamber, while the others started to work on the hypnotic curtain. One removed a bag from her belt and pulled fistfuls of green sand from it. She spoke some words over the sand, using Sperethiel—the language of elves. "Tan'ath lie armma diesk cycampeth waregram 'cen."

  Lethe understood the words. "Obscure the power of this ward. Dull the images, the potency of what you cover."

  The other magician had fashioned a spell, looking in astral space like an elaborate key made of fire and lightning. He was trying to integrate the key into the weave of the ward's curtain. Time passed as the spell advanced and retreated, advanced and retreated until it had opened a small hole in the ward.