Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  The Lady of the Weeping Eye shrieked and suddenly, the deathly silence that’d fallen over them all was shattered into a million pieces as the banshee’s cry echoed across the tiny little park, traveled through the streets to batter against the buildings on all sides, leaving everyone who huddled inside their apartments or businesses to thank their own personal deities that they’d stayed right where they were.

  Grunion stopped laughing. The others followed suit, but it was too late; Mirabelle was moving amongst them, a bone-white murderous blur, a shrieking, white-wrapped figure summoned out of their worst nightmares.

  The first to go were three unnamed, unimportant henchman. Always one for a bit of prolonged torture and enhanced misery, Mirabelle wasted no time at all in doing for them this time ‘round because it were as Agnethea has always said: start as you mean to go on, and in this instance, there were lessons to be taught to everyone.

  Including the folks who were ostensibly being led by Master Ragar.

  So.

  Thusly, Mirabelle pulled limbs from shoulders, wrenching entire arms free and tossing them aside as though they were twigs snatched from saplings. One of the doughty lads was near enough to a gearhead that it took a few seconds for the metal-wrapped appendage to be ripped loose, and when it did finally come loose, Mirabelle was forced to remove nearly the man’s entire rib cage in the process, sending all manner of the bastard’s insides sloughing to the ground in a steaming, soupy mess. The third and final fool had his head torn clean off as easy as picking a carrot from loose soil.

  Grunion whirled to deal with Mirabelle with both guns drawn, expecting to find some sort of mess playing out behind him if for no other reason than the ashen and haggard expressions on those stupid idiots close by, but when he saw all three of his best completely dismantled, and that ugly bitch standing there, barely breathing, covered head to toe in blood and guts and gore as if it was no big thing, his gut involuntarily and violently shivered. He hawked up a gob of bitter bile and took a nervous step backwards.

  “Do you see, Master Grunion?” Mirabelle whispered, wiping some of the steaming blood from her face and flicking it to the ground. Her eyes fell on poor Ainsley’s cooling body, and if ever she needed her resolve firmed up from now until the end of her days, all she’d need do is think of that image. Light blonde hair, soft brown eyes, innocent smile, gaping wound through the forehead. “You are not the toughest thing in the room.”

  The Lady of the Weeping Eye looked slyly down at her bare feet and wiggled her toes, tiny little worms in a soup of organs. “Nor, I think, will you ever be.”

  “There’s … we can … work something out!” Grunion hollered, backing off to one side. He let his guns clatter to the ground. He didn’t know what was happening here, but … but he’d made a terrible mistake.

  “Not this time, not for you, nor for your men down below.” Mirabelle lurched forward and snatched the man’s jaw clean out of his head. She stood there, watching the leader of the gang gurgle and grope at the wound, unable to resist a small smirk when one of his grubby hands closed around his own tongue. It wasn’t much later that he died.

  Mirabelle released a small sigh of relief tinged with regret; the work here was done, but the men down below the park had surely seen the aborted fight or would soon begin to wonder where their illustrious leader were at, so they, too, needed dispatching if she were to ensure the safety of the fools behind her.

  Dropping the jawbone, Mirabelle moved to stand in front of Master Ragar. “When I awoke in this world, Master Ragar, it was with the express desire to put my violent and cruel past behind me. I was to be the foil to my Lord’s hungry needs, so that he might go forth and do as he needs wi’out massive guilt clawing into him every time he did for someone. Not only that, but ‘twere to pay penance for my many thousands of years of cruel inhumanity to a people who had no defense ‘gainst me and mine.”

  Ragar couldn’t take his eyes off the blood and guts the woman was almost literally bathed in. She had to be some kind of monster because she wasn’t even bothered by the liquids stuck to her, slowly drying, or the … he held his stomach and willed himself not to vomit. “I … we … will. Ur. Go. Away.”

  Mirabelle pointed to Ainsley’s corpse. “This young girl died because she, like the rest, followed me when I asked for no one to do so. I dispatched those most intimately involved with her passing, but … am I correct in assuming that this world of yours has machines capable of seeing great distances?” She resumed with Ragar gave a tremulous nod. “Aye, so ‘tis. Then I warrant they know of what has happened, and are e’en now battening down the hatches. If we all go our separate ways, well, I know I shall be able to protect myself, but you will have earned the attention of those merely by being in my presence. How long ‘ere now do you think 'twill be before they fall ‘pon you in revenge for their master’s passing?”

  “I … we …” Ragar heard the nervous muttering behind him. It wasn’t their fault they’d started following her! She … she’d just seemed to know where to go, what to do! All dressed in white and wandering through the dimly lit streets, who could ignore that kind of beacon?

  “Now then.” Mirabelle pointed once more to the poor girl’s body. “You shall find a nice place here in this … gardened area and do this girl’s life justice. Pick a place with flowers. Dig deep.”

  They … they could do that. They would do that. Ragar nodded. “And … and you?”

  “’tis as I said, Master Ragar.” Mirabelle pointed to the brightly lit elevator encampment. “They prepare. I need to go down, and since you lot shall be coming wi’ me, I need to clear the entire area. Give us fifteen or twenty of your minutes, hey? Then come down, very softly, very gently, as while I seem to be peaceful and in control, I was near on a mindless murdering beast for longer than you can imagine. 'twould take little, especially wi' my current mood, to send me down t'the darkest hole inside."

  Ragar and the others watched their Lady of the Weeping Eye flash away into the darkness, wordlessly and quickly bending to the task they’d been appointed by their new leader.

  It wasn’t too long before shrieks and screams –punctuated by weapons’ fire- reached their ears.

  Ragar dipped his head in sorrow. They’d all of them made a terrible, horrible mistake, but there was nothing they could do about it now. They all knew that if they tried to leave the madwoman now, their fate might very well be the same as the men down below…

  And at this point, he wasn’t so sure some of them might not deserve it for costing young Ainsley her life.

  He and a few others bent to task of picking her corpse up. It was terrible, like picking up a dead bird, light, empty.

  Tears were little in the way of recompense, but they fell anyways.

  ***

  Ragar and a select few crept up towards the main entrance, eagerly hoping that somehow, some way, the whirlwind of violence that was the Lady of the Weeping Eye had met with her own end, knowing deep in their guts that not only was that not likely, they were most certainly going to enter a scene right out of an abattoir…

  The things they’d seen and heard as Mirabelle swarmed through the makeshift encampment would likely haunt those brave –or stupid enough- to hold witness to how their ‘protector’ was choosing to dispense her particular brand of comeuppance until the end of their days.

  That peculiar, soul-draining, blood-freezing shriek of hers, a thrashing of sound that seemed to come from some ice-cold, bitter place deep inside her, had flashed and echoed all around them, horrific thunder playing inhuman counterpoint to the thugs’ return fire.

  So much weapons’ fire. One of the men in their group had done time in a ‘glom as security, and as they stood in silence -watching staccato bursts of light flicker this way and that as the criminals with enhanced implants tried tracking the blur of white bone slithering through their midst- he’d listed off the various types, tone reeking of despair; these were well-armed, well-trained men with serious hardware.
/>   None of it had worked, though.

  None had been able to stop Mirabelle of the Weeping Eye from howling through them like a shrieking ghost, pulling arms from sockets, ripping heads from necks, plundering hearts from chests.

  “S…should we be doing this?” Danton –the ex-security guard demanded- as they crept up closer still. The heavy metal plates of the elevator’s main frame were liberally soaked in blood and … matter. Danton swallowed noisily and looked around for something to hold on to.

  “It’s not like we have a choice any longer.” Ragar hissed bitterly. “You heard her. She’s decided we’re coming with her. Because of … because of…”

  “Aye.” A weary voice called from inside the tremendous elevator car. “The girl. Ainsley. Do, come in, chaps, we needs must have a conversation about the future, and the nearer future, hey?”

  Against the better wishes and in direct contrast to anything remotely approaching sanity, Ragar, Danton and two other brave, foolish men joined Mirabelle inside the elevator car, worrying about what they’d see.

  Originally designed to hold a dozen or so vehicles of varying size –typically construction loaders and other machines built to construct the Stack’s various parts- the elevator was an enormous metal box that’d definitely seen better days; none of the four men could remember this one –or any of the elevators scattered around this level of the Stack- having ever been used for anything but temporary storage, and even then, it’d been empty for years and years.

  Empty no longer. They found their hostess slumped against the back wall, surrounded by the body parts of somewhere in the neighborhood of four men, with another whimpering, mewling thug clutched around the neck with one implacable hand. Stacked neatly beside her was an assortment of weapons, all of them soaked slick with blood and other grim substances.

  “They sought to create a killbox.” Mirabelle admitted regretfully. “I did not take that into consideration when I swept in here. Not that it mattered, as I believe I’ve proven to poor old Punch here, hey, Punch? You learnt your letters well in here, did you not?”

  ‘Punch’, who’s proper name had been beaten out of him a few moments ago, nodded maniacally, as if his head was on a spring. He opened his mouth and singsonged, “The Lady of The Weeping Eye cannot die, cannot die, cannot die.”

  Ragar stepped forward, ignoring the … thing that squelched beneath his foot. Danton and the others lost their stomachs right then, adding their own miseries to the floor and stench of the place. “Why … why is he still alive?”

  “As I were moving about this place, taking care of these gearhead ghosts, it did seem to me that they were well armed, hey?” Mirabelle shook Punch about a bit. “This lad here confirmed for me. Part of a Stackwide organization, they is. Dedicatin’ themselves to the acquisition of all they can, aren’t they just? Wi’ this tomb separated from the rest of the city as is called Zanzibar, he and his realized that they needed to do all they could to survive, so they’re in the process of gaining as much control of all they can lay hands upon. I informed him of the presence of my brethren and took special pains to impress upon him the likelihood of their own responses to these sorts of men. And what now, Punch?”

  “I will tell them to fly, fly, fly!” Punch singsonged again, his gravelly voice cracking on the high notes. “If they don’t want to die, die, die.”

  “And of my crew? My new, extended family?” Mirabelle asked, tightening her grip a tiny bit more.

  Punch croaked at the pain, but said nothing else until the grip lessened. “The Lady of the Weeping Eye and her Clan are to be left alone at all costs. If armed men come, armed men die. Armed men will be hung from the rafters and mounted on the walls, beaten to death with their own limbs and forced to eat their own guts. They will wear their lungs for hats and their hearts as boutonnieres. I don’t know what that last thing is, but it sounds gruesome.”

  “Indeed, young Master Punch, ‘tis gruesome indeed.” Mirabelle smiled, and the drying liquid on her face cracked, then started weeping again. “Now, young Punch, I am going to release you into the wilds, and through whatever mechanisms you possess, I urge you to let loose your cries of warning as soon as possible, hey? Spread the word that darkness moves amongst you all, and that when the four corners meet, well. The whole of this Stack shall be blanketed 'neath misery and the dead, won’t it just?”

  Punch felt the bone-cold vice around his neck disappear and he streaked off like a shot, aiming himself for the nearest jury-rigged callbox, fully intending on doing precisely as the Lady of the Weeping Eye had commanded.

  “And now,” Mirabelle said, “you, Master Ragar, and the others. You have the right of it. You shall be coming with me, for I am now responsible for all your lives. Contrary to what Master Punch believes, his friends shall not listen entirely to what has been told to them. In point of fact, it is all too likely these animals will stop doing as they are and come ahunting for us Arcadians. It is the same me and mine have done since time immemorial, so why should lesser animals be any different?”

  “What … what about when you and … the other Arcadians meet?” Danton demanded, wiping bile from the corners of his mouth. “W…won’t we be in trouble then? More than now?”

  “Well, by then, lad, I reckon you shall be ready to face whatever troubles face you, hey?” Mirabelle gestured to the weapons she’d collected. “Those of you familiar with this sort of thing will teach those who are not, and when we break ground ‘pon where we need to be, you shall all be ready, won’t you just?”

  Danton licked his lips but said nothing, choosing instead to nod. They were trapped. Trapped with a madwoman who’d either kill them for causing her grief or who’d let them die in pursuit of something that was valuable only to her. The others nodded, close to weeping.

  “Master Ragar. The child’s grave? Is it done?”

  “Oh yes, Mirabelle. Deep as our regret. Underneath a tall tree, surrounded by flowers.”

  “It is good.” Mirabelle nodded. “We shall have more words on that, later. But first, fetch the others whilst I see if I can turn this geared mechanism I slump against on my own, or if we shall need to figure out some other way.”

  Mirabelle stood and put her hands on the vast gear that was connected directly to the elevator’s machinery.

  It let loose a groan that was surely heard up and down the Stack.

  9. Orion’s Choice #2: The Great and Musty Mycogene Empire

  Huey was not a fan of being aboard Orion while … ‘he’ moved around the Universe, and he suspected that it was intentional; the hyper aggressive AI definitely struck the would-be God for Reality 2.0 as the sort of childish asshat that’d do whatever it took to keep his enemies on edge, and intentionally manipulating the shielding that kept the worst Tunneling effects away from passengers so that it hurt to move from point A to B was definitely the sort of thing Orion would get himself up to.

  Several thousand subminds wanted to leap off the diving board and determine the precise mechanisms by which Orion translated himself through space in an effort to see if they could manipulate the fields to their benefit, but Huey was of the mind that that was what their so-called host wanted; since his capture moments after dealing with Tendreel Salingh, the quantum ether had been positively ablaze with seeker signals originating from Orion, pure and basic hallmarks that the maddened thinking machine was doing everything in his power to hack his captive.

  Huey was not about to allow Orion access to things he knew about the base state of the Universe. Hell, the AI figured it was bad enough that he knew them, and he was –technically- on the Good Guy side.

  So while he figured it’d be possible to burrow deep into Orion’s thought processes to see precisely what was going on and how to change the frequencies –or whatever it was that needed doing- Huey was instead choosing to play Stoic Captive. It looked better on camera, so to speak, and, at the end of the day, he supposed he was working to convince Old Man Politoyov that he was the better choice, irrespectiv
e of whatever benefits the stupid odyssey they were on might have for the End of All Things.

  Besides, after a while, you kind of got used to feel like you were going to throw up out of your eyeballs. A few subminds were working on scripting a code that’d translate the meatsuit’s physiological responses the mind-gripping, soul-numbing experience into something slightly more pleasurable, like a root canal.

  “How you doing?” Huey asked when the hot bubble of nausea he’d been battling for the last fifteen minutes dissipated at long last. It wasn’t thanks to those diligent subminds, but some random and frankly mysterious process that the body pulled off all on it’s own.

  Aleksander swallowed miserably and did his level best to pretend that he wasn’t hanging onto the metal support column to his left for dear life, rationally knowing that it didn’t matter one way or the other if he was obviously suffering or not; it took no genius to see that while Huey was an AI merged with illegal clone-tech, he, too, suffered from Orion’s churlishness.

  Saw it, and pretended otherwise.

  He was the goddamn leader of the Specters, for crying out loud. There had to be someone on board this … vessel … that kept a stiff upper lip.

  “This?” Aleks waved a handle that in no way trembled as a vicious surge of nausea careened through his guts and contrived a manner of bouncing all the way up his throat and into his right eyeball, which immediately began watering so badly that it sealed itself tight. “This is nothing. The Great Pizza Fire a few years ago was much worse than all this.”

  Huey tilted his head back and chuckled. Legendary Specter stoicism. The only entities in the known and probably unknown Universe to downplay things more were the God soldiers themselves, and perhaps only because they’d had a few thousand years to perfect the art.

  “Good to know.” Huey looked at the Old Man. The AI was having a bit of a hard time imagining what it’d been like for the Offworlder turned Secondmost Important Guy to Trinity’s Rule, running Specter while trying to make certain Garth didn’t accidentally end everything before it was properly time.