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

by Lee Bond

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Drake replied softly. Eddie shot him a dirty look. “You’re forgetting something. The Specter training. It’s ingrained! Has been for over ten years. He spent the first five years of his time with Special Services as nothing more than the man you hate so much. You cannot argue that the training burned into him at the deepest levels is without doubt the single most efficient and effective knowledge on how to accomplish anything. Given enough time, enough preparation, a single Specter can –and has- take control of an entire solar system. He has the tools and the wisdom to defeat Baron Samiel and is almost certainly doing precisely that.”

  “Then why hasn’t he done anything? I haven’t seen him do anything. He’s just fucking around. When Samiel steps forward, he does the usual, but that is it.”

  “He knows he’s being watched.” The words fell from Drake’s mouth simply, but powerfully. “In here, he’s Specter. No tricks, no powers, no nothing. Just a Specter. One who knows he’s being observed. One who’s become used to it, his entire life. The Armies of Man. Trinity. Bravo. Through all of that, there were eyes on him, and every fucking time, in each fucking instance, they missed his real gambit. Every. Single. Time! So whatever he’s doing down there, whatever it is, rest assured, it will happen. One day. Try as we might, we won’t catch it until it’s too late. Unless we cheat. Unless we read his mind, to see the plan he’s got. But we won’t do that, will we, Eddie? We’ve got to let nature run it’s course. We’ve got to abide by our side of the agreement, no? If it’s true, if you really have left a method for Garth to triumph over his guilt and come out the other side and you’re not just going to flat out kill him, he will win. We’ve had some very bad, desperate men in here. Not as dangerous as Garth, mind you, but Yellow Dog Elders guiltier than sin, and they survived. They worked through their anguish and guilt, and unless we violate the rules of the game we’ve been playing for thirty thousand or so years, we’ll dial into Garth TV and he’ll be sitting there, eating a Triple Slappy Deluxe, Samiel at his feet. And then he’ll be like … ‘what? This guy? I pushed out a turd was more difficult only last week!'"

  Eddie sat there in silence for a long time, absorbing everything Drake had said. It was concise, to the point, and made a great deal of sense.

  But only when taken from the point of view of a man who loved Garth Nickels. Who idolized the man. Drake’s time as Spur had given him more than enough skill in deciphering the true nature of Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez, but where his friend saw a tempering of steel, he saw weakness. Where Drake saw revitalization, he saw ossification. Garth N’Chalez was no longer a man worthy of awe. Not by a long shot.

  He was an empty shell of a man, running on the fumes of past glories and long-lost powers. Without the Geas, without Trinity’s machinations, without Bravo’s mind-control … hell, even without Dark Iron’s insatiable black and red hunger, the man down in the simulation was only ever going to be good enough to survive long enough to be hammered into the dust by the upcoming Invasion.

  When those black vessels fell through holes in the sky to disgorge the …

  No. He wouldn’t even get that far. Garth wouldn’t make it past Jericho Jade, the Envoy. And that was assuming he survived Samiel.

  Which he wouldn't.

  Eddie tipped an imaginary hat in recognition of Drake’s efforts in attempting to explain what was happening down in the micro-verse that was Garth’s gravesite. “A valiant effort, buddy, but I’m afraid you still haven’t convinced me. He’s gonna die down there, and it ain’t gonna have anything to do with me or my desires. He doesn’t have what it takes, and that’s all there is to it. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

  “More tests on your secret project?” Drake needed to find the space inside the incongruity where Eddie was working. Something about it had him on edge.

  “Just so.” Eddie tipped that invisible hat once again. “Be seeing you.”

  Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles disappeared in a tiny flash of purple-tinged light.

  “Be seeing you.” Drake echoed the words hollowly, turning his attention back to Garth.

  There had to be something. There had to be. He just needed to find it. See the pattern, find the path.

  Because otherwise…

  It really did look like Garth had no plan at all.

  None.

  And if he died down there, if he left the playing field wide open, Drake feared his old friend and comrade of thirty thousand years old might just decide he wanted to be god of Reality 2.0 himself.

  After all, they did know what Garth knew. They had the keys to the machine. They could do it. Right that moment, in fact. If they chose.

  The Universe could be dead by dawn.

  “Please, Garth.” Drake whispered. “Please be as cunning as I think you are, because I really do think Eddie’s lying about his actual goals here. And we’ll all suffer if I’m right.”

  The Danny Glover Effect

  “Dammit.” Granger gave up hope waiting for ambulances or police cars or even fire trucks to arrive on the scene of what would later prove to be the grisly murder scene of an upcoming, prominent member of the American Way of Life, or even the slapdash flight of three moronic Zigg-heads and put the car in motion, shaking his head bitterly.

  “Of course he’s not dead.” Granger muttered to himself as he took a left, not even bothering to turn on his signal.

  A few cars honked their horns but he ignored them as he was pretty much ignoring everything else in the world right then. He was well and truly fucked.

  “He’s got the beginnings of a goddamn Delta squad in that compound. He’s got plastic and metal 3D printers. He’s on course to make more money than Steve Jobs and that other idiot, whatshisname. For all we know, he could be turning that place into a goddamn lunatic compound. Right here in the middle of goddamn San Francisco.”

  Except Granger knew that wasn’t the truth. That’s what Garth’s detractors might try and make it out to be, if they ever grew tired of the man’s rapacious attacks all across the globe; the over-ambitious Special Agent Angela Devine was currently more than occupied in weeding through every single application for travel visas from every single country where the CEO of Changetech had spent virtual time, eager to prevent as many assassins, mercenaries and homicidal lunatics from entering the United States as possible. She was presently married up with a rep from the CIA, which had to be driving the pretty young Feeb batshit insane.

  “She’s lucky she doesn’t have someone from Homeland and DOJ sitting on the wire, putting their two cents in.” The tired old Federal agent took a right, driving on autopilot. A long horn blared out at him. Right. No signal again. He gifted the sonic symphony a crusty middle finger and kept on driving.

  Fuck the people in San Francisco. How anyone could be so happy and mellow all the time was beyond him. It was like some kind of goddamn reverse New York.

  Granger didn’t envy Devlin. Digging through suspect lists was bad enough when you were doing it on your own, but when you had another agency in there with you, it grew to be a whole other kind of affair. Granger didn’t like CIA. Each one of them –in his long, vast and mostly corrupt career- were like baby versions of Samiel, trying to maneuver everything and everyone into their own corners so they could profit from both ends.

  On the home front, scuttlebutt –Granger was officially on vacation, but that didn’t prevent him from reaching out and talking to some of his oldest and most on-the-hook contacts- was that a Federal task force was doing the same thing on all the people that’d been turned out of a job thanks to Nickels. So far, so good: there was very little in the way of hate mail, and the vast majority of the people who were unemployed were the sorts of people to prepare for the future.

  That was one thing that was nice about folks in the tech sector. They understood the inherently volatile nature of their profession and were always cagey enough to sock away cash or other valuables should the crunch come in the middle of the night.

&nb
sp; That wasn’t to say they were happy about what’d happened, though, just that they were finally coping.

  Granger’s contacts were sorting through emails and texts and there was a great deal of pissing and moaning and outright raging against the man. That was natural. That was expected.

  Very few of the buzzwords their monitoring programs were keyed with had been hit, so until that happened, the taskforce would no doubt operate under the assumption that Nickels was safe as houses.

  “Only he isn’t.” Granger muttered to himself, wishing he’d lit himself a cigar before starting on the road. “He isn’t, is he?”

  The phone was dead weight in his pocket. Sitting there now, all the time, somehow getting heavier with each passing hour. It wasn’t even an albatross any longer, tying him down to a fate he wished he’d ignored all those decades ago.

  Now it was the lodestone all the way, pulling him along tracks he didn’t want to follow. He was bound to Samiel, yet ached to be free. Decades of training and a lifetime in the field suggested the frightening man was –at the very least- peripherally aware that his agent was in a less than harmonious state, putting Granger on the ready for anything that might come down The Line.

  “Wouldn’t even see it coming, though, would I?” Granger sailed into a parking spot on the street and shut his car off before he’d even stopped rolling. He looked through hooded eyes at the assholes in the park with a thinly disguised cauldron of boiling hatred. Goddammit he hated these people. “Samiel’d just reach back in time and stop my father from meeting my mother or something poetic like that. Just erase me right out of time. Like Marty McFly. Except I don’t have a Doc Brown in my pocket.”

  But he could. Oh yes, he could, if he could only figure out a way to get around the Securicorps team. Granger didn’t need to pull their jackets to see that he’d be up against some of the best and brightest –and worst and darkest- that the various American military machines had ever spat out. Had he been made by them? That was dead certain. He wasn’t being precisely secretive in his activities, and that’d been the point, right? Be juuuuust obvious enough to draw one of them out so he could flash his badge when questioned about what he was doing.

  Then he could ask to meet with Garth Nickels. Meet the man who’d stolen from Baron Samiel and come out on top face to face. See if he was the sort of man who was actually going against someone in control of Time Itself or if he was just a time-traveling dilettante as Samiel thought, a smart guy with a bag full of tricks and gewgaws designed to simply make him a load of money.

  Across the road, in a park that’d seen better days, the first of the fists flew. Pretty soon after that, the dozen-strong group of complete and utter fucking morons were going at it cartoon-style, a messed up jumble of arms, legs, dust and the occasional tooth.

  “I am getting too old for this shit.” The Federal Agent clambered out of his car and made his way across the street, wondering –maybe even secretly hoping- that this would be the last time he did something like this.

  Maybe tonight, one of these assholes would take a swing, kill him, and maybe tonight, Baron Samiel wouldn’t adjust the timeline to make certain that it didn’t happen.

  Granger hated when that happened. It was worse than when you were on the phone with him and time changed, because at least then –minus, of course, Nickels’ stupendous arrival in the time stream- the memories eventually faded.

  But not the deaths. No sir, the deaths lingered on forever, gossamer skulls and crossbones brushing ever so gently on the skin, reminding you every now and then of the precise manner and nature of your death. The dreams were worse because when you woke up, screaming so loudly that your jaw felt like it was going to stay locked open for eternity, drenched in sweat, utterly, utterly convinced that someone was in the room with you, with a mind as blank as an empty wall …

  That was when you reached for the bottle.

  “Fifteen times and counting.” Granger groused as he curled his fingers through the chain link fence. It’d been recently added, no doubt to keep the carnage currently raging back and forth across now ill-kept grass to the playing field; when Ziggurat addicts found themselves a park they liked, they stayed, and fought in it nightly, until they either destroyed the grounds to such an extent that it no longer met their criteria or they wound up getting pinned beneath cars and trucks. Granger supposed there wasn’t a park left in places like Detroit, and wondered how long it’d take before the uptight citizens of San Francisco got on their high horses and tried moving these Zigg-heads along down the road.

  Granger turned his head skyward. “Thank Christ there are swords in the sky, waiting to fall down to heaven, to blast these idiots if that happens.”

  Then he angled himself for the entrance to the park. Dreading what was coming, knowing that if he didn’t do this on his own, Samiel’d call him up and order him to do it.

  Too many more phone calls and one aging Federal Agent might just try eating a bullet again. Just because it hadn’t worked the first ten times didn’t mean the next time wouldn’t stick, right?

  There was always a first time for everything.

  ***

  Cherry Cristal smelled someone that either didn’t belong in the wargrounds or who’d grown sick and tired of living and stopped wailing on Senator long enough for her dizzy-feeling eyes to focus. The other groups of friends were splitting, taking off to do whatever it took to find the money to get their next dose from The Man, but not her crew. They had enough cash on hand for another score already and besides which, they already had their next dose.

  It was all about planning. Something her dad had taught her, back in upscale New York, right before she’d driven her thumbs into his eyes for calling her those awful, horrible names. She’d tried to explain the feeling … the old man walking through the park wasn’t just walking in the park, he was coming right at them. A dumpy old fat man in dumpy gray clothes and a stupid old hat. He smelled like cigarettes, booze and … something odd.

  Senator tried taking advantage of her distraction by going for her throat with his teeth, so she kneed him hard, just under the jaw, when he got close enough. The idiot’s mouth clicked shut strong enough to shatter teeth.

  Wombag, Frigget and Slinkydog all stopped their horseplay and ran over to her, trailing blood from broken noses, cuts on cheeks, split lips. Cherry couldn’t help but smile, displaying brown and yellow teeth before clamping her mouth shut. She’d done a lot of meth before coming across Alphon-Zee and if she could travel back in time, she’d smack that pipe right out of her hand and introduce her to the good stuff, the bad stuff, right away.

  Life would’ve been so much better, then.

  Senator picked himself up off the ground, spat out a handful of chicklets, and laughed. They’d probably grow back. If they didn’t, oh well. The ones he still had were sharp now, better to go in for those soft, wobbly spots.

  Slinkydog sniffed the air and went scampering after the dumpy old man.

  “Stop.” The world rolled out of Granger’s mouth and across the torn grass like a grenade. It was a perilous second before the Zigg-head –this one looking more normal than usual, which was odd considering the clear signs of degenerative decay that came from long-time, habitual use of a drug that generally forced you to dress like a fucking moron sooner rather than later- slammed to a stop.

  Slinkydog looked over his shoulder at Cherry Cristal, who’s head was tilted to one side, her long, fluorescent pink pigtails shining like delicious cotton candy. He tried moving forward, putting his strong fingers into the soil and dragging himself towards the man who’d made him stop, but … he couldn’t. Nervous now, skin itching with hunger, Slinkydog looked over his shoulder again.

  “That wasn’t a word.” Cherry smacked Wombag on the back of the head and the wiry, whip-thin once-upon-a-time track runner peeled off as fast as he could, arms outstretched, ready to wrap his hands around the old man’s thick, fat neck so he could squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until his head popped r
ight off.

  “Goddamnit.” Granger hissed, stepping back. “I said, stop.”

  Wombag, forever refusing to change out of his old track and field school uniform until it fell right off his body and someone else found him something similar to wear, hit an invisible wall. He bounced off something and hit the ground back first, slamming his head hard enough into the brown grass to knock the sense out of him.

  “Look.” Granger took a deep breath and waited to see if the weird chick still done up in whatever cosplay she’d decided to do before taking the final hit of Zigg that turned your brains inside out so badly that you usually didn’t know what was happening until you came out of that high and found yourself on the other side of the country. “We can do this all fucking night. I don’t have the time for it, and neither do you. Well, I suppose I do have the time, especially if I do this wrong, but … whatever. You can’t hurt me.”

  Cherry continued tilting her head this way and that, that way and this. The old dumpy man seemed familiar somehow, but that couldn’t be. Even if she’d known him from before, she wouldn’t choose to remember someone so … plain. So … boring.

  So gray. She liked her new friends, the ones who dressed up bright as they could, wore clothes so fascinating, with hair so strange and wonderful it was like dress-up, all day every day. She wasn’t so sure about Slinkydog because he was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but he kind of made up for it by being her dog.

  Beside her, Senator slipped the thick rubber mask he always carried with him over his face, transforming himself from some guy into the actual Senator.

  “That wasn’t a word.” Cherry whispered, sliding left. Frigget and Senator started moving as well, looking to circle around the boring man in his gray suit. “It wasn’t a word I’ve ever heard but my brain heard you say stop and you made Wombag and Slinkydog stop. How did you do that?”