Her tongue was loosening in her mouth. A fierce volley of pins and needles rushed over her body, battling the cold seeping into her flesh.
“Where… taking… me…” she murmured.
“The unrighteous must be cleansed. No unholiness will be allowed to permeate our most blessed Polaris.”
“Let… me… go…”
“The unrighteous will be released soonest,” the shadow said. “Once the unrighteous has been restored to a blessed state of holiness once more.”
“Fracking crazy—”
“The unrighteous may no longer address us,” the shadow said. “Now the shunned one will be silent.”
And then Kitty’s lips melded together. It took all the energy she had to lift her hand and touch her fingers to the smooth skin that lay over her teeth. Her jaw clenched, but there wasn’t enough room for her to lever them apart.
Kitty screamed… but silently.
. . .
The altar was hot against Kitty’s back. It might have been cooler, had her ridiculous space suit not been replaced with something akin to the kind of negligee you bought on your honeymoon and never wore again because it served a better purpose as cheese cloth. It, too, was pink.
Her ankles and wrists had been bound with lengths of metal-scaled cords. With her mouth still closed for business, she couldn’t do anything except concentrate on breathing through her nose. She was in a tall-ceilinged chamber that looked hewn from the earth. But even here, the hard-packed soil that formed the walls had gleaming shapes interspersed randomly through it — pipes and girders and various bits and pieces of machinery — dissected when the cavern had been dug out.
Kitty swung her head to the side. A few metres from the raised dais her altar rested atop, swathes of shadow people watched. When she swung her head to the other side, more shadows peered back. A soupy air of anticipation sloshed around in the room and suppressed sound until Kitty’s ears began to buzz.
“All hail Queen Allaba, Darkest of the Night Stars.”
The voice came from behind her. Kitty wrenched her head up, arching her neck so she could see behind her, trying to ignore the scrape of warm marble against her scalp.
Even upside down, the Queen made Kitty stiffen.
A pair of guards dwarfed the tiny figure walking between them. The girl-child wore a crown fashioned of long, angled spikes, some almost a metre in length, glittering with a pale silver light. It held in place a gray, barely opaque veil that draped her body and brushed the floor.
The queen’s bare feet made no sound as she approached the dais. Kitty squirmed, trying to throw herself off the altar, but the ropes around her bound limbs had been attached to hitching posts at her head and feet — without a sizeable knife and the time and privacy to use it, Kitty was going nowhere.
Queen Allaba moved silently to a tiny throne perched atop a dais taller than that of the altar, its wide metal staircase gleaming. She seated herself carefully, a sharp nose protruding against the veil as she lifted her chin.
Apparently, the movement was a signal.
“We welcome thee, Queen of Night, and ask that you bless this cleansing,” a voice whispered suggestively beside Kitty.
Kitty jerked, her eyes torn away from the diminutive figure on the throne and fixing instead on the shadow beside her. His voice was different to the one that had captured her. If the thing could have smoked, and there were such things as tobacco and cigarettes in this place, then he was a pack-a-day kind of villain.
“Thank you, majesty,” the shadow grated. “With thee blessing, this cleansing shall proceed. I ask thee to bear witness to yonder shunned, stricken with the plague of unholiness. Shall thee bear witness to this unrighteous soul’s cleansing?”
Kitty forced her head back again. The tiny girl gave a curt nod that stirred her veil. Two hands, each only sporting three fingers, emerged from the depths of the veil, and gripped the ends of the throne’s arm.
“Hath she a name?” The Queen of Night lisped.
The shadow-man hesitated. An empty cowl turned to Kitty.
“Your name, unrighteous!”
Kitty, mouth still on vacation on a remote island somewhere, screamed quietly at the man.
There was a suggestion of acute embarrassment as the shadow-man did a quick wave toward Kitty with his hand.
Kitty inhaled a long breath through her mouth, coughing for the look of the thing, and then wriggled against her bonds again. Where the frack was Lucy? He should’ve been here already. There had been no detours on the single tunnel they’d taken to reach this place. And if he’d been triangulating her position using the radio, then he should have reached the tunnel a few minutes after they’d ventured inside.
She shook away the thought and focused on the man beside her.
“Uh… Belinda.”
The shadow-man made an impatient gesture with one smoky hand.
“Your player name, unrighteous,”
“Belinda… belinda_linda_24?” Kitty suggested.
“Belinda Linda,” the Queen of Night said. “Tonight, fate awaith you. Will you go to ith snowy embrathe?”
Kitty flung her head back. The Queen brought her chin up until the veil draped the indistinct shapes of her lips and jaw.
“Anther me, unrighteouth.”
“Uh… okay. Sure,” Kitty managed. “Is it going to hurt?”
The shadow-man replied, presumably on behalf of the Queen.
“Pain sloughs away the dirt of unholiness. Through pain and fire you will emerge cleansed, whole, and unsullied!”
“So only a little bit of pain?”
“Quiet, unrighteous!” The shadow-man adjusted his cowl and robe with a flick of his ephemeral fingers.
Kitty blinked. For a moment, there’d been a suggestion of solidity beneath the grip.
“Let the cleanthing begin…” Queen Allaba, Darkest of the Night Stars, Queen of the Night proclaimed.
Something warm flowed over Kitty’s legs. Kitty lifted her head, groaning as another shadow-priest upended a bucket of blood over her. The flow reached her waist before the bucket was empty. The underling paused, empty cowl glancing up to the priest at her side.
“I said go slow,” the shadow-priest whispered irritably. “Now you’ve gone and used it all up. She’s supposed to be covered in blood. This is a cleansing for frack’s sake, not a baptism.”
The shadow-underling dropped his head and rushed away.
“You know, if you need more time, I can always come back—” Kitty began, attempting — for the gazillionth time — to inconspicuously free herself.
“Silence, unrighteous!” And with a silent snap of its fingers, the shadow-priest removed Kitty’s mouth again.
She didn’t bother screaming in terror. They’d gotten the point the first time round, she was sure. The underling returned, wheezing, and abruptly splashed another bucket of blood over her. She was suddenly glad that she couldn’t actually drown in The Game.
“Easy, boy!” the shadow-priest said. “Blood’s not cheap you know. Go throwing it around like it costs nothing. You gone and got it all over my robe.”
“Sorry, master,” the underling wheezed. “Wanted to make sure I got everything.”
“You got everything and then some,” the priest said.
“Get on with the theremony, foolth” the Queen lisped urgently. “Thith throne maketh my ath hurt.”
“Off with you,” the priest said. “No, I said no! I’ll do the rest. You get back.”
There was a violent tug at Kitty’s ankles. She blinked frantically to rid her eyes of blood and lifted her head again. Then she let it fall back with a groan.
“By the sanctum of the void, and the icy depths of Night’s furnace, I call down the spirits of the stars to witness this cleansing.”
Several hundred shadow-people began moaning. Kitty squirmed against her bonds, trying to wriggle her body from under the priest’s sinuous blade. He held it up in both hands, his head tossed back as he ranted at the
cavern’s ceiling.
“And with the witness of a billion cold stars, and the eyes of the hundred immaculates, we ask that this unrighteous one be scraped clean of filth. Let her skin weep blood in mourning for its corruption. Let—”
The room grew bright for just a moment. A hushed whisper cascaded against the cavern walls.
“Let—” the priest repeated defiantly, raising his voice “—this unrighteous wake to the beauty of utter holiness. Let her join the ranks of the immaculates through the purging of her sins and—”
The lights went out.
Finally! Kitty sagged against her bonds. Lucy’d sure taken his fracking sweet time getting to her.
From the back of the assembled crowds came the sound of screaming. Kitty wriggled again. The blood had lubricated the skin around her wrists enough that, with a lot of pulling and muted cussing, she slid one of her hands free.
A light flared up.
The Queen had risen from her throne and held her hand extended. Above her, a ball of dead-white light soared gracefully into the air, curved, and began to fall down over the heads of a hundred cowled shadows.
And, with the light filling the cavern with an ominous glow, Kitty could see faces inside ever cowl. The empty-socketed, perpetually grinning faces of skeletons.
Luckily, no one seemed to pay attention to her scream. Probably because only she could hear it, what with her mouth sealed and everything.
She sat up and scrabbled at her ankles to untie her bonds. A quick glance showed a path being hewn through the crowds by her yet-unseen saviour (Lucy), and possibly a few companions he’d found on the way.
Kitty loosed the last bond and swung her legs over the side of the altar.
The shadow-priest’s arm slid over her waist, the edge of the surprisingly sharp ceremonial dagger touching her throat.
“Don’t move,” the priest said, his voice elevated to reach Kitty’s approaching rescuers. “I can end her in less than a second.”
In the silence that followed, the Queen’s ball of light sank down. It flashed from the plastic visor of a space-suit, both hands clutching a military-grade weapon that looked capable of doubling as a flotation device — or perhaps, in a pinch, a helicopter.
The man lowered the weapon, lifting one hand as he bent toward the floor to put it down.
Queen Allaba’s light winked out.
. . .
Kitty drove her elbow into the priest’s stomach. He doubled over with a satisfying grunt, the dagger momentarily dipping. Kitty surged forward, making sure she was no longer within reach of the priest. She slammed into moulded male anatomy, her sealed mouth still attempting a yelp of surprise when hands grasped her, lifted her, and carried her away.
She clung onto Lucy’s slick carapace, rendered blind by the lack of light. Shouts and screams erupted around her, the wave of sound providing a semblance of architecture to the pitch black night.
The quality of the noise changed: they’d entered a tunnel. It sloped upward. They were headed back to the surface. Kitty opened her chat console and located Lucy’s handle in her contact list.
BAD_KITTY_69: CANT SPEAK - SOMETHING WRONG WITH MOUTH
There was no response from Lucy. Surely he wasn’t so busy carrying her that he couldn’t think out a response?
BAD_KITTY_69: RU IGNORING ME? I DIDNT GET KIDNAPPED ON PURPOSE U KNOW ITS THIS STUPID SPACE SUIT. GOT KIDNAP VICTIM WRITTEN ALL OVER IT
Still no response. Kitty ground her teeth. A vague sense of illumination grew, revealing the space-suit encompassing her rescuer. When there was enough light to see the suggestion of her hand in front of her face, Kitty writhed in the man’s arms.
Instead of releasing her, however, her rescuer tightened his grip and increased his pace. Kitty grew still. An unnerving certainty had begun formulating in her mind.
Perhaps it was the sophistication of The Game’s programming, or perhaps the steely grip with which most humans clung to their identity. Either way, players inside The Game all seemed to retain the same posture, gestures and body language here as in the real world.
At first, when Queen Allaba’s light had glowed over her rescuer’s space-suit, she’d thought it was the confining attributes of the outfit itself that lent the man such stiff movement. But now…
It wasn’t Lucy. Someone else had arrived and snatched her from the priest. And was he taking her to safety, or simply to a different form of torture and death? Kitty opened her console again.
BAD_KITTY_69: WHERE RU? IVE BEEN CAPTURED
There was still no response.
Kitty selected Will’s handle from the chat console’s menu. But she hesitated before formulating a new sentence. What would she tell him? That she still had no idea where he was? That they were probably in the same rift, but that she’d been taken prisoner and had no idea how she was going to escape, let alone how she was going to rescue him?
She bit the inside of her cheek. What had happened to Lucy? Was he still in Polaris? Or had he decided it was too much effort to try and drag her along to the Arena? After all, it had been him saving her, helping her, guiding her since they’d met. He’d said they could work together, but maybe after two rifts worth of babysitting, he’d just had enough and decided to leave her to her own devices.
BAD_KITTY_69: I GET IT. I WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING.
She paused.
BAD_KITTY_69: I HOPE U GET OUT
She went back to Will’s conversation, but was still pondering over what she was supposed to tell him when she was dropped to the floor.
“You fracking stupid—” Kitty tried to say. Realising nothing but a strained murmur was emerging from behind her still-sealed mouth, Kitty gesticulated towardt her face.
The man didn’t seem to notice. He was standing, arms at his side, staring past her. The skin on Kitty’s back tried escaping. She spun around, growing rigid when she saw the line of figures standing behind her.
“Welcome home, sister,” the closest figure addressed her.
At least they had faces. Okay, she hoped that what she could see through the fabric drawn over their heads were faces. The fact that there were no spaces cut into the fabric for noses, mouths or eyes, didn’t seem to hinder their speech or sight. Draped in black cowls, they looked almost as if they were imitating the shadow-men Kitty had so recently had the pleasure of meeting.
Kitty pointed to her mouth, making sure the movement carried as much irritation as she could muster.
“Yes, of course,” the person addressing her murmured. The voice was too androgynous for her to attribute a sex to the person, but the slim body made her lean toward female.
The woman leaned forward. She touched cold, slim fingers to the area where Kitty’s mouth should have been. And then she was touching Kitty’s lips, and Kitty recoiled, lifting her own fingers to investigate her face.
“Thank you,” Kitty said. “Now, is someone going to tell me what the frack’s going on in this void-forsaken place?”
It took some telling, but it amounted to this:
A few moons ago, Queen Allaba, Darkest of the Night Stars, Sister of Darkness, Infernal Mother to the Void (which, impossibly, was also where she originated from), had captured the planet of Polaris from the planet’s inhabitants — a small percentage of which were responsible for Kitty’s rescue. Allaba’s plans for genocide had been thwarted, but not before more than eighty-percent of the population had been annihilated.
She’d been driven deep into the planet’s core where, instead of surrendering like any self-respecting thwarted enemy should, she’d decided to set up camp and begin randomly sacrificing anyone her wandering sentries found on the surface.
Small clans of resistance had sprung up, joining together like drops of mercury on an unwary palm, to form into something sizeable enough to take a stand against the Queen and bring her fanatics to an end.
“Your entry into Polaris has occurred at a momentous time indeed, sister,” the faceless woman said. “We are at the cusp of
our insertion into Queen Allaba’s core, a time which will herald great jubilation and signal the end of this planet’s grievous treatment.”
Kitty replayed the woman’s words, which she deducted were either poorly chosen, or expertly selected.
“I see. Okay, well—” Kitty began sidling to the right “—good luck with all of that. I’ll be sure to check in, let me see, never and get the dealio on this plan of yours and how it all turned out.”
She touched fingers to her forehead in a mock salute and spun around, nearly walking into the wall of plastic standing mute behind her.
“I’m afraid now that you know of our plan,” the woman said, “we cannot permit you to leave.”
Kitty glared at the woman. “I didn’t ask you to tell me. Why’s it my fault? Maybe you should start keeping your mouth shut instead of rattling off your secret plan to the first passer-by you come across.”
The woman lifted a hand. Two rubber-gloved hands closed over Kitty’s arms.
“It is for your own well-being, sister. Queen Allaba does not enjoy having her fun spoiled by the likes of us. And if she were to find you, she would enjoy nothing more than to exact vengeance upon you.”
“Again,” Kitty said. “I didn’t ask you to rescue me, did I? You can’t go around sticking your fracking noses in everywhere and then saying stuff like you did it for my, others, people’s—” she cut off the tangled sentence with a scream and a furious wriggle.
Neither did anything to release the pressure around her arms.
“Bring her,” the woman said, turning and striding away.
Kitty struggled against the hands gripping her, but only ended up bruising her arms. Instead, she slumped and gazed forward as the faceless party strode through Polaris. She had to admit, despite waves of depression, that the designers had done a really good job of the place. The star-dusted sky was infinite, with clouds of space-dust streaking across a serpentine milky way. Once they’d emerged on the surface, the sand beneath them turned to glittering grains of purple midnight. The land was uneven, humping into jagged mounds of mechanical rubble every few metres.
The Seventh Glitch Page 9
