by Alex Raizman
And you’re out of power, Athena thought, hoping it didn’t show on her face. You’re just a woman right now, as far as bullets are concerned. Her Hungers were scrabbling at the back of her mind, and she did her best to put them aside. Have to keep it together or this ends badly.
“You just saved our lives,” the Reverend said, lowering his gun. “I figure I could give you the benefit of the doubt there.”
Athena started to relax when Billy spoke up, his gun not wavering. “I heard on the news that one there is the Antichrist. I say we put a bullet in him to be safe.”
Her heart sped up. She could recover from death. Ryan would not. “He did most of the hard work in saving your lives.” Not entirely true, but what these people needed to believe right now.
“Yeah. Or that’s what you want us to think. But we got dead walking the Earth, and that’s biblical right there.’” Athena took it as a good sign that they were still talking, even though he - and several others - still were angry and frightened.
“Dumbass,” Silas interjected, glaring at him. “There’s no Bible verse that says that. Don’t you ever read it?”
“Can we stop arguing about the damn Bible?” Jodi said, her gun still trained on Athena, although she glanced over at the Reverend. “Sorry for the language, Reverend. But fact is, these two fought against the zombies, but that doesn’t make them friends. Now that we’re out here, if he’s the Antichrist, we do the world a favor by ending him and anyone who works with him.”
“May I speak?” asked Athena, keeping her hands raised. She was careful to keep her tone neutral, since it kept the sarcasm she was feeling from creeping into her voice. When no one objected, she continued. “I never had the pleasure of meeting your Christ. He didn’t come to Greece. But his disciples did. Good men, for the most part,” she said, glossing over several uncomfortable truths in the process. Give them what they want to hear, “and I never once opposed their attempts to convert my people.”
“Oh yeah?” Jodie looked interested, at least. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t care about being worshipped. Most of us don’t. There are a few who did - Zeus, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, Enki - but I have no desire for worshippers.”
“Why not?” Her eyes were narrowing, as were a couple others. “Y’all call yourself gods, right? Doesn’t that mean you want to be worshipped?”
Athena shook her head. “It’s a limitation of language. When we first became public, we were called gods because we were beings with power beyond normal comprehension. There’s still no other good word for it in your language. Superhuman might cover it, but that conjures images of men and women in colorful costumes which isn’t really what we do. I don’t intend on running around in a skintight costume.”
Silas took a moment to look her up and down, and leered. “Maybe you should think about it.”
Pig. Athena didn’t rise to the bait. She lowered her hands, and while the guns tensed, no one shot. “If I meant you harm, I had ample time to do horrible things. Instead, I’m talking. Shouldn’t that earn me some credit?”
“Lower your guns,” said the Reverend, his voice calm but loud. Projected. He knows how to speak to crowds. “I don’t see an Antichrist here, and I don’t see gods. Just a couple of people with the power to help, who did the right thing.”
“Reverend! We’ve already got those Satanists runnin’ around, now we got false gods, don’t you think that means we’re lookin’ at the end times?”
“Billy,” the Reverend said, his voice calm and authoritative, “these may be dark times, but until the good Lord sees fit to Rapture up the faithful, I think any claims to Armageddon are premature.”
“Your Reverend speaks well, and truly. I have read your Revelations, and it’s quite clear what will happen when it is time for the end of the world.” Athena didn’t even blink at the lie. In a sense, Ryan was their Antichrist, the man who would end the world. But only in a sense.
One by one the scared gunmen started lowering their weapons. Athena found it easier to relax after each one. “Might I take my friend and go? He needs to recover from our battle...and I have a feeling the next battle is not far away.”
The Reverend nodded, and since no one looked interested in arguing with him, she did just that, talking as she scooped Ryan up. “If any of the mummies remain, you must destroy both head and heart. Else they will simply reform.”
“Sounds good to me. Billy, Silas, Jodie. Spread the word to others and if any cops are still alive and kicking, make sure they know. National Guard or Army will probably be showing up soon, we gotta convince them of that anyway. Anything we should know about the - what’d you call them? Manticores?”
Athena hoisted Ryan over her shoulder. “Shoot them until they stop moving, and then keep shooting until it ceases to amuse you. They are hard to keep dead. If you can get ahold of their stingers, dip your bullets in their venom. It will kill them instantly. Don’t let it get on your skin if you value your life...”
“Noted. Thank you, ma’am, for your help.” The reverend gave her a broad smile. You’re not a goddess, he thought. But whatever you are, or whatever you claim to be, you’re on His side. Even if you don’t know it.
She nodded in appreciation, glad to at least get some gratitude, and carried Ryan back to the doorway they had left open. Once inside, Ishtar’s staging area created a bed for him, and she laid Ryan next to Ishtar’s corpse. I suppose I should start calling her Crystal, as he does. I wonder why the affectation?
She stared at Ryan for a moment. The man who would end the world. He looked so...tiny, like this. He didn’t have a commanding presence, but he did have a presence. Seeing him laid out like this after watching him destroy an army of mummies really drove home how fragile he was in his Nascent state. I will keep you safe, Eschaton, and we will find a way to end this world without you becoming what those ignorant brutes fear you to be.
She just wished she had some idea how she would keep either of those promises.
Chapter 16
Of Pens and Swords
Ryan woke up with his head pounding. Pushed it too far. Athena was standing close to the bed, swinging his sword. It sang in her hands, each strike humming through the air as she removed limbs and heads from straw training dummies.
He took a moment to just watch. Her motions were still full of the brute force she had used earlier, a raw power that years of video games and movies had caused Ryan to associate with the masculine. She didn't flip about, and there was no waifishness to her movements, none of the delicate grace that was given to action heroines or even that he had seen in Crystal. Seeing a woman rip into target dummies with a savagery that in no way matched her features, all with a near emotionless face...it was so enthralling, it took him a moment to realize they weren't in the silver planetarium of Crystal's nanoverse.
The sky above them was still swirling galaxies and stars, but it was much brighter than Crystal's - although not quite as bright as his own. Instead of a row of touchscreens, it had marble tablets with inscriptions that shifted and flowed like something organic. The floor was likewise marble, although with some carpeting in spots, and around the edge were pillars that held up arches. The whole thing, fittingly, brought to mind a Greek ruin.
“You moved us,” Ryan whispered, not wanting to interrupt her destructive dance.
"Yes.” Athena impaled the final dummy as she spoke, dragging Ryan's sword up to cut it in half before continuing. “Spending so much time using Ishtar's nanoverse was feeling invasive. She's still in there, but that archway," she pointed with the sword, "leads there now."
Ryan sat up, his movements gentle to account for his still throbbing headache. "Makes sense. How're you liking the sword?"
"It's a remarkable weapon. I think I figured out how it works,” Athena studied the blade for another moment “Feel up to using your divine sight to confirm my theory?”
“Sure, what am I looking for?”
“Programmable matter. I think the people of
your nanoverse figured it out.”
Ryan took a deep breath and opened his divine sight. The equations that swirled around the blade were incredibly complex, and it took him a moment to figure them out. “Yeah, hole in one. Programmable matter with micro cameras. It’s a...it’s a smartsword.”
Athena held up the blade and smiled at it. “I don't suppose you'd mind me keeping it? Assuming you can pull another from your nanoverse, of course." She gave it another few swings.
"Sure, if you'll answer a question for me." She raised an eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. "Why the swords? Bast used a gun, but pretty much everyone else has fought with swords - and I think I was subconsciously imitating that when I pulled mine out."
Athena walked over to one of the pillars and hung the sword on it. Looking around Ryan realized the pillars all had weapons hanging from them. Swords and guns and axes and pikes and other, more exotic implements.
"As Socrates was fond of doing, I'd like to answer your question by asking you some. How do you see your power?"
"Uh...I'm adjusting equations. Changing variables, sort of...hacking reality, I guess?"
She gave him a smile. An actual, genuine smile. "And your nanoverse, it obeys those same laws, yes?"
"Of course. You said it obeys the laws of reality unless we change them, right?"
"I did, although that was imprecise." She sat down on a stool that rose from the floor near the bed. "It would be more accurate to say it obeys the laws of reality as you understand them."
"Okay, so what's the difference?" He had to admit, he enjoyed getting answers, even in this roundabout way, more than being told to roll with it. Although, in Crystal's defense, I'm probably further along than I was then - if she'd told me, it might have broken my brain.
"I was born in Greece, millennia ago. I was twenty-three when I got my nanoverse. How much do you know about the classic elements?"
"That's earth, air, fire, and water, right?"
She nodded. "And Aether, the less famous one. It was believed that all matter was made of those five elements in varying ratios. Since that was what I believed, those are the rules my nanoverse abided by for millennia, before I could adapt it to keep up with modern understanding. Now, why do you think I would have had to rely on swords, shields, and other simple weapons?"
Ryan thought for a moment, chewing his cheek as he did so. "Because...that's not how reality works, so the advanced weapons didn’t work in the core universe?"
A genuine smile again. It almost would have been patronizing, a teacher giving an exceptionally bright student a rare moment of approval, but something in it was just soft enough to not feel like that. "Exactly. Now? I could pull out guns and other, advanced weapons, but...well; they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It works equally well if you swap the first and last letter of dog."
A moment passed before Ryan got the comment, then he started to chuckle. Not because the joke was all that funny, but because it was the first straight up joke he thought he'd ever heard from the normally dour goddess. After a couple moments he got his laughter under control and asked, "So Bast just decided that she'd be an exception to the rule?"
Athena nodded. "Which, following our earlier line of reasoning, does make sense." Ryan's mouth hung slightly open as he tried to figure out where she was going. Please don’t make me ask you what you mean. "She was associated with cats, after all."
That got another round of 'it's a lot funnier coming from you' laughter out of Ryan. "Okay, you got me there."
Athena's smile hadn't wavered. It was nice to see her looking something other than vaguely annoyed or frustrated, and it was a relief to see a smile that wasn’t sarcastic. "I do have good news for you, Ryan. Ishtar's body is beginning to warm again. She's started her rebirth cycle."
"Oh thank God." He paused, realizing that was a bit of an odd turn of phrase given what he was now, but rolled with it. "No offense, of course. I'll be glad to have her back, is all." Ryan didn't admit, out loud at least, that he'd also had doubts that she'd come back. He'd believed Athena when she'd told him, but...he still hadn't internalized the idea that death wasn't always permanent.
"None taken. When she does revive, you should talk to her without my presence - after all, when she died, I was still an adversary."
Ryan nodded. "Makes sense. In the meantime...Enki’s still an ongoing problem. We should be doing something. With all those marks on the Zoisphere in Granger..." Ryan shuddered. “How many people died?”
Athena shook her head, the smile vanishing from her face. “Dozens, at least. More likely hundreds. Maybe even more. Just to draw us out. I agree we need to deal with Enki before he kills more, especially since they now know it will draw us out, but…” Athena sighed. "But we do not know where they are, or what they want. We have limited options to strike at them."
"I think we do have an option there. We go back on the news, only you do most of the talking. Given that you were part of his original team, you talking about how awful he is might actually carry some weight."
Athena shook her head. “I see where you’re going with this, Ryan, but I don’t believe it’s our best course of action. That will provoke him into another fight, in the middle of a civilian population. We’ll be putting dozens of people at risk, especially now that he’s proven willing to allow innocents to be slaughtered to further his cause. No, we need something more definite, something more decisive. And we lack the intelligence to do it. She stood up. "Let's go into the core universe. You have Hungers to fill, and perhaps we’ll learn something."
Ryan felt his stomach agree with the idea as he climbed out of the bed and followed her to the door. The street they walked out on wasn't one Ryan recognized, but that hardly mattered. As always, his phone started buzzing with notifications as soon as he hit a cell tower, and he pulled it out to check it as they walked - making a mental note to charge it while they were in the core world.
Without even thinking about it, Ryan opened his email. Part of his brain though it was an odd choice - he had over twelve thousand notifications now, and there was unlikely to be anything interesting or useful there, but it was open, and he was scrolling through it. In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d already turned off his notifications, hadn’t he? Back the first time he and Crystal returned to the core world from Cipher Nullity.
As odd as these intrusive thoughts were, he still found himself opening an email.
Ryan,
We should talk. I think we can help each other out a great deal. Or, rather, my boss and you can help each other. Especially with this whole 'antichrist' mess you've gotten into. Give me a call, and let's talk about what we can do for each other.
Amy Preston
Heresiarch
Church of Adversity
It was followed by a phone number. “Church of Adversity...I’ve heard of that,” Ryan muttered. Yeah, it’s been in the news lately.
Athena was still walking. “Ryan? Are you coming?”
It was like the words lifted a fog on his mind. Ryan nearly threw his phone across the street. Someone, or something, had made him open and read that email. If whoever, or whatever, had done that had meant him real harm, they could have made him walk into traffic, not open an email.
Holy crap, what was that? Ryan knew his voice was shaking when he finally spoke. "Athena? What kind of power could make me open an email?”
Athena glanced over her shoulder and frowned. “That’s not something that normally happens. Why?”
Ryan held up the phone to show her the email. "I think we have something we need to do first."
◆◆◆
Rear Admiral Dale Bridges was getting tired of being one step behind these things. By the time he was able to touch down in Texas, the Antichrist and Athena were long gone.
They’d left a trail of bodies behind.
“Reverend Howard,” Bridges said to the only witness he considered worth his personal attention, “please, walk me through what happ
ened.”
Bridges listened attentively, glad to have a witness who wouldn’t bother with science fiction mumbo-jumbo, who would stick to what had actually happened: demons slaughtering innocent people.
Except that wasn’t the Reverend’s story. Bridges listened as the Reverend recounted how the undead had come from nowhere, how they had swarmed the town. How the Antichrist and Athena had fought to defend the town.
Despite the sweltering Texas heat, Bridges felt cold. They’ve managed to deceive a man of God.
“Did you consider it could be a false flag operation?” he asked the Reverend. “This sounds like it could be a deliberate attempt to gain people’s trust.”
“Can’t say that I considered that,” the Reverend replied, scratching his chin. “And if it was, it was a stupid one, to be honest. They both were in danger. We almost shot Athena’s head off in the aftermath. Ryan was unconscious on the ground.”
“And you really think bullets would have worked against them?” Bridges demanded. Progress on the new rounds was going slowly, and Bridges was itching to have weapons to use against these things.
“Don’t know, and quite frankly, I’m glad we didn’t find out.” The Reverend studied Bridges for a moment. “They’re good people, Rear Admiral.”
Bridges had no desire to berate a man of God, no matter how wrong he was. “I hope you’re right about that,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”
You won’t be right, of course, Bridges thought as Reverend Howard walked away. You’ve been deceived by the Antichrist. It’s not a judgement on you, Reverend. They don’t call the devil the Father of Lies for nothing. But I won’t be taken in. I will stop you, Ryan Smith, and those that follow you.
Then I can deal with these other “gods”.
Chapter 17
Heresiarch
“Mailbox!” Athena called, just in time for Ryan to avoid a collision.
“Thanks,” he said, swerving around the obstacle and then looking back to his phone.
