by Alex Raizman
“It’s true,” Ryan said firmly.
“Oh dear, you’ve already been taken in.”
Ryan sighed. “I’ve had this conversation four times today. Sorry if I’m a bit short.”
Everyone in the know agreed that Ryan was the Eschaton, the last god of an era. Unfortunately, opinions differed on what that meant. Some believed that meant there would be new gods, with different powers and roles. Others believed that no new gods would emerge. Ryan’s friend Crystal, formerly Ishtar, believed that this meant it was time to end the world. Ashtaroth believed the same, and Ryan was pretty sure that meant that Arthur was on board but didn’t know for sure.
For his part, Ryan agreed with her. Mostly. Her explanation made sense, and several people had tried very hard to kill Ryan based on the belief that it was true, so Ryan took that as a bit of confirmation. Granted, it wasn’t much to go on, but…
Morana was giving him a wary look, and Ryan sighed. “Look, I’m not going to go crazy and start killing people. I promise. Right now, we’re trying to figure out a way to save people, and we won’t be doing anything rash when it comes to the apocalypse. Can we skip that part of the lecture, please?”
Morana sniffed. “I remember being Nascent. So sure I had all the answers, too.”
Ryan rolled his eyes at the condescending tone. Yes, Ryan, that will convince everyone you’re not a child. Roll your eyes. You should throw a tantrum if you really want to sell it. “So, once you’re free, what are you up to next?” Ryan asked, hoping to change the subject.
Morana sniffed. “Something other than ending the world, I’m sure.”
You walked right into that one, Ryan chided himself. “Oh, thank God, we’re here,” he said as the console started to flash.
“Odd choice of words,” Morana said with a rueful grin, and Ryan couldn’t help but agree with her. He opened the door for Morana, and they stepped out on the edge of the battlefield.
“Well,” Morana said briskly, “looks like there’s still plenty for me to do. Thanks for the ride.” A chilling wind gathered around her as she strode into the fray.
Ryan deliberately turned his back on the fighting and came face to face with Athena. The Greek sculptors of ages past had done well mimicking her appearance, but no sculpture could have captured her energy and vitality, or her inherent grace. All the goddesses Ryan had met were beautiful, but Athena drew his eyes more than any other.
“Is that the last of them?” she asked, her voice tight. Athena had agreed on the necessity of working with Arthur, but Ryan knew that she was just as conflicted as he was, if not more so. He felt an urge to reach out to her and offer some sort of comfort, but held back, unsure if she would welcome the gesture.
He was glad he could at least give her good news. “Yup, as long as you and Crystal are done. Where is she?”
Athena jerked her thumb over her shoulder, and Ryan looked over to see Crystal perched on a rock and watching the battle. It was unusual to see her so still. A million years of life apparently left one with little patience for wasting time.
When he and Athena reached Crystal, Ryan saw that despite her relaxed posture, her expression was stormy. “I’m bloody glad that’s over,” she said. “Please tell me you lot are through so we can get out of here.”
Ryan just nodded, and they turned to exit the field. It was time to seek different allies.
Chapter 1
Myrmidon Rising
The cold, antiseptic room shouldn’t have made Bast think of the desert, but her dry, itchy eyes, swollen tongue, and parched throat caused her moments of half-sleep to be filled with images of sun and sand. When she drifted back to wakefulness, her stomach ached with Hunger so great, she almost wished for the desert of her dreams. At least then she could swallow sand to fill the emptiness in her stomach.
The sleep was never deep enough for her to actually pass into anything close to unconsciousness. She only got little tastes of sleep, just enough to leave her even more disoriented, trying to make sense of the fragments of conversation around her.
“...still alive, lending credence to the theory that…”
“...responsiveness to stimuli is…”
“...attempt again? The last time…”
It had been like that since she resurrected, and like the occasional smell of food inflamed her Hunger, the half-heard conversations drove home how painfully alone she was. They were talking to each other, and she wanted to cry out for them to acknowledge her. Talk to her. A hand on her shoulder, a whispered message; it didn’t matter. She yearned for some interaction with these people, as badly as she wanted to tear their heads from their shoulders for subjecting her to this torment.
She didn’t know where this place was. The last thing she remembered clearly was the battle on Graham Island. Being overpowered by Athena and her allies. Surrendering - actually surrendering - to Athena. That had been galling enough, but the fact that Athena had still driven her sword through Bast’s stomach had been worse. When Bast had first awoken, she’d thought Athena was the one who had shackled and bound her and had put the mask on her face that prevented her from even speaking.
It’s what Bast would have done if she’d been the victor. Better to restrain a foe than to destroy a nanoverse.
But then she’d started to have visitors. Individuals that walked around her, talking about her, never to her. She’d been denied any succor for her Hungers. No sleep, no food, no water, no interaction. She’d only been allowed air. For a mortal, this captivity would be fatal. For a goddess...she wouldn’t be granted that relief. She could feel cool air brushing against her skin. At first, it had given her some hope she was outside, where rain would fall on her lips and quench her thirst, but she could also see a ceiling above her, oppressively close.
The owners of the voices drifted in and out like her consciousness. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of a white lab coat, or the edge of navy blue uniform. Nothing in those half-heard snippets of conversation gave her anything concrete to latch onto. They spoke almost constantly, it seemed to Bast. Or maybe she just couldn’t remember the times when there was silence. Say something to me. Talk to me. Just ask me a question, just say my name! Anything!
She faded back into half-sleep, back to the desert that awaited her. Here she lay among sun-bleached bones that had been worn by the constant winds. Here she was half-buried in sand that should have seared her flesh but felt cool and distant. A scorpion scuttled across the sand near her, and with human lips, it said, “...extraction must be done carefully, we do not know how much more…”
The scorpion dissolved into the edge of a lab coat and a woman’s voice. So close, the woman was so close. In desperation, Bast jerked her hands. To caress or throttle, even Bast couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. The chains they’d shackled her with clanked as soon as she’d reached the half-inch of movement they allowed her. She hissed as the edge of the shackles cut into her skin. The lab coat took a half step back and began to speak. Bast couldn’t focus enough to make out the words. Help me, Bast tried to say. She’d beg, she’d plead if she could, but the skintight steel mask around her face arrested the motion. She made a noise, in the back of her throat, and it sent a ripple of agony along her ruined tongue and mouth.
She blacked out from the pain and found herself in the desert again. The scorpion was regarding her with curiosity, then skittered down to her arm. Bast watched, unable to move, as it stung. She wanted to scream at the sudden pain, but even here in this desert, her mouth would not move.
When she faded back into the antiseptic room, her head was slightly clearer. I must have actually slept for a bit there. Perhaps they had sedated her. Or perhaps she had gone mad. Was this place real? Or was the desert and its scorpions reality?
In this place, at least, she saw that she had been stuck with something: an intravenous drip providing nutrients she didn’t need. She wanted to laugh, to scream, to curse whoever had thought that was required to keep her alive. It wasn’t about the liquid
or chemicals. It was about eating. Drinking. Feeling the gnawing in her belly fade away and feeling the dry sand on her tongue melt into soothing coolness.
No such relief was offered to her. Nothing. Bast felt herself drifting again, but not to the desert, and not to the lab. This was a memory.
“You’re late,” Thoth said, arms crossed, his fingers tapping with impatience. He’d abandoned the ibis head back in the third century, over twelve thousand years ago. Bast still found it odd to see him with a human face. It was even stranger to see him wrapped in the gleaming steel plate they favored in this land.
Bast shook her head to clear the rain from her hair. “You didn’t want us relying on doorways,” she countered. “I’ve been riding this damn horse for the last day, and you demand punctuality?”
The figure next to Thoth rolled his eyes. “This isn’t important,” he said. “She is here now. That is what matters.”
Bast fixed the figure with a curious gaze. He was taller than either herself or Thoth, and broad of shoulders, with a thick golden beard that obscured most of his face. “Baldur, I presume? Or Thor?”
“Do I look like a blithering idiot, waving my hammer around and drooling?” Baldur rolled his eyes.
“There’s enough rain in that bush on your face that I can’t be certain about the drooling,” Bast countered.
Baldur’s retort was cut short by the approach of a final figure, wearing a thick green cloak. “We can cut the prattle,” the woman said. “I found the trail.”
Bast considered how unlikely that was in the rain, but held her tongue. If Artemis said she’d found a trail, then a trail had been found.
“I’m still not sure what we’re dealing with,” Bast said as she wheeled her mount around to follow the archer goddess. “All Thoth would tell me is that a monster had arisen.” She didn’t add the other part, the reason Thoth had asked her to join in this hunt.
He’d wanted a monster to catch a monster.
“Have you ever met a god,” Baldur asked, “that could not slake their Hungers after reviving?”
Bast shook her head. “I’d never even considered the possibility.”
“It happened here. Someone newfound their nanoverse. Survived long enough to undergo Apotheosis. Then the war with the Ottomans started.”
“That was a year ago,” Bast said with a frown. “How long is this story?”
“Short version,” Artemis said, her voice sharp. “He was dismembered and entombed before he could revive. When he was finally released...”
“What?” Bast asked, her frown deepening. “So far, you’ve explained only how he was denied feeding his Hungers. You haven’t explained what that means!”
“Look and see.” Baldur gestured, creating a globe of light in the night gloom. In the center of the road was one of the spears favored by the local soldiers.
A man’s decapitated head was impaled on the point of the weapon. His tongue hung from his lips, purple and swollen, and his eyes were wide with the terror he’d felt as he died. Bast shuddered as the skin squirmed from maggots writhing beneath the surface.
“Other Hungers develop in their absence,” Thoth said quietly as they guided their horses past the macabre trophy.
Before she could ask for clarification, Bast saw a slumped figure ahead. The body of a young woman lay broken against an abandoned building, her skin desiccated and the color of parchment. Afraid to see more but unable to turn away, Bast leaned in, trying to find a cause of death. With growing horror, she realized with Thoth meant - there were two holes in her carotid artery.
“Damnit,” Baldur whispered. “We’re too late. He’s become a full anthropophage.”
“What was his name?” Bast asked, studying the woman’s body with intense curiosity.
Artemis brushed the hair back from her face. “Vlad Dracul. These bodies are three weeks dead...the trail is colder than I feared.”
A scorpion crawled out of the woman’s wounds. Bast blinked. This wasn’t had happened. This wasn’t real. There hadn’t been a scorpion, and it had been raining. There wasn’t a dust storm. She hadn’t been thirsty. It…
It was the desert again. And it was the sterile room that was her prison. The past and present ran together, and for a moment, Bast wasn’t sure where any of the three began or ended.
Bast realized that, if this went on too long, she’d end up as mad as Dracul had been. She tried to find some comfort in the certainty that she wasn’t mad yet. Not yet.
The door opened. Footsteps approached, and she tried in vain to turn her head towards the sound. For one wild moment, she was terrified, that it was the scorpion, grown so large it had to wear boots. No. No, cling to this. The desert is a lie. This is real.
“Is she ready to be drained again?” The authoritative male voice was familiar, and Bast knew instinctively that this was likely her chief tormentor. It was the voice of a man who gave orders and expected them to be carried out, a man who expects others to follow him straight to the gates of hell. We’ll see if they follow when I send you there. Bast resolved to take no relief from this man, even if it was offered. This man had to die.
“Yes, sir. We should be able to get another two liters of ichor.” It was a woman’s voice. Bast had heard it before, multiple times. It was a gentle, almost motherly voice, but the speaker was a woman who always spoke of Bast as if she was a point of data, a statistical anomaly that needed to be forced into an equation. The disconnect between the tone and the words bothered Bast more than it should. It showed that this woman, whoever she was, was capable of compassion, of kindness.
She just had none to spare for Bast.
Why won’t you even give me your names? It was another point of frustration that they never seemed to use names around her, always referring to each other by titles, or simply “sir.” It couldn’t be for fear of filling her Social Hunger - if they knew she had it, they would know enough to be sure that just knowing their names wouldn’t fill it. Some old superstition about names, maybe? There had been times where men had believed true names had power. They were wrong, but...
“It seems to me that we should be able to fully drain each time. She’s died once before, after all. She was dead when we pulled her out of the damn ocean. Why not just drain her and bring her back.” The man’s words should have formed a question, but his tone made it an imperative. Flat. He always spoke like that. He did not expect enlightenment, was not requesting it. He would understand what was happening.
You bastard, Bast though. Look at me. Acknowledge me. I’m not your lab rat.
The woman cleared her throat before saying, “We can’t be certain she’ll come back, Admiral. There are plenty of stories of gods truly dying. It seems safer to drain her as much as we can without killing her instead of...”
Bast felt her attention waver as another pang of Hunger overtook her. The desert began to return. Before it did, in a moment when she was between this place and the sands, she could hear their hearts beating in their chests. A steady pair of rhythms - wub-thub-wub-thub. I’ll rip them out when I get free. I’ll rip them out still beating and then I’ll be full. She shivered at the thought, not from fear or disgust, but a wave of delight, and she reminded herself that she wasn’t mad yet.
The desert returned. The scorpion was waiting, its tail poised over her arm, only this time the tail was a long, empty syringe. It was going to drain her ichor. It was going to drain her near death, but not all the way. She’d be weak for days afterward. Well, weaker.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the Hunger, the need to get satisfaction.
She ignored the scorpion this time. There was a new element to the desert. High in the sky were a pair of suns, and they pulsed in time with that delicious sound. Wub-thub. Wub-thub. It sang to her, and Bast again reminded herself that she hadn’t gone mad.
Yet.
***
The door to conference room 4B was adorned with a hand-lettered sign that gleefully proclaimed it the “Nerd Lair”.
Rear Admiral Dale Bridges paused to roll his eyes before reaching for the handle. He had allowed this breach in protocol so far because these consultants were not military, and the discipline Dale preferred would have made them miserable. Long ago, Dale had learned that the happier civilians were, the better their results would be. Still, he had to take a deep breath and adopt a neutral expression before braving the “lair” that currently housed the United States military’s most unusual think tank.
The rest of the base was a bastion of order, discipline, and efficiency, and the contrast made this room seem even more...weird. Dale still hadn’t gotten used to the ever-expanding collection of posters; superheroes, supervillains, elves, dwarves, space marines, and all manner of nerd ephemera were rapidly covering every inch of available wall space. The conference table was littered with scientific reports and laptops mixed with stacks of comic books, graph paper, spiral notebooks, random post-it notes, and strangely shaped dice. Dale was pretty sure that some of these items were used to play some kind of game (and he certainly hoped that was the case with the dice), but he had absolutely no desire to learn the details. He had a feeling he was happier not knowing.
The tableau would have given a heart attack to most men of Dale’s rank. However, the people in this room were useful, and skilled, and had unique perspectives Dale valued. He just wished they had some modicum of discipline.
To be fair, the professors and scientists were much more orderly than the comic book writers and genre fiction experts, although Dale had seen evidence that some of the academics were starting to slide towards the chaotic nature of their colleagues.
Doctor Shivani Pivarti, however, was not one of them. The Director of the recently formed Project Myrmidon was a no-nonsense woman who kept her person and personal space organized to a level that would have impressed the surliest of drill instructors. That attitude, combined with the fact that she’d been researching these entities for years before they’d become public figures - and managed to do so without letting the academic studies people took seriously suffer - had earned her the title of Director. Of everyone in the room, Dale preferred dealing with her. She could make sense of the chaos, and never let it impact how she comported herself.
