Soul Jacker Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  When he finally lets her go, he is crying and he can't meet her eyes. She'd expected to see some sign of triumph, but this is the opposite.

  "I'm sorry," he mumbles to the floor, "for what I am," then he turns and starts up into the thickness of staircases. Doe runs after him in silence; as her feet fall in air the steps become solid again and the ghosts of other paths fall away.

  They race upward together. There are no more slit windows now, but Ruin's sobs hang in the air behind him like bubbles of memory in the Molten Core, bursting as Doe runs through them. In one she remembers the list of abandoned places he compiled so carefully for Ritry, as a gift. In another she sees him framing Don Zachary's son and Mei-An like cogs in a complex machine, providing just enough impetus to force Ritry out of his aimless life on the Skulks. In a third he sits eagerly in the shark arena, waiting for Ritry to come.

  It was love, she sees then, after a fashion. Ruin cared for Ritry Goligh, even needed him, but when he showed that affection in the only way he knew, Ritry rejected him. He offered a partnership to dominate the world and was turned away. Ten years of emptiness followed, searching old conquests for something to take away his pain; but all his past trophies had grown stale.

  The bonds of pain were no longer enough.

  This misery washes back through Doe until a crash comes from far below, jogging her from the reverie. "They're in the Tower," says Mr. Ruin blankly.

  The thumping drumbeats of marines storming up the stairs follows.

  "We blazed the trail," Mr. Ruin says, "they'll be on us in seconds. Hurry, Ritry!"

  They run until her thighs burn and the stairs become a blur, then emerge onto a pearl-white landing at the top, across from which stands a beautifully-carved alabaster door. Mr. Ruins stops abruptly and his jaw drops.

  "It's so clean," he says with a strange yearning in his voice. "I didn't think that was even possible."

  "It's the bridge," says Doe, and reaches into her belt for a chunk of candlebomb.

  "It means more than that," says Ruin, his eyes watering. "It means I wasn't always so foul."

  Doe ignores him and strides up to the door, rolling the candlebomb into seven strips that adhere to the white stone easily. There is no fuse for some reason, but Ruin is already there at her side holding out his left hand.

  "Take them all," he says, "I won't need them any more."

  Doe nods the briefest thanks then snips his fingers away with a pair of shears, lines them up along the wall leading to the first candlebomb strip and strikes a spark.

  "Thank you," says Mr. Ruin as she sprints away from the door, "thank you for showing me what I might have been." He doesn't move until the elasteel line Doe hooked around his waist yanks him along in her wake, then-

  BOOM

  The explosion flings them both high against the wall. Doe's suit takes the brunt of the strike, and she spins mid-air to land on her feet. Smoke fills the gouge where the door had been, revealing flashes of flashing purple aether beyond, but-

  CRACKAKAKAKAKAKAK

  Howitzer bullets strafe her back and burst through her chest, tossing her forward to smash her HUD off the ground. More bullets track her body, boring into her suit and drilling through the flesh within. Alarms flare across her broken visor announcing internal injury and shattered bones. Using exo-motors she manages to flip her battered frame in time to see-

  Black-clad marines have taken the landing and more pour up the stairs, all wearing buzzing EMR-helmets with weapons trained on her. Too fast, she thinks. There wasn't enough time…

  One of them carrying a large howitzer steps forward and flips up his HUD. He has dark copper-skin and the fire of twin blazing Suns in his eyes.

  "Hello, Mr. Goligh," he says. "Or should I say Doe? I'm delighted to find you here."

  "The Suns," Doe manages. Speaking makes something come loose in her chest, and she coughs up blood.

  He smiles. "The very same. Thank you for opening the bridge, and thank you for leading the way. Now, goodbye."

  He trains the howitzer on her face and the barrels begin to spin.

  R. RAY

  Ti and her Dactyl explode far below, and Ray beats the console so hard something clicks in his wrist.

  "Shit!" he shouts.

  Looking down into the spreading smoke he curses the whole Sunken World for what it has taken from him. The chord shouldn't have to die like this, none of this should be happening and that just makes him more angry. He looks up to the falling sky of red-veined black mud, collapsing inward like a closing eye with twin blazing irises and shouts "Fuck you!"

  Doe needs him now and he won't let her down. He yanks back on the control stick and the helicopter's rotors whine into overdrive, chopping him upward so steeply the G-force almost knocks him unconscious.

  Clinging to the controls he soars up and the White Tower soars with him, far taller now than it seemed before, up to the top where a gray-slate roof caps it like a two-cornered hat. He squeezes the triggers and fires every bullet and missile in the machine's battery into the wall at once.

  RATATATATAT

  CRACKACRACKCRACKA

  BOOM

  The Tower stones disintegrate in the inferno, sending molten white matter out and down like strange rain. Through charcoal clouds of atomized stone Ray's HUD highlights the living figures within; Doe and Mr. Ruin lie prone on the floor while the marines of the Suns' chord are already aiming their QC rifles out at Ray.

  He unleashes the helicopters Bofors guns upon them. The noise is deafening in the echo chamber of the Tower's smoky interior, shredding their bodies under the laser-like hail of bullets. Their upper bodies fall to rest amongst their legs and Ray keeps firing until the last of them is down.

  Impacts rock the Dactyl. He spins and sees his cab is on fire, pock-marked with a dozen spherical QC bites. Above that the collapsing sky roars inward in a spherical red-black tsunami, driving them all toward the final implosion.

  The helicopter sputters its last and Ray springs up from his seat, takes one step and dives through the passenger door, firing his grapnel into the smoke.

  He falls into the gap between the Dactyl and the Tower, but the grapnel head bites and the elasteel line bites catches and swings him like a pendulum to smack against the White Tower's wall. Newly bonded bones break with the impact and Ray grits his pierced teeth against a dark wave of unconsciousness, then the blades of his stolen helicopter tilt and chop into the stones by his side. He stiffens his suit just in time for the explosion, which hammers him against the wall once more.

  It's all pain. It's all good.

  "Come on!" he grunts, and rides the grapnel tracer up the wall and in through the blasted hole to lie on the edge of the broken wall. Billows of shifting black smoke fill the Tower, dappled by the crackling purple light of the bridge. Doe managed to opened it. He glimpses a figure standing within, so faint still against the coruscating universe beyond, and he would recognize another tone in the chord anywhere.

  Far.

  He tries to shouts but there's no sound to it; his body is shot. Red lights flash in his HUD warning of broken legs and arms, broken ribs and punctured lungs. A QC ate into his gut, another calved off a knot of his shoulder. He can only wave one half-broken arm to the slim figure of the boy in the doorway; the boy who saved them all before.

  But he is not a boy anymore. As Far strides toward him through the smoke Ray see that he's a young man now, grown tall and strong. The blemishes of his old scars have stretched taut with muscle.

  "Damn son," Ray whispers up at him, "you look good."

  "You look terrible," says Far, "really bad."

  Ray chuckles even as Far grips him under his arms and starts dragging him back. The suit keeps the worst of the pain at bay but still the grey swirl of unconsciousness beckons. His feet scrape over soot-blackened white marble, he sees the tidal wave swelling just outside the window, then he's through the blasted door and into the purple roar of the aetheric bridge.

  Stars are every
where; around and inside and encircling. He sees light and memories and things he never did, then he blinks back to himself and the pain in his body is fading. The HUD says his powdered bones are knitting at an impossible pace. Far beckons and he rises disbelieving to his feet, running back into the shaking ruin of the Tower after Far, who already has Doe in his arms. Instead he nods at the bloodied figure of Mr. Ruin slumped on the floor.

  "Take him," he shouts.

  "What?" Ray protests weakly, not understanding, "he's-"

  "Just do it, Ray," Far says, and that is enough. Ray scoops the battered figure of Ruin in his powerful arms and sprints back through the bridge.

  The end of the world hits like a supernova at their backs.

  Ray spins to see it. One moment there is a Tower and smoke and the grinding roar of the red-veined mud sky falling in, then there is an in-rushing of black and a deep flare of red and with a tumultuous crash the Sunken World is gone.

  Ray pants and watches as the bridge between there and here fades to nothing, leaving only the fizz and crackle of the aether in the air. He looks at Far and Far only shrugs, then Doe is on her feet and in his face, grabbing hold of him, plucking off his HUD and kissing him hard and long.

  It's pretty great.

  "I love you," she whispers in the fevered heat that follows, with her grime-streaked white face close up to his. "Do you hear me, Ray of the chord? I love you, you last-minute-saving bastard."

  He tries to laugh and say he loves her back, but she is kissing him again, too hard and it's wonderful. When she finally lets go he gasps for breath and laughs and then looks out at the place they have come to, where they have only ever been for the briefest of moments before.

  The aether.

  The immense glory of it numbs his frazzled senses, spreading before them as a universe of stars in a blue-black firmament, intertwined with the silvery tracer lines of bonds that branch like the trillion interconnections in a single Molten Core. Flashes of purple electric light flash between them incessantly like nerve signals in the mind, every star a mote in this massive ocean of life, every star in ceaseless communion.

  "Fuuuuuck," Ray says in one long exhale.

  "It's amazing," says Doe.

  Blazing at the center lie the blood-red twin Suns like a gory wound in the glittering dark. Venal bond-lines spray out from them to the universe at large like tumorous growths, pulsing with the organic beat of stolen life, at once repellent and fascinating.

  "There lies King Ruin," says Far, pointing. "The Suns."

  Ray zooms his HUD in to study the slow revolve of these feverish stars; they are just like the suns over the Sunken World, though now a glossy golden band links the two like a tongue.

  "I never knew," says Mr. Ruin.

  Ray turns to see Mr. Ruin on his feet, healed just like him. Anger bursts up and makes his hands ball into fists. Ruin, the bastard; he looks just as he did when Ritry Goligh first met him in the shark arena, wearing his grey suit with his teeth gleaming white like a shark, having stalked them their whole life. Now tears shine in his eyes, and that just makes Ray angrier. This evil bastard who tortured Ritry and raped and abused his family, who tried to destroy everything, is crying?

  "I didn't know," he says, looking now at Ray. "I swear I didn't know it would be like this."

  Ray goes to break in his face, but Far stops him with a gentle hand on his chest; firm but kind. Through that touch Ray begins to see what Far has seen; begins to understand everything that has happened and everything that will happen, and the cost of it all.

  The anger drops out of him and he turns to Doe.

  "It's all right," she says, though it doesn't come easy. She's seen it too. "Ray, it's what we have to do."

  He can't think of any words to say. He tries to breathe but the air here has no weight, does nothing to clear the burning in his chest. It can't be like this, but it is. Far's eyes are sad. Doe's eyes are sad. He feels like someone is squeezing his lungs like a bellows, so hard he can't breathe.

  "Tell Ritry I'm sorry," says Mr. Ruin, looking at him still. "Please. I wanted to be better, but I didn't know how. Tell Ritry I only wanted to be better."

  Ray doesn't want to listen to this, not now, but he can't close his ears and he can't rip the man to shreds. He can see what will come, and feels things changing in his heart. It is a becoming, of sorts. He hates Mr. Ruin more than anything in the Cores, but here he is, begging for understanding as he too becomes something new. Doe is right by his side, but there is nothing he can say to her now; nothing to explain or help him comprehend what's coming.

  "I should kill you," he hisses at Ruin; all he can manage to get out.

  "You already did," Ruin says, smiling even as a tear breaks down his cheek. "I'll be gone soon either way. I hope you can repair what we've done."

  Ray's fists tighten, and though Far's hand is still on his shoulder filling him with a soft low tone, and though Doe is holding tight to his hand, he imagines what he would do. Mr. Ruin would be torn in half and scattered. His blood would consecrate the bridge and serve as payment for everything he took.

  But he doesn't do that. Instead he reaches out with one trembling hand and places it on Mr. Ruin's chest, over his heart. Through that touch he feels the agony inside. This man has suffered too. He sees a lifetime of reaching out but never knowing how or for what. He feels the constant frustration of killing the only things he loves instead of embracing them. He sees a baby born in the midst of a Court and left for the Suns to corrupt.

  It's too much, more suffering than he's willing to accept, but he can't hold onto his hate in the face of what's coming. Perhaps they could have been fellow marines in a Molten Core. It was all that Ruin ever wanted, though he didn't know how to ask. Everything might have been better. Ray's last bulwark of anger breaks under this revelation and he surrenders beneath it.

  Not forgiveness, not that yet or perhaps ever, but understanding.

  "I'll tell Ritry," he says. "He can be the judge."

  Fresh flurries of tears run down Ruin's cheeks. "Thank you, thank you you beautiful man, that's all I could ask."

  Ray just nods. It is too hard to speak, knowing what he now knows, about the past and the future both. Doe's hand is in his and he cherishes her touch. For so long they have waited, only stealing glances between missions in the Molten Core and too afraid to take things any further, but now…

  "You have to go," Far says with fresh urgency, "Me is dying right now."

  "Kill them all," says Mr. Ruin, and squeezes Ray's big hand in his own. Ray lets him, then pulls Doe close and kisses her again.

  "We'll be together on the other side," Doe says, her voice breaking with emotion. "Now go save our chord."

  There are so many things he wants to say but no words to say them. All he can do is nod, and squeeze her hand, and turn. It is the hardest thing to do, but Me is dying and he has to go. He focuses on that and the anger comes flooding back to wash the grief away. There will be a time for sorrow later; now is the time to fight.

  He leaps into the aether and the knowledge of how to travel here comes to him through Far's memory, like swinging on elasteel grapnels below the Solid Core. He soars light years in an instant, crossing the vast crackling expanse of silvery bonds to land upon a star close to the blazing Suns. It is a hand of King Ruin, tethered by a thick band of thought to the King.

  He punches through the star's furious outer crust, driving first his fist then his head and his whole body through the hard rock and directly into the-

  Solid Core.

  His eyes open on an empty grey corridor. There is no RG-stippling on the floor, no organic pulse in the walls and no sign of the Lag. It is a Solid Core in name only, with no memories, no defenses and no ideas; a Soul stripped of any hint of personality. Behind him the fresh gouge out to the aether warps and shrinks and Ray drives forward without looking back again, propelled by the force of his rage.

  He races out through the simple, streamlined Solid Core maze in s
econds, to stand looking down through a wide-open Deathgate upon the tepid boil of this Soul's slowly churning Molten Core. There are no thoughts bubbling inside the lava at all; the Suns has cored them all leaving only the most basic autonomic functions behind. The whole mind has been erased leaving the body as a mere vehicle for the Sun's will, a 'hand' and nothing more.

  Ray dives and hits the Molten Core at terminal velocity, but there is no need for the Bathyscaphe in these lukewarm flows, no need for a crew or a chord. With his own voice he chimes out the sound of his singular tone, a deep and rumbling Ray which swells through the weak magma and realigns its polarization like a tsunami tide, turning all the flows to chime just like him.

  Around him the empty Soul of the King's hand reorients. He plunges further and the healing of his single tone prepares the way, pushing his thoughts into the causeways of nerves and muscles as though slipping on a glove. He slides out into the hands and the feet, into the arms and legs; he feels the thump of this body's pulse, feels the sound of its breathing and the sensation of air on its skin, and throttles off the thick band of the Suns' control.

  So he is born, and for the first time opens his eyes on the world.

  It is a dark hall filled with corpses lying in thumping EMR hubs. Beside him lies the husk of Mr. Ruin; his skull flayed back with numerous wires plunged into his gray matter. Ray looks down at his copper-dark hands in the gloom, and realizes he is truly alive. He is Ray and he is breathing, he is here, and Me is near and needs his help.

  Already the Suns has sensed him. Already the Suns is coming, but Ray is burning hot and born for it. He sprints from the corpse hall into a worn gray metal corridor, recognizing the grind of vast caterpillar tracks deep below; an immense suprarene tank designed to trawl the burning deserts in the War and fight over the deepest tar-sands..

  Details of a history he never lived slot into place in his mind as he sprints on; knowledge left by Far or come through from Ritry Goligh; the 'Court' around him erupts like a hive of wasps as the King turns his hundreds of 'hands' against him. Bonds whip through the air like lashes but none of them break through his shield of fury.