by Aaron Frale
“They let you experiment on their own?”
“They have taken to heart the philosophy of ‘what doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger’. Either way, they are nothing more than servants to me.”
“Why are you scared of them?”
“The High Priest is unpredictable. He kills his most trusted for sport. I can outsmart them, but the fact remains that I need time to enact my plan. The oxygen processing center is not far from here. I can have it down in 30 minutes. Then maybe another hour before they realize the oxygen is running out, and by then it’ll be too late. I’ll lock them in and prevent all tuning. They will be too weak to do anything and will be choking on their own fumes.”
“And then what?”
“We take over. The Tuners, I mean. We continue my experiments.”
“No deal.”
“There you go, being unreasonable again. Your problem is that you are rash and have no vision. We can shape the multiverse how we want it to be. That slavery world? We come in with plasma rifles, take them out, and free the slaves.”
“It’s not that simple,” Jon said. “You can’t just go to a place you know nothing about and tell them what to do!”
“So we give the slaves guns,” Ludie said. “They’ll figure it out pretty quickly.”
“No matter how noble the cause, giving weapons today creates the terrorists and dictators of tomorrow.”
“That’s why you forced my hand. The cultists were the only way to get anything done.”
“Don’t try to pin their bloodshed on me. How many people have they killed, Ludie? How many of them would have considered you a friend?”
Ludie wavered. “It—it wasn’t supposed to go that way.”
“How was it supposed to go? You think the cultist would show up, Hector would hand them the keys to his office and tell them it was their turn now?”
“He said they would strand you in a no-account universe like 42.”
“And you believed him! Ludie, let me tell you how I think it is going. You thought the cultists might kill a few people, but what are a few people when you are saving the multiverse? Either way, it’s how you changed the Tuners in the way you thought it should go. But that’s not what’s happening. You aren’t in charge. The High Priest has you under his thumb as much as any follower. Probably more so, because they believe they are doing the right thing, whereas he has to keep his eye on you, am I close? Now, it’s spiraling out of control, and you don’t know how to stop it. You can kill everyone on this station, but there is still a universe out there full of them, and what’s worse now is they know how to get here. And I’ll give the High Priest credit for one thing. He made something larger than himself. If you kill him, someone else will take his place and that one might be only wanting vengeance if you are lucky.”
“Shut up!” Ludie yelled and hit Jon with full force.
The kid may come from a universe with weaker gravity, but when backed into a corner, he could pack a punch. The blow knocked Jon off his feet, and his sword clattered to the floor. Before Jon could regroup, Ludie took off running. Jon shoved his sword inside his cloak and dashed out of the rec room after the kid, but it was too late. The guy was gone. He contemplated pursuing since Ludie probably ran to his quarters for his power suit, but Jon figured it was best to get Hector before the ex-Tuner could warn anybody.
Jon dashed down the hall.
15
Alex and Hailey snuck through the tree cover on the outskirts of the farmhouse property. There was a fence and too much field to dash across without being spotted. The invisibility cloaks were too risky. Ernest was working on a technology that could scan for anything that may be dispersing light in the area that the cultists could have stolen. Their options were limited, but they still were able to devise a plan.
They rounded the outskirts to an area where the barn was between them and the house. The field was a much larger distance than the other access points they could have chosen, but the barn didn’t have any windows where a person could be looking out for them. The only obstacle was a lone cultist standing in front of the back door to the barn.
Once they were in position and the farmhouse disappeared from view, Alex sat against a tree. Hailey stood and kept a watchful eye. Alex pulled out a knife and a whittling project. The piece of wood was shaping up to be a dog.
“Relax, your boyfriend made it to HQ,” they said and chipped away at the pooch.
“How well do you know Azerius?” Hailey asked, ignoring the comment.
“Other than he’d be a terrible roommate. He is way too fastidious. The dude tried to scold me for not keeping the color order of the plates, and I was thinking that I’m amazing for even emptying the dishwasher,” they said as they worked.
“You’re living with the guy?”
“I had to spend some time watching you all to know that you were indeed still Tuners and not some cultist freaks.”
Hailey gestured toward the barn. “We are the ones being hunted, remember?”
“Boo-freaking-hoo. How about being chased by gangs who treat torture like an Olympic sport?”
“You grew up in a rough universe. We get it. I hope you didn’t lead my friends into a death trap because you are too chicken to go back.”
“Relax; my sister will help them out.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah. We didn’t exactly part on good terms.”
“Why would your sister help them?”
“Because she’s the namby-pamby good one.”
“Some ‘bargain’ you turned out to be,” Hailey said under her breath.
“I never said I was a ‘bargain.’ I ain’t cheap.”
“Sure, but I haven’t seen you produce any results. Anyone could have driven the getaway in that crappy car of yours!”
Alex threw their knife. It sliced off a lock of Hailey’s hair and stuck in the tree behind her. Hailey pulled out her dagger and tossed it at Alex. It cut through the whittling project and stuck into the tree behind them. They both eyed each other.
“Don’t ever talk about my car like that,” Alex said.
“The next one will go through your throat,” Hailey said.
Alex eyed her and said, “You know, I like you. Not in a sexual way. Not my type. Not enough meat on your bones. But damn, girl, you have got an arm.”
Before Hailey could respond, she noticed another cultist in priest robes walking towards the man in the back. Since Azerius was the only one of them who could pass for a cultist, he went in through the front door, pretending to come with news from the High Priest. At first, Azerius had said no, but Alex had convinced him that he’d only truly be free if they could dismantle the whole cult.
“If the Tuners couldn’t do it, no one could,” Hailey had said. “It would only be a matter of time before they found you.”
“Fine,” Azerius had mumbled.
“What?”
“FINE!”
They were lucky the clan that had been sent to go after them wasn’t the one Azerius had defected from, or their plan would have fallen apart. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell from a distance, so they just had to take the risk. The fact that Azerius made it past the people on the porch meant at least some of their plan was going right. Now they just had to wait and see if Meathook’s part would come through.
They watched as Azerius walked up to the guard and exchanged words. The other cultist eventually turned toward the farmhouse, and Azerius thumped him over the head with a club he had on his belt. It was go time.
They both ran from the tree cover at a full sprint. The fence was just three rows of barbed wire that was more to keep animals out than people. Hailey jumped and kept herself flat as she could while she flew through the gap between the top and middle row. Alex slid limbo style through the bottom. They both went full speed through the field to minimize the time they were out in the open.
Once they got to the back door of the barn, Azerius was hog tying the cultist he had
knocked out. Alex inspected his work and said, “Look at you, and they say you can’t teach an old cultist new tricks!”
They stuffed a rag in the guard’s mouth and went for the door. Hailey entered a code, and the light turned green. At least the cultists hadn’t changed the locks while they were gone. They all entered the barn.
While the inside had been retrofitted as a living quarters, it was still a fairly open room. They needed to be ready to fight anyone they could find. Luckily, there weren’t any cultists in the place. The techs all stood in rows in what used to be the living room area. The couches, TV, and even the pool table had been removed.
Hailey could see evidence of torture. Some had wounds on their faces, others were missing teeth, and some even didn’t have fingernails. From the way they were all quiet, standing face front and heads down, Hailey deduced that it must be some protocol that was beaten into them.
Samira, a tech from the evening shift, risked a glance up, and said, “Hailey?”
The others murmured, and poked their heads up. After Hailey and the group got close enough, the techs finally broke formation, and there was a tearful and brief reunion. What struck Hailey was that there were only about of third of them left. According to the group, some were killed defending the farm during the takeover, others were tortured to death, and a few were recovering in the bunkbeds. Samira had at least convinced them that they would be more likely to talk if they were allowed to take care of the wounded.
After hearing the horrific accounts of what it was like to live under the thumb of the cultists, Hailey was reinvigorated by their choice to save the people. After taking a head count, minus the ones who were dead, they were only missing three: Ernest and two others who had helped Patel with the barrier project.
“They’re dead,” Alex said. “Let’s go while we can still count it as a win.”
“No,” Hailey said. “We leave no one behind.”
Alex rolled their eyes and said, “I’m on overtime anyway. I’m adding hazard pay to this.”
“Fine, whatever,” Hailey said. She turned to Samira. “Can you get the wounded ready to transport?”
“Sure,” Samira said, “but how will you get a vehicle past the farmhouse? The only road—”
Hailey smiled and said, “You let me worry about that.”
“Come on,” Hailey said to Azerius and Alex, “Let’s go.”
Samira said, “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you need to gather the wounded.”
“Bobbi can do that,” she said. A blonde in her forties who had been a caretaker at the arboretum gave the thumbs up. Samira continued, “I’ve been in the farmhouse. I know what’s in there. I even know where they are torturing people.”
She lifted her shirt, and there were burn marks all over her chest.
“Fine,” Hailey said. “Azerius, give her your backup dagger.”
“I don’t have a backup dagger,” Azerius said.
“It’s taped to your thigh,” Hailey said. “You can see it bunched up in your robe when you walk. Believe me, if you ever get to the point of needing to use it, we are all dead anyway. One more hand to fight might prevent that.”
Azerius stuck his hairy leg out of his robe. A dagger was duct taped to his thigh. He had to unwrap it just to get it out and made owie noises while he was doing it.
“You really think that would help you in battle?” Hailey said.
“Owie, owie! Maybe they wouldn’t find it on me when they threw me in prison,” he said and finally got it free. He handed to Samira, who brushed the leg hair off and crinkled her nose. The other techs scrambled to get ready to leave the place. Hailey and her team went towards the front door. There was no use sneaking around at this point. They wouldn’t be able to approach the farmhouse without being noticed. Hector had made sure to buy a property with windows on every side.
However, they still had the element of surprise. Hailey hoped that was enough. She clicked on a walkie-talkie they had got from Azerius’s house. “Meathook?” Hailey said.
“Yeah?” his voice crackled over the radio.
“We are ready to go.”
“One pickup,” Meathook said. “I’ll be there.”
“Don’t be late,” Hailey said.
“I already got the truck—I mean goods.”
“The only point of speaking in code is so they don’t know what we are planning!”
Alex grabbed the walkie and said, “So whatever you do, don’t say we are coming from the north. Use summer migration or something.” Hailey gave them a look. Alex shrugged and asked, “What? In case they are listening, maybe they’ll think we are coming from the north.”
Hailey grabbed the walkie back and tossed it in her invisibility backpack. “You ready?” she asked to Alex.
“Does a bear crap in the woods?” Alex responded.
“Depends on what you feed it.”
“Fish?”
“The blood of my enemies.”
“I take back all the bad things I’ve said about you,” Alex said and unhooked what could be best described as a saw blade with a handle. They grinned and said, “Made it myself. You’d be amazed by the advances in hand-to-hand combat the apocalypse inspires.”
“Let’s go,” Hailey said.
Samira held up two fingers and pointed to each side of the front door. Hailey nodded, and Alex gave the thumbs up. Azerius burst out the door.
The two cultists jumped back but didn’t pull out their weapons when they saw one of their own. The couple seconds of distraction was all they needed. Hailey slit the throat of the one on her side. Alex did the same, but the grooves on her weapon took a portion of the throat with it. Alex grinned with mad glee at the carnage.
“You know I was joking—about the bear,” Hailey said.
The chunk of flesh dropped from the saw blade. “I wasn’t,” Alex said.
The group turned toward the farmhouse and dashed up the lawn. If the cultists had spotted them, there was no indication. They got to the edge of the house and skirted the side until they came to the front porch.
There were two dressed in plain clothes. One had a hat covering his forehead scars, and the other had hair brushed in front. They looked convincing from afar, but up close, Hailey could tell they weren’t one of their own. Not that that would have helped if they stumbled into the trap. Hailey threw her dagger and got the one with the hat in the throat.
The one with the hair turned to run for the front door, but Alex was on top of him. She stabbed him several times while holding her hand over his mouth. Hailey didn’t waste a moment and opened the front door.
On the other side, she saw a cultist who was presumably coming to change shifts with one of them because he was also in plain clothes. Hailey stuck a dagger into his skull. Another female cultist sat on the couch in the living room and ran for her weapon leaning on the edge of the sofa. She didn’t make it two steps. The woman fell to the floor with a dagger in her back.
Hailey retrieved her weapons, and miraculously, they didn’t hear the stomping of boots as the forces mobilized. The cultists must not have been watching the barn side of the house. Samira pointed towards the kitchen where the stairs to the basement were located. Hailey motioned for people to follow her. They went through the dining room and had to take out three more in the middle of a meal. Even Samira got her hands dirty on the takedown. Hailey didn’t want to even guess at what they were eating; it was a disgusting black mush presumably from their world.
They walked into the kitchen, and it stunk. The fridge reeked of the food they left rotting, and the trash didn’t look like it had been touched since they had left. Jon’s cereal bowl was still in the sink with something molding inside. At least Hailey thought it was his. She sometimes felt like his mother when she had to hound him to wash up afterward.
They opened the door to the basement and were assaulted by the smell of decay and burning flesh. Samira ran to the sink and puked. Hailey nodded to Azerius, and he stayed with
her and patted her on the back. Alex and Hailey tiptoed down the steps.
They walked into a horror show. The room at the bottom of the stairs had body parts hanging from the ceiling. Some were fresh and dripping with blood. Others were in various states of decay. Whether it was a torso, arm, or a leg; there seemed to be no method to the madness they had witnessed. It also looked like some were stitched together. A white person’s arm on a black man’s body. They heard a scream from deeper in the basement and pushed through the parts to a back room that used to be an old workshop.
A pit formed in Hailey’s stomach. She recognized the cultist immediately. It was the doctor who had tortured her in the cultist’s homeworld. He was cutting off a piece of flesh from the thigh of Ernest, who was chained to the workshop table. The poor guy was missing an eye, several fingers, and had the bruises and scars of the torment he had endured.
The other techs they were looking for were discarded in the corner with the same signs of cruelty all over their body. The freshness of some of the parts in the other room led Hailey to conclude how they had met their end. Hailey motioned for Alex to stand back and crept into the room,
The doctor looked down at his patient and said, “Since your friends were so helpful in letting us control the barrier, there is no real use for any of you anymore.” He threw the flesh he had cut off and began to saw off a similar sized piece from the dead tech. “But worry not; you can still serve the Flame. If I can sew the parts of fallen warriors onto living ones, maybe they can fight for the will of the Flame longer.”
Before the doctor could sew the dead flesh on Ernest, Hailey placed her dagger at the doctor’s throat. As much as she wanted to look the man in the eyes when she killed him, the mission came first.
“How many of you are there?” Hailey asked.
The doctor froze and said, “Is that—the Tuner? Oh, yes, I remember you. How much of a pain tolerance you had. More than any other. Those who are weak die after a few days. You—how I would love to do my experiments on you.”
She pressed her dagger until a bead of blood formed. “How many?”
