Daryl and the others tracked them to a circular plaza at the bottom of a set of polished marble steps leading up to the tallest, most impressive-looking buildings the teenagers had seen on their travels.
It rose from its wide plinth like an elongated diamond, its smooth blue-green walls sloping upward to form a series of jagged points several hundred feet above the ground. There were no windows, as far as Daryl could tell, but the whole building had a slight translucence to it that suggested light could get in through the walls themselves.
Upon seeing the escaped prisoners for the first time, Ash had immediately taken cover behind the tangle of a wreck they had left in their wake. He peered at them through a gap in the metal, and Daryl could hear the other boy’s heart thudding, even through the armor.
“I thought you said they were dwarves?!” Ash whispered. “They’re huge!”
“Metaphorical dwarves,” Riley reminded him.
“Which means what?”
Riley eyed him with something like suspicion. “Which means they’re not dwarves.”
“They’re huge,” Ash said again, in case the others hadn’t quite grasped their enormity yet.
“They are,” agreed Daryl.
“They’re also kind of unfriendly,” said Riley. “They’re boorish. Is that a word? Boorish? If it’s a word, then that’s what they are.”
“It’s a word,” said Daryl.
“Good. They’re boorish,” said Riley. She shot Daryl a sideways look. “Does it mean what I think it means?”
“Probably,” Daryl confirmed. He indicated the group with a nod. “Also, looks like they didn’t take the weapons. They’re unarmed.”
Ash chewed his lip. “Should we get their attention?” he wondered. “I mean, we’re on the same side, right? They might need our help.”
“Does it look like they need our help?” Daryl asked.
“We didn’t come all this way just to hide and watch,” Ash hissed.
“We’re not hiding,” Daryl told him. “We’re observing from cover.”
“Same thing.”
Daryl shook his head. “It’s a different thing. It’s strategy. It’s a very different thing.”
Ash started to answer, but a series of shouts from Hath’s friends drowned him out. All six men punched their fists in the air, their individual cries quickly becoming a synchronized chant.
“Huntka-sa! Huntka-sa! Huntka-sa!”
“What are they saying?” Ash whispered.
“They’re saying ‘Huntka-sa’ over and over,” Riley replied.
“What?” Ash tutted. “No, I know that. But what does it mean?”
“World Killer,” said Daryl. “They’re calling out the World Killer.”
Ash gritted his teeth. “Well, OK. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
He began to stand, but Daryl caught him by the back of his armor and pulled him back down into cover. “Wait. Let’s see what happens.”
“They’re going to fight the big bad,” Ash pointed out. “So, we should be there.”
“Let’s just hold back for a minute,” Daryl urged. “Just wait.”
Out in the square, the prisoners’ voices continued to rise in volume. They stamped a foot each time they spat out a “-sa,” and the thunder of it reverberated around the burning town.
At the top of the steps, one wall of the tower spiraled open, revealing a circular doorway. A figure stood waiting, the leering grin of his mask made even more creepy by the pale glow of the tower’s lights.
The shouts from the prisoners stopped in a staccato beat of foot stomps. The World Killer ducked through the doorway and out into the blazing sunlight. Daryl shrunk further into cover, out of sight, convinced the empty eye sockets of that mask had been staring straight at him.
“That’s him,” Ash whispered, his voice trembling. “That’s the guy.”
Riley nodded quickly. They both watched the assembled prisoners, all standing there in their silent face-off. “What are they waiting for?” she wondered. “Why don’t they attack him?”
“Maybe they’re waiting for us,” said Ash.
Daryl raised his head enough to get another look at the World Killer. At first, he saw nothing but that mask leering out at everyone, its features twisted like something from a nightmare.
The longer he looked, though, the more he noticed other things about the figure. The way he stood. The clothes he wore. The size of his fists. The more he noticed, the tighter the coil of panic in his gut became.
Daryl tried to speak, to warn the others, but that knot of terror and horror and everything in between left him with barely enough breath for a panicky wheeze. He felt as if he were drowning, stuck just below the surface of some dark, oppressive ocean, with the surface mere inches beyond his reach.
“Here we go,” Ash whispered, as the prisoners all approached the bottom of the steps. “This is it.”
The six not-dwarves stopped again by the bottom step. Ash and Riley watched, dumbfounded, as all six of them lowered onto one knee and bowed their heads.
“What are they doing?” Ash hissed. “Are they surrendering? Those chicken-shit—”
“N-not surrendering,” said Daryl, forcing the words through his narrow throat. “This is the plan. This was always the plan.”
Riley and Ash both turned to him, frowning. “Huh?” Riley asked. “Whose plan?”
It made sense. The clues had been there, but Daryl hadn’t put them together. Hadn’t wanted to believe them. Now, though, there was no escaping the truth.
“His plan!” Daryl whispered, pointing to the figure at the top of the steps.
“The World Killer?” Riley asked.
“Hath,” said Daryl. “It’s Hath.”
“What?” Ash snorted. “I thought that was the World Killer?”
“It is,” Daryl said. “Hath is the World Killer. We were set up. This whole thing was a trick. He used us.”
“What?” Ash hissed. “I mean… What? No! What?”
“Oh God, he’s right,” Riley whispered. “Look. It’s Hath. He’s right.”
“No! What?” Ash said, as if stuck in some sort of loop. “Hath? Like, Hath Hath?”
“We have to get out of here,” Daryl hissed. “We need to go.”
There was an ear-splitting screech of grinding metal as the burned-out wreck shuddered aside, exposing the three teenagers as they knelt on the cobbled ground.
“Come now, Daryl Elliot,” boomed Hath, his voice amplified through the mask. “Leaving so soon?”
The six prisoners rose as one, then turned to face the teens. Hath plodded very slowly and deliberately down a few steps, the hollow eyes of his mask remaining fixed on Daryl.
“I don’t get it,” said Ash, standing and puffing up his chest. “What’s going on? You’re the World Killer? How? That makes no sense.”
“Not to you,” Hath said. He nodded to Daryl. “But to him. He knew.”
Ash and Riley both looked to Daryl. “You knew?”
“What? No!” Daryl protested. He stood up. “I mean… I was starting to suspect.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” said Riley, her eyes shimmering with betrayal.
“I didn’t know. I could’ve been wrong,” Daryl said. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Believe what, exactly?” Ash demanded.
It took a second or two for all the pieces to fully click together in Daryl’s head. Some of it he knew. Much of it he could only guess at, but the overall explanation that cobbled itself together was the only one that made any sense.
“You’re the World Killer. You’ve always been the World Killer,” he said, aiming the accusation at Hath. “But the other people here on this planet didn’t like what you were doing, so they rose up. They rebelled. They locked up your friends and they drove you away.” Daryl dug his fingernails into his palms as he fought to keep his composure. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Close enough,” said Hath. “Although not everyone was agains
t me. Not everyone was fooled by those cowardly usurpers.” He gestured to the six prisoners. “My Royal Guard, for one. But there were others. Many others. Working with me—for me—in my absence. Altering the trajectory of this planet a little more each day, bringing it to here. To now. To me.”
He waved vaguely in the teenagers’ direction. “And then there was you three, of course. Unwitting pawns, yes, but so useful. You caused the necessary distractions, freed my guards… and as for you.”
Hath cocked his head a little as he regarded Daryl through the visor. “You lowered the shields that barred my entry into this capital, transferred control of the planetary weapon systems to me, and suffocated… oh, a few hundred officials within the buildings you see around you. Sucked the air right out of each room. Right out of them. Brutal, but effective.”
Daryl shook his head, his brain refusing to accept the idea. “No. N-no, that’s not… I didn’t…”
“So, what are you saying?” demanded Ash. He was several steps back in the conversation and struggling to make ground. “This place isn’t attacking Earth? But what about the message?”
“He changed the message,” Daryl said. “I heard it on Yufo. The audio we heard, it wasn’t a translation. They were…” Daryl thought back to the message, applying his new knowledge of the language to the memory. “They were afraid. They didn’t understand. They thought we’d brought them here.”
“Because they were fools,” said Hath. “Light years off course, and they didn’t notice.” His voice took on a harsher, angry edge. “And they thought themselves fit to rule the once-great Skalgorth?”
Something fiery flared in the eye socket of the mask for a moment, then faded. “And yes, I said ‘once-great’. This world once prospered, hard as it is to believe now. But it shall prosper again. The harvest shall begin anew. We will strip the resources from your world, and bring them here to ours. Skalgorth shall rise again. Skalgorth shall rule again. And all across the galaxy, people will tremble at its name.”
“Oh yeah?” said Riley. “Tremble at this!”
The step beneath Hath cracked open, revealing a gaping chasm below. He stepped clear with very little visible effort, shot Riley and admonishing look, then made a brief beckoning motion. She screamed as she was wrenched off her feet, her hands grabbing for Daryl’s as he dived after her.
“Riley!”
“Help!”
She jerked to a stop as Hath’s hand clamped down on the top of her skull, fingers splayed across her hat like spider-legs. Over by the wrecked vehicle, Ash raised both arms—one trained on Hath, the other sweeping back and forth across his guards, although none of them seemed to be about to try anything. They looked bored, almost, like this was some tedious warm-up act to be endured before the main event.
“Let her go!” Ash warned.
“You heard him,” Daryl added, barely concealing the tremble in his voice. “You know what we can do. You should listen. Let her go.”
Hath snorted. “What you can do. Yes. I know what you can do. We seven were DNA splicing decades before you were born, Daryl Elliot. You can do nothing of consequence.”
He lowered his face so the mask leered close to Riley. She squirmed in his grip, lashed out with her fists in panic, but if he felt the blows, he did nothing to show it.
“I shall miss you most of all, Riley Harper,” he whispered, his grip tightening until she hissed in pain. “Although, to be brutally honest, that isn’t really saying much.”
Riley’s words came out as a babbled sob. “W-wait, no!” she pleaded. “Don’t!”
Hath placed a finger against the mouth of his mask. “Shh,” he soothed. “Don’t ruin it.”
Riley stared back at the leering visor and saw her own wide-eyed reflection there. “Screw you,” she told him. Her body stiffened briefly, then went limp in his grip.
There was a twist.
There was a snap.
And Riley’s body slid to the bottom of the steps.
Daryl became aware of the blood whooshing along his veins. He became aware of his heart, and of his breath, and of the feeling of nausea spreading up through his insides like a rash.
Ash reacted before Daryl could. He roared as two bolts of searing energy crackled from his hands. The energy flares lasted for a split second before some invisible force slammed into him, launching him backward. He flew several feet through the air, hit the cobbles, and then came skidding to an uncomfortable stop.
Daryl’s instincts screamed at him to fight, or flee, or do something, at least. Fear overruled them, and he stood rooted to the spot, watching as Hath’s guards formed a sneering semicircle around him.
“Look, just… wait. OK? Just wait,” Daryl pleaded. “Let’s talk about this!”
They laughed at that, a sickening snigger at the back of their throats that told Daryl no conversation was about to be forthcoming.
Hath was still standing on the steps, watching on. And below him, crumpled at the bottom, lay Riley. Her hat had come off and lay discarded on the steps beside her. The sight of it there turned the tragedy of her death into an outrage. How dare he?
How dare he?
Daryl threw his arms out at his sides, then swept them toward the semicircle of guards. The six men continued to sneer for a moment, before the wreckage of two vehicles crashed into them from either side.
To Daryl’s dismay, the high-speed impacts didn’t have the effect he’d hoped for. In his head, the guards would’ve been taken out by the fast-moving wrecks, but they looked barely dazed, and were tearing through the metal like it was paper.
Thrusting his arms forward, Daryl produced a psychic shockwave that toppled two of the guards and staggered the other four. Hath remained motionless on the step, watching from behind his mask. Daryl couldn’t read his thoughts, exactly, but he could pick up a sense of them.
Amusement. Hath was laughing at him.
A blast of fire erupted toward him from the mouth of one of the guards. Daryl felt his hair singe as he cartwheeled clear, then flipped backward to avoid a short burst of gold-colored energy blasts that spat from the fingertips of another.
It was no use. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and completely out of his depth. With a grunt, he smashed another vehicle into the guards, scattering them, then turned and raced to where a winded Ash was dragging himself to his feet.
Daryl bent low and slammed into Ash’s midsection, knocking the last few breaths out of the boy as he scooped him up onto his shoulder.
“What the f—?" Ash wheezed, bouncing painfully on Daryl’s shoulder.
“Don’t talk. Just shoot!” Daryl roared, dodging left and right to avoid a variety of energy blasts, power beams, and other assorted projectiles.
Ash obliged, although aiming proved difficult. Beams erupted from both hands, cutting trenches in the ground as he swung helplessly on Daryl’s shoulder.
“Stop zig-zagging!” he complained.
“Then they’ll hit us!” Daryl pointed out. “Just shoot!”
He staggered left as a chunk of the cobbled street exploded on his right, filling the air with dust and smoke. He bounded through it, using the cloud for cover as he powered toward a narrow alleyway between two towers just ahead. If he could make it in there, they’d be safer. Not safe—not by a long shot—but safer.
“Hold on!” Daryl warned.
“You hold on! I’m kinda busy here!” Ash spat back, launching another volley of power blasts back at the pursuing guards.
They reached the alleyway just as a rain of return fire peppered the walls around them, throwing out chunks of the translucent building material. Daryl almost sobbed with relief when they raced into the relative cover of the narrow gap. It didn’t last. His stomach tightened, forcing him to run faster as the walls of the buildings shook on either side.
“They’re closing in!” Ash cried. “The walls are closing in!”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Daryl groaned.
“How are the walls clos
ing in?!”
Just like back on Earth, when he’d been fleeing the men who’d come to his house, Daryl’s legs seemed to move faster all on their own. The narrowing gap became a blur around him. He heard Ash cry out in fright, but he was moving too fast now to be able to make out the words.
That same twinge of panic he’d felt last time hit him again. Back then, it had made him try to slow down, but now he forced his legs to move faster still, turning the blur into a streak as the ground flew by beneath his feet.
He cleared the alleyway just as the buildings collapsed into each other, but didn’t slow down until he was several blocks away, almost back where they’d first arrived at the town’s border.
When Daryl eventually stopped, he discovered Ash was unconscious, his arms drooping down near Daryl’s knees, his whole body hanging limply from his shoulder.
It was only when he stopped that Daryl felt the aching in his legs and the burning in his chest. He staggered, and barely managed to ease Ash onto the ground before collapsing next to him.
His blood whooshed around in his ears, making it impossible to hear if the guards were still coming. He didn’t think so, and he didn’t have the energy to do anything about it if they were.
Ash stirred on the ground beside him. He was alive. That was something. He still didn’t like the guy, but he didn’t want him dead. And, more importantly, he didn’t want to be alone.
Daryl lay on his back, gazing up at the universe. The whole of infinity stretched out before him, though he was too exhausted and spent to really appreciate it.
He thought of his home, so far away.
He thought of his dad, of his school, of everyone he’d ever known. He recognized all of their faces, and knew all their names, no matter how briefly he’d met them.
He thought of Riley, lying dead on the steps.
And then, millions of miles from everything he loved, Daryl Elliot began to cry.
Thirty
Commodore Nuth of the Skalgorth High Guardians watched with increasing dismay as a whole platoon of troops tried, and then failed, to force open the thick metal door trapping them inside the bunker.
World Killer: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure Novel Page 20
