King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) (25 page)

Why?

He chuckles. "Would you like to understand me, Mr. Goligh, to better judge me? Was I perhaps abandoned as you were, when I was an infant? Was I abused some way, mistreated? Even if I was it would explain nothing. Souls are abandoned every day by those who should care for them, by the gods who should have prepared for them. I was not special in that regard, nor were you. But we are here now."

Why?

"You insist. Very well. It is trite to give the answer, because I can. It is also meaningless to say, I am hungry, because I am not an addict. I enjoy the suffering, I enjoy the power, but I could give them both up."

Why?

A long moment. He looks at my eyes searchingly, as if he might divine the answer in me. "I suppose it is because I am angry, Mr. Goligh. I am angry about so many things, but most of all that I was ever born. Yet here I am, so I must make the best of it. To that end, your suffering helps express my anger. Diving the aetheric bridge will help me express my anger in ways I never felt possible before. It will help me show to all of your people out there what the essence that makes them up is. Can you understand that?"

You hate to live, I think. So die.

"Oh, I think I will. When all the minds are gone and all that's left in my hands are a few grains of purest shit, I expect I will simply wink out of existence. If I do not, well, I think it would be the worst thing imaginable, to go on living after that point, wouldn't you agree? Hell is other people, but no people at all? I think that is the greatest hell. My anger would be so meaningless. So, perversely, perhaps I will remain like that for a time, alone, as my own punishment. It seems fair."

I judge that. Within it I find understanding, and what I will be now, something named Ritry Goligh that stands for the opposite of King Ruin, for as long as it can. This too is an essence, boiled down from all its constituent parts. I meet his mind and judge it with sympathy. He is damaged beyond repair, in ways I will perhaps never understand, but he is like me. I want to help him, but I cannot, because I do not know how. Instead I offer him my pity.

He laughs. "Ah. If only they were all like you, Mr. Goligh. None of them grasping so hard, none of them so desperate to not be hurt, to just keep their son, to just keep their daughter, to just please not have their tongues pulled out, perhaps then I could learn to live with you people. But I don't think that will ever happen. You are always so hungry, always grasping, always reaching your sticky little fingers out to take things that don't belong to you."

I'm sorry it hurts you.

"You're sorry. Thank you. Now if only they could all just lie back. If only they could all be quiet and stop talking so much, stop wanting so much, stop breathing so much, and take what I'm going to do to them without complaint. Perhaps then I could accept them."

You punish them.

"I simply hold up a mirror. I show them what they are. I don't force them to cannibalize each other. I don't force them to lie, cheat, manipulate, steal, though I admire the destructive, reductive capacity of all those traits. I only wind up the clock, Mr. Goligh. The choices remain with them, and they tick out the seconds very gladly."

He is placid, half-smiling, as if this is a pleasant conversation we're having. From his face, from his mind, I define what I am.

You are a cancer, I think.

He nods. "I am a cancer. Or you are. One way or the other, one of us will be consumed, and it does not look too promising for you, Mr. Goligh. I don't think you can last much longer. I see you have made yourself in the reverse of my image, and in that I see you are still hungry for something, so you steal it from me. I will put an end to that."

I watch as the pincers drift through the tank towards me. Coolly they snip away my ears, and the tones of the womb are replaced by nothing. Next they snip away my eyes, leaving only blackness.

What essence will you become, comes his voice in my mind, when there is nothing to judge? When you are only yourself in an empty, echoing void?

The Lag that follows is complete. He erases me to the moment of my birth and beyond. I am…

Ti explodes, and Ray beats the console before him so hard something clicks in his wrist.

"Fuck!" he shouts.

Looking down into the spreading smoke and crater she has become, he curses the whole fucking Sunken World, for what it has taken from him. They shouldn't have to die like this, none of this should be happening, and that just makes him more angry. He looks up and out to the sky of this Sunken World, now collapsing inward like the Molten Core moat, black mud tinged with the twin suns' red, and shouts into it.

"Fuck you!"

He hits the console again. Then he stops fucking around, because 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 higher into the air so hard it drives him down in the seat.

Soaring upward to a falling sky of blood-veined black mud, he readies himself at the controls. The White Tower's walls rise with him, higher than they ever seemed before, up to the top where a white-slate roof sits atop it like a bicorne hat. He holds his fingers over the triggers.

"Alakazam," he whispers, and fires every missile in the machine's battery at once.

BOOM

The Tower wall disintegrates in the inferno explosion, sending molten white brick out and down like strange rain. Through charcoal clouds of atomized stone, Ray's HUD reads the living figures inside, recognizing the prone figures of Doe and Mr. Ruins by her side. They are lying next to a purple vortex in the wall, which must be the bridge.

Blasted back against the far wall are the marines of the Suns' chord, already shouting orders through the noise, aiming their QCs at Ray.

He unleashes the helicopters howitzers upon them. The noise is deafening in the echo-chamber of the Tower's smoky interior. One by one their bodies pop apart under the raking line of bullets, like blades of grass lined up for the scythe. Their upper bodies fall to rest amongst their legs, and Ray keeps firing until the last of them running up the stairs is shredded and torn.

There is a thunder from above. He spins and sees his cab is on fire, pock-marked with a dozen QC bites. Beyond that the collapsing world is roaring toward the final implosion, the red-black tsunami wave moments away.

The helicopter sputters, and Ray springs up from his seat, takes one step across the passenger door, and dives. In the gap between the Tower and the helicopter, in the seconds before it too explodes and drives him down, he fires his grapnel into the smoke.

It bites. He falls, and the elasteel line catches him, brings him swinging back like a pendulum to crack against the White Tower's wall, below the hole he blasted.

Newly bonded bones break with the impact. Ray cries out but bites his teeth against unconsciousness, as the blades of his stolen helicopter tilt and chop at the tower wall just to his side. He stiffens his suit just in time for the explosion, which hammers him against the wall again.

It's all pain. It's all good.

"Fuck yeah!" he grunts through his teeth, gives the finger to the surging tsunami tide, then rides the grapnel in-coil up the wall and through the blasted hole.

Inside it is all black smoke dappled purple by the light of the bridge. There is a figure inside, so faint, which he recognizes at once, though it seems impossible.

"Far!"

He shouts but he can't move. Red lights flash in his HUD, warning of broken legs and arms, broken ribs and shoulders. He can only wave one unbroken arm to the slim figure of the boy in the doorway, the boy who saved them all before.

"Far!"

And Far comes, but he is not a boy anymore. He's a young man now, tall and strong. The blemishes of his old weals and scars have turned faint and stretched with age and muscle.

"You look good," says Ray, looking up. "Damn, son."

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

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

At once the pain in his body fades, as his bones heal. He rises disbelieving to his feet, then runs back out into the Tower to fetch Doe, but Far already has her. Ray goes to help but instead Far nods at the bloodied figure of Mr. Ruins.

"Take him," he says.

"What? He's-

"Just do it, Ray, please!" Far shouts.

It is enough. Ray scoops the small figure of Ruins in his powerful arms and sprints back toward the bridge.

And the final tsunami wave strikes. It erases the hole Ray's missiles made, consumes the Tower with all the Suns' dead pulses inside, and swallows up the last of Mr. Ruins Sunken World in a vast supernovic implosion.

Ray and Far stand side by side within the aetheric bridge, panting, watching while the tsunami churns by and eats up the door. Ray looks at Far, and Far only shrugs.

Then Doe is on her feet. She grabs hold of Ray, plucks off his HUD, and kisses him hard and long.

"I love you," she whispers, in the fevered heat that follows, 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, to say he loves her back, but she is kissing him too hard.

When she finally lets go, they both turn to look at the place they have come to, where they have only been for the briefest moments before.

The aetheric soul. It is everything and nothing at once, a universe of a billion stars in a blue-black firmament, all of them intertwined with bonds, spreading in every direction like the trillion interconnections in a single Molten Core. Flashes of electric light coruscate between them like action potentials, twinkling with distance-shift, every star and every mind a mote in a massive ocean of life.

"Fuuuuuck," Ray says in one long exhale.

"Amazing," says Doe.

Nestled in the center lie the blood-red burning twin suns of King Ruin, like a gory wound in the glittering darkness. Venal bond-lines spray out from it like cancerous growths, pulsing with the organic beat of stolen life. It is at once repellent and fascinating.

"That's the King", says Far. "The Suns."

Ray zooms his HUD in to study the slow revolve of the fever-red stars. A glossy golden band encircles them like an orbital ring. Squinting into the display, he can almost make out individual moments in the band, what look like tightly compressed memories.

"I never knew," says Mr. Ruins.

Ray turns, and sees Mr. Ruins has changed. He looks as he did when Ritry Goligh first met him in the shark arena, wearing a grey suit, his teeth gleaming white like a shark. Tears shine in his eyes. 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."

Ray wants to break in his face, but Far stops him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. Through that touch, he begins to see what Far has seen. He begins to understand everything that has happened, and everything that will happen. He understands the cost.

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

"It's alright," she says, "Ray, it'll be alright."

He can't think of any words to say. He tries to breathe but the air has no weight, does nothing to clear the burn in his chest.

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

Ray feels himself changing inside. Becoming. He hates this man more than anything, but here he is, begging for understanding.

"I should kill you," Ray says.

Ruins smiles, and a tear breaks down his cheek. "You already did. I'll be dead soon, anyway. I hope you can make things better out there."

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. Ruins 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. Instead he reaches out with one trembling large black hand, and places it on Ruins' 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 what for. He feels the constant frustration of killing the only things he loves, only knowing how to hurt them. He sees a baby born in the midst of a Court, and left for the Suns to take.

It's too much, more suffering than he's willing to accept, but he can't keep his hate in the face of it.

Perhaps they could have been friends. It was all that Ruins wanted, though he didn't know how to ask. Everything could have been better. The last bulwark of anger breaks under this understanding, like a wall beneath a tsunami, and he gives into to it.

Forgiveness.

"I'll tell him," he says. "I promise."

Fresh flurries of tears run down Ruins' cheeks. "Thank you, thank you you beautiful man. Now listen. You have to be ready. Even if we kill the Suns, it won't be over. It's not only King Ruin. If you crush him there'll be others, thousands of his brood just like me, all waiting for their chance to rise, my brothers and sisters. They'll all want the bridge. You've dived it so many times now, and they've all been watching. They are the smartest, most ruthless people in the world, and they'll all be learning from you. You need to put them down."

"We will," says Ray. It is hard to speak, knowing what he has just given this man, knowing what lies ahead. Doe's hand is in his, and he cherishes her touch. For so long they waited, only stealing glances between missions in the Molten Core, never really knowing each other and too afraid to take things any further. And now… 

"We have to go," Far says. "Me is dying."

"Kill them all," says Mr. Ruins. He takes Ray's big hand in his own and squeezes it.

Ray lets him, then pulls Doe and kisses her again.

"We always will have been," Doe says. "Remember that, Ray. You'll always remember, even if I won't. Now go."

It is the moment, and there is no use in delay. He looks a final time to Far, this boy now a man, and nods. Far nods back.

Then Ray turns. It is the hardest thing to do, but Me is dying, Me needs him. He focuses on that and the anger comes flooding back. He knows what King Ruin has done, and it makes him burn with rage. There will be a time for sorrow later.

Now it is time for revenge.

He leaps out through the aetheric soul in a way he has never done before, but it comes to him through Far's memory easily, like swinging on elasteel grapnels below the Solid Core. He soars, then lands within the nearest star, one over from the collapsing black hole of Mr. Ruins' mind. It is a hand of King Ruin, the Suns, slack for the time being. The thick red band of control linking it to the King is fallow and pale.

This is a becoming, he thinks, as he steps through the aetheric bridge and into its Solid Core.

Inside it is empty, an empty grey corridor through an empty building, with no sign of the Lag. Ray lets the power of the bridge propel him outward, gliding through the building and out of the edge of its Solid Core, to look over the tepid boil of this mind's mild Molten Core, churning slowly with nothing.

There are no thoughts inside the lava, no ideas, no memories. The King has cored them all, leaving only the most basic autonomic functions of breathing, standing, eating. It is a vehicle and nothing more.

Ray cuts its tie to the King, then dives bodily into the Molten Core. He has no need for the Bathyscaphe in these lukewarm floes, no need for a crew. With his own voice he chimes out the sound of his tone, a deep rumbling Ray, which swells out through the magmic floes and realigns their polarization, turning them all steadily to him.

Around him this hollow mind slowly reorients. The healing of his single tone prepares the way, and Ray reaches after it, slipping his thoughts into the mind's causeways of control as though slipping on a glove. He slides 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.

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

It is a dark room filled with other bodies like his own. He looks down at his copper-dark hands in the gloom, lit by low underlights.

He is alive. He is breathing. He is here, and Me is near.

He reaches out to every other hand in the room and Lags their connection to the King. He strides amongst them until he finds a door, then walks out into a white-lit metal corridor of a suprarene tank-crawler. He can feel the grind of vast caterpillar tracks grinding deep below. There are many copper-skinned hands walking around him, all of them connected to the King. He feels the bonds linking them back like tethers, like genetic instructions driving them on a kind of autopilot like ants in a hive.