Modern Rituals (27 page)

“Uh…” Clayton stammered. “Well, Theo, you have been an invaluable asset to this organization and to me. I suppose you’ve earned my trust.”

“Excellent! Thank you my boy!”

Clayton clicked his fingers against his security badge and paused, then flopped his hands on his tablet’s screen and flittered over it with all of his fingers at once. His ability with gestural computers astounded those around him and he loved to show off—Clayton’s hand-eye coordination was unmatched.
 

A red panel near Clayton’s foot slid open. Inside rested a small key card. It gleamed silver as he withdrew it. Sky-blue neon circuit patterns radiated from its front, back and smooth, beveled edges. Clayton’s trembling, clammy hand held the card out to Theo.

Unseen eyes tickled the back of Theo’s neck. Inside the wall—within a machined, aluminum seam—a micro-camera’s eye loomed over Theo and Clayton. Theo had avoided being seen until then. Now Magnus knew where their fugitive had fled.
 

“Dammit,” Theo said to himself. “I hate ruining people’s days.” He wrenched the card from Clayton’s hand, twisting the arm and pulling Clayton to his feet.

“What are you doing?” Clayton said.

Theo whispered into Clayton’s ear. “Putting on a show,” he said, and then aloud, “Let me in the containment chamber unless you want me to break your arm.”

Theo slipped an earpiece into Clayton’s pocket as they moved toward the thick, titanium doors behind Clayton’s desk. These stalwart portals offered entry to a quarter-mile-long corridor connecting to Una Corda’s isolation chamber, which housed the creatures used in rituals.
 

Theo estimated a security detail would arrive in less than two minutes—probably in the HyperLoop at that moment. He pretend-forced Clayton to open the doors and hurried through.

Theo kept his cardiovascular condition in tip-top shape—it helped that Una Corda placed those who failed their biweekly physicals on administrative leave—or as Magnus employees liked to say, “forcible rehabilitation.” Sprinting down the passage proved a simple feat—he executed it within two minutes.
 

Not bad for an old man.

Theo arrived at the containment sector’s security perimeter—an unassuming set of titanium doors much like the entrance. An enormous dodecahedron, the containment sector boasted a three-mile diameter, and Una Corda’s campus enveloped the spherical prison like a bag around a marble. Only one entry existed: the corridor Theo crossed now. A gap cushioned the dodecahedron from Una Corda, and in this space existed a total void—an anti-spectral meridian. Any creature, living or dead, that attempted to sojourn beyond this boundary would be annihilated. If any event compromised the containment sector, then—by design—the single corridor would collapse and seal in the monstrosities. It would also seal in Theo, if his plan went awry.

Theo swiped the gate key through the security panel. It beeped in reply, and the doors parted. Theo entered. Some time had passed since his last visit to the containment facility. He had accompanied Clayton on an interview with a talking monkey—they had concluded that the monkey wanted nothing but to murder children and ring its tiny cymbals, and this they had recorded in their report, hoping never to see the damned creature again. Fortunately, it had never been summoned for a ritual—yet.
 

He had forgotten the overwhelming vertigo the facility’s high roof imposed. Typical prisons feature a gridded arrangement of cells—and this works just fine because they house humans. Magnus, however, applied unorthodox methods to safely store spectral entities and mythical creatures. While humans live happily in a comfy three dimensions—and a touch of a fourth (and seven or eight more, but who’s counting)—paranormal creatures played by a different rulebook, and in response to these needs Magnus had designed dimensional spheres. Each family of creature held captive in a dimensional sphere resided within a wormhole linked to an isolated—and artificially crafted—chunk of the universe. This afforded them a healthy environment, whatever that environment may be—and these cosmic worm-bubbles floated freely in the containment facility, bouncing and touching and behaving much as balloons do.
 

It was an odd sight.
 

Theo shaded his eyes and squinted at the lot of them. He felt as though he stood inside a gargantuan gumball machine or marble-filled fishbowl, except instead of gumballs or glass spheres, dimensional spheres of all sizes—each translucent like a crystal ball—danced with each other.
 

Beside Theo lolled a bubble about his height. He stared into it: beyond its clear, filmy threshold, submersed in a lagoon filled with rays of rippling light, mermaids flittered, cutting in and out of the water, swirling around each other in captivating gyrations. He laid a hand on the sphere, running his fingers over the velvety surface, and bent closer to watch a mermaid swim within what appeared to be inches of his hand. It remained oblivious to his presence: the spheres allowed light to travel in only one direction.

The containment facility accommodated a near-infinite number of creatures in perfect comfort. While Theo observed the mermaids in their six-foot sphere, they believed themselves to be in their natural habitat.
 

The sphere’s inner domain linked to a partition somewhere in the universe—if a creature required an enormous place in which to live, the inner sphere grew to meet the demand, but the “outer” sphere (what Theo saw now) expanded exponentially less. For instance, the mermaids’ sphere enclosed a lagoon the size of a small island. If a larger creature required twice the space, the outer shell would grow by just .005% or about ten millimeters—that’s two lagoons for the price of half an inch. Quantum physics deals one hell of a bargain.
 

Spheres could also store spheres: space within space within space—near infinite confinement.

To catalog and retrieve creatures, Magnus had assigned each sphere a unique spectral frequency. Theo walked to a console near the entrance, next to which sat a wide, parabolic recovery platform. He punched in a string of numbers and pressed a button labeled “retrieve.”
 

A computerized voice spoke. “
Recovery platform emitting frequency 23.343082KHz. Retention field calibrated for entry.
”

Broadcasting the inverted frequency worked as a recall tether—like a magnetic lasso—attracting the desired sphere anywhere within the dodecahedron. A retention field placed over the recovery platform allowed only the summoned sphere to pass—other floating spheres bounced off it, and these formed a cloud of buoyant crystal balls atop Theo’s position.
 

On average, retrieval takes less than a minute—still more time than Theo could afford. He shaded his eyes and squinted into the distance, hoping to spot his sphere as it advanced to the platform.
 

Twenty seconds. Stillness.

Thirty seconds. Nothing.

Forty seconds.
 

Was that a jiggle?

At fifty-five seconds, a foot-long sphere popped through the cloud and touched down on the platform.

Finally.

Theo rushed to it, pulling on a pair of resonation gloves. He knelt beside the sphere. It was a small thing—and pitch black. Theo shoved his hands into the bubble. It offered no resistance—the resonation gloves had calibrated themselves to the sphere’s frequency, allowing Theo to penetrate the dimensional membrane. Theo grimaced as the full length of his arm entered another dimension. He wrapped his hand around a furry, squirming creature.
 

As he pulled his arm upward, a voice said, “Freeze! Theo, remove the gloves and come with us quietly.”

Here we go.

Theo dropped the gloves and placed his hands above his head.

CHAPTER 5
 

He said unto them:

Fear not, for I am born,

bow down to my divinity.

(Sæmorous 1:1)

1

General Holmes paced back and forth along the row of consoles. He stroked the base of his chin and scanned the images on HULK.
 

“Never a dull moment, eh?” he said, leaning into Susan.

“No sir,” Susan said.

“Who’d have thought that Part Seven would turn on his own?” he said. “This is the stuff of movies. He’s a serial killer, for Christ’s sake.”

“Participant Four is in shock from severe blood loss,” Susan said. “His systolic is 90mg, heart rate at 45 beats per minute. I doubt he’ll survive much longer.”

“Excellent—that will put us in a much safer zone. Keep me abreast of his vitals,” he said.

New faces decorated the Purgatory 8 monitoring station. Holmes had invited close colleagues, executive and military, to watch the ritual’s conclusion—all to his credit. News of Theo Watson’s capture had coursed through Una Corda and was generally well-received—Theo had made a habit of stepping on people’s toes. The ritual’s impending success shone a lustrous light on General Holmes.
 

Icing on the cake.

Holmes noted Trevor and Parts Five and Six’s position on the map—just outside the suicide chamber where Horace had tortured Keto, forcing Colette to watch.

“Looks like Trevor and his two pals are in for a rude awakening,” he said. “This ought to be interesting.”

The three entered the suicide chamber, and Holmes grew uneasy as events unfolded. Something about Trevor’s actions, or lack thereof, raised a red flag. When James offered himself to Horace in exchange for Keto, he detected an unexpected emotion in Trevor: empathy had burned in the young man’s eyes. Holmes wondered where Trevor’s training had failed. He scribbled a note on his mental TODO list to place Trevor in a reconditioning class.

A series of kicks propelled Keto across the screen. Three cameras caught his blood-spitting tumble in high resolution from multiple angles.

“Wow—did you see the spiral from that blood?” Holmes said, chuckling with his comrades, who joined the laughter.

Susan lurched, looked away from the monitor and stroked her neck until the green left her cheeks.
Weak girl
, Holmes thought
.
 

What followed caught Holmes off guard. Trevor appeared to defend James, and then—of all things—he drew a gateway symbol in his own blood.

“No—what’s he doing?” Holmes said. His bottom lip burned as he bit into it. Trevor’s intentions were clear—the torii
proved he had defected.

The events blurred—suddenly an impaled Horace fell onto the gateway symbol, sacrificed for Arikura’s freedom.
 

“No!” Holmes said again, slamming his fist onto the desk. A few of Theo’s things fell to the floor, including his absurd red stapler.
 

Minutes passed. Every eye and ear in Purgatory 8 remained transfixed on Trevor as he divulged Magnus’ secrets. When James, Trevor, Colette and Olivia came across the escape tunnel, Holmes jumped up, toppling over Theo’s chair.

“Send the troops. Wipe them clean,” he said. “All of them.”

2

A rivulet of sweat trickled down James’ cheek. Labored footsteps and heavy panting broke the corridor’s stillness. Their feet clacked on lacquered concrete, and the shuffling of their clothes echoed in the metal conduits above their heads. James’ nostrils rebelled against the tunnel’s damp air. Swaying, overhead lamps reflected strings of fluorescent light onto the glossy floor.
 

Trevor led them around a dizzying number of bends and up and down stairs, dissolving James’ sense of direction—he, Colette and Olivia glued themselves to their guide. They’d put their trust in Trevor as their sole navigator. They had no other choice now.

“You have any idea where you’re going?” James said.

“Yeah, for the most part,” Trevor said. “These service tunnels can get confusing. But I memorize each facility’s blueprints before a ritual begins, so I know this one pretty well. We should be about halfway under the school, heading north.”

“Memorize?” Olivia said. “How the hell can you keep track of all this in your head?”

“Not sure. It’s just a habit, I guess. I used to enter memory competitions—I was the champ for awhile. Memorizing the tunnel patterns is no different,” Trevor said.

“For you, maybe,” James said.

“There are lots of techniques for improving memory,” Trevor said. “I’m nothing special, nor are those people who can memorize 1500 random numbers. It just takes practice. Tell you what—if we make it out of here, I’ll teach you how sometime.”

“I can barely remember my name right now,” Colette said.
 

“Of course you can’t—you guys’ hormones are imbalanced on top of everything else,” Trevor said.

“Why would our hormones be imbalanced?” Olivia said.

Trevor sighed. “I really need to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “Ah, well. Remember when I said I’d researched paranormal phenomena? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I transferred to Magnus from a stint at Harvard where I wrote algorithms modeling pathogen replication and transmission.”
 

Trevor looked down at Colette and smirked.

“I was dead set on becoming a sub-thirty-year-old Nobel Laureate, but Magnus took interest in my research and offered me an attractive job. Been here since.”

“What does that have to do with our hormones?” Olivia said.

“I was getting to that,” Trevor said. “They used my research to help develop a serum they now inject into ritual participants.”

“What kind of serum?” James said.

“Well, having perfected pathogen models meant also modeling cell interactions. I decoded them, which allowed me to reverse engineer their response to stimuli,” Trevor said, raising his head high to squint down the hallway. “There’re more than a few geniuses within the hallowed walls of Magnus…” They came to a fork and he chose left.“…many of whom are dedicated to nanotech research—manipulating rituals on a molecular level is less likely to alert the Gods of our interference.”

“Get to the point, man!” James said.

“Damn—give me a minute,” Trevor said between breaths. They’d been keeping up a decent pace and he hadn’t stopped talking in a good while.