New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (32 page)

“Be careful with the Source,” Janus said. “That kind of power could destroy you. It could destroy us all.” He sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

That discussion might have gotten a little too interesting, but we got interrupted before it did.

“We’ve got company!” Condor called out. A platoon’s worth of guys in jumpsuit uniforms, body armor and helmets had shown up, blocking the way to the Source. We charged them as they opened fire on us with disruptors and blasters. The anti-disruptor fields worked as advertised, although even when the twisting darkness was kept at bay, I could feel it, like a painful infection festering just under my skin, making me feel feverish and weak.

Luckily, we wiped them out in under five seconds, so we didn’t have to endure the disruptors for long.

We plowed through the guards with fists, feet and energy blasts and after a brief scuffle they ended up strewn around the tunnel, unconscious, nursing broken limbs, or, in a couple of cases, not moving or breathing at all. Those had been Condor and Kestrel, one kill apiece. I didn’t kill anybody; pulling my punches was no harder than it’d been before Christine super-charged me, and I had no excuse not to, since other than the disruptors no weapon the guards were carrying could hurt me. Their blasters barely irritated my skin. As it turned out, being chivalrous like Ultimate was pretty easy when you were invulnerable like him.

As the last guard slid limply down a wall, Christine led us deeper into the facility. Janus didn’t say anything else, but still looked worried, which worried me. Another vault-sized door was the last obstacle in our way, and we knocked it down without much trouble. We went in and came face to face with our goal.

All good mad scientist lairs have to have an oversized chamber, a cathedral’s nave of sorts, where their greatest achievement is put on display, whether it is a doomsday weapon or the ultimate instant oatmeal recipe. This particular oversized chamber was about a football field wide and maybe fifty yards deep, an oval opening given shape by concrete and metal. A deep circular pit surrounded by a metal railing was in the center of the room; dozens of devices were placed all around it, including several machines that projected a huge force field over the pit. The Source was there.

At first it looked like ball lightning, a gigantic exemplar of its kind, a swirling core of white-blue light that projected arcs of electricity that flickered across the force filed surrounding it. A few moments later, it shifted shapes and colors, first appearing as a liquid of some sort, bubbling and boiling merrily, next becoming a gaseous mist, expanding and contracting at random; after that it turned into a fractal crystal, pieces of it vanishing into some realm we could not perceive and being replaced by new edges and points. Its shifting patterns made my body thrum in a sympathetic rhythm, and I was certain that what I was seeing was a tiny fraction of its true size and scope, like sunlight reflecting off the tip of a mostly submerged iceberg. I had the feeling that we were looking at something we couldn’t really perceive, and our brains were making those images up as a way to cope with it.

The sight was hypnotic. We stood by the railing and took in the sights for several moments. I noticed symbols carved into the walls of the pit, symbols that looked a lot like the ones in the Lurker’s cave. They were just as hard to look at as before, and there were so many of them it was hard not to.

“Oh my God,” Christine gasped. She was looking intently at the shifting thing in the chamber, her mouth hanging open.

About two seconds after she spoke, she collapsed with the limp finality of someone shot through the brain.

I grabbed her before she hit the ground. “Christine?”

She didn’t respond. I couldn’t feel a pulse; she wasn’t breathing, either.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey.” Meaningless noises. Neos don’t just drop dead. They don’t need to breathe, they don’t really need their hearts to work, either. So she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.

She couldn’t be.

Chapter Fourteen

Christine Dark

New York, New York, March 17, 2013

Fade out.

All it had taken had been one look at the Source, not even with her Christine-senses, just her regular eyes. Her vision had narrowed down to a pinpoint and she’d gone nighty-night.

Fade in.

She was lying in bed. Her old bed, the one in her room at her mother’s house. The old Sailor Moon poster was just the way she remembered, faded and worn. So was the ancient PC, the one that was long gone in the real world. Christine groaned. She was back in Dreamland, or Candyland or Neverwhere or whatever you wanted to call this place made of fake memories. In fact, the only thing that was missing was…

“Hello, Christine.”

Cassandra. The friendly neighborhood blind seer. She was sitting on the same spot as the last time, on the corner of the bed, close enough to Christine to be a cozy presence but not so close it was creepy. She looked the same as before, a strikingly beautiful petite woman with eyes covered in a whitish film.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Christine said.

“She is, dear. This is not Cassandra, not exactly. I’m using your memories of her. I thought it would make it easier for both of us.”

“Easier to do what?”

“Communicate. Interact. Understand one another.”

Christine sat up, and realized she was wearing leather armor that looked great but chafed in a few uncomfortable places. Said armor belonged to Snipe, her gaming character, Elven rogue extraordinaire. She patted her ears. Yep, she had Elven ears again. That had happened to her when she’d been inside John Clarke’s mind, during her second trip into Dreamland. Why would she be all geared up for war, instead of wearing her customary Dreamland Hello Kitty pajamas?

Because you’re in danger
, her brain suggested.
Because this fake Cassandra is a threat of some sort, and your subconscious knows it.

Crappity crap.

Cassandra was just looking at her and smiling. The faux Cassandra, that was.

“Okay, so you’re not Cassandra. Who are you?” Christine asked. At this point, the madness had gone on far enough it was just easier to accept it as reality and go along with it.

“I am the First. The first human who encountered the Source, one hundred and five years ago. I was the closest human available when it fell to our world, and thus I was chosen. Observe:”

The room dissolved, and Christine’s perspective changed, becoming pure disembodied sensory input. That must be what being a ghost felt like, able to see without eyes, hear without ears. She was looking at a vast expanse of forest interspaced with rivers and bogs and swamps; dense masses of trees filled the higher, drier areas, and dead drowned trees lay where the swamps had killed them. It was hot and humid even though it was early in the morning, and the place stank of decaying plant matter with a pungency that would have turned her stomach if she’d had a stomach to turn. Her focus narrowed until she saw a young boy in rough homespun clothes walking barefoot through the woods. He was a malnourished, sad-looking child, wandering aimlessly until something caused him to stop and look towards the sky.

Her viewpoint followed his gaze even as a tremor grew in intensity throughout the forest. A second sun was glowing overhead, a circle of light brighter than any star, getting larger by the second.

The descending brilliance closed the distance incredibly fast, blinding the boy. The light obliterated everything, consuming him amidst a deafening roar and an earthquake that felt like the end of the world.

An eye blink later, she was back in her room.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” Christine said. “The boy in the woods, that was you.”

The fake Cassandra nodded. “I died on that day. The child I’d been ceased to exist, and became something else, knowledge and purpose contained within a small human pattern. I have been hiding in the forest ever since, waiting for someone worthy to guide.”

“That was the Source,” she said. Neat, not. What was the first thing the big Happy Birthday Present from the Cosmic Nerds had done? Nothing much, just killed some innocent child in Upper Bumcrapistan or wherever that was. And those were the good guys.

“The physical manifestation of what you call the Source, yes. After it made contact with me, it traveled on until it reached a resting point beneath the earth.”

“Somewhere below New York City, right?”

The fake Cassandra nodded again. “Unfortunately, something went wrong. I was supposed to act as a teacher for a handful of carefully chosen individuals, but the Source has been empowering many people, seemingly at random. The Outsiders are to blame for this. You may be the one person able to set things right.”

“Awesome. Okay, that takes care of the backstory, the Cliff’s Notes, anyways. Which reminds me, is this little confab going to take long? Because we were expecting company pretty soon.”

“What you saw in that place is a manifestation of the Source. As soon as you and your friends broke into the facility, fail-safes went into effect, releasing it back into the earth. It will be gone in a few seconds, and at that point our mind-link will be cut off.”

“Okay, but that still leaves the Big Bads to deal with. So let’s get on with this.”

“I wish to extend an invitation to you. Come to my dwelling, where I have been since being transformed by the Source, and I will complete the process your father started. If you prove yourself worthy, I can teach you what you need to know.”

Go to a swampy forest to meet with a mysterious teacher. She’d seen that movie before. “Okay, I’ll think about it. What’s your address?”

“I can be found in the Pripet Marshes.”

“The Whazit Marshes?”

“Google it.”

Great, a computer-literate smartass cosmic teacher. “Okay, sensei, I will.”

“Very well. You should return to your body now, before it starts to decay.”

“Before it starts to what?”

* * *

Pain. She gasped desperately for air. Her chest was burning. Her heartbeat was horribly slow, and each beat felt like a stab to the chest. It hurt to breathe, to exist. She looked up and saw Mark’s blank face, fear radiating from him in waves. She was lying in his arms. That part felt pretty good, actually, even if nothing else did.

It took her a few seconds before she could draw enough breath to speak. “Ow! Ow! Effing ow, that hurts!” Her heart started beating a little faster, and the beats hurt a little less each time. She held onto Mark tightly and waited for the agony to subside.

“Fuck,” he said, squeezing her like he was afraid she’d disappear if he didn’t hold on to her. “Don’t fucking scare me like that.”

“What? What did I do?”

“You collapsed. I couldn’t find a pulse. Then the Source disappeared and you woke up.” He paused for a second; his emotions were almost as painful as her near-death experience. “I thought you were dead.”

I guess I was, that’s why that d-bag First guy said my body was beginning to decay.
Why couldn’t people just use telepathy like any self-respecting super-critter? She’d have to ask the d-bag if she went to visit him at the Chia-pet Marshes or whatevs. Mark was hugging her so tightly that she was glad for her Neo-strength bones.
Holy crap, Fay.
His first girlfriend had ended up much like she almost had; she couldn’t even imagine what Mark must have gone through while she was having her stupid out of body experience. The joy that had replaced the fear was intense enough. She let him keep squeezing her like a lemon.

A quick peek around Mark showed her the pit where the Source had been was empty, just as the First had said. No force fields, no ever-changing glowy thingy. She could feel that it wasn’t very far, but for now it was inaccessible.

“Anything happen while I was out?” she asked Condor. She could breathe normally again and the aches were mostly gone. Even if she didn’t need to breathe, being able to do so felt pretty darn nice.

He shook his head. “The Source disappeared about fifteen seconds after you passed out. That’s when you woke up.”

“I more than passed out. My body shut down. I never thought I’d get to say that my body shut down. Can my life get any worse?”

She really shouldn’t have asked.

The Lurker’s Tale

Lake Michigan, Illinois, October 30
^th
, 2008

He had failed.

Damon Trent laughed at himself. He pulled the Codex out of his pocket, the priceless object he’d spent most of his life trying to understand. The cold heavy stone mocked him with its silence. He briefly considered smashing it to pieces, assuming he had the power to do so. In the end, he put it back in his pocket. He’d gleaned a handful of Words from the Codex, after decades of efforts, but none of them had helped cleanse him of the Taint or gain an understanding of the Source. When it had become clear he’d never succeed on his own, he’d embarked on a desperate plan: he would help create someone who was worthy of the Codex and the Source. A child of his would assume the role that eluded him. He would beget a son, and he would become the savior of the world.

He’d traveled to other universes, seduced and abandoned a good woman, watched over the child of their union – a daughter, it had turned out to be – while making subtle alterations on her genetic code and her Soul-Mind matrix, using the handful of Words he’d learned to infuse his child with potential power, to attune her to the workings of the Source. Finally, when she’d reached puberty, he’d deemed her ready and put the Codex in her hands.

Nothing had happened. Her aura had remained dull and powerless. She’d stared at the Codex and made no connection to it. Everything he had done had been for nothing.

Amazingly, all he’d felt then was relief. He’d grown fond of the young woman in question, and now she would be free to lead a normal life in her native universe, where the Source had been destroyed on arrival over the trackless forests of Tunguska a century ago. His daughter would die of old age long before the war came to her planet, utterly unaware of how close she’d been to facing terrible dangers just because her father had chosen her destiny without her knowledge or consent.