Ia didn’t notice letting go of the railing. In that moment, she didn’t care. But someone else did. Marius grabbed hold of her hand in the last possible moment. He pulled her up, she could hear him struggling, his teeth grinding with the effort.
“Dammit, girl, the hell you thinking!” he shouted.
He pulled her up, “I can’t keep this up forever, grab hold of the laddering damn you, do it!”
“I–“
“Do it!”
The iron bars they clung to were just wide enough for two skinny persons to pass each other shoulder to shoulder. Climbing almost a hundred meters from the ground she felt dizzy, realizing what the hell she had nearly just done. How had she not noticed the madness of it before? Marius’ voice, however, began to slowly bring back fragments of her mind, reining back her senses with each condescending word. It was his way, she knew, and his way was what she needed at that very moment. A stern verbal slap. It made her realize she wasn’t alone in this. She didn’t want to die. Why would anyone? I can get through this, she knew. Unaware of her sudden resolve, Marius didn’t trust the apparently suicidal girl just yet, he felt his grip on her hand unrelenting.
“Climb up past me,” he ordered, “go!”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, passing him as he pushed her up.
“I needed to see this place,” Marius said. “Now I wish I hadn’t.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she told him. “There’s something I must… Dyekart…he’s, he–“
“He’s gone?” Marius questioned.
Ia snorted, she couldn’t even bring herself to say it.
“Fuck!” he spat. “We need to get the hell out of here. And Sol?”
“We tried to save her, she—“
“God DAMN it!” Marius growled. “I’m open to suggestion here, any ideas what we should we do?”
“Round up the survivors,” she said. “Get the hell off this ship.”
“And do what? Where would we go? We can’t just leave,” Marius said..
“You saw what’ll happen if we don’t, we can’t stay here,” she said, “I saw the slime, it’s gonna eat this ship whole.”
“But what’s in here is also out there,” Marius pointed out. “Which leads one to assume we won’t be any safer out there.”
“The dark side,” Ia added. “Perhaps whatever this contaminant is, it can only survive in the light, like a plant.”
“It looked more like a fungus to me,” Marius said. “And the damn mushrooms can grow any fucking where.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But we have to try, besides, I think the dead here are what really gave it a kick. We should never have come here,” Ia sighed.
“Then it’s good we brought a God damn Sherlock with us,” Marius added.
***
The ship had changed. Changed so much Bolt couldn’t recognize it anymore. The walls themselves felt dead. Now more than ever, he wished he hadn’t come here. He missed his wife, their life, he missed Max.
Every few minutes, he looked down at what looked more like a sheer drop surrounded by red walls than a tunnel leading to the cloning chamber. Just looking at it made Bolt’s head whirl. He had little doubt that, had he gone down with Marius, he would have fallen into the abyss. Yet no sooner had he began to think Marius too succumbed to such a fate, Bolt began to hear voices streaming outward from the opening. The two sounds talked about what to do next, and what he heard didn’t fill him with hope.
“Good,” Marius said as soon as his helmet reared up from below, “you’re still here.”
“I don’t dare to go anywhere in this place anymore. It’s gone to hell,” Bolt said.
“We need to get out of here,” Marius grunted, pulling himself out with the aid of Bolt’s hand. “We decided staying here is not an option. It’s safe!” Marius yelled down into the hole, “Get up here!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Bolt nodded. “Who’s we? Who did you find down there?”
Ia climbed out of the shaft as Marius helped her to her feet. She rushed into Bolt’s arms as soon as she saw him, sobbing into his shoulder. “You’re alive!” she gasped. “Thank the Gods for that suit!”
“Gods had nothing to do with it, girl,” Marius retorted. “I made those suits, remember?”
Despite everything, she managed a smile.
“Where’d you get yours, Ia?” Bolt asked her.
“I took as many as I could carry with me,” she said. “Dyekart always used to keep them on him just in case.”
“Used to?” Bolt asked.
CHAPTER 28
I Am All Things
She was in no rush. He would come to her, she knew. Looking down from atop the Grey Spire, Taryn thought of little, but saw all. She saw the confused state in which the streets below her had suddenly found themselves in. Above her, material slowly slid down the slopes of the dome, scraping and whining as it went. There were gaps in the field above her now, reveling a halo in the sky where the station exploded. The sight came with amazing clarity, as though a layer of ozone had torn away in the blast, and the particles of oxygen could no longer obfuscate the vision.
She looked down, taking in the confusion and chaos with no emotion, the winds whistling outside the glass–wall before her. The night’s darkness was made purple within the bubble, the shield. The office where she waited remained empty, but this was not where they would meet, she knew. She went even higher, ascending a stairway made of what looked like photo–luminescent marble. She ended up in a room with five figures seated upon thrones. Their combined placements made a rough circle. Their heads were hunched as if in thought, or perhaps asleep, she couldn’t tell nor cared. They looked identical, bearded and un–kept, with white–knuckled hands grasping the edges of their thrones. Taryn looked closer, noticing their faces looked as if straining, their eyes moving inside closed eyelids, their lips mumbling words unheard. She found herself strangely fascinated. They reminded her of old kings who had gone insane in their thrones. This thought, however, perplexed her, it had been so long since she had thought of anything in terms of imagery or metaphor that even an image such as this, a simple connection in her mind, came as a surprise. Internally analyzing her own circuits, she came to realize her brain had begun to form a rough outline of her former consciousness. The longer she stayed separate from the machines which had made her slumber, the more of her own mind seemed to come back to her as thought it were a nebulous cloud trailing her. In fear of what it might mean, she shrunk away from it, took backward steps, unaware of even doing it. It took her a moment to notice someone else was already there. She wondered how she didn’t see the shape before. The reality of the figure kept fading out of focus, and she found it hard to concentrate on it.
“How does it feel,” it asked with a mellow, motherly voice, “to get your mind back?”
***
Zack was the only one who managed to escape. The colony on Europa seemed like the best place to hide, so that’s where he went. Used his unique knowledge of portal technology, he orchestrated a workaround the dampening capabilities of the rampaging maniac decimating the station. The warden seemed to be projecting a kind of field which immediately had nullified any attempt to establish an active wormhole. Some kind of EMP shockwave perpetually expanding and contracting, circumfusing the station. But, for a brief moment, Zack had managed to canceled it out, to make the intrinsic field of reality upon which the portal needed to be opened simply ignore it. Urging the others to follow as quickly as they could, the wormhole cracked open, its raw, tenebrous power–expulsions nearly killing them in the process.
“Say behind me!” he yelled, urging them again to follow. None of them had the chance, the wormhole shut, cutting off the lower part of his left heel.
He found himself alone on the other side.
To his dismay, Zack found something had disturbed the workings of the portal, and before he stepped upon the plinth on top of the Grey–Tech tower, situated upon the frozen
moon and groping at his severed, heat–seared leg, Zack found himself staring into the eye of a God. Unable to stand, resting on his side–thigh, he found himself before the deviant fortress. A massive head bent down, the sounds of it like grumblings on the surface of a sun. For a second Zack thought he might get crushed, instinctively shielding himself with one hand. But the giant stopped before him, its eye rippling and staring, so huge he could not see the ends of it. The intensity of its stare made him shake as though freezing, his heart smacking against his ear–walls. His body hairs stood up in the electrified air. The shadow–form was not endowed with a month, yet still Zack heard it speak.
“Hide it,” it said, handing him an orb, a round, eye–looking metal sphere. It floated above his hand, bobbing gently. The object felt heavy as the being dropped it from its clawed hand – a hand whose reality, much like that of the being itself, constantly smoked with two–dimensional and static gas.
“What is it?”
“It is the cipher.”
“To what? Why can’t you keep it here? Where should I hide it?”
“You already know,” the being said before the whole scene shifted, and Zack lay staring into the red eye of Jupiter.
***
The world had changed, and a distant sense told Max that not only his world has. He found it hard to concentrate inside the tunnel–vision of his senses. All of his sensations appeared to coalesce into a single perception that was neither sound, nor sight, nor smell. He perceived the word down to its very fundamentals, each morsel of the collective whole twisting endlessly in his mind, forming new patters within a rippling ocean of possibility. Colors intertwined as sounds traveled and misted the air around him. Max felt like he could touch them. His mind seemed slippery, as though it could wiggle away at any moment. He felt on the verge of discovering some elemental truth, but the words to conjure it up and the images that would make him understand would not come. Within his thought–patters, one question shone far more brilliant than any other. I am going mad? He figured he was not, since a madman would probably not question such a thing. Or would he?
By the use of his will, Max and his group were able to pass below the massive archway of the Grey Tower undisturbed. His projected demands rippled out like a wave, outwards and all around him, a bubble infecting the minds it came in contact with, making them move aside. He saw pulses racing within the skulls around him, expanding in all directions within each synaptic matrix, performing miniature big bangs each and every nanosecond. For the first time, Max saw what his mind actually did. His will caused the bang to skip an expansion midway, disrupting the flow, and in that moment of cancelation, imprinted his own idea.
“Will we see him?” Leah suddenly asked him. “I always wanted to see him.”
“We will,” Max assured her.
“How do you know the Admin’s even here?” Falk asked, a middle–aged man with the type of face you might expect in an astronaut, friendly and strangely frail–looking.
“I can see him, he’s like vibrations that spread outwards, a nuclear explosion in the sky,” Max assured them.
Moving in front of him, Leah stopped him for a moment. “We need to get that thing out of you,” she said. “You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Not before I find him,” he said. “I’m not sure we can undo what has been done anymore.”
“We’ll find a way,” she assured him. “There’s always a way.”
“Honestly I don’t think he should,” Bruno said, gazing around him. Unaware of the group that moved invisible in their midst, the people around looked up at the sundering dome, talked amongst themselves, or eyed the events about them in open–faced wonder, their expressions pale. “Look what he can do, all of these people here have no idea we’re even here. I doubted him before, I admit, but, honestly, I’ve always wished I could do something like this.”
“Who knows what’s actually going on in his head,” Leah said. “He needs to be cautious with this. The brain is a like a sea of vibration, disturb it and you run the risk of it never settling again.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, I think…” Max said. “Anyone have any family on the planet? I’m guessing you all do. You should go to them, who knows what other chunks have landed and where, I can’t ask you to come with me.”
“I want to see Him,” Falk said, and both Leah and Bruno agreed, Mia’s hair waved as she nodded.
“Why?” Max asked. “Chances are you won’t remember him afterwards.”
“That’s quite inconsequential,” Falk said matter–of–factly. “Wouldn’t we all like to see a living God?”
“What if he hates us?” Bruno chipped in.
“Then he’s not really a God,” Falk answered.
“As you wish,” Max signed as they passed further below the tower’s vast opening.
They walked through the cavernous lobby, the walls climbing upon themselves in his mind, the voices within splattering them with color, like paint thrown upon a canvas without heed for composition or artistic sense. Through the madness, the thought–haze, a quad of men approached the group. The four men appeared oblivious to his mind–projections.
“Turn back, citizen,” one of them uttered, his mouth hidden behind the tall collar. The Warden’s hands were long and slender, and they all stood tall, their backs arching backwards ever so slightly.
“I was wondering when you guys would come,” Max smiled. “At least this way I don’t have to look for you.”
“There is nothing for you here, the truth is out there,” the warden said, pointing with his hand outside.
“And who told you this, hmm?” Max asked.
“The source.”
“And that’s where I’m going. I want to hear it from Him.” Max said, trying to ignore the four men, but they wouldn’t move. Why are they even trying to stop me? Max remembered how one of them had turned, back in his apartment, how he halted when Max focused his thoughts upon him. He sought to do the same now.
***
Rob felt him before he saw him. The man in question had awoken a strange sensation within Robert’s mind, a sense as though the entire world was under some massive hydraulic pressure, the center of which was this man, this black–haired and bearded man, an individual who everyone but the five of his followers around him seemed to ignore. They were all telling him something, advising perhaps.
Around him, the vast lobby stifled Rob’s senses. It was packed full of people rushing about, most of them trying to get outside, to the site where something had penetrated a building and landed on a square behind it. The devastation was a source of wonder and talk amongst the population, but mostly dread – everyone wanted to see it for themselves. To see the source of their terror. Humans… Rob sighed in his head.
Brushing the shoulders of others and grazing their arms, Rob raced towards this man, towards the only man he didn’t hear in his mind at all. A blank slate devoid of thought amidst the froth of intangible feelings and sensations. There was, however, a thing which Rob didn’t hear, but sensed. A prevailing impression that the man was after something, and that the three individuals which stood in his way, bickering with him, were about to have a very bad day. One of the three opposing men, the one standing closes to the tranquil one, lifted a hand and suddenly, everyone around seemed to notice the one, as if a veil had been lifted before their eyes. The tranquil collapsed on his knees. The raised hand of the robotic, stiff–moving man seemingly brought great discomfort. The others tried to comfort him, a women got on her knees beside the tranquil, another began to yell in protest. Rob raced towards him, struggling through the crowd to even see him. Palms were raised to cover the eyes, as if the tranquil was trying to keep his eyes in. A sound like an electric discharge wobbled in the back of Rob’s mind, a familiar buzz that sent his heart racing. Rob’s hand squeezed around a piece of metal in his right hand, a tube of material with rounded edges that could be screwed between a doorframe, in fact that was what his father was go
ing to use it for, “To get into shape” he had said. Rob, however, didn’t even remember taking it. He could not recall why he would even do such a thing. He didn’t know what could propel him towards such an act, or why he would chose to carry it around with him. It simply made sense that he should, as if a synchronicity of events had compelled him to do it, a feeling like the world suddenly felt right should he pick up the tube and take it with him. Racing towards the screaming man, he reached the edges of the crowd standing in a ‘safe’ circle ten meters about the screamer. Rob raised the iron shaft in both hands, and even as he brought it down, bending the arm of the warden with a heavy clang, he saw the tranquil remove his hands from his face. Eyes burst out as if the sockets themselves chose to vomit blood. Before the feet of the Warden, the eyes landed as slimy, blood–covered globs. The optical cords shone with strange luminescence.
Rob realized the warden must have used some kind of magnetic force on the implant, pushing it out from within to blind the tranquil one, but to what and he was unsure. Perhaps merely to blind him? It seemed reason enough. The act appalled him. Rob slammed the rod into the warden’s face. Features bent, sparks flew, and the sound of metal upon metal rang inside his head, his hands. The iron vibrated, spreading the force of the hit through his palms and into his torso until Rob could not hold the thing anymore. He dropped it, his hands throbbing. He rubbed the aching palms and squeezed them together. Doing this, trying to expunge the pain, Rob was given no time to realize he got smacked over the face, back–handed by the same hand he had mangled, throwing him over the floor, unconscious.