1.
Wade heard a noise from behind him, the sound of great sinews stretching and flexing. He turned, and saw a massive shadow inching along the tunnel toward him, its reptilian flesh filling the passageway, like a piston in a shaft, slithering towards him.
Two great eyes that burned with a dumb malice, ancient beyond measure, but undoubtedly human in nature, bored into him. They shone like torchlight in the dim hallway.
With nowhere to go, Wade stood his ground, though every instinct told him to hide. Self-preservation screamed urgently out of every limb, reverberated in his body, gained volume in his spinal column, but was silenced when it reached his brain.
It stretched its head forward, revealing flesh the color of black, greasy smoke, the same color as the anti-halo of the arafel that crowned him when the demon came over him.
Its great jaws opened, revealing a mouth devoid of fangs—despite the shape of it, the jaws were studded with the irregular, squared-off shapes of human teeth. A forked tongue slithered out, and voices filled the passageway.
“Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Unclea—”
“—nameless scion, son of a dead-end line—”
“—Nothing but filth, servant and chariot of—”
“—clean! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Un—”
“—crowned by the loyalist, he who presides—”
“—Knight of the Virus-King, filth made flesh—”
“—aster of the Progenetoi, who drinks of the black oil—”
“--Ayh Jee Yu See Yu See Jee Ayh Yu See See Ayh—”
“--an! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Uncle—”
The chorus of madness grew louder as it grew closer, figures appeared, half-obscured by the arafel-smoke. Men in three-piece suits, in lab coats, women in fine evening gowns, in severe business dress, children of all ages.
Their eyes, glowing with red light, pierced the smoky flesh of the serpent.
Whisps of greasy-black smoke came from Wade's ears, from his nose, and from his mouth. He felt his teeth fuse together and lengthen, creating an ivory grille pierced through by vents, and his eyes shut, the lids fusing together.
The arafel passed over his left arm, turning his pale, breakable flesh into a hard, unforgiving mass of white bone. His fingers lengthened and turned into claws.
Lunging forward, he reached out, and seized the tongue from the serpent's mouth, his talons tore its insubstantial flesh, and he pulled the tongue out by its root, causing the snake to scream and attempt to pull back into its bulk.
The arafel that emerged from his mouth merged with the serpent, and he began to inhale, pulling the Arafel back into him, and drawing the serpent into him.
He felt it flooding his lungs and stomach, the smoke turned to tar inside of him, filling his stomach and coating his lungs. Wade felt as if he were about to burst.
When the serpent was gone, he fell to his knees. His eyes opened, stinging with blood, his teeth broke apart, and his arm turned from bone to flesh-and-bone.
For a time, he knelt there, hacking, coughing and gagging. He almost didn't hear the door behind him unlock.
2.
The state cracked where they left your breath
No
longer instrument. Along the shore
The sand ripped up, and the
newer blood
Streaked like a vein to every monument.
The empty
smoke that drifted near the guns
Where the stiff motor pounded in
the mud
Had the smell of a hundred burned-out suns.
The ceiling
of your sky went dark.
A year ago today they cracked your bones.
So
rot in a closet in the ground
For the bad trumpets and the
capitol's
Long seasonable grief. Rot for its guests,
Alive,
that step away from death. Yet you,
A year cold, come more living
to this room
Than these intruders, vertical and warm.
Theia examined the symbol on the tile above the sink, leaning in close, and sniffing.
“Yup. That's blood.”
“I could've told you that.”
“What else can you tell me about it, then?” Theia asked irritably.
“Well, I can't really tell whose blood it is. It probably wasn't the blood of the person who drew the sigil. Assuming that all the blood is from the same person, it was probably be enough to make it difficult to have that kind of muscle control.”
“How big would someone have to be for this much blood to not be a thing?” Theia asked.
“About Wade's size,” Algernon said, “at least as far as I can guess. I'm not a phlebotomist.”
“Strangely specific denial, there,” Theia joked. Her smile vanished when she saw Algernon's hard-edged grimace, a face that could cut diamonds.
“So I know my words. What of it? Why does this symbol make you excited?”
“Because this symbol's been showing up a lot, and I don't know anyone who's put it up. It's a counterbalance to the other one that people have been doing...”
“Get to the point,” Algernon growled.
“Calm down, calm down. Come on, Algernon, I know it's bad, but let's be rational.”
His grimace hardening, Algernon leaned back against the counter, and crossed his arms.
“Okay. That's better. It's a Hashshishin symbol. I've seen it a lot on the edge of Palladion...but nowhere near as much as in Old Gaol. That's probably where the artist—or the kidnapper—is.”
“Or wants us to go.”
“Your call, Mr. Heller.”
Algernon sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut.
“What is the symbol?” he asked.
“It's part of the Ars Goetia. It's a symbol for Ashtaroth, the Prince of Hell, a demon supposedly capable of answering any question posed to it, turning men invisible, or giving a man power over serpents.”
“Why would this symbol be used here?”
“I don't know. No Nov who knows what they're doing would use it, and considering the state of the apartment, I'm guessing Hashshishin.”
Wade nodded, and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Theia asked.
“To the park. Where else would I be headed?”
Theia followed after him.
“What?” he asked, turning as he heard her feet on the stairs behind him.
“I'm coming with you,” she said.
“No, you aren't.”
“You can let me come or I can break your arm,” Theia said.
“You can go home, or I can shoot you.”
“Then shoot me. It'll only slow you down.”
3.
The woman had opened the door behind him, and turned when he looked up. Her black hair came down almost to her shoulders, and she was slender. She wore a sun dress, but it had a pocket sewn into it on her left hip.
“I've been waiting for you,” she said, a slight French accent on her voice.
“You're...” he began, forcing himself up.
“Laplace,” she said, “please, follow me. We haven't much time.”
Wade didn't move, but simply leaned against the wall, he coughed, and a streamer of black spittle came from his mouth, and splattered to the ground. When it struck, a word could be heard: “Unclean!”
“Why? Why should I?”
“You're here, aren't you, Wade? Why don't you just walk with me for a moment? Everything will soon be revealed.”
Tentatively, Wade took one step, then another, shortly, he was walking behind her, just out of arm's reach.
“How did you contact me?” Wade asked.
“I had to do so, so I did.”
“That's a 'why' answer. Not a 'how.' You always knew where I was. How?”
“I had to do so, so I did,” she repeated.
“That's not an answer.”
She turned back and looked at him, regarding him with tired brown eyes. She had a soft, welcoming face, but wore no expression, other than a raised eyebrow.
“Isn't it?”
They walked past rooms adorned only with bedframes, and into a workshop, where various machines sat on benches, in various states of repair or construction.
“Are you, or are you not, Angelica Cohen?” Wade asked.
“That name doesn't mean anything to me,” she said, dismissively, turning back to look ahead, “You ask the wrong questions, you know that, Wade. Wouldn't Uncle Georges be disappointed with you?”
“How do you know about him?” Wade asked, narrowing his eyes.
“I know many things, Wade. You're getting closer, though.”
“What is your connection to Victor Carver?” Wade asked.
They were walking into a large, theatre-like room lit in blinding white light. The walls were ceramic tile. A dais in the middle was surrounded by coils of copper, and there was a trap door in the ceiling at five scattered about the room. In the middle of the dais was a gurney, with a squirming body under a sheet. A door was set in the opposite wall.
Wade stopped.
“I'm not walking another step until you tell me,” he declared.
She continued walking, heading towards the Gurney.
“Victor Carver is my maker and my master,” she declared, “I know, I know. I look at least twenty, don't I? In fact, I'm just using this body. Victor put my mind in here.”
Standing by the gurney, she turned and tapped her temple, smiling.
“In fact, I've been self-aware for less than six hours.”
“Bullshit, you were trying to contact me before then.”
“Was I?”
“Make sense, dammit,” he growled.
“Something else was trying to reach out to you, but when I became self-aware, I involved myself, and became part of the system, just another cog in the machine, like you are.”
“What do you mean, 'machine?'” he asked, “is this all some game Carver is playing?”
She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small notepad and a pen.
“No. Carver is like you. Whipped by the forces inside of him, driven on by things he doesn't understand.”
“The machine I refer to is much bigger, much more unpleasant. There is no escaping the system, Wade. No matter how much you want to, the System is all, it is the world in toto.”
“So...what? The government? Society?”
“No. The system is All. It is everything, Wade.”
She ripped the leaf off her pad, and set it on the chest of the squirming figure.
“You'll understand,” she said, walking towards the opposite door.
He stepped forward.
“Hey, wait!”
The door clanged shut behind him, as the one in front of her opened up.
He ran forward, skirting the circle, as she passed through the door and it shut behind her, leaving him trapped.
The only things in the room were the wire circle and the body on the dais. Gulping, he headed toward the body, and picked up the single note that Angelica—Laplace—had left behind:
NO HOPE
written in block caps, without punctuation.
The trapdoor over Wade's head opened, and a wire cage descended, slamming to the floor around the dais.
He reached out, intending to lift the cage and get out, but burned his hands on the charged mesh.
Jerking back, he uncovered the body, to discover a charred corpse with electrodes jammed into its arms and stomach, jerking about like a marionette operated by a drunkard.
He heard the sound of doors opening, and turned to look at the portal Laplace had exited through.
4.
Algernon drove like a madman, driving past the parking lot, and taking a service road toward the middle of the park, to the marker that stood where the heart of Old Gaol had been.
He parked the car, and got out. Almost immediately, he lit a cigarette, and started glancing around, before moving toward the marker.
It was a solemn memorial, half obelisk and half minaret, made out of dark stone. On one side was the Ashtaroth-symbol, smeared in white paint.
Algernon looked at it, and scratched his head.
“Why here?”
“Look,” Theia said, gesturing with a nod towards a figure sitting on a bench across one of the short-grassed lawns.
“Mari,” Algernon said, sighing in relief. He began walking towards her, squinting a little to see what her facial expression was.
She looked up, her face tired. She watched him until he was almost thirty feet away.
“Algernon...” she said, “stay back. Get away.”
“What?” he asked, “why?”
“I don't feel good,” she replied, weakly.
“Well, come on,” he said, stepping closer, “Your apartment is trashed. You can come back to my place, we'll put you to bed, I'll get you some broth, and—”
“Algy, stay away,” she sobbed.
“Mari, what's really wrong?” he asked, concern etched across his face.
Theia caught up to them, and stopped just behind Algernon, looking at Mari, who had her arms crossed over her abdomen, and had bent down. Her shoulders shook with sobs.
“Whatever it is, Mari. I can help.”
He took another step forward, and she looked up. Tears of blood ran down her face.
“Stay away!” she screamed. Briefly, her teeth sharpened, then squared off again.
“Jesus,” Theia muttered under her breath.
“Just leave me alone,” Mari pleaded, “just go home. Forget about me, Algy.”
“I can't do that, Mari. Come on. Whatever is wrong, I don't care.”
He stepped toward her, and knelt by her side. Theia sidled closer, but her muscles were tense, her eyes sharp.
Algernon reached out, and took Mari's hand.
“Come on. It'll be alright. It'll be alright.”
Mari tried to pull back, but he wouldn't let go. She squeezed her eyes shut, and turned her head away, gritting her teeth. The bloody tears continued to flow.
“Algernon...I can't...”
5.
The five trap doors opened, and a voice came over a hidden loudspeaker. Maxwell and Laplace watched from the doorway.
“Mr. Larkin, you have been nothing but a pain since I experimented on you. Admittedly, I had expected you to die, given that my method at the time was...shall we say, crude? Yes. I believe crude would be the best descriptor.”
Five metal pylons rose from the trap doors, each topped with a silvery globe and ringed in metal coils. Each crackled with electrical potential.
“But that's no matter. I'm going to solve the problem once and for all. With access to notes left by the original inventor of this machine, as well as my great-grandfather, who refined its use, I believe I can solve our little problem.”
“Problem?” Wade asked.
“Yes. Problem. You see, I put a demon inside of you. Dissolved it in an electrolyte solution and injected it right into your spinal fluid. Ingenious, wouldn't you say? I've always been clever. I have a dry cell battery with my grandmother in it. My first experiment with electrically-bound anti-entropy. Don't worry, though. The woman was a horrid bitch.”
The crackling began to grow louder, drowning out Victor's voice.
Each pylon shot a bolt of electricity towards the cage, which redirected it and grounded the charge.
As the power grew, bolts of electricity lanced from each pylon to each of its brothers, forming a pentacle of lightning.
Then the cage began to lift, withdrawing into the ceiling. Wade crouched down on the balls of his feet, and waited.
When nothing happened, he looked up.
He was surrounded by a sphere of smoky darkness, which pushed back the blue electricity, shielding him from it. It expanded outward, and narrowed into a ring. When it contacted each tesla coil, it pushed them outward, and slammed them into the ceramic walls.
“Interesting...” Victor's voice crackled from the damaged loudspeaker, “But don't think I'm...” the voice turned to static, before returning, “Laplace, come here, Maxwell, dist...”
Wade watched as Laplace retreated through the door, and Maxwell approached him. The suited man pulled his right glove off, his hand glowed with a deep red light, slowly turning to orange, then to yellow.
He released it, and it bored through the black wall of the Arafel, hitting wade on the chest, making him stumble back, his clothes smoldering and his skin singed.
The Arafel collapsed inward on Wade, washing over him, and transforming him. When it unfurled, he had changed again, his skin turned to a white, bone-like shell. His arms reached almost to his knees, and terminated in five-fingered claws.
His head had no features, but vents along his back emitted the oily black smoke of the arafel. The smoke coalesced, and encircled his head in the familiar anti-halo.
6.
Theia grabbed Algernon's arm, and threw him to the ground, pulling him away from Mari, whose right hand had turned into a twisted claw.
“What?” he asked.
“Stay back, Mr. Heller,” Theia said, “she can't control herself.”
Mari lunged forward, her clawed hand outstretched. Theia grabbed Mari by the wrist, put her left hand on Mari's side, and flipped her over, onto the sidewalk.
Mari lay, dazed, for a moment.
“What the hell is going on?” Algernon asked, standing up, “Theia? Mari?”
“I told you to stand back,” Theia chided, “you'd better listen to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn't believe me when I told you Wade turned into a monster. He turned back.”
Mari reached out and tried to grab Theia's ankle, but only got a heel to her wrist for her trouble.
“Maybe she will, too, but I can't say.”
“Why should I get back, though?”
Mari clambered to her feet, and shrank back, settling on the balls of her feet, and curling into a crouched fetal position.
“Because I can tell you couldn't bring yourself to hurt her, and that makes you useless.”
Turning back to her opponent, Theia stayed in a ready position.
“Mari? Are you sane, yet?”
7.
“So, I see Paimon has more than just one preferred shape,” Maxwell said. His hand shone blue, and he curled it into a fist, “but an old, half-dead thing like you is worse than useless, you know that?”
He charged forward, toward Wade, his hand outstretched, and tried to touch the burning fist to the shelled thing.
Wade put his left hand on the ground, and raised his foot, kicking Maxwell on the jaw. The suited man fell to the ground, the blue glow shooting off along the floor, leaving a trail of melted ceramic behind it.
Planting his foot back on the ground, Wade brought his left fist over his head, and hammered it into Maxwell's stomach. A trace of burning blood arced through the air, and Wade raised his other fist.
Maxwell rolled out of the way.
“I suppose both gloves need to come off, do they not?” he asked, rhetorically.
He touched his bare hand to his gloved hand, and a flickering flame consumed the fabric, leaving his hands bare. The fire swept across him, and his true shape was revealed.
Maxwell did not remotely resemble a human being. Instead, he was an ever-shifting platonic solid composed of fire. First a tetrahedron, then a cube, then an octahedron, then a cube again. He randomly shifted from one shape to another.
From each vertex emerged a cluster of tendrils composed of fire, and seemingly random jumbles of letters and numbers orbited him.
“Paimon may have dominion over all mysteries of the world and the mind,” Maxwell's demon said, “you may, indeed, be mighty.”
The voice lacked all inflection, like a speech synthesizer's, but it still crackled and growled as if it emerged from the mouth of an open furnace.
“But I control entropy.”
Maxwell's Demon squeezed into a cylinder ringed on both ends with tendrils of fire, and extended towards Wade, shooting through the intervening space and slamming into his chest.
Wade slid back along the ground, his feet carving furrows into the ceramic floor, even as Maxwell's proximity made it melt and bubble.
It retracted, and reformed into a sphere as Wade hit the wall, cracks appearing in his armor, leaking the tarry black substance that he had been coughing up since Paimon ate the snake-thing in the tunnel, marring the dead white of his armor.
Wade collapsed forward, first to his knees, then down onto one elbow.
Forcing himself upward, the arafel flickered and grew, forming into a long, thin tendril. It stabbed forward, towards Maxwell. The demon changed from a sphere into a ring, parting in the path of the lance of black smoke.
Long arms of fire came from the ring's edge, and stabbed out towards Wade, scoring and gouging into his armor. One pierced each of his shoulders and lifted him up, slamming him into the wall over the door that he had entered, and holding him in place.
“Now, this ends.”
The opposite door opened, and Victor entered, carrying a device that seemed to resemble a rifle made of stainless steel, with broad barrels encircling a prong that glowed with blue light. A long cord emerged from the butt of the weapon, and extended back down the hallway.
“I can use this to pull that demon from your body, Mr. Larkin. It might pull you from it, as well, but better that than a life of you assaulting me, isn't it?”
He raised the weapon.
“Maxwell, move out of the way.”
“No. He's mine.”
“Maxwell, I gave you an order.”
“To hell with you and your orders. You hairless ape, you worm, you paramecium. I will have none of this. Now, I will consume this wretch, and with its raw power and my abilities, I need not listen to your commands ever again. How does that sound, Victor?”
“I don't think I like that idea at all, not one bit, Maxwell. Would you kindly move?” Victor was perfectly calm, completely in control.
“I shall not. Bow down before me, human. I will end your suffering.”
Victor sighed, raised the lightning gun to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
A lance of dancing blue-white light emerged from Wade's chest and shot through Maxwell's Demon before it could react. The lightning bolt alighted on the prong of the gun, and the crackling smell of ozone filled the room. The cable leading from the gun to whatever ultimate storage Victor had prepared began to glow a dull orange.
Maxwell was gone immediately. Wade's armor gradually flaked off, eventually revealing the tarry black core. As soon as the lightning touched the black oil, it began to evaporate, turning into an arafel.
The un-light, the force of Paimon's will filled the room, the black smoke moving with a will of its own.
The body on the dais lurched to its feet, one of its eyes a sphere of blinding blue-white light, the other a well of impenetrable black. It screamed:
“No hope!
“No future!
“No salvation!
“Humanity is a virus!
“No salvation!
“No future!
“No hope!
“Only ruins!
“Only destruction!
“Only the Virus-King!”
The body shriveled, then turned to a liquid in the intense heat of the room, and the liquid soaked into the half-molten floor, spreading its corruption across the floor.
Now Wade's armor was completely gone, and though every second, Victor pulled more and more of his self through the gun and into the bank of batteries beyond, he was not diminished. Paimon remained whole, and Wade, encased in the demon, was safe.
As the last of the liquid boiled away, the white-hot cable snapped, and Victor fell to the side, rolling away from the gun and clutching his burned hands.
Paimon stretched, and began to fill the room. Somewhere in the complex, Laplace hit a switch and sealed the chamber air-tight.
Wade floated, bodiless, in a void of nothing. No color. No temperature. No light. No scent. No sensation presented itself to his mind, and his mind was emptied. At that exact moment, he was not conscious of anything.
His body was gone, his mind was gone. All that remained of him was the borrowed power, and that had been scarred by Victor.
After a moment, he extended himself.
The ceiling of the chamber shattered, and he reached upward, toward the light.
8.
The black smoke roiled from the ground, and Theia retreated from Mari, grabbing Algernon, and pulling him away.
A tendril of the arafel touched Mari, and she lurched.
Her hair solidified, turning into a crest of bone that hung behind her head and her eyes turned yellow, while her fangs lengthened.
“Let go of me,” Algernon commanded.
“That's not Mari, Algernon,” Theia said.
“But it is her. Don't you get it?”
She let go, and turned back towards the older man, who stood calmly. His shoulders stooped, his hair a mess, his eyes sharp and aware.
“Don't you understand anything?” he asked Theia in a quiet voice.
Turning back towards the monster that had been Mari, he squared his feet and waited.
She bounded towards him, leaping like a beast. All hints of intelligence were gone from her eyes. Algernon bowed his head, as if accepting his fate.
Mari lept.
Algernon moved.
There was the sound of thunder.
Mari fell, dead, to a gunshot that pierced her left eye.
Algernon fell to his knees, and wept unashamedly.
9.
The black pillar pulled back in on itself, and solidified into the form of a tall young man who needed a shave and a good night's rest.
He lay, his eyes half-lidded, in a sinkhole in the middle of Old Gaol park.
A soft, feminine hand touched his shoulder.
“Wake up, Wade. Wake up. I think we can come to an agreement on something.”
He opened his eyes.
“Mari?”
No.
Astarte crouched next to him, and touched his cheek with her left hand, running her finger along his jawbone.
“Get away from me,” he commanded.
Reaching up, his arm turned into a tentacle of black smoke, it expanded and enveloped her before extending, and depositing the lifeless body of the Phoenician goddess in the wall of the sinkhole.
He pulled himself to his feet as his arm became flesh-and-blood again, and climbed upward, out, into the light.