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THEN
— - —
Ismael stood in the doorway, slowly pulling on a cigarette. Ivan was sitting at a table a few feet away, flipping through a report they had received the day before. Outside the window of their makeshift command center in Guadalajara a parade danced through the street, slowly working its way towards the center of town. The window was left open for the faint breeze, but it hadn’t helped.
Ismael took another drag, letting the smoke fall out of his nostrils as he exhaled. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “I don’t know what you were expecting. Didn’t this confirm everything else we’ve heard so far?”
Ivan shook his head. “Yes, yes, it did, but I don’t understand it. They mobilized an army to Santa Ana - how is that possible?” He flipped the report over, looking for loose pages. “What we did in Quito should have ruined them, Ismael. Who was left afterwards?”
“Plenty of people were left - what do you mean?”
Ivan threw him a look. “I mean, who was left in command positions? Who knew how to- did any of them even know how to get into 909-Site-100?” He tossed the report onto the couch behind him. “We didn’t leave the door unlocked, did we? Who was left?”
Ismael shrugged. “Edward Saunders, maybe. Last we heard he was operating out of that site in Michigan, but it could’ve been him. He wouldn’t know how to get into the secure site, though.” He paused, considering. “David McLean? Where was his team assigned?”
Ivan rubbed his eyes. “No, no, it wasn’t McLean. He defected too - just not with us.”
They sat in silence for a moment longer, only the sound of the parade moving into the distance breaking the quiet between them. Then, without warning, the door to the room opened. Ismael was at it in an instant, gun drawn. Ivan didn’t move, but stared unbelievingly at the figure inside the doorframe.
“Antonina?” he asked incredulously.
Antonina Makarov stepped through the door, slowly pulling a hood down off her face. Her hair was shorter than when they had last seen each other, but her eyes were the same unmistakable green. Ivan felt something catch in his chest - something he hadn’t felt in years. Longing.
“No,” Ismael growled, “a Council spy.”
Antonina rolled her eyes. “Put the gun down, you idiot. I’m not here to kill you.” She rolled up the sleeve of her turtleneck, revealing the long scar on her neck that had long since scarred over. She had no hidden weapons. “There, satisfied?”
“What are you doing here?” Ivan asked.
She pulled the coat off and set it on the single bed in the room. “You sent a message to Daniel Van Bardeleven,” she said, looking at Ivan. “909-1. All the same melodramatic prose as ever, I knew it was you. He added it to the file we have in place for the-” she paused, “the Children. See, Daniel still believes the lie we’ve been telling everyone.”
“And what’s what?” Ismael asked.
“That he, or any of us, are still in control.” She sat down across from them and lit a cigarette of her own. Ivan could feel his heart crashing against his chest. “Your Defection really did a number on us, boys. Scattered, leaderless, all of our best and brightest killed or gone into hiding. We threw together a hodgepodge of doctors and called them “Consulates”, but none of them are actually running the show.” She paused. “Not even me.”
Ivan frowned. “Then who is?”
“We don’t know,” she continued. “For years, the Consulates have been running the individual sites by themselves, but orders keep coming down from 909-Site-100. Somebody is in there. For a long time we thought it was you,” she looked at Ivan, and her gaze softened slightly, “but after a while we realized it had to be something else entirely.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. “I know you went back. I was following you. You saw exactly what I saw when I went back - a man-shaped absence where Chris-” hearing her say his name made Ivan wince “-used to be. Smoke on a wall, and nothing else.” She took another draw on the cigarette. “So if you’re not in there, and he’s not in there, then who is calling the shots?”
Ismael finally lowered his gun. “Why are you here?”
She glared at him. “Because the other day we found something that shouldn’t have been possible. Site-03, the facility we built when we scrapped the plans for the Alaska site, there was a door there we hadn’t seen before. There was a whole new wing behind it, something that couldn’t have been built without us knowing.” She swallowed hard.
She stood up. “I’m here because something is happening at 909-Site-100 that is changing the Council. New facilities are being built every day, more and more doctors and researchers are being recruited that we know nothing about. You saw what happened in Santa Ana?” They both nodded. “Those orders didn’t come from any of the Consulates. They came from 909-Site-100. Somebody in there is making calls and the Council is following orders.”
She paused. “I don’t agree with what you did, and I think the Council has more to offer than you give it credit for, but what’s happening here needs to be stopped. We need to know what’s going on in there, before it’s too late.”
“Then why not just go?” Ismael grunted at her.
She looked at him for a second, and then away to the ground. “I don’t want to go alone.”
Ivan and Ismael exchanged glances. “If we find something in there,” Ivan said, slowly, “we’re going to kill it. You understand? The Council can’t be allowed to continue like this. Antonina - the damage it’s doing is- is more than we can keep up with. We’ve been looking at the numbers again, the ones we uh-” he laughed nervously, “-the ones we borrowed from Dr. Saunders, and his figures match our own. The Council is destabilizing our reality, Antonina. Walker was right about the threads, but they’re being damaged. We have to do something to stop this.” He met her gaze as she looked back up at him. “I know we’re scientists, but this… this is a box we never should have opened.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped and sighed. She nodded. “Fine. Get me in there and you can do whatever you feel like you need to do.”
Ismael nodded. "I'll go radio headquarters. We'll need some kind of distraction to keep them off our backs while we take 909-Site-100."
He put out his cigarette on the wall and left the room, closing the door behind him. Antonina watched him leave, and once he was gone turned her eyes back to her hands. Ivan didn't move.
"I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again," he said softly.
She smiled an uncertain half-smile, her eyes betraying her. "Well, yes. I wasn't sure either." She looked up at him, and Ivan could see that great sadness behind the facade of content. "It's difficult, you know. I lost everything that night: my friends, my mentor, my life's work. And you." She bit her lip until it was white. "I didn't know where to go. You left me and I was alone to pick up the pieces of what we had, and-"
Her voice trembled. "I don't want to know why you killed Chris. I don't care. Maybe you knew something you didn't tell anyone but I don't know why you didn't tell me."
Ivan's face went pale. "I did want to tell you. I was preparing for- for what we were planning, and I told Ismael to let everyone know." He leaned forward. "He didn't tell you?"
She grimaced. "No. He didn't. But neither did you. You had every opportunity to reach out to me, you knew all the channels, but you did nothing. It's been thirty years, Ivan. Thirty years and I hear nothing, not even word that you're still alive." A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and with the back of a glove she wiped it away. "When I saw you and Ismael in Quito, I thought I was seeing a ghost."
"I'm sorry," Ivan said softly. "I thought you had rejected the offer, that-"
"I would have rejected the offer," she said, her voice congealing into something venomous. "I dedicated my life to the Council and that project and you were all too willing to throw it away. Everything we'd worked for. All of our efforts."
Ivan slumped back in his seat. "Walker was-"
"I know what he was," she spat, "but he could have been dealt with. When you killed him and broke off to go gallivanting around the country shooting up convoys and stealing from warehouses, you threatened all of the work we had done. Do you remember why we did it? Do you even care? Our world is sick, and if we can't find the source of it then we're going to keep seeing-"
"The world was sick because of Walker," Ivan said pointedly, "he was the source, he was-"
"But here we are, fifty years removed from Christopher Walker’s life, and you know what's happening out there?" She paused to light another cigarette. "More unexplained events every day. More artifacts and monsters we pull out of the ground, every day. Why, if the Administrator was the source of the anomalies, are we still seeing anomalies, Ivan?"
Ivan didn't answer. She sighed and sat back further on the bed, pulling her legs up to her chest. "I might have believed you back then," she said quietly. "I might have listened, but I have seen nothing in the last few decades that would lead me to believe that one man was the advent of every paranormal event in that time. There's something deeper out there, and it's not going to be stopped by killing a man. It's going to be stopped by research and investigation, and the only group with the resources to make that happen right now is the Council."
Ivan didn't respond. He sat, eyes downcast, as Antonina finished her cigarette.
"I'm not going to stop you from doing whatever you think you need to do," she said, her voice empty. "But before you do anything, you need to think about what it is you actually want."
She looked back towards the door. "And if it's what he wants, too."
NOW
— - —
Karl was two steps out of the humvee with his gun drawn. Sam was close behind him, but the woman in the middle of the road didn’t move. She held up both hands, palms out, and waved them slightly.
“Look, see?” she showed them the backs of her hands. “No guns. I’m not here for violence.”
“Who are you?” Karl asked.
The woman made a large, sweeping bow. She was slightly hunchbacked, and when she bent over they could see the deviation in her spine.
“I am Aurora Kaitlyn Perkins,” she said, standing back up. “I’m your next Consulate. Number Nine, you see.” She gave them a knowing elbow. “I noticed you were going down numerically. Not maybe the most unique approach, but I’ll admit it’s narratively consistent.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “You’re The Vassal?”
The man made a dismissive gesture. “Please, The Vassal is my work name. I’m not here on work, obviously, though-” she gave them both a look, “-it seems that you two are.”
Karl raised his gun as if to fire, and then hesitated. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” Aurora raised a hand to her mouth. “Why, I came to meet you! I have seen some incredible things - many incredible things, if you believe half the stories they tell about me, but I’ve never met someone who has, in one way or another, killed eight Consulates.” She crossed her arms and nodded. “That is impressive. That’s never been done before, not even by the Consulates themselves!”
“If you know why we’re here, then why did you seek us out?” Sam asked. “You know we’re trying to kill you.”
The woman laughed. “Yes, well, I did know that. But see, unfortunately for both of us, killing me is sort of a non-starter, even after your little whoopsie with Hudson back at the Spire.” She gestured at Karl. “Here, I’ll show you. This will help establish some rules. Shoot me.” She tapped on her forehead. “Right here, square between the eyes if you can.”
Karl raised his gun again but paused. He looked at Sam, who looked back at him with uncertainty. Aurora rolled her eyes and produced a knife from inside her sleeve.
“Fine, fine,” she said, “we can do it this way too.”
Holding the knife in her left hand and bracing the bottom of it with her right, Aurora drove the blade of the knife into her head through her neck. Blood splashed out onto the ground and she immediately went cross-eyed as a gargling gasp escaped his lips. She pushed one more time with her right hand and the end of the knife lodged perfectly into her skull. She stumbled backwards and collapsed.
The three of them sat staring at the woman on the ground in shock.
“What the hell was that?” Devin said from behind them.
Then, suddenly, the road in front of them was illuminated by a dark purple light. It pulsed twice, and then with a snapping sound and the distinct smell of ozone, the Vassal appeared before them again, unscathed. She held out her arms as if performing a magic trick, and then gestured to the corpse on the ground.
“See?” she said. “Voila. Good as new.”
“You’re anomalous,” Sam stated.
Aurora nodded. “But really, who isn’t anymore?” She held a finger to her chin. “You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I believe that The Mercenary wasn’t. I think that always got to him, you know? He had all these machinations-” she gestured wildly, “-that would’ve been so much easier to achieve if she could do the things I can do.”
“What can you do?” Karl said, lowering his gun.
The Consulate held up a finger. “Ah, that’s a good question! Let’s start with a better one - where I’m from.” He turned as if to walk away, and then stopped midstep to turn back and motion them to follow. “Come on, let’s go. You can leave your belongings here; nobody is going to come after them for a while.”
The three of them hesitantly started walking behind him. As they fell in step, they noticed the sky changing. It had been night, but now it was a deep, rich purple that was occasionally disturbed by ripples emanating from somewhere in the distance. The landscape around them began to change as well - gone were the hills leading up into the mountains, now they walked on a cobblestone street through a city they did not recognize. The sky above them began to change again, fading out from purple and into a sullen grey. A light rain was falling and a chill hit them from behind.
“This,” Aurora said, turning back to look at them, “is my home - where I am from, anyway. I was born here, in the city of Munich. Munich, population one-hundred thousand. Isn’t that something?”
They stared around in muted amazement. Something dark and massive passed overhead, and they were momentarily drenched in shadow.
“What happened here?” Devin asked.
The Consulate shrugged. “You remember the Black Death? You no doubt read about it in a history book or something - a very tragic event in your world’s history. Well, as it turns out the Black Death hit this world very hard. There was this fellow in the Out There who woke up just in time to catch it at its worst, and told everyone he had a cure. As you can imagine, people were eager to take him up on the proposition. Only problem was, the Plague wasn’t exactly what he was curing.” She waggled her eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”
She turned back to look down the dull street. At the far end, a horse drawn carriage passed by - the horse looking little more than a skeleton.
“In your world - the one you were born in, this entity exists. The Foundation have him contained, in fact - stuffed in a cell somewhere. He’s much different there than he is here, I doubt there would be much we could do to inhibit this fellow.” He paused. “Anyway, city after city began to fall, all around the world. Except for two cities, London and Munich. The Forefathers built her walls strong and her defenses stalwart. For a time, we had allies - Paris, London, Rome. Even some much further away. Slowly, over time, they all went silent. London and Munich were all that’s left.”
She started walking again, and they followed. She led them down the street and then out into a large, open thoroughfare that was empty except for them.
“Now, as for what I can ‘do’. You’ve no doubt picked up on part of it - walking hither and yon between realities is both useful and obvious. But before you can go somewhere, you need to see where it is you’re going.”
She pointed up into the sky and closed her eyes. “You’ve met my good ex-friend The Assassin already. She was very good with numbers and assassinations, and there were some who thought she could see the future. She couldn’t really, just like I can’t really. But I can do her one better. See, they’ll tell you there are infinitely many universes, and for the layman that might as well be true. But it’s not actually true. There is a functional end to all creation - a hard limit, if you will. There are only so many atoms and so many interactions. It might seem like infinity to your average guy on the street, but I can see those variations - each and every one of them. If there are more of some than there are of others, I know that in any one universe that event would be more likely.”
She stopped again. “Now imagine you’re a young Aurora Kaitlyn Perkins, and you live in a shit city on a shit continent at the end of the world. The skies are always grey, the air is always toxic, and on the other side of the channel outside of these walls is a nightmare that could kill you in a heartbeat. You have dreams - dreams of a place like yours, but different. Brighter. Happier. A smaller chance of imminent death. You can see it, clear as day. Then one day you hear a voice calling out to you from this place - and it’s your own voice. They’re not you, but they are you.”
She turned back. “I heard that voice, and took those first steps into a place that wasn’t my own. This place, this Munich, is part of a dying world. If it makes it another six months it’ll be a miracle. I had no family, no friends. Nobody wanted a lame orphan who was hearing voices.” He shrugged. “So I left.”
“Hang on,” Sam said, rubbing her temple. “You can see other realities?”
Aurora looked up curiously, as if forming a thought. “See… no. It’s not like I can open my eyes and look at them, not really. It’s more like I can… hear them.”
He started walking again. They passed an empty butcher shop, an empty bank, an empty apartment building.
“You remember when I said I heard my own voice?” he asked. “That was true. When I came through there, I found another me, and together we found another. We kept running into each other until there were no more of me left undiscovered, and then we all just sort of… came together. Unified, if you will. There are still a lot of me in here,” she tapped her head, “but we all more or less speak the same language now. This works out well, because if one of me ever dies, the others can just break that one off and stay intact. Does that make sense? Sort of like an onion. You peel one layer back, and there’s more onion underneath.” She rubbed her chin. “I think that’s a reference to something.”
“I still don’t understand,” Sam said, “if you’re all in the same place now, how do you hear these other dimensions?”
“Realities,” she said, holding up a finger. “Dimensions are different and I don’t dabble in those. That was the tricky bit, but sometimes things just have a way of working out. In my travels I found someone else like me, someone else who was maybe not quite so organized as I was, but could still hear herself wherever she is out there. Her name was Alison, the daughter of one of the Foundation senior staff members, Charles Gears, I think. She and her… sisters? That’s not right. She and the other versions of herself struck a deal with me. I show up whenever she needs a little ‘muscle’ and she keeps me informed of everything happening… everywhere. Do you understand?”
Karl stopped walking. “So why did you bring us here? What do you want?”
Aurora paused and then turned around. She was still smiling, but it was more somber somehow.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, “and I’m sympathetic, trust me. I know you’re Devinant about what you want to accomplish and I know that nothing that I can say personally can change that - and that’s fair. Thing is, I don’t know if you’re right or not, or if your crusade will make any sort of difference in the grand scheme. I have some ideas, but I’m not sure. Just in case, I want to try and keep it from happening, because if for some reason you succeed and I lose touch with all of the me that’s in here, well…” she paused. “I don’t really know what would happen, to be honest. I don’t think it would be good.”
“So I’m going to give you something!” Her smile diminished slightly when she saw their faces turn. “Oh, no, this isn’t like other deals I’m sure the others gave you. Especially since they were, what, Shaddy and Kendra? Those two are nasty.” She shook her head. “I’m sure they resorted to horrible things in order to dissuade you, and look where that got them! Me, though, I can do better than that.”
They stopped in front of another empty shop with three doors. Somewhere in the distance a flare went up, and they were briefly bathed in red light. When they looked back, there were three men standing in front of the doors, each identical to the others.
“I’m going to offer you an out,” Aurora said, the voices speaking in perfect unison. “Not an out that’s just in your head like your next target – after me of course — might’ve offered, or an out that’s not really an out at all and mostly just results in your death like Kendra would’ve preferred. No, this is a bonafide, 100% guaranteed out. If you take it, it’s yours. I can arrange all the paperwork and make it happen, but it’s there if you want it.”
Each of the three men stepped aside, exposing the now open doors behind them. One for each of them.
“We go through these,” Karl said slowly, “and what, we’re killed immediately? Is this a joke?”
Aurora’s face softened. For the first time she no longer appeared unceasingly genial - instead, she looked tired.
“No, it’s not a joke - and there’s no funny business here. I’m just looking for a way we can both benefit from this.”
They each looked at each other, and after a minute, Sam shrugged.
“I mean, what else are we going to do?” she said. “Shoot her?”
Karl and Devin nodded in agreement, and the three of them each entered separate doors.
— - —
Devin found himself standing in a warmly lit room on a shaggy carpet. Somewhere on the street below, a man was playing something on a saxophone. There was a small fireplace, and a fire burning within it. Something was cooking in the next room, and it smelled heavenly. Devin scanned the room for something familiar, but found nothing.
“It’s over there, if you’re looking for it,” the Vassal said, suddenly appearing next to him. “Over there in the corner, I mean. Your laptop, right? That’s what you’re looking for? I notice you don’t really ever part with it.”
“What is this?” Devin said, confused. “Where am I?”
“This is Seattle, Washington, in the United States. Can’t remember the address exactly. You’ve actually been here once before, when you were younger. Your parents briefly sought asylum here.”
Devin looked back around the room. “That’s right,” he said, nodding. “We lived in the town in the mountains after this.”
The Vassal walked over to the window and looked out at the street. Devin continued scanning the room. “Why here?”
“Because in this world, your asylum was granted,” the Vassal said without looking up. “You grew up here, with both of your parents and your siblings. They’re all still alive, too. Your parents moved to Los Angeles, but you liked it here most of all. This felt like home to you.”
Devin didn’t respond. It did feel like home. He remembered the thick carpet and the drapes that were just a little musty. Even the stupid little fireplace had made him so happy as a child. It was perfect, exactly as he remembered it but better, except-
“Devin,” a voice called from the kitchen. It was dark and rough - and familiar. Devin felt his heartbeat quicken slightly as he took a few steps around the edge of the sofa in the middle of the room. A moment later, Karl’s head poked around the corner.
“Dinner,” he said. He raised an eyebrow and looked around. “Who are you talking to?”
Devin hesitated, his voice catching in his throat. He turned to look at the Vassal for some response, but the man was staring straight ahead, unblinking.
“Are you surprised?” the Consulate said. “You can’t hide from me, Devin Krieg.” She tapped a finger on the side of her head. “There was a time once when I too desired certain comforts. Pleasures of the flesh, as you know. The girl Alison has had her usefulness there, but I will admit I find your tastes far more fulfilling than my own.”
Devin turned back to Karl, who was no longer moving. The world had grown very still. From his position in the living room, quietly shaking and unable to control his heart, Devin saw a silver band on one of Karl’s fingers. He felt blood rush into his face.
“There are struggles here,” the Vassal said, walking back over towards a shimmering purple door in the back of the room. “You will experience hardships, just like everyone does. But it is an opportunity, and it is normal. It is a life that you can live free of fear. A life that is your own, not somebody else’s.”
Then Karl was walking over towards him, and he was unable to move. Karl’s face was stoic, but his eyes betrayed his concern. He reached out and put a hand on the back of Devin’s head. It was warm.
— - —
Sam stepped through the door and was abruptly hit in the face with a blast of salty water. She stumbled sideways and opened her eyes, and realized she’d very nearly walked into the sea off the edge of the ship she was now standing on. Ship was perhaps not the right term - the vessel she had appeared on was a yacht. Overhead the skies were blue and cloudless, and the seas around her were generally calm.
She walked towards the center of the deck, where an easel was set up and a rack of different art supplies sat next to it. She moved to stand in front of it and saw it was a painting, half completed, of the horizon in front of her. In the painting the sun was hanging low in the sky. She leaned in and saw the sun in the painting was moving, slowly sinking below the horizon. As it did, the completed half of the image grew dark, and its sky filled with purples and blues.
She stepped back, and noticed the Vassal standing nearby, casually gazing off the side of the ship towards a beach nearby.
“Where is this?” she asked.
“Wherever you want it to be, I believe,” she said, idly drumming her fingers on the rail of the ship. “In this world, this ship is yours. That easel and those paints are yours. You have nothing to worry about except the easel, and the sea. All the time you need.”
Sam snorted. “You think I’d be convinced with a nice boat and some new paints?”
The Vassal looked back at her and smiled. “No, I really didn’t.”
She heard another sound from behind her - somebody climbing steps. She turned around to find a man emerging from below deck. He had dark, rich skin and long hair in thick braids. He was wearing white shorts and little else, and the definition in his musculature could have cut diamond. When she saw him, Sam gasped.
“Steven?” she said, her voice catching. “I don’t- I don’t understand, how?”
The world froze. The Vassal walked up behind her and beheld the man for a moment.
“I had wondered about you, Sam. For all your passion you never seemed to show any kind of true emotion. Nothing raw or real.” She looked at him and he grinned. “Yes, I’ve been watching you for a long time. I saw this coming, more or less, and long ago decided to keep tabs on those of you who might be involved.”
He gestured at the man coming up the stairs. “This, though, surprised me. I was really amazed at how well you kept it hidden, even from the people who knew you best. But what would the Incredible Ivory be without her Excellent Ebony, eh?” He laughed. “I get now why the name wouldn’t stick. That’s ok, I’ve had my fair share as well.”
The Vassal turned back towards the sea. “In this world, the boat and the paints are yours, and so is Steven García. There is no Council raid on your anartist community, and you don’t accidentally turn him into glass while drawing up that wave of fire to dissuade your pursuers.” She glanced at her as her face turned white. “Yes, even that. The All-Seeing Eye of the Council doesn’t miss much, and it certainly didn’t miss that. I imagine it must have been horrible, really. I understand your pain - I too have made terrible choices with unintended outcomes that I have had to live with.”
He sat down in a deck chair and produced a glass from inside his coat, filling it with a flask also from inside his coat. He took a drink and sighed, leaning back in the chair.
“In this world, Sam, you don’t have to make that terrible choice. There is no accident. You and he get to stay on this ship and go where you want to go, and see everything you want to see. There is no limit to your horizons here.”
Sam tried to turn away, but tears were already streaming down her face. The Vassal took another drink.
“Wouldn’t that be nicer?”
— - —
Karl stepped out into a grassy field in the middle of the woods. The air was crisp and a thin layer of dew sparkled across the grass in the light of a rising sun. He took a few steps and gauged his surroundings, then sighed. He knew where he was.
The Vassal appeared beside him, looking down the small slow of a hill they stood on towards a small lake set on the edge of the woods. For a moment, they didn’t speak.
“This is a strange choice,” Karl finally said.
The Vassal looked sideways at him. “What makes you say that?”
Karl shrugged. “I’ve been here before. I know how it goes.”
The Vassal tutted. “Now, that’s not true. You know how it goes from a single perspective, the one you had that day in the woods-”
Karl raised an eyebrow.
“-but this world, this is the one you always wanted. The one where you have a chance to save your mother.”
They watched as a young Karl and his mother came into view through the trees. As they came across the side of the lake, a body appeared in the water, floating up from some dark depth below. Then another, and another, and suddenly there were hundreds of bodies coating the surface of the water like a slime. As they appeared, Karl’s mother stopped and turned, and she began walking towards the lake. Young Karl stood unmoving behind her.
“You had all this time,” the Vassal continued, “all this time to run down and stop her. But you didn’t, because you were a boy and you were scared. Now, though, you have all the time in the-”
She stopped. Staring back at the two of them, right into Karl’s eyes, was young Karl. There was a look of knowing there that he recognized as his own, a look of understanding about what had come before and what would happen next. The young man looked back at his mother, and then back at the treeline. Standing there, amidst the brush and the limbs, was a cloaked figure holding a silver canister. Karl began walking towards them.
The Vassal recoiled at the sight. “You!?” his voice cracked and Karl could hear something unnatural beneath his tone. “You did this?”
Karl reached the figure and took the canister. The figure held a single finger up to their lips.
“This is not what you think it is,” the figure said. “Take it and see.”
Karl opened the canister and dumped the contents out into his hand. It was a pair of wire-framed glasses, with thin golden runes marked along its edges. Near the back of one of the earpieces was a name, inlaid in black. E. Saunders. Karl held them up and they glittered in the light of the rising sun.
“What are you doing?!” the Vassal cried from across the meadow. “All of our endeavors laid to waste, and nothing but panic and uselessness from all of you. At least I was trying to fix the problem. I was trying to help. I wanted to make them happy, even if this one can’t be satisfied.”
Karl paused. “You showed me this place, didn’t you? I imagine you showed the other two something similar. What - their ideal world, or something?” He considered this. “If this is my ideal world, then why wouldn’t it make me happy?”
The Vassal sank her thumb into the bridge of her nose. “Because those two want things that can be achieved reasonably. You, on the other hand, are a violent demagogue appealing to their baser instincts. They’ve both experienced hardships - because all people experience hardships. You and your ilk just pointed the finger at the Council and gave them an outlet for their hate. I was trying to offer them something better. But all you want is to kill, and all because of this moment, right here.”
She gestured towards the water. “Do you see that? Your own mother, walking off to meet a terrible fate. Your entire life would change, made infinitely better by your non-involvement in these affairs. You have the choice, and you’re still choosing violence. What does that make you?”
Karl looked back down at the glasses, and after a moment he put them on.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see about you.”
When he looked back up through the slightly blue-tinted lenses, the meadow and the lake and the woods were still there. However, instead of the Vassal there now stood a towering monstrosity, some horrific green radioactive liquid creature with dead eyes and fetid, rotting flesh. He could see through its thin, revolting hands that resemble wings to within, where a swirling mass of faces howled and cursed, each pressed up against the sides of their container as if it was near to burst. When the creature opened its foul mouth to speak, he could hear the Vassal’s voice echoed over infinitely many incarnations of itself, a sinister cacophony of misery and pain.
“I offered you a life,” the creature said. “I offered you freedom. I offered you your mother.”
Karl shook his head. “No. That’s not my mother.” He looked down at young Karl, who was watching him closely. “She’s his. My mother died a long time ago, because of abominations just like you.”
“You’re a fool,” the Vassal groaned,. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to make you happy - you’re already here, and I don’t have to stay.”
The sky began to turn purple again, and Karl smelled ozone. From behind him, the figure lay a hand on his shoulder.
“Turn the canister over again,” it said. “Quickly.”
Karl did, and sliding out from within it was a long fiberglass fishing rod. It was bright pink, with the words “Dr. Wondertainment’s Interdimensional Line and Lure” emblazoned on the side. Behind it was something else, and at the sight of it Karl grinned. It was plain white wiffle-ball bat with a taped handle and the words “bird-b-gone by dado” written on it in black marker.
He took the rod in one hand and, rearing back, cast it out towards the Vassal. Out from its end came a brilliant white shimmering line that arced across the meadow and sank into the Vassal’s liquid flesh. The line went taught, and Karl gave one last look to the boy standing by the lake before the world turned purple and they disappeared.
When he opened his eyes, Karl was standing on the deck of a wrecked and ruined ship. A cavernous hole had opened in the middle of it, and peering below he could see no visible bottom. A moment later, the Vassal fell from the sky behind him and crashed onto the ship with a wet crunching sound.
“Wha-” the creature said, fumbling up onto its wings and claw-like fingers, “what is this? Where are we? This isn’t where we were supposed to-”
It was stopped suddenly by the sound of a cash register as Karl swung the wiffle-ball bat sideway and struck the Vassal in its mottled face. The impact point erupted in a large amount of green liquid and the creature howled and roared. It turned to bite at the fishing line that was now stuck in its back, but before it could reach it Karl had come around again with the bat, each time causing the Vassal to burst with radioactive liquid and even gore and the sound of cash registers.
The Vassal spread its wings and took off, and Karl held tightly to the end of the line as he was pulled up into a purple sky. When the haze cleared, they were in a building - a Council site, it seemed - surrounded by chaos. Klaxons were blaring and the red lights of breach alarms pulsed rapidly in the giant antechamber they were standing in. A great many white-coated persons were scrambling out of a hallway where, behind them, there came a roaring sound. The Vassal stared in the direction of the sound, and then its eyes grew suddenly very wide.
“Oh fuck me,” it said.
Bursting out of the hallway came the reptilian monstrosity they had seen in Devin’s village, only smaller and covered in razor sharp blades. It was different, Karl noticed, but the eyes gave it away. The creatures roared and hissed, and when it turned he could see a man standing on its back, screaming and laughing.
As the Vassal hesitated, Karl crossed the room and struck it again with the bat, and then again, and then several times in quick succession. Each time, more and more green liquid burst from its hide and the swirling mass of souls within it shouted and recoiled. As the reptilian creature came towards them, rows of teeth clashing together, the Vassal beat its wings backwards pulling both of them away into the ether.
Karl crashed into the dirt, and not far away he heard the Vassal do the same. When he stood up he saw that they were standing in what might have once been a field of grass, but the vegetation had long since died off. In fact, he realized with some morbid amazement, it didn’t seem like there was anything alive at all except for the two of them. The sky was overcast and there was a storm rolling by a distance away, but they heard no birds, no insects, and nothing man-made.
He was distracted momentarily when a drone buzzed by overhead, its motor the only sound to pierce the silence except for a light wind. When he turned back the Vassal was upon him, biting feverishly down at where he had been standing. He scrambled sideways and pulled himself steady on the fishing line, then brought the bat around with him and beat the Vassal in the side of the cheek with it. The beak cracked and splintered and the monster howled, but it pressed on - each time growing closer and closer to Karl.
Then there was a flash of light on the horizon. They both stopped to look, and in the far north a towering mushroom cloud was forming, a fireball that stretched into the heavens. They watched it rise and rise, and then saw with horror an approaching wall of heat and death. The Vassal took two steps and then leapt into the sky, and they were gone again.
They did not land immediately. As Karl clung to the rod for dear life, he saw images of places as they passed. He saw a dark facility where three girls watched them with blind eyes as he came in and out of their existence. He saw a sky with seven moons and an arched golden gateway. He saw a Council site covered in snow - not one he was familiar with - with a multitude of doctors pouring out of it. He heard a piercing screech, then a blast of blue light, and then the site was gone.
Each vision he passed, he began to notice faces. They were faint at first, growing clearer every time he came by another world. They were closer to him, more in focus. They were a girl - always slightly different, but the same girl each time. They watched him intently, each one looking as if they were about to speak. Then, one of them was holding up a hand with five fingers. The next had four. Then three. Two. One.
The last girl held out her hand, and Karl reached for it. They touched, and then immediately the swirling purple haze subsided and they crashed into a hard concrete floor.
The first thing Karl noticed was pressure. Something nearby was exerting a lot of it, and he felt a considerable effort to even breathe. As he stood up and looked around, he noticed the source: a massive, immensely complicated machine comprised of several concentric rings, within which was a dark, swirling mass of dust and debris. He looked up and saw that they were in the bottom of shaft he could not see the top of. The walls were lined with machines and panels, hoses and brackets, banks of lights that extended upwards to those dizzying heights.
And then he saw the Vassal, rising up from a heap in front of the machine in the middle of the chamber, stretching its wings and screaming furiously. Its eyes came back down and settled on the only other person in the room, a thin girl with dark hair wearing a silver circlet etched with a small black crown around her head. She took one nervous step back as the creature hissed at her.
“Alison?” it asked, rage burning in its sockets. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”
“I’ve had enough, Rory,” she yelled, barely audible over the din of the machine in front of them. “This isn’t right. None of this is right.”
The Vassal growled and roared. “What do you mean, ‘isn’t right’? How do you all not understand this? I can offer you anything you want. A life worth living, a death worth dying, and anything in between. You could be a god, Alison.”
She shook her head. “No. No, it’s not natural. I can’t keep doing this.”
The Vassal reared up in front of her. “Natural? Death is natural. Misery is natural. What I offer is an escape - an existence that isn’t a horror. What else could you possibly want?”
She didn’t respond. The massive creature groaned loudly and beat its wings down at her.
“I’m sorry Alison,” it said, its tone now cold and flat, “but I’m afraid you no longer have a choic. You can do nothing to stop me.”
“No,” she said, her hand falling back to a panel near her. “But he can.”
She turned a key and pulled a thick black handle and the lights around the room turned red and began to strobe in unison. Behind the Vassal the massive machine began to unfold, the rings pulling backwards and exposing the room to the massive pressure within. The Vassal steadied itself and laughed.
“Really, Alison? Have you not learned anything? There are infinitely many of me in here - killing any one of me will do nothing.”
Karl came up beside her, bat in hand. He tapped it twice against his shoe.
“Not infinite,” he said. “Not quite.”
With a running start, Karl crossed the room and took aim at the Vassal’s center, striking it dead even with a solid, resounding crack. The creature heaved and creaked, and stumbled backwards into the swirling cloud of dust. It grabbed the edges of the machine with its talons and gripped, causing the metal to bend and twist. The ground beneath them began to shake and buckle, and the steel walls of the shaft began to groan.
Then, with a soft rush of air, the cloud of dust vanished. In its place was a humanoid figure, solid black and unmoving. The air around it distorted heavily, and in the place of the cloud of dust was a red glow. The sound of creaking metal and groaning earth faded, and the figure inside the machine looked up. Alison grabbed Karl’s arm and pulled him behind a raised platform.
The room began to vibrate, and through the sound Karl could hear something like a voice, tinny and metallic, echoing through the air around them.
“Consulate…” the voice said, “you are… a Consulate?”
“Yes!” the Vassal screeched. “Release me!”
The figure unfolded itself and was now hanging in the air, standing straight up.
“Crimes… immeasurable crimes.”
“What crime?” the Vassal cried. “The only thing I’ve done is offer an escape! A way out!”
The figure extended an open hand.
“No,” it said, “this is the only way out.”
It closed its hand, and the Vassal seized. There was another rush of air, and Karl could feel the breath being pulled from his chest. He leaned around the platform just in time to see the Vassal pulled into a single superheated point and sizzle out of existence. The room began to shake violently, and Alison reached up and hit the handle on the platform. The lights began to flash again, and the machine started spooling up. A few moments later, as they sat huddled behind the platform, the air settled and the roar subsided.
Karl took a deep breath and coughed. “What… what was that?”
The girl called Alison stood up gingerly. She held out a hand to Karl and he did the same.
“That being is one of near unparalleled power,” she said, her hand rubbing a spot on her neck. “It took me a long time to find it, but I had been searching for it for years. This is the only reality where this being exists, so you had to come here.” She cracked her neck. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Karl nodded slowly. “Who are you?”
She smiled. “My name is Alison. The Foundation has a different name for me, for all of us, but that’s neither here nor there. We caught wind of what you were doing and realized this was our chance to undo the damage he had done.”
Karl cocked his head to the side. “Damage?”
She rubbed her wrist. “When the Vassal found us, we thought we had a sort of kinship with her. She-” she hesitated. “I don’t think she was evil, but there were so many Auroras in there that it’s hard to say who you’d be talking to at any given time. She could see injustice, I think, but aside from his own power to escape it he didn’t ever seem to care enough to do anything about it. I think he enjoyed his own existence too much.”
Karl nodded and then looked back to the humming machine. “I don’t know how to get back.”
Alison gestured at the fishing rod laying on the ground. “If you cast that out, another Black Queen will catch it and pull you in.”
He frowned. “You mentioned the Foundation. Does it exist in this world? Do you know anything about the Consulates?”
She laughed. “It did. They did too, a long time ago. But this-” she gestured towards the machine, “-this killed everybody a long time ago. There’s nobody left here, now. Just me, and just to make sure this machine keeps running.”
Karl nodded and picked up the rod. He turned away from her and then stopped.
“Do you know what she showed them?” he asked. “The two other people I was with?”
Alison grimaced. “I do.”
“What was it?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that - just that taking them from where they are right now would be a cruelty, you’d be doing to them.”
Karl didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled the rod back and cast it into the sky. It caught somewhere up above him, and the world went purple.
— - —
They stood on the tarmac of a small airport as a plane taxied up to them. When it stopped and the stairs descended, Kevin South emerged from within.
He eyed them over carefully. Finishing his assessment, he loudly harrumphed.
“You three look like shit,” he said.
He was right. Devin stood uncomfortably apart from the other two, his eyes glassy and downcast and his shoulders hunched slightly. He shivered even despite the warm winds blowing out of the badlands behind them. Sam was white as a sheet - the skin around her eyes tight and her breathing shallow. Karl stood in front of them, his hands bandaged and several large bruises forming over his neck and face. The broken fishing rod was clutched in his hand; Olivia’s eyes would occasionally flash over towards it, and her breathing would become shallow again.
Karl nodded curtly. South frowned, and without another word ushered the three of them onto the plane. Moments later, they were away.
ELSEWHERE
— - —
Ivan Hilohiko stood in an elevator, quickly and quietly descending down a long shaft towards a complex aperture suspended over a shallow pool of red fluid. The elevator came to a halt, and he stepped out onto the platform in front of him. He glanced down at the figures lying in the pool, and then crossed over to a control panel.
He entered a command into the panel, and below him the red liquid began to drain away. The four figures, still obscured by darkness, were lifted up from the pool by long metal arms that whirred quietly as they worked. They carried metallic plates, long lengths of wire and tubing, and racks of ammunition over to the figures, across whom glowing lines of superheated metal appeared as they squirmed silently. Ivan watched the entire process until it was finished, and the four figures were lifted up to the platform and deposited.
“Can you hear me?” Ivan said.
The foremost figure, a bald humanoid male in flexible armor, nodded. “We do.”
“There are three agents of the Insurgency who had gotten their hands on powerful and valuable artifacts,” Ivan said quickly. “They have already killed seven of the other Consulates. Myself, the Canaanite, and the Kid are protected. The Chimera's already after them. The Terrorist has gone missing, and will likely be their next target.” He typed something into the control panel. “These are his last known coordinates.”
“What is the mission?” another figure asked. This one was short and lean - clearly feminine, with cropped hair.
“Find these three,” Ivan said, “if you can, bring them to me. If they resist, kill them. They are carrying two very valuable artifacts - a journal and a spear. Bring me the artifacts.”
He turned over his shoulder. Behind him was a screen - black, with a dark grey snake consuming its own tail and a gear in the center spinning slowly around a single red, glowing point. When Ivan acknowledged it, the red spot began glowing brighter.
“Show them,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Show them where he’s at. Find him.”
The red spot blinked twice and disappeared. He turned back to the humanoids in front of him.
“Go now Irantu, Munru, Nanku, Onru,” he said. “Find the Insurgents. Bring me the artifacts. Be my Crimson Vanguard.”
- BACK -
