Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6) Read online

  Besides, he’d been more worried about fitting in with his new besties more than anything else.

  Lalcombe was getting the last of the outrageous story from the snitch.

  Garth made up his mind.

  There was only one direction to go, and that was into the conflagration. Though he was only human, it wasn’t completely inhospitable in there. Once deep inside the fire and twisted wreckage, he’d have a few minutes to think clearly about what his real objectives were; fire trucks were finally arriving on the scene, but there wasn’t much they could do until things died down a bit on their own and even then, they’d start picking at the edges first.

  Lalcombe made eye contact. Garth felt the officer’s psychic insistence that everything stay cool.

  Officer Lalcombe wasn’t going to get his wishes.

  Garth bolted, straight at the officer, shoving a few of the oblivious out of the way. Time ran a bit slower, though not as slow as the ex-Specter might like.

  Either way, it gave him the opportunity to knock Lalcombe’s sidearm from his hands with a quick slap and to send the officer stumbling on his derriere with a neatly executed front kick that had the man gasping and wheezing.

  The crowd of people behind him erupted in confused frenzy, oohing and aahing and shouting all kinds of things, actively drawing the attention of the other officers asking questions of the civilians on all sides.

  Garth didn’t spare a glance over his shoulder. There was no time. He needed to be in the belly of the beast, risking burns and worse, for a moment of clarity.

  ***

  “You see?” Sparks demanded triumphantly. “He’s running into the fire! To think clearly? That’s insanity. That’s madness. That’s savagery.”

  “It’s also the only place in the entire area not full of cops and assholes with smartphones.” Drake countered evenly. “I think you upped the security to fuck with him.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Sparks replied just as evenly. “There’s a Tech Conference happening around the corner, roughly eighteen billion dollars’ worth of big brained idiots like Elton Crux and other dudes. Trying to save the world, you know.”

  Drake snorted. “Crux. Tyson. Even Hawking, none of them had any idea what was coming, what was happening. They missed it all. Anyways, shut up. Let the man do his thing.”

  “Oh, you got that right. This is actually pretty interesting. I’m glad I let you convince me to let him start from there.”

  ***

  It was damned hard to take a breath that wasn’t either burning hot, full of smoke, tainted with the harsh chemical stink of petrochemicals or some nasty combination of all three, but at the very least, it was quiet.

  Quietish. Quieter?

  Garth shook his head. It was hard to tell how many cars and vehicles had been caught in the explosion, but there were too many for his liking. At least a half dozen, not including the cab and the randomly placed truck hauling giant concrete blocks for no good reason.

  “All these people.” Garth walked slowly through the disaster, ears perked for anything that might up the ante all over again: firemen coming in, axes blazing and hoses … hosing, UAVs trying to pierce the thick black smoke and fires, stupid cops trying to be heroes, you name it.

  But there was nothing.

  Not even the sounds of survivors. The entire area was a burning graveyard. He was the only survivor, and as he picked his way slowly but surely through the carnage, trying desperately to think his way out of the situation, Garth found himself more concerned with just what the Ushbet M'Tai had done.

  How deeply had they altered the flow of normal events in the Engine's Dream? How heavily had they colored his own perceptions of events? Had he genuinely chosen to operate on a nearly power-free basis of his own free will ninety percent of the time, or had those high and mighty bastards tricked him into running around like a mostly-normal goof?

  Garth wound his thoughts back to the accident he'd been a part of. Had caused? It didn't matter.

  If he was to take current events and consider them to be the most likely outcome in the true proto-Reality, then the Ushbet M'Tai had actively prevented dozens of deaths by massaging eventuality until the cleanest outcome presented itself.

  If that was the case …

  How many more deaths were there going to be in this Groundhog Day simulator?

  People dying was a fact of Existence. You couldn’t get away from it. Hell, it wasn’t until very recently he’d finally come to terms with that himself. People died around him. Either by his own actions or just because that was how the cookie crumbled in the super shitty Unreal Universe, but there was one thing he could say for damned certain about every one of the poor bastards caught in the crosshairs: he’d been the one in the hot seat. He’d been the cause. His actions, his motives –Trinity’s ultra-subtle machinations notwithstanding- his desires.

  But this, here, in the proto-Reality …

  The Ushbet had changed the rules. Not even Trinity was capable of doing that. No, the machine mind had sent him down the path, but he’d walked there in his own pair of blood-soaked combat boots, hadn’t he?

  Not here, though. Here, they’d … cheated? Massaged things? They’d clearly used his presence to their advantage and for reasons he’d never been able to discover. Had any of the people who’d survived this little situation in the original timeline done something to help him in some way? Or had they just gone on to live their lives as ordinary, normal people?

  “I hate this kind of shit.” Garth shied away from a sudden burst of scorching flame that singed the hairs along one arm.

  The heat rose a few degrees, ramping up from 'awkwardly uncomfortable' to 'average cloudy day in Australia'. Minus the killer koala bears, of course, but still, pretty uncomfortable all the same.

  Time was running short and answers were as vague as ever.

  Well, this time around, Ushbet weren’t around to flex their godlike muscles when things got too out of control.

  Thanks to the Emperor's intervention, here, in this place, he actually was completely powerless, whereas the Ushbet had merely tricked him into playacting as one.

  Which left Baron Samiel himself as the only individual in this bullshit out-of-control Hologram Deck who had any kind of measurable power.

  “Which is bullshit!” Garth shouted to the heavens. “How the fuck you expect an ordinary dude to do sweet fuck all against a fucking time travelling zombie making madman?”

  The heavens said nothing. Hell, Garth could scarcely see the skies overhead because of the thick smoke.

  Garth skirted a smoldering Toyota, ignored the dead woman trapped inside; her car doors had been melted shut within seconds of the second eruption. From the looks of things, she’d died almost instantly, all the oxygen sucked out of her lungs.

  A peaceful death. Better than what might be waiting for her -or anyone else- who got caught in the crossfire.

  It was time to get a move on, turn to more practical matters.

  Getting out alive. Getting out without being seen. Getting the foundation of a proper existence.

  Garth picked up the pace and the wind compromised by shifting a bit, throwing the smoke and the heat away from where he passed, prompting the Kin'kithal to quirk an eyebrow.

  Surely not providence from The Emperor?

  The Specter focused on the task at hand. Find money. Find communications. Find equipment, material …

  There!

  Garth sighed, a twisted mixture of relief and regret at his happiness in finding a male body blown far enough away from his car so that he wasn’t too … corpsey rolling through him.

  Necessity might be the mother of invention, but some tasks were just a little dirtier than others.

  Running quickly over to the dead man, the first Garth rifled professionally through the dead man’s pockets.

  The PIDpak identified the poor bastard as James Morrison, age, 36, single, no children, organ donor, brown hair, brown eyes, glasses. Probably out for a nice lei
surely drive, if the mostly intact casual clothes James had died in was any indication.

  Garth dug around one edge of the Piddy with a thumbnail until he found the slight indent, then popped it open to remove the battery; few people knew or realized –with the exception of the weirdoes who frequented even weirder parts of the Internet- that a Piddy’s battery doubled as a kind of rough and ready GPS.

  God bless the proto-Reality's NSA. Keeping America safe. From everyone, including themselves.

  “That’s the last thing I need.” Garth tossed the battery over a shoulder and put the now powerless PID carefully off to one side. If he got out of this mess in something resembling one piece, it was pretty likely he could reprogram the PID to match whatever cover story he chose.

  At least until he could work out something more permanent, not to mention less mind-bogglingly illegal.

  The last thing he wanted was to deal with the Federales while hunting an evil, time-traveling, undead-spawning asshat from the far flung future.

  Next to the PID went a handful of parking tokens, a few heavy dollar coins and fifteen dollars in paper money. Poor James Morrison wasn’t a bread winner. Not with the parking tokens and so little in paper money.

  Thoughts of outright stealing James Morrison's identity died a swift, merciful death; if he was going against Samiel, whatever identity he did settle for was going to need a lot more cash.

  Saving the Universe couldn't be done a budget.

  After that, the man’s smartphone.

  Being expelled from whichever car was his to his final resting place off to one side had shattered the screen like no one’s business, but otherwise, it was fine. Someone handy with a repair kit could get it up and running in no time. The battery from that joined the piddy battery.

  Garth looked at dead James Morrison. His neck was at a funny angle, and the top of head was flattened. Didn’t diminish his need, though. “Dunno what you were plannin' on doin' today, friendo, and I am sorry you’re dead now, but I’m gonna need your clothes, too.”

  ***

  “Morbid. You see?” Sparks shook his head, disgusted. “And it’s not the only time. You dig far enough, all I can find is him, stealing dead men’s clothing.”

  “You could always…”

  “If you suggest I make it easy for him, even for a second, I’ll give you an Emperor-sized Purple Nurple.”

  “Well, okay then, but remember, he’s not exactly spoiled for choice, here, Sparks. The most watched nation in the world, during it’s most paranoid times, with all those Brainiacs around the corner. This is the kind of thing he was trained to deal with, and these are the methods he was taught to use. Besides, he's clearly suffering from … from being emptied of the guilt."

  Eddie wrinkled his nose at Drake's uncouth suggestion. Yes, some of the men and women entering his trial did find themselves … hollowed out, but only a bit. The smallest hint of … emptiness crept in and was only ever filled once the penitent moved closer to their goal.

  Garth wasn’t thusly afflicted. Drake wanted him to be, but their old friend was just a stone-cold motherfucker, and the sooner that was accepted, the sooner they could move on to more interesting things.

  "He's got a terrible surprise coming for him. One that all his training and expertise and smarts won’t prepare him for.”

  Drake sighed morosely. “He sure does.”

  ***

  Wearing a dead man’s clothes, holding his possessions in his pockets and claiming them for your own … it was something that took time getting used to. Garth remembered the first time he'd been called upon to do something like this, and how he'd been sick in the heart over the whole thing.

  That time wasn't now. It felt odd, feeling … nothing for the action, but what else was he supposed to've done?

  “Jesus.” Garth said as small tremors shivered his hands as he struggled to keep a grip on the girder he hung from by the fingertips; his plan –suddenly seeming a little … brash- was to use the ferocious explosion as rough and ready cover for his masterful escape plan.

  Which was to drop down into the waters dow … Garth shut his eyes and blamed recent events on a sudden reluctance to look down.

  "You die a million times inside a metal death furnace, see how you react." Garth directed this at the Emperor, whom he knew was watching.

  With everyone scrambling for cover, nobody'd notice some dude falling into the water.

  He hoped.

  From there, a brief swim towards China Beach, probably –hopefully- making his way inland sometime before then.

  And then?

  Well, if luck was with him –not to mention hundreds of years of guerrilla training thanks to dear old Dad- it was a more or less straight shot to San Francisco State University, the only facility left in the entire Bay area capable of holding a roster of students large enough to make leaving it open worthwhile.

  That everyone in the University was a wicked combo of very intelligent and super rich made it easier, but that was neither here nor there.

  The truck went up, filling the sky with devil’s laughter.

  Garth shut his eyes and let go.

  The cold water swallowed him whole.

  5. In the Wilds of Space

  The Sleeper Must Awaken

  Sometimes, the words he whispered to himself rolled slow and heavy through his mind like bowling balls, great, massive spheres crushing all the lesser thoughts flowing through him flat, but got hung up on the towering crystalline –alien- thoughts belonging to damnable Lady Ha as easily as a child having a difficult time choosing between two types of candy.

  Or a Babel, between two hookers, or two cons, or two types of beer.

  Other times, those whispered words careened through the insides of his skull like bullets and bombs, crashing into those towering alien thoughts with their weird shapes and their even weirder echoes, crashed into them and sent them tumbling to the ground, where they broke into so many tiny little fractals of diseased, greasy light before disappearing altogether.

  When that happened, those high-reaching pillars –Babel swore they rose far, far, far too high inside a poor conman’s mind to be actually truthful- sprung back within seconds, for though the Lady Ha was always busy, always making her other marionettes dance and laugh and play at life or death, she was never too busy for him.

  He was her most prized possession.

  The fascination with death was a new thing, a fledgling perversion that tottered around Ha's frigid metal paradise like a brand-new colt. Like everything else they were asked to endure, there was a queer innocence to it.

  At the start. As time rolled by and the demands grew more and more specific, darker and darker, you could feel virtue disappearing.

  They were at the cruelty part of death's fascination, tainting all their punishments with a sickness that filled them with unspeakable dread every time she moved amongst them.

  Would this be the moment, they all wondered inside sealed skulls, where I die? Will she pull my tongue out through the top of my skull? Will she tell me to break my own neck? What will it be?

  They all knew the reasons why, even if none of them could utter a word against her.

  The mighty Lady Ha, a woman possessed of powers that the insane should only ever dream about, was failing.

  Not at everything. No, most definitely not at everything.

  She was, for example, proving incredibly adept at handling the irate Yellow Dog Elders who continually threw everything they could at her. Elder Katainn -the foppish more-European than-Japanese Elder poor old Armageddon Troop Two had been dispatched to treat with over the growing threat that was Ha- was no more; he’d squandered his vast resources –including the king’s ransom garnered through Tomas Kamagana- on his own armada, only to find it, and him, defeated most swiftly. He was around the place, somewhere, doing something piteously meaningless.

  Babel squinted against the pain as another bowling ball thought rambled through his noggin, squashing thoughts flat and
making him pliant as a plant. It was necessary. Push the broom, swab the deck, fix the machine. It was what they did. Those low-level thoughts got him in trouble, sometimes, because as Ha always reminded him …

  “I am always in here with you.” Lady Ha’s twisted white noise voice that washed through too many layers of the here and now rolled over Babel’s wretched, much abused body, brought more pain to his eyes. “What are you thinking in there, my little fly?”

  Babel blinked slowly, tears streaming down his face. He was a puppet. He was a tool. He was a fly.

  Bullets started forming somewhere. He could feel them. He knew she couldn’t see them. He’d tricked those bullets up nice and good, and somewhere even deeper inside him, there was a voice that whispered those bullets and bowling balls into life. One day, one precious moment, they’d fire at the same time, the bullets shattering the strange towers and tiers that belonged to Lady Ha into billions of pieces and the balls would smash them flat and then his eyes would open wide for the first time in a long time and he’d be free.

  “I am a puppet, Lady Ha, a tool, a trinket.” Babel’s voice was odd and alien to him. This was his first time speaking in over a week now, punishment delivered for Ha’s inability to break him fully.

  She was no fool, was Ha.

  She knew he wasn’t as brainwashed as the others. She told him so, on a daily basis. She reminded him that she was smarter than he was, saw things no mortal man or woman could possibly see and that one day soon, she’d lose her temper and instead of forbidding him to speak or to eat properly, she’d just kill him.

  “Would you like that, dear Babel?” Lady Ha wondered idly from her curious throne, one hand strumming the metallic halos risen from the back of her head as if it were a musical instrument. “Would you like to die instead of being the way you are?”

  Babel thought about that a lot. About being dead. About being free in a way that not even she could influence. When he thought like that, all he needed to do was look this way or that, and he’d catch sight of Cianni or Telgar or Eddie; Ha liked to keep the greatest of all her treasures as close to her as possible, as often as possible. Seeing their tortured faces was to be instantly rendered stoic.