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

  “10-4, Eagle Eye. Prepping for action.”

  “Directing the ground teams to keep that area empty of foot traffic … now.”

  ***

  Garth looked up at the dorm that’d been his home for a very short time, wonder and happiness blossoming on his face in a way that he hadn’t felt in … well, forever.

  When he’d woken up inside, on the top floor –originally four rooms, but Sparks and Drake had pooled their cash together and hired some lawyers to force the University to let them combine everything into one massive condo-esque affair- he’d been Kin’kithal, purely and solely vested in playing the part of a befuddled student with a mild concussion while trying to figure out what in the hell had happened to him, where he was, all of that.

  Well, now he knew his responses -even his insane acceptance of memories clearly not his own and a backstory that couldn’t possibly have been real- had been arranged by the Ushbet M’Tai themselves, but that was beside the point. As false as his experiences in the 21st century were, there was one thing Garth simply couldn't deny.

  When he'd finally surrendered to the inertia generated by Drake and Sparks, when he'd simply chosen to be … his whole world had turned upside down. He'd gone from Kin'kithal warrior to regular dude with some rather extraordinary powers.

  A wistful sigh escaped him.

  Sneaking out after curfew had been a thing of military precision; both Sparks and Drake were continually at war with every single authority figure in the University who held reign over their grades and their shenanigans in the outside world, making such high level escapades a necessity.

  Hell, even the stuff they’d gotten up to inside the walls of the prestigious State-run and government-protected University kept everyone in such hot water that Garth considered it a miracle that they hadn't been sent to Guantanamo Bay, let alone been permitted to stay and 'learn'.

  Garth paced back and forth, unsure what he was doing now he’d reached his final destination. He … had no idea what to do, or what he was doing.

  It was about five in the afternoon, round about the time he’d woken up from his Ushbet sponsored unconsciousness. In the real Universe, in the real timeline of the proto-Reality dreamed up by the Engines of Creation, right that second, the very interesting Drake Bishop, a golden-haired, blue-eyed, walking, talking advertisement for 80’s buddy movies, had been giving him a crash course in 21st century … everything.

  After that, introductions to Sparks, his smaller Japanese-American buddy and all-around swell guy and avid surfer, had been on deck; Sparks, like Drake, had found his calling in permanent scholastic purgatory, choosing to live the life of a surfer and living paean to a kinder, gentler time in American cinematography where you didn’t have to worry about offending anyone because you were busy offending everyone.

  And having a wicked fucking time while you were doing it.

  Garth supposed it was a minor miracle he hadn't killed both men -and everyone else in the dormitory- for being super-spies or something. If he had, who knew what the future would look like today?

  And thus had begun a two month crash course in how to be … human. They’d introduced a surly, relatively gruff Kin’kithal warrior to things like movies from the '80's, fast food, rock and roll music, free love, car racing, sneaking around campus like fiends and just generally how to live your life inside a sitcom.

  It'd taken some effort on everyone's part, but eventually Garth had gotten onboard with the program, only … not quite as completely as his two new friends had believed; Kin’kith, didn’t need sleep, so when Sparks and Drake and the rest of the inhabitants of the coolest dorm on the planet had all crashed or passed out or whatever, the displaced Unrealite had burned countless hours surfing the ’net, crawling through every site that might hold the smallest hint, the tiniest sign of machinations that proved the M’Zahdi Hesh were being the whole thing.

  Nothing. Anywhere, and not for a lack of trying, or because of a failure to recognize the signs. The Kith and Kin, working for their overlords, were invisible to human eyes, but not to a scion trained to see the ripples.

  Nothing.

  Blessed nothing had risen up out through the cracks in history, save for perhaps an encyclopedic knowledge of an Earth free of the Heshii Plague.

  Once that reality had sunk in, that instead of a dozen world-spanning conflicts across five hundred years there’d been a mere handful, that there were no such thing as the Kith and Kin lurking in the shadows, cruelly directing the fate of Mankind down a dark, empty path that’d ultimately lead to their destruction… he’d let loose.

  Learned to relax.

  Developed a passion and affection for the same terrible movies and television shows as his two new –and only- best friends. He’d patterned himself after them as closely as possible without surrendering his own unique nature and for two golden, glorious months, it’d been awesome.

  And then the troubles had started.

  “Oh boy.” Garth muttered angrily. “Had they ever.”

  Drake, getting weirder and weirder, spending more time out of his skull than in it. Sparks, aggressively ignoring the problem, for some reason weirdly willing to let his Number One best friend do a swan dive off the high board into an empty pool.

  “And then Lissande fucking Amour shows up.” Garth slammed a fist into his hand.

  Until her arrival, there’d been a glimmer of hope; unable to ignore Drake’s mounting problems with drugs and/or alcohol, he’d been gearing up for a little investigative work to see just what was going on in the man’s life when they weren't around, but that’d been trumped by the arrival of the mysterious Lissande Amour, Drake’s ‘girlfriend’.

  “Not a girlfriend, oh no. Not at all. More like a fucking pusher. An infectious disease. A time-traveling, soul-emptied zombie from the future.”

  Out loud, even after so long experiencing the matter from a first-hand point of view, it sounded ridiculous, precisely like all those cheesy 80’s science fiction movies, complete with bad special effects and random, topless women because, hey, the 80’s.

  Only it hadn’t been a movie.

  Lissande really and truly had been from the future, and she really and truly had targeted Drake Bishop at the behest of her ‘employer’, The Baron Samiel, a rotten, evil bastard in control of most of the planet a mere five hundred years down The Line.

  Garth shook his head angrily. Even after winding up in the future and working diligently to uncover the Baron’s plans for Drake, he’d fallen short of the mark. No explanation, no hint, no reason -obvious or otherwise- as to why Samiel had been targeting people like Drake. He just had, intentionally exposing highly specific individuals with absolutely no connections to each other to ‘Ocular Degenerative Disorder’.

  While sounding stupid, ODD was a genetically modified disease specifically designed to utterly sever a human being from the flow of the cosmos while keeping them alive. In short, the Universe -that chaotic assemblage of higher and lower principles- believed the energy belonging to an ODD-sufferer had been changed from positive to negative, and stopped paying attention to that energy.

  In short … zombies. Dead to the Universe, dead to everything that mattered, but still alive.

  Dead to the Universe, removed from categorization and quantification, Samiel's … chosen ones … had been able to endure the harsh, scouring energies of the incongruity long enough to move upwards and downwards The Line to different points in history.

  Doing … whatever it was the Baron wanted.

  Last time, Garth had insinuated himself right smack dab in the middle of all that shit by first rescuing Drake from Lissande's evil clutches. The billionaire surfer boy had been interred in swanky private rooms at a prestigious -and wholly Baron-owned- hotel casino in the heart of Las Vegas, but that hadn't deterred Garth at all; presumably the jail break was –had been- the stuff of local legend because during that escape, both sides had … cut loose.

  Samiel with lasers and stunners and ridiculously
enormous zombie footsoldiers clomping all over the place, Garth with timely bursts of Kin'kithal powers, all of which had to look amazing on security footage.

  By that same token, that conflict must've turned the world on it's head.

  Garth would never know how the original 21st century had dealt with that singularity event, because he'd been catapulted into the future shortly after freeing Drake; aided by the disenfranchised Lissande Amour herself, the Kin’kith had hopped into the temporal incongruity's Line Rig, and bam!

  25th century future America, whereupon the M'Tai's expectations that he 'deal' with Samiel came into full effect. As a powerful Kin'kithal finally in a place and time where his powers wouldn't immediately draw scrutiny, Garth had erroneously believed that taking Samiel down would be a 'piece of cake'.

  Alas, in the future, there was no cake. Oh no, definitely no cake, because that future had been carved right out of the worst of the worst dystopian futures ever cast on the silver screen. Even with his full Kin’kithal powers at his command, it’d been difficult.

  Impossible, almost.

  In fact, the world of the future had been almost impossibly corrupt, transformed in such a short time into a place nearly unrecognizable. During his travels, Garth had spent more than his fair share of time trying to uncover just what'd happened to good old Earth, only to fail over and over.

  In the end, after losing his way and finding it again, he’d almost come out on top. He’d managed to corral Samiel and his enormous time-traveling mecha-pyramid into a single location and –with the aid of nearly an entire planet’s worth of soldiers and heroes- he’d almost won.

  Until, of course, the Ushbet had kicked him home without so much as a by your leave.

  That was right, wasn't it?

  Garth remembered it very clearly. He'd had Samiel on the ropes, had been ready to dummy that motherfucker so hard he traveled backwards through his own timeline until he killed himself to prevent such a hard-core beatdown from ever happening in the first place.

  And then they'd come. And kicked him home.

  Right?

  Garth nodded firmly to himself. Many things about his interactions were now suspect thanks to Emperor-for-Life's whispered words, but that was true.

  “But that was then.” Garth kicked at a stone and watched it sail down the street. “And this is now. There is no Ushbet. There is no friendship. How the fuck am I supposed to save Drake without being right there in the middle of it all? How do I know if anything I do is gonna make a goddamn difference? This is all such total bullshit!”

  Garth was about to go on another round of angry hobo-talk in an attempt to figure out what the hell was going on and what he should do about all of it when the front door of the converted house banged open.

  Merry shouting filled the air, and a few seconds later, Drake, Sparks and a few of their not-so-temporary house guests disgorged onto the street, laughing and chatting happily to themselves.

  A knife struck Garth, square through the heart.

  A million years ago and in a different reality, he’d been in that group, desperately trying to fit in, absorbing everything like a living sponge, absolutely uncertain about everything but certain that it was going to work out all right.

  “Hey, bro, you all right?” Drake stopped and the crowd stopped with him.

  Garth felt all eyes on him, burning into his skin. He could say something right then and there, put the seed of warning into the blonde guy’s ear. It’d be easy.

  ‘Hey, you’re gonna meet a chick with a rock solid 10-body but she’s gonna have freaky solid contact lenses that look like you’re staring into a kaleidoscope, don’t hang out with her, she'll fuck your shit up.'

  ‘Hey, they’re gonna tell you in the next little while that you got Ocular Degenerative Disorder, don’t believe ’em, what’s really goin’ on is the Baron Samiel, a time-traveler from the future, is siphoning your soul out through your eyeballs so you can join his legion of time-traveling zombies.’

  Sparks pushed his diminutive way through the small crowd. “’sup, brah? Like the man asked, you doin’ all right? We got places to be, am I right, guys?”

  Garth knew exactly where they were headed. China Beach, with a quick stopover at Slappy Burgers for some delicious and highly expensive fast food products. Then it’d be a dangerous –and wildly exhilarating- round of nighttime surfing. Sparks would round the evening out with some pretty intense trick surfing, complete with road flares. Drake –if Garth recalled correctly- would hook up with the cute girl with the pink hair, leaving a reality-traveling weirdo sitting on the beach in front of a bonfire, deep peace sinking into his bones.

  Gone. All gone.

  The best, most peaceful moments of his life, gone. Stripped away and thrown into the trash, all to make room for this Guilt Trip.

  Permanent emptiness settled in Garth's bosom, right where that metaphorical knife had so recently struck.

  Since entering this simulation, he'd been hoping against hope for something, some faint glimmer of recognition, a tiny spark of remembrance in either man’s eyes, but … nothing. In this Universe, real or unreal, live or Memorex, Sparks Dangerously and Drake Bishop had no fucking clue who he was.

  They never would.

  Any ‘saving’ would have to be done in the shadows, just as the Emperor demanded.

  Before Sparks could open his mouth again -the fiery redhead had a signature tell when he was about to spout off- Garth shook his head. “I am totally fucking lost, guys. Supposed to meet some dude, uhhhh, Christian someone or other? Late submission. From Sweden. Anyways, I took a wrong turn somewhere. Help a brother out?”

  “Sure, bro.” Drake stepped up beside Garth and carefully explained the route that’d take him right where he needed to be. Then, because Drake was Drake, he said, “Take it easy, dude. See you around campus sometime.”

  Then he, and they, were gone, Sparks looking over his shoulder a few times just to make sure the weird guy who didn’t so much look lost as a dude lookin’ to do some dorm-robbing any second now.

  The group disappeared down the road and around the corner. There had to be a way around the seemingly insurmountable problem of 'no Kin’kith powers'. There just had to be, and now he knew there was simply no way to be in either Sparks’ or Drake’s orbit, it was less about defending them from the oncoming problems and more about offensively striking at Lissande and Samiel’s operation from a different angle.

  And that demanded a level of speed and strength and…

  ***

  "You got a shot, Alpine 4?"

  "That's a roger, Eagle Eye. Bogey in the crosshairs, rabbit in the weeds."

  "Alpine 1 through 3, area clear?"

  "Check."

  "Check."

  "Check."

  "All right, Alpine 4, you're clear for the shot. Cleanup crews in root as we speak."

  "Roger that, Eagle Eye. Taking the shot."

  ***

  They say you never hear the shot that kills you. Garth didn't know much about that, but what he did know was that he preferred not feeling the shot that did you in.

  This was like that.

  One moment, he was watching his friends disappear around the corner, the next…

  Blissful, pain-free silence.

  Bargaining Chips

  “What a pity.” The Emperor’s words rang hollowly through the chamber. “So close, and yet so far away. Tell me truthfully; did you really expect either one of those men, indeed, anyone in that crowd, to recognize you? That somehow, in some way, some tattered remains of the Ushbet’s initial interference lingered in the shadows, to rise up and transform your experiences in this second retelling? This is my domain, fool, and no one else's."

  Garth prodded the spot where the sniper had cracked his skull wide open with a finger. Nothing, nothing at all, just like his chance at friendship with New Drake and Sparks.

  Zero.

  At least this time his death had been instantaneous and pain-free. Burnin
g to death in the backseat of a cab –not to mention all the other horrific ways he’d gone out on that bridge and surrounding environment- had left a foul taste in his mouth.

  How Phil had done it, for somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand years, was beyond Garth, and he'd only been Groundhogging now for, like, half a minute.

  “Glad to be back by your master’s side after five thousand years, Spur?” It was unsurprising that the pale android stood protectively off to one side of the Emperor-for-Life. When not cautioning him about getting close enough to trigger his self-defence protocols, the android had gone on at surprising length about how much he missed home.

  Odd behavior for an android, sure, but then again, how often did you meet five thousand year old thinking machines created with physics-warping materials?

  “There is a certain amount of something akin to pleasure in my return, yes.” Spur dipped his head. “I have you to thank for that.”

  “No biggie.” Garth shrugged. “I was headed this way, thought I might as well give you a lift. And no,” This time, he turned his attention to the Emperor-for-Life, who was gloating enough for sixteen regular Emperors and one morbidly obese Jabba the Hutt, “I didn’t really expect for anything like that to happen. Would’ve been nice, though.”

  “Then why go all that way, through all that suffering? All those ‘shenanigans’, as you call them, at the beach? After getting free from the pileup, you could’ve gone anywhere in the city.” Sparks was at a loss for words over Garth’s behavior since breaking the explosive cycle of death he'd been trapped in.

  It was evident from his monologue outside the dormitory that he’d been aware of the reality of the situation right from the start, yet … the man had been as deliberate and as patient as programmer hunting down a missing but deadly semi-colon. “Anywhere at all.”

  Garth nodded instantly, agreeing with the perplexed Emperor. That very idea had cropped up over and over again, especially when he’d been acting the fool in the playground.