A Shrouded World (Book 7): Hvergelmir Read online

  The mask on my face beeped. I could just make out a flashing blue light, then movement from my stomach, up my throat and out my mouth. A clear, straw-like protuberance issued forth like a tapeworm eager to get its fair share of sustenance. The canister also lit up, a slightly larger tube came out of an opening on the side. It sought out the tube from my mouth and coupled with it. The visual was bad enough, the fluid-y mush being pumped directly into me was worse. I tried pulling the canister away, to no avail. The food-ish stuff was the green of a sick baby’s diaper. I moaned as I was force-fed. I couldn’t get the mask off and the canister was welded to it.

  After a few minutes there was a buzzing sound, then a click, before the blue light on the canister turned yellow and the pipe from it withdrew, as did the one from the front of my mask. Whatever they’d fed me was sitting in my gut like a pile of rocks. I was sick to my stomach and wanted to evacuate everything in it, then I panicked when I realized it had nowhere to go. I would aspirate on green bile. After all I’d been through and the ways I could have died, I couldn’t imagine Vegas would have even had a line for this particular way out. I sat back down, doing my best to not think about puking; you can imagine how that went. I had my back against the wall when I lightly tapped my head back and heard a metallic sound, and a fresh jolt of pain slashed throughout my skull. I forgot all about the baby throw-up food and touched the top of my head. Yeah, I was freaking out. I had on some sort of metal cap; the edges seemed to be welded to my now shorn head.

  What the fuck, what the fuck! I thought as loud as I could as I did not have the power of speech. I tried to find a finger hold to pry it free; it was seamless. I smacked it harder against the wall. My entire body went rigid like I had triggered a built-in taser. I could see an angry red glow reflecting off the walls, and then my captor’s voice boomed again.

  “You are a stupid being that must be controlled. Do not tamper with your monitoring and regulation device!”

  I didn’t know how they planned on controlling me until I was given a live demonstration in the form of every pain receptor on my entire body being activated at once. A minute later, I was on the ground convulsing wildly, my body covered in a thick layer of sweat. Pretty sure I passed out; the only way I could tell was that I was cold from the sweat evaporating. I gave what I figured was a sick, twisted little grin. If I took anything away from their demonstration, it was that the cap could be destroyed or at least damaged, otherwise, why put a deterrent on it? Not sure what that would get me, though, because even if I was able to bust it, like Marines are wont to do, laying in a puddle of your own sweat for who knows how long would make a hasty escape nearly impossible. I wanted to say “one problem at a time,” but these were stacked so fucking high I wasn’t sure where to start, like, where in the hell was Jack?

  I was traveling swiftly down a path to despair, shivering on the ground, captured by a ruthless enemy and tucked away in a cell I couldn’t hope to escape. I was looking at the opening far above me when I saw a glint of metal falling toward me. I scurried to the wall on my left to get out of the way. I was praying that Trip had come back, somehow found me and was quite literally dropping the key to my escape. It was not the relic. It was a mechanical arm, free-floating of any manipulation that I could see. At the end of it, coming toward me, was a thick grey band—a collar of some kind.

  “Fuck that” blazed through my head as I tried to move away from it. But like the feeding tubes were drawn to each other, so was this collar to my mask. I brought my hands up to shield my neck from its placement; it didn’t even try to make me move my hands. I was blasted with another electrical firestorm. When I awoke, I found I’d been fitted with my very own choker. And I was fucking pissed off, enough that I shouted a choice swear word. I was shocked when I heard the word, just not in my own voice. The choker was an artificial voice box, and what came out sounded like a robot on helium might. The fucking absurdity of it was not lost on me.

  What I had thought was the sky above me never changed hue. Maybe the sun didn’t set in this fuck-filled place, or, more likely, it was artificial. I had no way of knowing the passage of time, and I’m here to tell you, that is a serious screwing of the mind. I was fed four more times; whether or not they were scheduled or random times, again, I had no idea. At no point did my body signify that it was hungry; I can’t imagine how long I’d have to go before whatever I was eating became palatable. After the fourth disgusting ingestion, that arm came down again.

  “Stand still!” rang out. I felt anger that I complied so willingly. Was it possible I could be broken that quickly? I hoped that it was rather a picking my battles, and this wasn’t one I could win. Plus, I didn’t want to pass out again. The arm came down, then there was a solid connection as the arm attached to my skull cap. Yeah, then, as if that wasn’t fun enough, it got ramped up as I was lifted. Adrenaline shot through my system as I was on my tiptoes, and then completely off the ground. I grabbed the top of my head and held on, my neck not at all liking the feeling of being suspended. I was approaching the lip of the enclosure. I’d been wrong; it was closer to fifty feet high, and now was when I figured the connection would be severed and I’d go plummeting to my death on the hard floor. But then, what was the point of all the machinery and the food? Just to prove a point? That they could do with me as they pleased?

  I kept still; swinging my legs would only increase the discomfort along my spine and neck. When I was brought to the top and a foot over from the edge, the arm let go and I dropped a few inches to a walkway. All around me were the same types of openings, like a beehive prison. It made sense that Jack was still, or had been, inside one of these. I wanted, no, I needed to look.

  “Walk!”

  I was about to ask where, when the path before me was illuminated. The pathway wasn’t more than three feet wide, and I knew how far down the fall was. The prison was immense. There were thousands of holes, maybe hundreds of thousands. I could not see the edge of it in any direction, save the one I was going. It was a building of sorts, if you can consider an inverted floating pyramid a building. If the Egyptians had somehow used this to base their version, they’d have gone for a miniature scale. If I was pressed for an answer, I’d say the point of this pyramid was larger than the base of the human-built monument. It was going to take me the better part of the day to get to the upside-down mountain. And truth be told, I wasn’t in much of a rush to get to it. Probably safe to assume it wasn’t a resort of any kind. Thick black and green smoke was billowing from the top. As I looked around, I saw other beings ambling their way, much like I was, toward the structure.

  I tried to find Jack, but there were so many of them. There were over-grown spiders, crocs on two legs, giant ferrets with too many legs, the traditional aliens depicted in so many close-encounter stories. The variety, the magnitude, of what I was witnessing…it just couldn’t be. It had to be more likely that the cap was implanting these images. There were so many animals and beings from so many different worlds; the only commonality was they all wore the same apparatus as I did, only adapted for their physiology. How many worlds, how many realities, had the whistlers been ransacking, and for how long, to have something like this in place?

  My steps faltered; I had to wonder if I was heading for the galaxy's largest barbecue pit, that was as likely an answer as any. I was slowing up. This set-up was too big to be watched by anything but an automated system; there had to be something I could exploit, some way out. If I could have thought some more on it, maybe I could have come up with something, but a none-too-gentle prodding from the monster behind me was all the encouragement I needed to move forward, ever forward. I’d been walking for miles, my legs throbbed, and still it seemed like I had gotten no closer to where I was being sent. More than once I witnessed some creature dreamt up in childhood nightmares stumble and fall into a hole. The mechanical arms were quick to pick up the mangled ruins and deposit it back on the pathway. Sometimes it would have enough life left in it to drag itself for a whi
le; most times it just became an impediment to the things behind that had to find a way around or over it.

  It was, in all manner, a death march. I wanted to sit, to take a breather, but the thing behind me that looked part-demon part-warthog was enormous, five hundred pounds of beast that would have no problem whatsoever, pushing me out of its way as it moved on. Unlike me, it did not appear to be flagging. I was now looking down, no longer able to concentrate on what lay in front, only what was at my feet, when the order to stop was issued. I wondered how so many aliens understood English, when it dawned on my battered brain that the caps were geared toward their respective modes of communication. When wart-beast sagged down, so did I. There was a momentary wobble where I was afraid I would pitch over; I quickly sat, avoiding a much longer fall.

  Hundreds of those strange, drone arms flew toward us, carrying the metal feeding tubes, the last fucking thing I wanted was alien gruel. There was no choice in the matter; if I got jolted up here and either fell to the side or passed out, it would be the end. Wart-beast eyed my meal greedily; if he could have mustered the energy, I think he would have stolen it, like a bully will its mark’s pudding at lunch. I gave it the finger; I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I wasn’t defying the whistlers, and I still needed to prove to myself that I would and could stick it to someone else, if only in gesture. Wart-beast seemed unaffected by it, especially once his tube came along. I shouldn’t have felt a stab of jealousy when his was three times as big as mine, but I did. Want to know the fucked-up part of it? He raised a three-fingered hand and dropped the two side ones. I snorted. The first thing resembling a humorous situation since I’d been on the whistler homeworld.

  The thick fluid sluiced into my stomach, sloshing around. It still created nausea every time I “ate” it but there was a rebound in energy. The drone arms were flying around, grabbing the completed empty tubes and, most likely, bringing them back to the recycling center, where I could only hope they were being sterilized. Strange the things you can find concerning when the world is falling around you. If I thought this was fucking insane, it got worse. Somehow our less than gracious hosts had got hold of some zombies. A few columns off to my right, there was a stampede happening. Aliens were running, shoving, pushing, pulling, some falling, as my closest kin on this world were running pell-mell trying to eat everything in their path.

  A few were successful at clutching their prey, the breathing and eating mask impeding their feast. Some were trying to chew through it, others were smart enough to rip at it with force. I don’t know if they were tearing their skin apart because they were working at it in such a mania, or the injuries were a byproduct of the melded prosthetic. No matter how it came about, it was something that should never be seen. Some had ripped the skin off to the point that wet muscle and bone shone through. It did little to deter them from their objectives; I was almost proud of them. The ensuing chaos attracted the attention of a dozen or more whistlers. They were using small devices, a handheld remote that was having devastating results on everything close to them. Creatures, large and small, fell over—a good number pitching into the holes. Everything seemed to be affected except for the zombies, who went about their cannibalistic selves, thoroughly enjoying that their food had the good graciousness to fall over.

  They were equal opportunity eaters: run or don’t, it was all the same to them. When the whistlers realized that the box wasn’t working on the captives, they went right for the staples, riddling the zombies with dozens of projectiles. That had some effect, slowed the zombies down, but they appeared to be like a fast mutating virus and were becoming resistant to the toxin. They turned on their would-be captors and took a few of them down, ripping through their Orca-like skin with a fervor.

  “Well that’s different.” I was actively rooting for the zombies. It was like watching the Mets beat the Yankees; I despised both teams, but the Yankees more so. The zombies, having realized the whistlers could fight back, directed their efforts toward the enemy that was making their eating more difficult. Seven whistlers had succumbed to the greater numbers of the zombies when help in the form of a hovering war machine came into play. Unlike a normal operation that would do all in its power to help their fellow fighters, the hovercraft opened fire, blasting through friend, foe, and non-combatant alike. This wasn’t about rescue, this was about restoring order at whatever cost. If I thought the zombies had caused a commotion, that had nothing on what the whistlers were doing themselves.

  Alien creatures were running in every direction, a good number falling back into the holes, others running through or over smaller beings in their way. The resulting carnage from the bedlam was worse than what the zombies and the hovercraft had accomplished combined. When the uprising had been quelled, the hovercraft flew higher to monitor the situation. After another ten minutes, the chaos had petered out and the slow migration to the pyramid resumed. I was extremely grateful for having been a spectator from a safe distance. Most of us had stopped to watch, eat, rest or all of the above.

  “Walk!” The break and the show was over. I found the strength to get up and get moving, many did not and were skullcap prodded into doing so. More than a few went into the pits below, some appeared as if they’d done so on purpose. When all hope is taken away, sometimes the only avenue appears to be suicide. It was demoralizing and, again, I was stabbed with the pain of jealousy. It was over for them, yeah, they’d taken the easy way out. Their captors would never suffer for what they’d done to them, but again, it was over. Funny the motivation that spurred me on; it wasn’t that suicide was considered a mortal sin by the system of belief instilled into me, it was because of the situation I found myself in that there was no salvation for me at the end, no Pearly Gates, no reserved space in Heaven, no reuniting with loved ones. I couldn’t die because I had nowhere to go to. And, oh yeah, I wanted to seriously fuck up some whistlers first, so there was that.

  I must have slowed as I thought about the multitude of things going through my head. I felt a brushing against my shoulder; wart-beast had swung his arm. If he’d fully connected, there would have been no chance I could have stayed on the thin platform.

  “Son of a bitch.” I ran a few steps ahead before turning to face him. He stopped when he saw what I’d done. I want to think he had some concern, odds were he’d never seen anything like me and had no idea at all what I was capable of. Or more likely, he had a brain the size of a can of peas and it took that long to figure out a plan of action because he just put his head down and charged. Wasn’t a whole bunch of things I could do except turn tail and run. And run I did. My legs were burning, and I was heading toward exhaustion when I turned; I had hoped that wart-beast had called off the chase. There was good news and bad; I’d gained some ground on him, but he had not stopped.

  “Fuck, Talbot. Just had to flip him off, didn’t you?” My head sagged before I once again got going, this time it took longer to get up to speed, lactic acid beginning to build in my muscles, making them stiff. The mask helped ease the lack of oxygen, with no exertion; the same didn’t hold true under a heavy load. It was like being underwater and only having a straw to breathe through. Yeah, you could stay alive, but it wasn’t comfortable. I was gaining on something. What it was, I had no idea. It was hunched over, either due to fatigue or its natural state. Its body was skinny, not much wider than a splayed hand. It walked on four limbs, the front much longer so that its angular head was raised. It looked like a human-sized stick bug, but instead of wood brown, this was canary yellow.

  It was either prescient, or could hear me—or possibly feel me—coming, because it stood up on its hind legs and turned to watch me approaching. Don’t know if I had scared it, or, more likely, the behemoth behind me had, but it started to run as well. The problem with this was that ahead of him was something else entirely, a gelatinous red blob that was just oozing along. Its base wider than the walkway, its sides were bleeding over the edges. Once my stick friend and I caught up to it, there was going to b
e a traffic jam, like we were on a small rural roadway with twisted curves and sheer drops on either side. Not allowing anyone to pass was the little old man who was in no particular rush to go fucking anywhere! Or, just as likely, he’d forgotten where he wanted to go and had slowed down in an attempt to remember and not miss his turn. Yup, a dickhead thought, but I was running for my life.

  Stick thing was in such a rush to get away from the oncoming train, he’d run headlong into Jell-O Moldless man and stuck. Didn’t have a clue the anatomy of the gummy guy, but where stick man had inserted and the way gummy guy turned, I think it was exactly where it looked like. Gummy guy shifted his body so that stick man’s legs were scrabbling in the open air, then (I know, I know, this analogy is entirely too graphic) the gummy guy appeared to release a log into the wild, so to speak. It doesn’t make me happy to convey that; just from my perspective, that was the way I saw it. Pretty sure gummy guy was looking directly at me as I pulled up short. His upper part stretched like taffy to look over me and to my pursuer. Arm-like appendages appeared from the side of its body and it beckoned just like it was one of my giant great aunts that wanted to hug me tight and pinch my cheeks while telling me how big I’d grown.

  Gummy to the front, Warty to the rear. Wart-beast’s intention was clear: murder by crushing. Gummy, less so. So, devil you know or devil you don’t? I moved closer to Gummy; he didn’t move or get into a defensive posture, but seriously, how would I know? He, she, or it was looking straight at me; the eyes would occasionally swim around inside its head, moving further to the sides so it could again see past me.