A Shrouded World (Book 7): Hvergelmir Read online

  “How are these other fuckers doing this?” I was convinced I had to be doing something wrong—the pain alone would kill me in a day. And then I remembered the steady stream of workers they sent down here; that could very well be the case. Then I had to wonder why the fuck were we down here at all. Surely they had the means to mine remotely, with AI machines doing all the work; were they capturing so many entities that they had to create work? I was missing something. Why go through all the effort? I get that they could do it just because they could, but that answer wasn’t good enough. Too many resources were being used just to prove a point. Another pulse to the ground, another gong to my cap. This was not something I could sustain; it was sort of like every time I hammered a nail, I had to put my thumb in the way. Yeah, I’d done it before; everyone who has ever swung a hammer has done it, but if you knew your thumb was going to get slammed every time, do you think you would still choose to become a carpenter?

  I was doing what I figured were the minimum allowed strikes per hour, wallowing in misery, knowing that my odds of escape or doing anything meaningful to bring down this empire of evil were diminishing by the minute. Fuck, when I died, I wasn’t even going to be able to pass on my goggles to anyone, considering I hadn’t secured any. How pathetic is that? An alarm broke out, my body went rigid, I was completely immobile. I could hear other beings yelling out, but all of it was gibberish. It clicked then what was going on. The whistlers were, without a doubt, brilliant in their cunning. If any trouble broke out, not only could they incapacitate everyone at once, they also took away the ability of communication. Kind of difficult to have an uprising if no one knows what the other is saying. I hated them. It occurred to me I should have a grudging measure of respect for what they could do, but instead it made me angrier.

  They were now in control of nearly every facet of my life; not sure when Tracy had relinquished her role. I was going to have to destroy the cap—I had no other choice. If I didn’t get the fucking thing off, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. The problem was, once I did that, I would be cut off from everyone, though not sure how much that mattered. What kind of allies was I going to be able to make down here anyway? But that wasn’t true at all, Bob’s cap was on only in appearance and we could still talk, it was the throat collar I had to keep on. Once whatever emergency was dealt with and we were again at work, I stepped off the machine. I walked over to a rock wall, I braced myself, made a few practice motions before I lined up for what I hoped was the kill shot.

  “Do not,” came from Gecko. “Wreck head-bubble, expire.” There was a weird cadence and feel to his words like maybe there was no smooth transition from gecko to English.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “How me got sight coverings.”

  “Shit.” I was still looking at the wall. What did he have to gain from a lie? “I can’t stay here.”

  “Choice?”

  “Kill them.”

  “Die.” Tough to say if he was referring to whistlers or the more likely event, that I would be killed soon after or, even more likely, in the process of trying. I was at the lowest depths of despair. I’d often heard that God only gives as much as a person can handle. I don’t know if that’s true, but this time he gave a little something in return.

  “Milk!”

  Tears were forming in my eyes as I turned to see the glorious red blob that was Bob. I was so overcome with emotion, I moved to hug him. Gecko thought this was the most insane thing I had done since coming down here.

  The word “goblin” drifted toward me, just as I squeezed that gelatinous mass for all I was worth. Two arms shot out and wrapped around me. It seemed Bob was as happy to see me as I was him. Gecko’s eyes were nearly touching his goggles, they were protruding so much. We broke the embrace.

  “Bob,” he said triumphantly.

  “I know, man, you found me, and thank you. I was at about my breaking point, buddy.”

  “You aware of him?” Gecko asked.

  I can’t imagine he thought we were both seeing a specter and had to corroborate with each other over our sanity. He was referring to everyone, except me and the whistlers, knowing exactly who or what Bob was. All I knew was he’d saved me a few times already, so even if he killed me now, I was still ahead on the ledger. Grim thought but meant with humor, as I’d never been so happy to see a walking pile of Jell-O in my entire life.

  “Work,” Gecko said, putting his head back down. I could see a trio of whistlers off in the distance making their way.

  “Back to it,” I told Bob.

  “Milk.”

  “Tonight? What’s tonight? How do I even know when that is?” But he’d already turned and was heading to a large hovering car that I could only guess was used to haul out whatever we were mining for.

  The whistlers didn’t spare a glance as they passed by. I’d just shot a pulse and was suffering through the after-effects. Maybe did half a dozen more bursts before there was a strange blast of sound then I watched as weary miners stepped off their machines and sat or lay down. I quickly followed suit. Instead of the drone arms, a hovering cart was winding its way through the throngs. Workers were grabbing cylinders as it went. I wanted to sleep, but I was positive that if I didn’t grab a cylinder when the cart came, it would be much like flying on an airplane and missing the flight attendant when they came by with those glorious cookies. Gone for good.

  As the cart neared, I contemplated taking two, but if none of the others did, it was most likely there was some deterrent; I did not want another crippling muscle jolt. I greedily snagged a tube and ate. I was waiting for blissful sleep when my foot was thumped.

  “If that’s you, Warty, fuck off.”

  “Milk, hurt.”

  I sat up. “What? I’m not hurt.”

  Bob slid effortlessly over me and the pain was unimaginable.

  16

  Mike Journal Entry 5

  I awoke to the same sound that had signified the end of our shift, and workers were already operating their machines. Gecko was looking over at me strangely.

  “Was I yelling out in my sleep? I had the weirdest fucking dream.”

  “Not dead,” was all he said as he started shooting pulses.

  “Normal response is ‘good morning,’ but yeah, not dead to you too.” I didn’t feel great like, vacationing in the Alps with a fresh cup of cocoa great, but, it was the best since I’d been here, maybe since I’d started any of this Trip nonsense. Still, I wasn’t going to whistle while I worked. I gritted my teeth as I prepared to do my allotted minimum.

  “Must be government work,” I muttered.

  Sent a pulse, waited for the head-splitting resonance and waited, then waited some more. “Umm, what the fuck?” I sent another pulse, thinking that maybe my machine was broken, even though I’d seen the bolt of light that accompanied the oscillation. Again, I got nothing more than the standard vibration that would be caused. “Maybe you get used to it,” I said aloud. Then memories flooded back in, Bob at my feet, an encompassing pain so intense as to red out everything else, then I awoke.

  “What is going on?” I was scared. Bob had definitely done something, but was it for good or for evil, and did those constructs even mean the slightest thing to him? Because they were much like time, something man had created. Almost no creatures on earth are inherently evil or good; they exist in the moment; they survive. Did evil and good have to be thought out? Perhaps that was the difference.

  “Milk!” Bob shouted as he passed by with his hovercraft.

  “Bob, what did you do?”

  He paused for a moment, then I watched in fascination as he once again pulled his skull cap down into his body. My confused expression let him know I didn’t know what he was talking about. His eyes did a complete loop around the entirety of his head, checking for anyone watching before he raised the skull cap up. Then a small finger of bodily material pushed the cap up and off his head. He brought it back down quickly.

  “I know, Bob. I kno
w you’re not tied to the cap. Why are you showing me?”

  “Milk.” It came out as a long vibratory sigh, like he was trying to explain something to a particularly slow child, which, I mean, honestly, given the person at hand…

  “No way?!” I said excitedly when I got it. I wanted to do a small dance, maybe kiss Bob, definitely kill a whistler or seventeen. I let the excitement of the moment seep in before I began to dwell on the inherent dangers and how not to get caught. I was going to have to be vigilant with the cues from other workers. If they started acting in any particular way in unison, I would have to act accordingly. This was all great and fine…unless I was singled out for some reason. I could get caught on something as inane as they send me left and I go right. Fuck this. Never been a good actor. I needed to get a weapon. Action, forceful action, was my strong suit.

  “Milk.”

  “Come on, Bob. We need to get out of here.”

  “Bob.”

  “Yeah, I know we just got here.”

  He stared at me.

  “Fine, I get it, the idea is to really hurt them, not take out a couple of lowly guards. Where are you hiding that big brain of yours?”

  He shuffled off without saying another word, which I’d thought was rude until I saw a whistler meandering about. I got back to work, still unsure as to what I was doing. I kept my head down, hoping he wouldn’t notice me at all, just like I did most days in high school when I’d completely blown off the lesson and didn’t want to fumble my way through trying to answer the teacher’s questions. He was close and his back was to me. I knew, without a doubt, I could grab his weapon and kill him before he could even register he was dead. I wanted it bad: the instant gratification, some payback for not only what they’d put me through but for the entirety of the cosmos, apparently. I thought humans were some pretty terrible creatures, but we were babes in the woods compared to these villains.

  “Work.” This from Gecko; he must have been watching the bloodlust in my eyes.

  I shot three quick pulses in an effort to dispel my anger. It didn’t work. I’d firmly got myself and Jack into this shitty mess and for that, I was sorry. I’d finally been given some semblance of a chance to fix it, but how? I had a feeling I was miles under the ground; Jack was fuck knows where. My best chance lay with Bob the enigma.

  Seven more days. I did the routine, worked, ate, slept. I had no way of knowing if they were Earth standard twenty-four-hour days and what did it matter. It was getting more and more difficult to quell the desire to do something, anything, rather than mine. Near as I could tell, none of us had found so much as a piece of quartz—worst vein of material ever.

  Had just started my eighth day at the grind. The initial joy of being free from the cap had long ago worn off. They say idle hands are the devil’s workshop. You should have been in my mind right about then, it was a veritable den of death. I’d thought of more ways to kill something than should be possible. One even involved shoving an air pump up the ass of a whistler and pumping him until he exploded like the most grizzly of piñatas. Loved the end part of the visual, not so much the beginning. I had more than a few visions of putting a whistler under the front of my pulse machine to see what would happen. Had a feeling it would look something like a watermelon being dropped off a ten-story building. A lot of these fantasies involved explosions; there's something visceral and demeaning about blowing your enemy into pieces, so impersonal, so final. No lingering, no quarter, no pulling oneself back together, and that was something I could get behind.

  Oh, to be sure, I had a few up close and personal ones as well. I was scaring myself with how elaborate and violent they were becoming. My latest iteration involved restraining a whistler, cutting a decent-sized incision in its side, reaching my hand and arm in to the point where I could grip individual internal organs and squeezing them until they burst, starting with ones that wouldn’t necessarily kill it quickly. That one was gaining traction. This was the way I was occupying my day, something needed to change quickly, or I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop the impulse. I did not like that I was getting these urges, and that it was getting increasingly difficult to suppress them. This is what I had to figure serial killers went through.

  Where the fuck was I? Keep getting lost in murder fantasies…right. Eight days. On the eighth day, Hell created Warty. Don’t know where my frenemy had been, but he was back now. He looked sufficiently kowtowed; not sure if that all rested on my shoulders, or if he was simply beaten, like the rest of us, from just being here. Maybe both. I knew he’d seen me, but his head was hanging down, and he made sure not to look over, making it that much more obvious he was. Like a guy trying to catch a glimpse of an attractive woman in a bikini while she was looking in his general direction and he was standing next to his significant other. That level of sneaky, it’s never pulled off as well as we think it is. (Not that I have personal experience in the matter; I’d read about it once.) I didn’t like that he was this close. That was entirely too coincidental; he’d sought me out, and it wasn’t to make amends. He was going to try and finish what he’d started, and he was going to die at the end of my shift. One way or another, I was going to sate my bloodlust.

  17

  Jack Walker — Chapter Three

  Consciousness comes slowly as I rise through the thick fog left by the whistler toxin. The ground is hard beneath my back and my head feels like it’s being squeezed. Looking through squinted eyes, there’s a vertical shaft running straight up, the rough-hewn walls ending at a circle of light at the top. Light from a bleached sky reaches the bottom of the well where I’ve been dropped.

  Memory returns as I claw my way through to full consciousness. There is the sensation of struggling to walk through the thin atmosphere, watching as the railgun tore through the night runners who followed. Then there was Trip leaving with BT, yelling out an apology before stepping through a portal. I mean, if he could do that, then for fuck’s sake, why not take us along with him? I swear; I just get back to the point of not wanting to throttle him, and then he goes and does something like that.

  I should never have relinquished the relic in the first place. I trust Mike with it, but frankly, I’d rather have fought off the night runners with my bare hands than be stuck on some alien world and, now, seemingly at the mercy of the whistlers. This may not have been our best choice, although I honestly don’t see how else we would have made it through the night runner attack. So, I suppose alive is better than dead. With life, there’s still a chance.

  I remember the hovercraft closing in, the whistlers disembarking, and then the jolt of staples slamming into my body…the fading consciousness, and everything going dark. Sitting up, I reach for where the staples had hit, expecting to find them still embedded. Instead, there’s just a bruised ache and the sting of open wounds. Feeling foggy, I look down to see that I’m still in my fatigues but that the vest and my gear have been removed. So, I’m unarmed, which isn’t surprising, considering we were taken.

  I wonder where Mike is, and if he’s been thrown into a similar hole. I’m honestly surprised to be alive. That means the whistlers have a plan of sorts rather than just chaining me behind one of their pieces of equipment and dragging me. Do they mean to interrogate me? Find out how to work the waystation portals? Locate the relic, assuming they know we had it? They had to have watched Trip engage a portal and vanish through it. So, are they going to use us, or me, to find Trip and gain access to it?

  I sit up, the tightness in my head still persisting. Reaching up, I feel a metal plate on the top part of my skull. I try to pry it off but it seems firmly set. I feel for an edge only to find there isn’t one. The plate seems to meld in with my scalp. As my head clears more, I feel an attached face mask and notice that I’m able to breathe easier. Although that’s nice, I’m still not a fan of having something attached to my body that I don’t have any control over.

  A dim shadow crosses over the opening about fifty feet above my head. Looking up, I s
ee a whistler standing near the edge.

  “Food,” the creature shouts.

  I have no idea how they can be talking our language, or me understanding theirs. Nor do I know what the lanky creature means. Am I to become food, or am I going to eat? The alien tosses something into the hole, the shadowy object lowering. I back against the wall as the device drops into the pit, coming to a hover face high. A tube extends outward and I inch farther backward, expecting to be hit by another load of toxin. Suddenly, I’m gagging as a tube pushes up my throat and out through my mouth. The two attach and a mushy liquid is pumped into my stomach.

  The process ends, the tube retracts back into the thermos-looking device, the other one back down my throat. Whatever was pumped into me is sloshing around and leaving a queasy feeling. Now, I’m not happy at all with having some device planted internally. The device lifts out of the hole and the whistler walks away. The roiling in my stomach settles, and my head clears.

  I’m guessing that the helmet on my head functions as a translator in addition to who knows what else. It probably takes a signal from the thermos-looking thing and engages the feeding tube. I feel for my usual knife spots, but of course, those were taken. That’s rather unfortunate, although, I doubt I’ll be breaking free from an alien planet only armed with a blade.

  Standing, I feel something hard slide against my back near my belt line. Reaching around, I feel the knife that I always keep there, pressed against my spine. Apparently, they didn’t search all that well. The four-inch blade is the most beautiful thing in the world to me. It’s not much, but it’s sure as hell better than nothing.

  The fact that I have something makes me feel a little better, but I’m still trapped in this hole, and I’m still on an alien world. I really hope that Mike’s doing okay, and that Trip has something planned to get us out of this mess.