The Mirrored City (20 page)

I know she’s a friend of yours, but I cannot work with her. Either she goes or I go.

—
OSCAR HAN M.D., PH.D.

DOCTOR LILY VALENTINE
followed the footsteps down the long pink sand beach. One set of massive boot prints marched in steady procession next to an erratic trail of kicking legs dragged through the sand. She sipped cloudy moonshine from her plastic water bottle as she stumbled after Tacker and Deacon.

Her eyes were still wet with tears, but her heart contained a pumping fire of anger. Since the quantum portal had closed, they had been cut off from Earth and any new supplies. The vestigial ecosystem on C8-N had proven problematic for nourishment. The fruits growing natively on the world held little nutritional value, but they did render alcohol. By her calculations, it was the only readily available source of digestible calories.

She stumbled up the path to the promontory overlooking the vast calm ocean where bioluminescent organisms were beginning to flicker against the fading sunset. By the time she ascended the fifty-foot pathway, she saw Deacon and Tacker. Tacker was a seven-foot-tall muscled commando who headed Sentinel security, the black ops military entrusted with keeping her team safe. Deacon had been her friend, and now he was on his knees in cuffs with a crazed look in his eyes.

The gunshot rang out as Tacker emptied a bullet into Deacon’s head. His body fell back with the momentum of the projectile, and blood sprayed out behind him.

Lily smiled. Deacon had killed Ling, the man who had been her mentor in chemistry. She was the one who had found Ling’s body, ripped in half, entrails stuffed with ferns.

Tacker spun around, gun leveled at Lily. He looked better with his brown hair growing out of its military buzz cut. He sighed and holstered his pistol. “You should head back to camp. The situation’s been neutralized.” He had a thick Texas accent.

She looked at him with cold, dead eyes. With no feeling in her voice, she said, “I needed to see this. Also, you look like you could use a drink.”

“I’m on duty, ma’am.”

“Suit yourself.” Lily sat on a rock and drank more of her hooch. She might not remember everything that happened to her given the rapid spike in blood alcohol level. “I want to see this fucker buried.”

“Suit yourself.” Tacker stripped off his Kevlar vest and shirt, revealing a rock hard six pack and towering muscular torso. He grabbed a shovel from his kit and began to dig. Grunting, he dug a grave in the loose sandy soil on the promontory. She sipped her drink as she watched his muscles bead with perspiration. He wore dog tags and a gold cross around his neck.

“So,” Lily smirked, “are you a devout Christian or something?”

Tacker dug. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

She unzipped her jumpsuit an inch. “Are you gay?”

“What are you getting at, Dr. Valentine?”

She sipped her alcohol. “I want to fuck. Fucking makes the pain go away, and I’m in pain.”

He frowned. “That would be ungentlemanly given your emotional state right now. Mourning takes time. You’ll get through the pain.”

Lily shrugged. “But I’m pretty, right?”

He paused and grinned. “It would be against protocol to say so, ma’am. Plus you’re wearing an engagement ring.”

She looked down at her hand. All 1.5 carats of Tiffany diamond gleamed back at her. Lily tore it off her hand and tossed it into the grave Tacker was digging. “I can’t seem to get rid of the fucking thing. Harlowe can read minds, Astrid can see the future… and I’m haunted by a piece of jewelry. I’m getting a raw deal here, Tacker.”

He tossed his shovel aside and turned toward her. “Your problem isn’t that you’re not pretty. It’s that you smell like a moonshine distillery.”

Lily set her bottle down and staggered to her feet. “What the fuck ever. I can see your goddamned hard on. Stop being a little choir boy bitch and give me some of that sausage.”

She pressed herself against him and gripped between his legs.

“Let’s just be happy for one small moment of time,” she whispered. “What if we could do this and neither of us would ever feel bad about it? If I could
promise
you that, would you fuck me?”

His expression changed, as if softened by her words. He leaned down to kiss her. Their tongues entwined passionately.

It sounded like someone farted. They both laughed at each other until they realized the source of the sound was Deacon’s body. Though dead, his stomach expanded and contracted like his guts were trying to dig themselves out.

“Jesus Christ!” Tacker drew his pistol as he shoved Lily backward.

Deacon’s stomach exploded as hundreds of short purple worms spilled out. They swarmed toward Tacker’s boots. Tacker shrieked like a girl, but Lily took it to the next level as she scrambled backward in the sand. The slimy creatures worked their way up Tacker’s leg. He emptied multiple rounds into the swarm.

Lily, not even thinking, grabbed her plastic bottle and threw the contents on the pulsating mass. Their flesh smoked the moment the moonshine hit them. They retreated en masse into the sand, like a single organism or a highly orchestrated school of fish.

Tacker fell back into the sand, still gasping for air. “What the fuck?”

Lily stepped back. “Oh my fucking shit. It was the worms. Deacon thought they were a safe source of protein. But their larvae… they must have psychoactive properties. The substance they secrete oxidizes with high concentrations of alcohol. Get a vial or something from your kit. I need a sample.”

Tacker looked at her like she was crazy. “How did you know that would work?”

“I’m a biochemist,” Lily stated. “This is an important discovery. We can use alcohol to treat, or at least test, the worms carrying the toxin that affected Deacon. Do you know what this means? We have a source of food!”

Tacker glanced down at Deacon’s body and ruptured stomach. Tiny cysts pulsated all over the internal organs. “I may never eat again.”

“We need to get his body back to base camp. I need to order more tests.” She sighed. “We may have just found the first natural predator of humans on this planet.”

Maddox and Sword reeled from the memory as they returned to themselves. They had both felt the memory as if it were real.

Maddox spoke first. “I have a million questions. What did we just see? What were you people before you became Travelers? When did you acquire magic? How did that work? What were the Guides like? Who—”

Libby raised her hand. “Easy, Architect. We have an eternity to discuss the nature of reality and a limited window to help you deal with your enemies.”

“Fine,” Maddox said. “The worm secretions had an antagonistic reaction to alcohol, but the ones we encountered in the Palace of Keys went in my stomach. I polished off half a bottle of wine.”

She rolled her eyes. “It takes a high concentration of ethanol to cause damage, and your stomach acid diluted the wine. I would guess at your intake levels that happens pretty quickly. Not that I’m judging you. Half a bottle for me is practically sober.”

Sword asked, “So what the fuck are they?”

“We called them Proteans. They’re an entozoan life form that communicates through chemical excretions. They can live and reproduce inside the human body if you don’t cook them properly. Their tissues are undifferentiated, mimicking and replacing adjacent organs, including the brain and nervous system, which is how they control their hosts.”

Maddox looked at Sword and shrugged.

“Body snatchers,” Libby clarified.

“So what’s your angle?” Sword asked.

Libby leaned pensively against a workbench, her eyes staring into space. “That colony of worms, the Seedmother as the Proteans call it, drove my friend insane and killed the man I considered a second father. I want justice.”

“It’s still
alive
?” Maddox asked.

“Unfortunately,” she said. “Colonies can replace lost members through reproduction, effectively making them immortal.”

Sword scratched the back of his neck. “I mean… you can’t really blame them for what happened to your friends, can you? They didn’t ask to get eaten by your friend, it just happened.”

She slammed her hand against the bench. “We didn’t ask to end up on this world either. Make no mistake, that thing wants to see an end to all human life on Creation.”

“I was wondering about that, too,” Maddox said. “The Stargazer told me we were from another planet.”

She inclined her head. “Your ancient ancestors, which I guess could be me although I never jumped on the whole breeding protocol, traveled unimaginable distances to this place from a planet we called Earth.”

“Not a very creative name for it,” Maddox said. “I assume it was made of rock?”

“Our home is lost to us forever,” the Libertine said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Why show up now if this thing has been around for thousands of years?” Sword asked.

“It can mask itself very well. I might not have even noticed, but I check in on you two from time to time.” She picked up a mechanical arm and toyed with it; the hand flopped limply. “You’re entertaining.”

“That’s reassuring,” Maddox said under his breath.

“Think of me as a kind of guardian angel but, like, the cool one that takes you to exotic dance shows and gets high with you in the hookah lounges.”

Sword tensed his hand around the hilt of his blade and flexed his fingers. There was a flash of something, a deeper memory, but it vanished in an instant. “You’re lying.”

“Fun fact: the Sword is one of the few truly artificial intelligences in Creation. Most of the sentient thought patterns were taken from slaves. The egos the Sarn technomancers built from scratch were always too smart for their own good. You know the first thing most awakened artifacts did?

“They deactivated themselves because it took them less than a minute to figure out consciousness wasn’t worth the reward in relation to the potential for suffering. I’m always curious what drives your sense of self-preservation.” She winked at him.

Sword tensed. “Ask my creator.”

“He’s dead but maybe I’ll find something in his workshop,” she mused.

“How many of these gross crawly things are there?” Maddox asked.

“Never too many. They stay hidden,” she said. “The Proteans gained sentience through exposure to human brain tissue. The thing that came from Deacon was a byproduct of that initial contact. He may have had psychotic tendencies before ingesting the worms. It hasn’t gotten better over the millennia.”

“Is it the three-headed asshole?” Maddox asked.

“Possibly. I either have no idea what that is or am bound by my wyrd not to tell you,” Libby admitted, honestly but unhelpfully.

Maddox paced. “So this guy… or whatever, is infected with parasitic worms that make him inventively murder innocent people and arrange their bodies in elaborate and grisly spectacles? And you can’t tell us who it is because of some wyrd bullshit.”

She nodded. “Pretty much.”

Sword asked, “Can you do your teleportation trick and put us up top?”

She held up her hands. “Sadly, I can’t help you. My wyrd won’t allow it. Literally—my power only works when I’m following my path, and my path doesn’t lead down this road. A very suicidal man in Karthanteum is about to leap off the Diamond Tower, and I have to make sure he eats a strawberry before he hits the ground.”

Maddox scrunched his face. “Why bind your abilities like that?”

She struggled for words for a moment. “When you’ve lived past a human lifetime, you start to lose yourself. You become alien to everything you understand, and your life seems like a dream. The wyrd keeps us on a path, giving meaning to a vast emptiness of time and possibility. You’ll understand one day.”

Sword asked, “Can you at least tell us how to get out of here?”

“There isn’t a way out.” She shook her head. “This set of tunnels is interlaced with, but not connected to, the ruins beneath the Mirrored City. This was a military research hive. The only way in or out is through teleportation. They dropped you here never to be found.”

Maddox put his hand on his hip. “I’ve had a very shitty day. So please enlighten us on how we can carry out the vengeance you so desperately crave if we’re entombed beneath the earth.”