Spires of Infinity (40 page)

All around her was the army she’d raised in the Quarantine Zone, surging and

churning in an unorganized mess. They may not be organized, but there were enough of them for their corpses to pile up against the wall high enough for her to stroll over the top and still have minions leftover to seize the Spires.

In her army, there were beings that might have once been human, or had human

ancestors. Others obviously had little or no human in them. Most were animals mutated by the radiation to the point that they’d developed intelligence. Some of them were incredibly smart, and many of them had at least enough intelligence to understand human speech if not the ability to actually speak it.

It was an army out of nightmares, but the Apostle did not care. Her goal was

within sight, and she would soon be inside the walls and traveling back through time.

Soon, she would be able to remove the cause of her suffering forever.

Though she had known from the memories of the man she’d drained of blood to

expect the energy shield, it still vexed her horribly. Having taken steps to deal with it, she knew that it was only a matter of time before she could begin her assault. The wasted time waiting for her agent to do his work began to chip away at her patience. She abhorred pointless wastes of her time.

Sneering behind her mask, the Apostle didn’t even think the saboteur realized he was hers. Such was the beauty of her power to manipulate the hearts and minds of men.

She could erase all memory of the commands from his mind, while still leaving them ingrained in him. Her man would follow orders without even realizing what he was doing.

Green lances of fire began to rain through the shield into the massing mob of

mutants. Any flesh touched by the beams melted into a pile of gory goo. The stench of it even managed to penetrate the Apostle’s mask.

Counting the cannons that were firing, she removed one from the count as it

exploded in a large ball of flames. There were only nineteen, and a considerable recharge period between shots. They could fire into her army for days and barely put a dent in it.

She was not concerned in the least. She could wait until her man did his job.

“It is a good day to triumph over the Council,” the Apostle hissed.

Howling with feverish laughter in the back of her mind, Cain seemed even more

excited than she was. His excitement radiated into her, making her heart race and her chest seem to burn with the anticipation. She only hoped that prisoners were taken so she could drain them of blood to celebrate her victory before she had her revenge.

Chapter 35: Unexpected Rescue

Groaning, Gabriel could feel a small animal desperately trying to dig its way out of his skull, either that or it was the worst hangover of his life. He couldn’t remember what was happening, but there seemed to be some urgency, though it was far away, and the pain was close, and all consuming.

“Gabriel, you have to wake up before the security systems notice you,” a voice insisted in his ear.

“Primary systems activation in five minutes,” the same voice blared over a

loudspeaker.

“Wake up, Gabriel,” the voice cried frantically.

Everything came back in a rush. He’d gone through the Gate, fallen through hell, and now . . .

Opening his eyes, Gabriel squinted against sudden pain caused by bright sunlight, digging into his skull like daggers. Sitting up, he massaged his temples, but it did little good. His hands came away bloody, and there was a large lump to the right side of his forehead.

Humidity pressed down on him like a heavy, wet blanket, condensing on his skin, and mixing with his sweat. It wasn’t just humid, it was hot, made more so by the change from freezing cold a few moments ago. It felt like Chicago in summer.

“Are you all right,” Allie asked.

“My head,” Gabriel muttered woodenly, attempting and failing to get to his feet.

Grabbing onto the railing beside him, he forced himself dizzily upright. His hand slipped on a bloody patch and he collapsed against the rail for a second, hanging out over a very long drop down the side of one of the fang shaped towers of the Spires of Infinity.

He must have hit his head on the rail when he arrived.

Righting himself, Gabriel swayed with woozy nausea, as the ground seemed to tilt unpredictably under him.

“See,” Allie said cheerfully. “I got us here safe and sound.”

“If you say so,” Gabriel was having fond thoughts of emptying his stomach down the side of the tower. Only the twinge of pain from his mostly healed rib gave him the willpower to keep it down.

“Primary systems activation in two minutes,” Allie’s voice blared again over a loudspeaker, making Gabriel’s head feel like it might pop. Her voice was mechanical and completely devoid of emotion and personality.

“Two minutes,” Allie said in his ear, her excitement contrasting deeply with the emotionless voice on the loudspeaker. “Am I good, or am I good? I almost nailed exactly where we wanted to go.”

“You sure nailed something,” Gabriel moaned, holding his pounding head in his

hands. “I think I have a concussion. Good job.”

“Oh, shut up, you,” Allie sniffed indignantly. “You are the one that bashed his head against the railing, not me. Be more careful, I do not think I could stand any further diminished capacity due to brain damage.”

Stepping away from the railing, Gabriel realized that he was on the same

observation catwalk he’d thought things through on earlier, but before the railing had gone missing.

Looking to the sky, he saw that the sun was much smaller, and a bright yellow

color. For the first time in memory, there were clouds in the sky. The difference in climate was amazing to say the least. What had been nuclear wastelands, was now a thick jungle of bright purple foliage mixed with lush green and vibrant red.

Everywhere he looked, Gabriel saw men in black uniforms patrolling with rifles in hand, or robotic guards with a lot more menace than the trundling, docile manner they’d displayed in the future. They patrolled the courtyard, the wall tops, and everywhere else a man could patrol. None of them were NVMs. The fact that none of the men far below had tails or malformed mutations seemed rather strange now that Gabriel had become accustomed to such things.

“Gabriel, this is what we need to do. Once the black hole is created, we need to disable the computer as quickly as possible, and then copy me onto the mainframe. She will see us as saboteurs, and do everything in her power to stop us. The computer core and controls for everything but the containment field are in this tower.”

“Well that’s just great,” Gabriel muttered. “If this is the control tower it’s going to be crawling with people. I’ll get caught the second I set foot inside.”

“Relax,” Allie said. “They only allowed the bare minimum of personnel today in case of accidents. There are only two people on the entire floor of the control room.

After the computer is disabled we will use the underground accessway to reach the containment area. Once there I will program a Gate Jump back to our time, and set the containment field to shut down. You will have thirty seconds before the command registers to Gate Jump to safety.”

“Primary systems activation reset to ten minutes at the request of Doctor

Halvaren,” Allie’s mechanical voice echoed over the loudspeaker.

“There we go,” Allie said. “I found the sight centers of your brain.”

She appeared before him, not the two-dimensional hologram, but a seemingly real girl. Pushing a stray lock of hair from her face to behind her ear, she smiled. Taking hold of her skirt with her hands she twirled, making it flare around her.

“How do I look,” she asked, soundly strangely abashed for a computer.

“Real,” Gabriel said. “I’m the only one that can see you?”

“Right,” Allie nodded firmly.

“You’re a computer, why choose to look and sound like a little girl?”

A very sad expression crossed over Allie’s face, and she shrugged uncomfortably.

“You’ll see that soon enough. We should move before the security system picks you up.”

With a crack of thunder, the railing behind Gabriel rang like a struck gong.

Spinning, he found himself facing a black cloaked figure crouching on the rail. Leaping to the catwalk, he straightened his cloak and reached inside for something.

Whoever it was, he certainly was impressive. Tall and slender, his black cloak concealed his entire body, and the hood hid his head. He wore a black, polished mask and Gabriel caught glimpses of black armor under the cloak as well.

“She Gate Jumped here,” Allie cried. “We were followed.”

“The Apostle,” Gabriel snarled, his addled brain finally connecting the black

cloak and mask to what Kari had told him of their enemy. “She must have broken through the shield somehow!”

Fear bolted through his heart. If the Apostle was here, she must have taken over the Spires of Infinity. Was Sam all right?

Gabriel drew his pistol at the exact moment the Apostle drew a long, slender

rapier, made from the same black material as his knife, from within her cloak.

“Wingless,” Gabriel hissed, bringing his pistol up to point at the Apostle. The Sa’Dhi automatically corrected his aim as he pulled the trigger, and lessened some of the pain and sluggishness rattling around inside his skull.

Sounding like a cannon blast, the gunshot caused pain to spike through his head, and the recoil jarred his arm. At such close range he had little doubt that his pistol could punch through the Apostle’s armor as easily as it could a sheet of paper.

With a fluid, almost casual motion, the Apostle swung her sword in the graceful sort of movement that only came with long, hard practice. It wasn’t like in the movies where everything was choreographed beyond believability, with actors still looking awkward handling their weapons. The way she moved, the sword actually seemed part of her.

The bullet didn’t punch through or ricochet off of her armor. It didn’t even hit the wall behind her. Clinking on the ground, two smoking pieces of lead dropped out of the air.

Gaping, Gabriel stared at the bullet, neatly bisected on the ground between them.

She’d actually stopped a
bullet
with a
sword
, cutting it right out of the air!

“What the hell,” he said in awe, as Allie stared openly with wonder.

“Get out of my way, insect,” the Apostle said in a voice mechanically distorted to sound like the movie preview voiceover guy on a partially blown speaker. “I have little time to deal with the likes of you. You may live, but do not impede my revenge!”

“I don’t know how you got here,” Gabriel took aim again. “Or what you did to

the people on the other side of that Gate, but whatever you’re planning, I can’t allow it.”

Gabriel fired again, and as the Apostle moved to cut the bullet out of the air he aimed and fired a second time. The Apostle wasn’t able to block both, and the second bullet struck the center of her mask. It pinged off, ricocheting into the sky with a low whine. Her mask cracked and fell away piece by piece, revealing a very pretty face with pale skin and big, green eyes that were pinched with anger. Snarling, she bared bestial teeth. Whipping her hood out of her face, she revealed wolf ears like Sam’s and chestnut hair, cut very short in military fashion. Gabriel wondered if she was hiding a tail under that big cloak too.

“You will pay for that,” the Apostle’s voice was surprisingly gentle and melodic, contrasting greatly with the acid anger raging through her tone.

“I don’t think so,” Gabriel grinned as he fired twice more.

The Apostle tried to cut both bullets with the same stroke this time, but missed one of them and it struck her in the face just below the cheekbone. Blood and flesh exploded away from her as the bullet ricocheted with a hum, causing Gabriel to gape.

The bullet had actually bounced off of her
face
! Who the hell
was
this chick anyway, Chuck Norris! She could cut bullets out of the air with a sword, and bullets bounced right off of her face!

Before bouncing off of the bone, his bullet had completely destroyed the left side of her face. Her entire left cheek and lower lip were gone, and blood poured down her neck and chest. He could see her inhumanly sharp teeth grating together against the pain.

Then he saw something truly shocking. Glinting through the ragged hole in her face, her bones appeared to be made of a golden metal, smeared with blood and bits of flesh.

“Oh, that’s just great,” Gabriel cried, unable to tear his eyes away. “Of all the people in the universe to pick a fight with, I had to choose the freaking
Terminator
!”

Ignoring the wound as her face began to knit back together before Gabriel’s very eyes, the Apostle raised her sword and charged at him with such speed that she seemed to blur. Thrown against the wall, Gabriel felt the wind knocked out of him. Unable to breathe, he lost his grip on his pistol and his knees gave out as he fumbled for his knife.

The Apostle raised her sword over her head to deliver the finishing blow. He could see his death in her eyes, and reflected in her black blade as it began to fall toward him.

Then there was a metallic thump and the Apostle’s eyes rolled back in her head. Going limp, she fell in a heap next to Gabriel.

Standing behind the Apostle was Sam, holding a dented fire extinguisher and

sporting an extremely relieved expression that it had actually knocked her out. Tossing it aside, she grinned at Gabriel, showing her fangs and wagging her tail.

“He’s
mine
, bitch. Hands off!”

“What the hell are
you
doing here,” Gabriel cried as he holstered his pistol and dragged himself back to his feet. He was so relieved to see her still alive that he nearly forgot to be angry that she’d followed him through the Gate.

Pointing a paw at the Apostle, Mister Mittens shrugged.

“She got through,” Sam explained, “so we came after her. And a good thing too, she almost—oh wow! Mister Mittens, look at the sun!”