Splintered the labyrinth.., p.25
Splintered: The Labyrinth, Book 3, page 25
“T-twenty-three years,” Teddy stammered. “You’re telling us we’ve been here for twenty-three years? That’s impossible. We haven’t eaten. We haven’t had water. We’d be dead…”
“We haven’t gone to the bathroom in twenty-three years, either,” the Exit muttered.
“Twenty-three years as you and we tell time, in the linear fashion,” Sephera explained. “But time is not linear. That is only our perception of it. And again, this place exists outside of time and space. Twenty-three years is both the blink of an eye and an eternity here in our citadel. Both of these things are simultaneously true. Regardless, we’ve been very busy in that time. For over two decades, our agents searched across the multiverse for the remainder of your group. We frequented times and locations where you were known to be, and left signs of our calling.”
“What sort of signs?” LeHorn asked.
“Graffiti. Classified advertisements. Posts on internet message boards and social media. Occasionally other ways, depending on the level and the technology available. We enlisted outside contractors, as well, and they utilized methods of their own.
“Hold the fuck up,” Tony said, frowning.
Sephera, Linda, and Tom stared at him expectantly.
“Graffiti…” he muttered.
“What are you talking about?” LeHorn asked.
“A few times over the years, I came across this weird fucking graffiti,” Tony explained. “And not just me, either. I have memories of my other selves finding it, too.”
“What kind of graffiti,” Ob asked. “Incantations and such?”
“No, nothing like that. Weird shit that didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Messages like, ‘Have you seen Teddy Garnett? If so, call this number’ and ‘We are looking for Frankie’ and shit like that.”
“You saw my name before we met?” Teddy asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t think anything of it then, because your name didn’t mean shit to me, but it’s all coming back to me now.” Tony smacked his forehead with his palm. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember it before.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” LeHorn advised. “It would have seemed inconsequential at the time.”
“But my name popped up, too,” Tony replied. “There was this strip club I used to do business at pretty regularly. A place owned by this sick fucking Russian bastard, Whitey Putin. There was graffiti in the men’s bathroom there a bunch of times, and it often mentioned me. I thought it was just somebody fucking around. Playing some kind of weird joke. That was you people?”
Smiling, Sephera nodded. “One of our cruder methods, but yes. That was us. As I said, we also took out classified ads and posted on internet message boards and paid a network of spies and watchers.”
“I saw graffiti like that, too,” the Exit said. “I knew it was something…different, but I never understood its purpose. And I’m still not sure I do.”
“You might not,” Sephera replied, “but that doesn’t really matter. The graffiti did prove useful. Tips supplied via it allowed us to track and surveil several of you.”
“So,” Tony asked, “why didn’t you just fucking abduct us then? Why wait twenty-three years?”
“Because, Mister Genova, if we had captured you before your passage through the Chamber of Spheres, we wouldn’t have had all of you. Instead, we would have had to exterminate all of your other multitude of selves, one-by-one, across all of time and space. We simply don’t have the resources or manpower for that. Nor does our master.”
“And who is your master,” Ob asked again, growing impatient.
“The Unknown.”
Ob suppressed his reaction to this news. Sullen Tom had been right, after all. He was indeed stalling for time. What he also hadn’t told them was that while Sephera and Linda were unknown quantities, he had met other versions of Tom before. Twice, in fact. Once, he’d worked security in Argentina for a company called Alpinus Biofutures. The other time he’d been a longshoreman in New York. Ob had not taken possession of the man’s body on either occasion, but he remembered killing him. Despite the millennia of his long existence, Ob never failed to be surprised by the Labyrinth’s strange connections.
“And your master, the Unknown, wishes to turn us over to He Who Shall Not Be Named?”
“Correct,” Sephera replied.
“But you don’t have all of us yet.”
“Ah, but we do.”
Ob turned to the other cages and pointed. “Exit, Teddy, Nelson, Tony, and myself. That makes five, not seven.”
“The Morningstar knows how to hide himself from us, but no worries. He Who Shall Not Be Named has other plans for him. Yes, we know that Lucifer still lives.”
Ob shrugged. “That still only makes six.”
“Miss Rogers is dead. Extinguished from all timelines.”
Tony lunged forward and gripped the bars. He glanced at Ob with an anguished expression.
“We know this for a fact,” Sephera continued. “We even checked the Lost Level. She has been eliminated.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong,” Ob taunted, sarcastically mimicking Sephera. “She lives, still. Just like the Morningstar.”
“Nonsense. If she were alive, we’d have been able to find her. There are no traces of her throughout the Labyrinth. Her energies have been dissipated.”
“Nope. She’s still there. You just need to know where to look. And given that it took you morons twenty-three years to track the rest of us down, I won’t hold my breath in that regard. But, let’s say…just for the sake of argument, that you’re right. That Frankie’s dead and you’ve captured the rest of us. So what? Huh? What do you get out of it?”
She snickered. “Why, we get the blessings of our master. We do their work.”
“So…you don’t get much of anything then?”
Sephera’s smile vanished. Her lip curled back in a sneer. She was about to respond, when her body went stiff. The wand wavered. The tip flashed for a moment, like a coal flickering to life at the bottom of a campfire, and then turned dull again. She relaxed again, and her smile returned. The air pressure changed in the room. Ob wondered if the other prisoners noticed it. He knew they hadn’t seen what he had just seen—in the second before Sephera had stiffened, a red mist had materialized in the room and settled over her. It hadn’t appeared via the Labyrinth but had come from somewhere outside the Labyrinth—outside time and space, much like this place.
“We get a great deal,” the thing inside Sephera said with her mouth. “We are granted—”
“You can dispense with that bullshit,” Ob interrupted. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to play with these meat puppets sometimes. I enjoy speaking with their voices, too. But I know who you are. And I’m not addressing the flesh, now. I’m addressing you, who just took possession of it. The original coward. An entity so afraid and so powerless that its only defense has been to unperson itself, removing any physical descriptions or attributes or history of itself from the collective pool of universal knowledge. Names have power, so you erased your name. Now you go by the Unknown. But you are not unknown to me. I know your real name, Slithaxx. I knew you when you were known. Now, are you going to come out of that body and fight me, or am I going to have to rip you out of it?”
Sephera backed up, trembling in fear. Linda and Tom stared at her in wonder.
“Is it true?” Linda gasped. “Does our master dwell inside of you?”
“I…I…” Sephera frantically glanced around the room. Then she pointed at Ob. “Tom, shoot him. Shoot Bloom, right now!”
Frowning in confusion, the big man fumbled with his weapon.
“Don’t bother, Tom.” Ob reached out, gripped the bars of his cage with both hands, and then used a spell that Bloom had learned shortly before his transformation by Amun. The bars buckled and crumpled like aluminum foil, and he strode out onto the floor, glancing with disdain at the circle of binding. He deliberately brushed it with his toe, scuffing the lines.
“Oops. Looks like I messed up your pretty little drawings.”
“But…how?” Tom raised his pistol, but the weapon shook so badly that Ob doubted he’d be hit, even if the man could gather enough wits to pull the trigger.
“You drew that for Donald Bloom. But I am not Donald Bloom.”
Sephera jabbed the wand at him, releasing a visible bolt of energy. Ob sidestepped it and grinned.
“Is that all you’ve got, Slithaxx? You’re weaker than these humans.”
“W-who are you?”
“I am Ob, the Obot, Lord of the Siqqusim, and you should not have brought me here.”
He moved as fast as Bloom’s body would let him, which, even in its current state, was impressive. In life, even before being augmented by Amun, the young combat magician had been in tremendous physical shape. In death, he was still one of the most agile and strong corpses Ob had ever had the pleasure of inhabiting. It was almost as if, even now, with his consciousness and soul long departed, something remained within Bloom’s body—some determination and resistance and fight against the inevitable autolysis, putrefaction, and eventual skeletonization.
Panicking, Tom finally squeezed the trigger, but as Ob had predicted, the shot went wild. Before the hulking acolyte could adjust his aim again, the Lord of the Siqqusim fell upon him, leaping into the air and smashing into Tom with a full, hard body slam. Neither opponent fell, but it stunned Tom long enough that Ob was able to seize the wrist of his gun arm, and twist savagely, snapping the bone. Tom screamed, and as he did, Ob leaned in close and kissed him deeply, biting down on the man’s flailing tongue and then jerking his head backward. Two inches of Tom’s tongue dangled from between his teeth. He spat the red, dripping morsel aside as Tom wriggled and thrashed, desperately trying to pull away. The big man tried to cry out for help, but the blood gushing from his mouth made his words garbled and mushy.
Sephera aimed her wand again and as the magical burst left the instrument, Ob spun Tom in the direction of the bolt and then dove to the left. The energy slammed into Tom, immediately converting him into salt. He stood there, motionless. Even his clothes and weapon had been transformed.
Ob heard a shriek behind him. He rolled, glanced up, and saw that Linda had flanked him, most likely intending to shoot him in the back. Unfortunately for her, she’d forgotten about the other prisoners. She stood now, stiff as a board, as Genova kept one arm thrust through the bars and curled around her neck. His other hand gripped her gun arm, keeping it pointed low.
“Finish them, you dumb fuck,” Tony yelled. “I can’t hold her all day.”
Grinning, Ob jumped to his feet and pointed at Sephera.
“Dinitay,” he chanted. “Ozmot. Dinosha. Hunten ket.”
Sephera’s wand shattered in her hand. Tiny shards nicked her porcelain skin, drawing little beads of blood along her cheek, forehead, and arm.
“Thank Bloom for that,” he said. “There’s a spell I didn’t know until now. Handy.”
Eyes-wide, she backed toward the exit. Ob lunged forward. She turned to flee but he leaped upon her, knocking them both to the floor. She kicked and struggled but he flipped her over to face him, putting his knees to either side of her chest and bringing his full weight down on her abdomen. She raised her hands and clawed at him. Ob balled up one fist and struck her twice. The first blow broke her nose. The second knocked out a tooth. When she opened her mouth to moan, it dangled there by a strand of tissue. Ob wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed.
“Poor Slithaxx,” he said. “So afraid of the actual war that you’ve stayed hidden all these years, wiping any mention of yourself—even your name—from the annals. And not just on this planet. You did it all across space, which is impressive. Even the mech civilizations and the places where machine intelligence became dominant weren’t able to work you out. But I did. You were a joke in our universe, and you’re even more of a joke in this one. I’ll tell you—of all the lifeforms that survived the destruction the Creator brought upon us—I never thought you were worthy. I mean, neither was Purturabo, really, but at least that prancy fucker had some style. Behemoth? Leviathan? Shtar? Worthy. Meeble? Kat? They have their uses. My brothers? Of course they are worthy. But you? You’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. Being the Unknown suits you perfectly.”
He risked a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that Linda had gone limp against Genova’s prison bars.
“Tony, get her gun.”
Blinking, the former fixer stared at Linda, as if just remembering that she was there. “Oh, shit. I killed her. Must have squeezed too hard. I was only trying to knock her out.”
“Are you sure?” Teddy asked.
Tony glanced at him. “Listen, old-timer. Now ain’t the fucking time to be giving me that don’t kill bullshit.”
“I’m not,” Teddy replied. “They took me away from Rose. They deserve whatever they get. I’m just asking are you sure that she’s dead. You might want to double check.”
Tony grabbed the weapon from her hands and then let her slip to the floor. Linda’s head bonked against the bars of the cage. She did not move. Her eyes stared, unblinking. Tony reached through the bars and felt her neck, searching for a pulse.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, nodding. “She’s dead.”
Ob turned back to Slithaxx and released his grip. Sephera coughed hoarsely, wracking her body.
“Traitor,” she rasped.
“Maybe so, Slithaxx, but I’m building a new order, and there’s no room for you in it, I’m afraid.”
Making sure she’d gotten another lungful of air, he then reapplied the pressure, choking her again.
“Mister LeHorn,” he said without turning around, “if I kill this physical form, then Slithaxx will just escape again, and go back into hiding. We can’t let that happen, obviously. Can you send them to the Void?”
“N-not from inside this cage,” LeHorn replied. “And I’d need some time, regardless.”
“Exit, what about you?”
“No. I could seal the Void, once the Unknown was imprisoned, but to banish them there, I’d need to be free of this cage and would have to erase some of the symbols on the floor.”
“And Bloom couldn’t either, nor can I. And I can’t free you lot without turning my back on this worm. Okay, then. We’ll do this the hard way.”
Grunting, he bore down with all his weight, squeezing until Sephera’s flesh ruptured beneath his fingertips. Blood welled out around them, and he dug into the softer tissue, clawing and rending until her throat was a wet, open ruin.
Fleeing, Slithaxx abandoned Sephera’s body.
Closing his eyes, Ob did the same with Bloom.
20
“W hat the fuck just happened? Are they both dead?”
“Well,” LeHorn said, “I guess that depends on who you’re talking about, Tony. We know now that what we feared was true. Ob was indeed in possession of his corpse. And the Unknown, or Slithaxx, as Ob referred to it, was apparently possessing Sephera. Now, given that we don’t know anything about the Unknown, and can only guess based on what we’ve witnessed, I’d say that unlike Ob, they were able to possess the living, and couldn’t inhabit a body once it is dead. So, Ob and Slithaxx? Very much alive, in their non-corporeal forms. Sephera and Bloom? Well…”
“Bloom’s really dead.” Teddy phrased it as a statement, his voice full of resignation and despondency.
LeHorn nodded. “I’m afraid so. You see those dark purplish areas on him? That’s liver mortis. Living people don’t have that.”
“We’ll have to make time to mourn him properly later,” Teddy said. “If we’re still alive.”
“These cocksuckers.” Tony hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat it through the bars onto Linda’s corpse.
“Which ones?” Teddy asked. “Our captors, or the Thirteen, or…?”
“All of them. Each and every one of these motherfuckers, including Ob. We’ve got to get out of these cages, guys. The runes and shit are all broken now, so it should be easier. But we need to be out before he comes back and fucking kills us all.”
“He won’t do that,” the Exit said.
They all turned to him.
“How’s that?” Teddy asked. “He’s one of the Thirteen.”
“Last time I checked,” Tony said, “they were the fucking bad guys.”
“He won’t kill us,” the Exit insisted. “Think about it. Each time we’ve encountered him, he’s tried to make a deal. A truce. And didn’t he help you fight Behemoth while I was in R’lyeh?”
“I reckon that was to keep himself alive,” Teddy replied. “Save his own stolen skin.”
The Exit shook his head. “It wasn’t. Tony, you saw. In the Labyrinth. He was fleeing He Who Shall Not Be Named, the same as Frankie was. I believe Ob has turned against the other members of the Thirteen.”
Teddy coughed. “What are you saying, Mendez?”
“Exit. I am an Exit.”
“You’re a child murdering son of a bitch,” Teddy countered. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about Henry.”
“Teddy…” LeHorn raised his hands, appealing for calm. Then he nodded at the Exit. “Let’s hear him out. We need him.”
“Yes,” the Exit replied, “you do need me. And I need all of you. But we also need Ob. Bloom is dead. Lucifer is missing. Frankie…well, we don’t know for sure, do we? Sephera said she was dead, but we don’t know that for sure. We’re supposed to be the Seven, but right now, I only count four.”
“We have Sarah,” Teddy argued. “All we have to do is go back and get her.”
“Teddy?” LeHorn spoke softly and slowly. “If we return for Sarah, then you know Rose is going to come with us, too. Do you really want to put her in harm’s way? Or Sarah, for that matter?”
“I reckon both of those gals are as tough as I am. Tougher, even.”
