Path of transcendence om.., p.51
Path of Transcendence Omnibus II, page 51
What The Fuck? This bullet is moving faster than the first. There is a faintly visible spell pattern surrounding it. The world around me turns faintly grayish, and searing pain tears through my Body, Mind, and Soul. As I stagger slightly, my movement slows. Off-balance, I cannot avoid the bullet. It hits me in the middle of my chest, but there is no pain.
There is no question; the bullet passed through me without touching me. I do not understand the exact conditions, but somehow, being in the Shadow of the Od can put me out of phase with the universe around me. It does not appear to work with all attacks, but with some, I can be in a dimensional state where I cannot be hit.
Special Agent Jones' eyes open so wide that the whites are clearly visible entirely around his irises. Just as he pulls the trigger, he stumbles, and the bullet goes wide.
Lunging in the direction of Special Agent Jones' movement, I slice my left-hand blade into his forearm, but he jerks his arm upward quickly enough that it is only half severed. His hand still goes limp, and the gun falls from it.
With my next step, my right-hand blade pierces his abdomen just below the diaphragm.
Clenching his teeth, Special Agent Jones lets out a hiss of pain, but he does not scream. Grabbing my sword with his right hand sword, he attempts to halt the movement of the blade. The man is as tough as he appears to be.
With a twist of my wrist, I slightly change the angle of my thrust, and Special Agent Jones' fingers are severed from his hand. I drive my sword entirely through his body until the guard slams into his stomach.
With blood already dripping from the corners of his mouth, Special Agent Jones smiles. Hooking his fingerless hand onto my shoulder, he uses me to support the weight of his body. My sword did not sever his spine, but it has at least cut into it. His legs do not appear to be working right.
Clunk.
The gun that Special Agent Jones dropped hits the ground.
"Fuck, I never would've stood a chance."
"I wasn't this good when I left Earth."
Special Agent Jones coughs. "Before they put this thing in my head, I wasn't even a tenth of the fighter I am now."
Sheathing my left-hand blade, I lower Special Agent Jones to the ground, but I do not pull my other sword out of him.
"There is a laptop in my car. It has everything that I know about these god worshipers that are fucking with America. The password is Wendell. Mr. McGuinness, kill them all. Please."
"If I said that I am going to nuke the Earth, would that work?"
Special Agent Jones' laugh turns into a wracking cough. As the spasm ends, he smiles, revealing blood coated teeth. "Nuke the fucking planet!"
As the light of life fades from Special Agent Jones' eyes, I feel a strange hollowness in me. It feels like I have lost something of value. I did not like the man, but I realize that I respected him. We were not friends, but we were not exactly enemies. Initially, our respective situations pitted us against each other, but I think Clarence Jones was a man similar to myself, someone addicted to violence and battle that never belonged on Earth. I think I regret only having that one chance in South Dakota to fight with him on my side.
Pulling my sword from the corpse, I stand up. There is no need to remove any blood from the blade of the sword, ever. Even after skewering someone, it is as clean and shiny as when Boran gave it to me.
I wait a few moments for Angelique to finish her spell. She is surrounded by a miniature cyclone that is circulating faster and faster. As she finishes casting, the cyclone streaks into the sky, and in a matter of seconds, the drone is engulfed.
Boom!
Both the drone and the cyclone disappear in a fiery explosion, and fragments of metal rain down on the city.
There is a black four-door sedan parked next to my SUV. Just looking at the car, it screams, "I am a government shithead's vehicle!"
The laptop is in the back seat, and I take it.
"Time to get out of here. Let's go."
"Yes, Master." Angelique's voice is subdued.
Prisoners
*** Central California – Earth ***
Return: Day 344
August 7, 2078
(Brand)
thump
While opening the driver's door of my SUV, I pause.
thump.
Looking around, I do not see anyone, but I am certain I heard something nearby.
"Master?" Angelique's voice has an inquisitive tone to it.
Without replying to her, I attempt to spread my Psi awareness throughout the area around us.
Thump.
The sound is clearer. It seems to be coming from the direction of the cemetery's gate, but I cannot see or sense anything in that direction other than Special Agent Jones' corpse.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
My eyes are drawn to Special Agent Jones' corpse. Even if I tried, I could probably not stop my eyes from opening wide.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Special Agent Jones' heart has started beating again, and it is growing stronger. The blood that was dripping from his wounds appears to have stopped, but the wounds are not scabbed over. Moving closer to the corpse, I see blood flowing through the wound as though it is still contained within his blood vessels. His heart stopped. He was definitely dead, but now, he is alive again. What the fuck is going on?
"Angelique, do you know spells to ward against scrying and to block mind control?"
For a moment, Angelique reveals an introspective look. "I know a few good spells to block various types a scrying, but I don't know anything about mind control. That is a really specialized type of magic. I've never met many Casters that do much with things like mind control, mental illusions, or things like thought scraping."
"Get in the SUV." Picking up Special Agent Jones, I dump them in the back seat of the SUV and climb in the driver's seat myself.
Picking a random destination on the north side of Fresno, I get the SUV moving.
"Cast everything you have that block scrying on him."
"Yes, Master." Angelique begins casting spells.
I pull the slave collars out of my storage ring. I am actually building up quite a collection. With my pattern sight still operative, I examine the different collars, evaluating their properties. None of them are ideal for what I want to do, but I choose the one that will probably be the most effective in blocking any sort of remote control spells or Psi-based triggers. Placing it on Special Agent Jones' neck, I snap it closed and activate it.
Using my social organizer, I drag Angelique and Dacbold into the same party as Elan and myself. *Dacbold, I need you to take one of the vans from the motor pool and bring Elan with you.*
Through the party channel, Dacbold's surprise is easy to feel. *Where are we going?*
*Head North out of Fresno. I'm moving that way now. I may or may not be being tracked. I have someone with an implant that reminds me of those things you would sometimes see in Artificers down around Troven's Depths. It's complex. I cannot tell if it has any tracking functions built into it, but it definitely has some very sophisticated mind control.*
Dacbold is silent for a moment. *I'm not even close to an authority about Artificing, but I do have a few things that might block remote control systems.*
*Elan, what about you? Do you have any spells that could help?*
*Maybe, it would depend on the methods being used to control the person.* Elan's tone sounds pensive.
*Okay. Let me know when you are outside of Fresno. I don't want to go near our base before Special Agent Jones is properly warded. Angelique is warding him for now, but she doesn't know anything about mind control spells.*
* * * * *
After reaching an address in the industrial area north of Fresno, I keep sending the SUV to different random destinations while waiting for Elan and Dacbold.
Special Agent Jones is obviously healing. His rate of recovery is ridiculous, and it does not seem to be connected to the plate in his skull. The man is not an Adept, but he does not seem to be a normal Earth human. How many more aberrants like him are there on Earth?
Even though I am trying to save Special Agent Jones, I am confused about why I am doing it. For me, this is completely out of character. I do not have friends, and he is not one of my women. At the cemetery, I intended to kill him. I thought I had killed him. Why do I care if he lives or dies? I am a killer. I am not altruistic. I am not compassionate. I revel in the deaths of my enemies and take pleasure in torturing them. Other than Perzey and my supposed parents, I have never been affected by the death of another. So, why? Why does it matter if Special Agent Jones lives or dies?
Since she finished casting her spells on Special Agent Jones, Angelique has quietly sat in the front passenger seat. She seems uneasy, and her eyes never leave me. When I look at her, she does not look away, but she gives the impression that she would rather be someplace else. Despite going to great lengths to be of use to me and to please me sexually, she is unsure of where and how she fits in around me. Her life has left her nearly devoid of anything resembling self-confidence. Her only similarity to me is her desire to inflict pain on her enemies.
I look out the window. This area is dominated by a mixture of light and heavy industry. There are almost no people. Computers and robots carry out more than 90% of the manufacturing done in America. The only people employed in these businesses are some administrators and maintenance personnel. In the past, there were apparently tens of millions of people who were employed to carry out numerous tasks by the manufacturing companies. Now, they, their children, and in some cases, their grandchildren are all living off the government's Federal Minimum Income.
I did not know where or how the government acquires the money to subsidize the hundreds of millions of people who have no employment. The actual employment numbers are not readily available, but with what little is available to the public, when you do the math, more than 70% of the population is unemployed. The government having the money to support them all goes against all the laws of economics that I learned in my university economics classes.
After completing their compulsory education, nearly three quarters of the country does little more than watch video streams, drink, and fuck. If it were not for computers and the technological infrastructure, America would have already collapsed under its own weight.
*Brand, we're north of the city. I found a factory that is closed down. We're parked in one of the loading bays. They're roofed, so we are undercover from any aerial surveillance.*
Dacbold's words break me out of my musing. *Give me the address.*
As Dacbold gives me the address, I plug it into the SUV's autopilot. We are only a few minutes away from his location.
When the SUV pulls up to the abandoned factory's gate, I disable the autopilot and enter the grounds under manual control. Circling around the building, I find the loading dock, which has one of those steel frame and corrugated metal awnings covering it. I park on the passenger side of the van.
The van sinks on its suspension, and the sliding side door opens to reveal Dacbold. Most modern Earth vehicles were never designed to carry passengers with the mass of a Dvergar.
Exiting the SUV, I open the rear door and drag out Special Agent Jones.
As I turn to the van, Dacbold's eyes widen and his jaw drops open slightly. "Clarence?"
Very little surprises me anymore, but hearing Special Agent Jones' given name come out of Dacbold's mouth sends a jolt through me. "You know him?"
Dacbold scratches his chin through his thick beard. "I spent thirty years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I was a combat engineer in Afghanistan. That fucking war that just wouldn't end. I ran into Clarence a few times over there. Damn, he looks good for his age."
"How old is he?"
Dacbold shrugs. "It has been over twenty-five years since I retired. He has to be in his sixties, maybe, over seventy, but he hardly looks any older than the last time I saw him."
For the second time in less than a minute, I am rocked by surprise. Special Agent Jones looks like he would be at most in his early forties. He could easily pass for his early thirties. Yep, Special Agent Jones is definitely a freak.
"Why did you put a slave collar on him?"
"Look at its pattern. The way that one is designed, it might keep him from following the orders of whoever put that plate in his head."
"You really think I can figure that out just by looking at the pattern?" Dacbold stares at me with incredulity plastered all over his face.
I would not say that I am surprised, but I find it odd that he would not be able to ascertain some basic properties of an item from its pattern. I know that most human Smiths in the Battleground of the Damned would have a hard time understanding an Item of Power from its pattern, but I thought that was just from lack of knowledge. Dacbold has been trained by Dvergar, he should be able to understand the pattern by looking at it. Is it really that hard to do?
I do not bother to continue thinking about why Dacbold might be limited. "The spell patterns built into this collar block and restrict the transmission of most types of energy, this includes pure Mana and Psi. Set up whatever devices you have that might block control signals from reaching him.
"Elan, ward him in any way that you can to block tracking and communications from reaching him."
Elan stares at Special Agent Jones for a minute or so, and a frown turns the corners of her lips downward. Before casting her own wards, she undoes three of the wards that Angelique placed on him.
Dacbold takes out four rods that are engraved with runes that I cannot read. "Let me know when you have cast all your wards. The energy shield that these create will block you from casting most ward type spells on him and block a lot of Psi abilities at the same time."
A little less than four minutes later, Elan looks toward Dacbold, and her eyes narrow as she stares at the rods in his hands. "You can activate your Spirit poles."
Dacbold has his back to me so I cannot see his eyes, but at Elan's words, his spine straightens slightly. He does not say anything to Elan, but he mutters incantations under his breath and traces several runes on each of the rods. As Dacbold finishes with each rod, it floats out of his hands and begins to circle around his head.
Once all four rods are floating around Dacbold, he mutters another incantation and points toward Special Agent Jones. Following Dacbold's commands, the four rods begin orbiting around Special Agent Jones' recumbent body in an oval pattern.
Dacbold watches the rods for a few moments. "Okay. We're good to go."
"Follow me. I'm going to drive around randomly for a bit. Keep an eye out for anyone that seems to be tailing us. Once we can be fairly certain we're in the clear, we'll go back to our base."
* * * * *
Special Agent Jones is laying on a mattress set directly on the floor. His arms and legs are chained to two eyebolts, an inch thick, that are sunk into the floor, and the links of the chains are half an inch thick. I used the metal hafts of a couple pole arms, which were among the trash loot I acquired from the massacred Thuggies when I first returned to the Battleground of the Damned, to fashion the eyebolts. Since I do not have a proper forge on hand, the workmanship is extremely shoddy, but it is unlikely that Special Agent Jones will be able to break either the chains or the eyebolts. I suppose, it will have to do.
In a matter of hours, the wounds that Special Agent Jones suffered of my hands have healed to a degree that should have taken days. Like me, he is another freak. Perhaps, I should not say that he is like me. After all, I am probably not of Earth origin.
The Spirit poles, as Elan called them, are still circling around Special Agent Jones. While I do not know how effective they will be against the followers of Woden, they are completely effective in blocking my erratic Psi. With luck, Woden's bitch followers will never realize we are here before we leave.
I almost sneer. I have absolutely no faith in luck.
As the door of the room closes, it cuts off my view of Special Agent Jones. I turned to Dacbold, who is waiting for me in the hall. "How well do you know Special Agent Jones?"
Dacbold scoffs. "Barely. He's one of those people that was sort of a shadow operative for Homeland Security. You could never tell what agency he really belonged to. His ID usually said FBI, but that never made sense for the kind of work you would do. His main job looked to be problem-solving, which in government parlance means killing people."
"If you were in the Army Corps of Engineers, how did you come into contact with him?"
"How much do you know about the war in Afghanistan?"
I shrug and shake my head. "Only what they taught in high school and college social awareness classes."
Dacbold looks incredulous. "Social awareness? Is that the bullshit name to replace the bullshit name social studies, which should really be history?"
I can only shrug again. "I don't know. In college, there are some classes that were labeled as history, but they were all part of the social awareness degree program. They weren't something that you would take if it was not your major. As far as social studies goes, I can't remember ever hearing that term, at least not in regards to anything in school."
"So what did they teach you about Afghanistan?"
While I organize my thoughts, I do not say anything for a moment. "The short version would be that the xenophobic Republican government provoked and allowed a terrorist attack that was used as an excuse to start a war for the control of the Middle East oil supplies. The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and the war continued for over sixty years."
Dacbold holds up his hand and shakes his head. "It figures. It really fucking figures. They've been fucking with and fucking up education since before I started school. That's nothing but bullshit and lies. At that time, Afghanistan had absolutely no oil production, and even now, there are only a few minor oilfields inside their borders. It's safe to assume that you know something between jack and shit about what went on in Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan is not what you could call a normal war. Most of the real fighting, the stuff that made a difference, was done by covert operators. The other part of the war that could be argued to have maybe made a difference, but really did not, was the attempts at nation-building. It failed in Iraq, and it failed even more miserably in Afghanistan. The Army Corps of Engineers was involved in a lot of it. We built roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and anything else some idiot bureaucrat or politician thought might endear the locals to us. In the end, it was all a waste of time. When we got there, most of them hated our guts for being Americans and not licking the sweaty, sheep shit stained balls of their pedophile Prophet. When we left, it was no different.
