Quantum wrath, p.11
Quantum Wrath, page 11
The most outdoor activity was concentrated in places that were far away from the smelly domed plants that dotted the landscape. But regardless of location, not everyone was partying. The city was full of people who were still trying to find lodging. It seemed like families were having the hardest time. I spotted whole troops of kids trudging along behind tired-looking parents laden down with bags.
A brief thought flickered through my mind as I wondered if these same kids would be licking the fucking stones after too long spent living here.
But the kids weren’t the only troops of small creatures running around.
A grating, high-pitched screech sounded out next to me. I raised my hand, ready to deck Lu if she was pulling some supervillain shit, but after a second I realized the sound hadn’t come from her at all.
A tiny, monkey-like creature was racing along the balconies just over our heads, and it was followed by about a dozen more of its kind. They were all singing the song of their people, which apparently was a piercing shriek with an oddly impressive vibrato.
Thirteen sets of gleaming, electric-purple eyes peered down at us as the silver-furred creatures turned their heads our way.
Then, in one collective motion, they all changed direction and headed straight for Lu.
She froze in place with her fists raised as the monkeys landed with tiny thuds on the railing next to her, and I choked back a laugh at the sight.
The monkeys– or whatever they were– stayed totally silent as they stared at Lu with something I thought was curiosity. Their creepy, bright purple eyes were locked on hers.
“I think they like your eyes,” I commented with a snort. “Good likeness. Scrunch up your face like them, maybe there’s a family resemblance.”
Lu’s pink eyes flashed furiously as she glared at me, but I just chuckled and continued down the road.
The monkeys kept pace with us as we continued on toward the peaks, and I kept a wary eye on them in case one of those fuckers tried anything. They seemed to get bored with our pace, though. It wasn’t long before they scampered off to join the rest of their kind who raced around the city down here.
“Ouch,” I sighed. “Even monkeys reject you.”
“Fuck off,” Lu growled and hopped high enough to punch my bicep.
In theory, I was sure the same hit would’ve easily smashed a glass window, but it didn’t cause me even a dull pang of discomfort. I was tempted to give her a solid one back just to remind her not to poke bears that weighed three times as much as her, but a shriek from up ahead wrenched my attention away.
I saw the figure of a kid go toppling over with about twenty monkeys on top of it.
They all scattered at a vicious kick from the kid’s mom, but one of them now had an ice cream cone clutched in its tiny, furry hand. Then at the next dark street we passed, a whole gang of the silver-furred creatures came bolting toward us.
Lu’s head whipped toward them, and she let loose a tiny but piercing squeak that penetrated the whole region, but somehow didn’t stab my own eardrums at all.
The monkeys all jumped like they’d been electrocuted. Their little purple eyes blazed twice as bright, like they’d undergone some electrical surge, and I briefly wondered if their heads were about to pop like water balloons. But then they scrambled away and sprinted into the night.
“Creepy little jerks,” Lu growled as we carried on.
Soon, we were approaching the edge of the chaotic metal jungle and nearing the region of pumpkin-shaped buildings. The stunted volcano peaks blocked out the stars ahead.
But then Lu’s head perked up all of a sudden, like she’d heard something off to our right.
The sound reached my ears a few seconds later, and it made me stop in my tracks.
The heavy clop of hooves, the creak of wood, and the jangle of chains set off every alarm bell in my body. I closed my hand around Lu’s wrist and yanked her behind the nearest building.
“Shh,” I said in the tiniest possible whisper.
She nodded silently and pressed herself against the metal wall of the building.
I stepped past her and slowly peeked my head around the corner.
A huge wooden jail cart with metal bars that glowed a nearly radioactive green was rolling down the street. It was pulled by a team of looming, hoofed steeds with horns like reindeer that came to jagged, barbed points in the front. Each point was apparently tipped with a similarly radioactive-looking substance.
But the cart’s wheels were what really stood out to me.
They looked like they were made out of rubber, and they had a chunky ribbed tread to them, with some weird, rubbery membrane between them that had a faint sheen to it, like there were glowing light strips beneath. Compared to the cart itself, they seemed weirdly high-tech.
A man with a whip sat in the front of the wagon and urged the steeds onward. The rattling of chains came from the people behind the glowing bars.
I could see their outlines just barely behind the glaring glow. There was a swaying glass ball that hung from the ceiling inside the jail cart. It looked just like the lanterns we had glimpsed in the rich regions of the city, but I could see the faded lines on the glass where the water had dried up. The bottom half of the orb was filled with dead fish, and their rotting scent suffused the air as the cart creaked past us.
Armed men rode behind the wagon on the back of more looming, antlered steeds. They were all dressed the same, in black hooded jumpsuits with padded shoulders that came to a sharp point, and loose pants that gathered tightly around the ankle. I realized these men must be from the Unit we’d been hearing so much about.
They seemed to be getting as bored as the monkeys had with being led along at a slow pace. One of them took off down a side street to cut off the jail cart and ride ahead of it, and the others quickly followed suit.
People shrieked and fled as they were almost trampled by the riders. A few of the pissed-off steeds even rammed the glowing tips of their antlers in the civilians’ directions, but it looked like everyone managed to escape unscathed.
I flitted just outside the shadow of the building to watch them continue on their path, but then I clearly saw one of the men dismount to snatch up a fallen pedestrian.
He barked a command, and the driver jerked the jail cart to a halt.
There was a furious rattling as the armed rider unlocked the ominously green bars of the cart’s door. He half-boosted, half-threw the pedestrian into the wagon. I heard soft groans and chains rattling as the guy landed on the people already heaped inside the cart.
Then the armed man slammed the door, locked it, and let out a shout.
The driver urged the steeds back into a walk, and the cart creaked onward.
I turned to Lu, and her eyes pulsated into a hot-pink glow ever so briefly.
“Alright,” I said softly. “We’re following them.”
Chapter 7
Lu stood up a little straighter and looked at me with new delight.
Then a smirk crossed her face.
“Awww,” she taunted in a sing-song voice. “So you do care about these pathetic people.”
“I don’t,” I said in my most unruffled tone, mostly because I knew it irked her not being able to torment me. “But I’m curious, and we have nothing to do for the next seventy or so hours. Plus, this is a dimension I might come back to at some point, so it’s best to know as much about it as possible. Especially shit like this.”
“You mean a dimension ‘we’ might come back to,” she corrected me.
I declined to respond.
Then I paused to glance at her. She was looking in the direction of the wagon, and the expression on her face reminded me of nothing more than Wile E. Coyote when he thinks he’s about to catch the Road Runner.
“Hey.” I shoved her up against the nearest building and pressed my face close to hers.
“Ooooh,” she giggled softly. “Helloooo…”
“Shut up,” I said. “You need to listen to me.”
The pink glow in her eyes faded as she looked at me.
“We are observing,” I said forcefully. “Say it with me.”
She sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes, but nodded.
“We are observing,” she chanted dully.
“That means no attacks,” I said firmly. “No bullshit whatsoever. No shrieks, squeaks, or chirps. No–”
“I get it, I get it,” she said impatiently. “I promise, I’ll be good. For now.”
I locked eyes with her for another few seconds before I nodded.
The tiniest smirk crossed her face as I released her.
“You know,” she said softly. “It’s kinda hot when you get all–”
“And no fucking idle chitchat,” I added.
She mimed locking up her lips and then drop-kicking the key off into the darkness.
I closed my eyes for a second and sighed.
Then I started walking again.
With its size, glowing bars, and antlered steeds, the jail cart wasn’t difficult to follow. It was confined to the widest roads in the city, and it was headed steadily toward the nearby edge of the bowl-like valley. This brought it right past the volcanoes and toward the edge of the city itself.
I couldn’t be sure if the people in the wagon were freshly-captured slaves or some other type of prisoners, but given the shit I had seen in some dimensions, the former wouldn’t have surprised me.
Regardless, I now knew that the Unit I had heard people mention was behind this.
And regardless of who it was, if there was someone capturing people and hauling them off into the night, I wanted to know as much about it as possible.
Partly to make sure that I didn’t become one of those people.
But there genuinely was an element of curiosity to this for me, too. Not the mischievous, wily, chaotic-evil curiosity that seemed to possess my blonde companion like a fucking demon. But I had all sorts of half-resolved, morbid questions in my mind about the state of humanity in different dimensions. Some places had been alright, I guess, but plenty had been straight-up irredeemable. They were truly incurable of the corruption and violence that had their whole society in a chokehold. Places that just deserved to be torched to the ground.
Was this place irredeemable, too?
I had no idea at this point. But this was the first step in finding out.
I watched the faintly glowing, dead-fish lamp swaying inside the wagon. That was the first thing that smelled foul to me, and not just literally. It was clearly meant to be a mockery of the living opulence found in the richer regions of the city. Something these prisoners could never even hope for.
Fragments of the Unit men’s conversations drifted back to me as we followed them.
“… hurry up and get these ones to the lab,” one of them grumbled. Then his voice switched to a tone of elated anticipation. “Another raid at moonset. Man, I’ve been waiting all week for this…”
“Yeah, say that a little louder,” his companion snarled. “Just in case anyone didn’t hear you.”
They dissolved into bickering as they rode on, and my mind moved fast as I contemplated what I’d just learned. I glanced at the sky overhead and saw a scattering of pallid green stars, along with a faint but poisonous-looking green moon. It was almost directly overhead, so I figured we had several hours at least until it disappeared over the horizon.
That was if celestial shit worked similarly here to the way it did on Earth, and in many other dimensions I’d been to.
Things weren’t always entirely the same, so I resolved to keep a close eye on the creepy green moon as the night progressed. Depending on where it was when we finished this little expedition, maybe Lu and I would just stay in the forest tonight after all. If it was still high enough in the sky, maybe we’d venture into the city again to see if we could find a place to stay near The Peaks, where the raids didn’t extend to.
Whatever we did would be after following this wagon to its destination, so I put it out of my mind for the time being.
As we neared the edge of the volcanic region, there were several areas of crumbling pavement from the Gnashers. I expected the cart to steer around them, but then the whole wagon lifted almost a foot higher.
“What…?” I murmured.
Then I realized it was the wheels.
The grooves in them had widened and spread, and the membrane between them stretched out. Instead of being perfectly circular, the tires were now shaped into deep, protruding ridges. With the membrane between them, it looked like some type of fleshy, glowing origami.
But the ridges seemed incredibly sturdy, and they allowed the cart to roll over the rough terrain with ease. The steeds seemed entirely unfazed by the change in terrain, too. They were picking their way through it with the practiced ease of mountain goats.
Giant, terrifying mountain goats with radioactive, poison-tipped reindeer antlers.
As we followed, I quickly worked out a plan in my mind.
If possible, we would follow this wagon to wherever it was heading. By all indications, that was somewhere outside the city. Following shouldn’t be too hard. It was dark, and the forest came almost right up to the edge of the city. The fact that it glowed made approaching it a little risky as far as being spotted, but once we were inside, we could lose ourselves in the thick shrubs pretty easily to veil ourselves from sight. Then, if all went well, we could follow parallel to the jail cart to see where it was headed.
The cart turned ahead of us and started up a steep, zigzagging ramp that led up out of the valley. With the size of the cart and the steeds pulling it, the driver had a hard time with the sharp turns. There was plenty of cursing, swearing, and whipping of the antlered steeds. That gave us plenty of time to travel to one of the many staircases and head up it. There were no crops on this side of the valley, so there were no glowing fences to signal where we were going.
When we reached the top of the stairs, the wagon was still struggling its way up the ramp.
I led the way through the buildings toward the edge of the city so I could get a glimpse of the landscape ahead.
Over here, the buildings dwindled into smaller and smaller ones the same way they had on the other side of the city. The glowing forest with its gently swaying vines and leaves came right up to the outermost buildings here, and there were even some glowing, oozing stumps in the shadow of the buildings.
But nearby, there was an area where everything faded into darkness.
Well, relative darkness.
Being a super definitely had its uses as far as seeing went.
My eyes quickly adjusted after looking away from the glowing plant matter, and I saw that the dark region was still forested, but it seemed to have lost all its glow. The plants were the same kind, but they looked limp, deflated, and dead somehow.
This was a sharp contrast to the tall, rigid spire that stabbed up into the sky between them. It seemed to possess all the glowing light that the surrounding forest lacked, and I wondered if that was the result of technology or some sort of magic that leached from the power of the land. I had seen elements of both these things during my travels so far, and in my experience, both could be equally powerful.
The place looked like a vast, looming clock tower. It seemed like it was made of obsidian in places and big slabs of metal in others, but the gaps between slabs gleamed with an ominous light. In random places, big tubes of metal stuck out from it like arms, and each one of these had a big capsule on it. The sight of glowing windows in the capsules told me they were some type of separate chambers that could be accessed from the tower. There were chimney pipes sticking out at odd angles, too, with plumes of black and silver smoke puffing out of them and into the night.
I glanced back at the jail cart that was still about midway up the ramp, and then back at Lu.
“Let’s go get under the cover of the trees now,” I said softly.
She nodded.
There was enough space between buildings that flitting from one to another would just make us look conspicuous, so I took off toward the forest at a steady walk. I headed in a direction that took me a little away from the tower diagonally, so it wouldn’t look like I was walking straight toward the place.
Once we were behind the cover of the undergrowth, I turned our steps toward the area where the ramp crested the valley, and I waited.
Normally, glowing foliage could be a con when it came to moving covertly. But the constant shifting and swaying of the foliage here was a huge advantage for us. We could walk in the cover of the thicker growths without our movement being obvious.
Once we were under cover, I settled back and waited.
The antlered steeds snorted and huffed as they finally crested the ramp. The jail cart jumped and jarred roughly with every bump and crack in the road. Inside, the prisoners’ heads swayed and bumped with each motion, but otherwise they were completely still under the dim glow of the dead fish.
I saw then that the fish weren’t the only source of light. There were some bioluminescent plants hanging from the ceiling of the wagon, too.
These plants didn’t look anything like the ones in the city or the forest around us, though. Their glow was a pale red rather than green or teal. As I watched, they started to shift and rustle. Then a long, sinuous vine looped itself down like a snake. It wrapped itself slowly around the neck of one of the slumped prisoners.
The light shone dully against his skin, so I could clearly see his arms shoot up to try and yank it free. He let out a thin wail of fear, and the cart rattled as he struggled with the plant, along with several other prisoners.
One of the riders spurred his steed back to come level with the metal bars of the cart.
“Stop yammering,” the rider snarled. “Or I’ll come in there and really give you something to cry about.”
“But it’s killing him!” one of the prisoners gasped.
“Oh?” The rider said in an overdone mockery of concern. “Here, then…”
He ripped a gun from his belt, jammed the barrel through the bars, then pulled the trigger.
Well, it looked like a gun. But whatever the hell came out of that weapon sure as hell wasn’t a bullet.
