Quantum wrath, p.32
Quantum Wrath, page 32
I wasn’t quite as careful with the amount of power I loosed this time. I was more concerned with the crystal wall not remaining up suspiciously long rather than anything else.
My zenith quivered and billowed outward as I pried an ounce of my control free. Then the crystals instantly went black and fell in a dark, clattering rush, and I slammed the power back into the depths of my core.
Beads of sweat broke out on my brow as my zenith’s energy tried to slither free. It was itching for release, and I knew I was playing with fire here, but I just growled quietly as I grappled with it, and I heard the faintest electric buzz underneath the sound of my own voice.
It faded away as I finally succeeded with a tooth-grinding effort of containing my power.
I felt Lu’s pink eyes on me as I panted heavily, but I just gave her the barest of glances before I grabbed the beast’s lead to pull them onward.
The arc of ground that the crystals had shot out of was bare and smooth as we stepped over it, but I barely noticed. Now that my power was fully under my control again, the heady energy was returning more than ever. The sweat vanished as my body thrummed with anticipation and just a trace of nerves.
But hey, nerves were good.
They meant I hadn’t lost my shit and gone full chaos-machine like Blondie.
And they were worth keeping track of, like any other instinct I possessed.
Even in situations like this, when every inch of me was eager to unleash hell on some well-deserving assholes.
Next to me, Lu twitched slightly, and my focus snapped back to the moment.
I tensed in anticipation of some sign we’d been discovered.
A second later, the ground shuddered violently nearby. A slab of the plant-covered dirt slowly rose upward like a trapdoor again and revealed the ramp that sloped down into the blackness. Inside, I could hear the echo of hooves clopping slowly, like there were a bunch of the antlered beasts milling around down there.
I listened closely for the sound of actual hoofbeats, but I heard nothing.
So either there was some mechanism that sensed the beasts’ presence, or someone was watching to open this weird-ass beastie garage for me.
I promptly and roughly dragged Lu to the ground, and she made sure to struggle against me just enough to be believable. I wasn’t sure what to do to send this steed off, and it showed no signs of moving, so I did what I’d do with any other creature of its kind and smacked it lightly on the rump.
It let out a shrill bugle in response and went galloping down into the darkness.
“Cool,” I murmured, and Lu snorted in response as we turned forward.
We had almost reached the looming doors now, but then they slammed open on their own, and a short man in a cape came striding out, along with a clearly inferior cadet who followed him with practiced, carefully measured steps.
The caped guy’s beady eyes fell on me, and he skidded to a halt.
“We had people looking out for you!” he blurted. Then his eyes narrowed, and his lip curled as he shot a look between me and Lu. “You know how stupid it was to walk in here? The boss will have your fucking heads for this.”
I shrugged, raised my gun, and shot a hot stream of acid at his head.
I got a brief glimpse of the tower’s inside through the sizzling green hole in his face before he slumped to the ground.
The second man howled and yanked his weapon up toward me, but Lu was quicker. She’d already ripped out of her bonds before I’d finished with the caped man, so the second idiot died with a bundle of metal blades sticking out of his head.
Then my blonde companion tore the gag off her mouth.
“Nice one, Heathy,” she panted.
“C’mon,” I said briskly. “Oh, hold on a sec… Lu, grab that one, will you?”
I nodded at the man she’d killed while I knelt and looped my arms under the arms of the one I had shot.
Then I gathered him up and flung him toward the slowly-narrowing gap in the beastie garage entrance with all my strength.
His limp body flopped down into the darkness. At Lu’s hands, his companion’s remains went hurtling in a bare second later, just before the stone slab slammed down to meet the ground.
I smirked and turned to Lu. “Where were we?”
She giggled and clapped her hands as she started skipping straight for the entrance. She did an elegant little twirl when she got there, but then she waited with barely-contained excitement for me to do the honors.
It was go time.
“Alright, stay focused and on your toes,” I instructed.
“Yes, sir,” Lu purred at once.
My zenith hummed in my veins as I easily shouldered through the massive door with Lu at my side.
The ground floor of the obelisk was one big room with a gleaming obsidian floor. There were circles in the ground the size of bike wheels that were outlined in gleaming blue light like the compartments we’d seen in the obelisk. Doors dotted the walls at regular intervals.
Someone came out of a door now. It was another man in a black jumpsuit, and he was carrying an armful of guns.
He dropped his swaggering stride at the sight of his dead comrades, but his shout died on his lips as my jet of acid punched a hole in his chest. The heap of guns clattered and thumped to the floor.
I loped over to his body and knelt to snatch up one of the guns.
A door across the room opened, and another unit man came striding out.
“Perfect timing,” I grunted. I aimed the weapon at his chest and pulled the trigger.
Bracing myself for recoil was practically instinctive at this point, and it was a damn good thing, because the blast from this gun just about knocked me off my feet. Despite that, its discharge was quiet, although it was incredibly odd-sounding. It was a soft, low whoof, like when someone purses their lips and blows, but it was about three octaves lower with a metallic twang to it. I saw Lu twitch explosively in the corner of my eye, but I was too focused on the scene in front of me to look away as the bullet barreled into my target’s chest.
A millisecond later, the man’s entire body shattered like glass.
Peach-colored shards sprayed everywhere. His clothes parted with a rip as the bigger fragments of his chest wall tore through, followed by a shower of bright red splinters that must’ve been his internal organs. The jagged debris clattered, clinked, and tinkled to the ground within a six-foot radius of where the man had stood.
Then it was over, and we were left staring at a jumble of human remains that looked like fragments of a broken china dish.
“Holy shit,” Lu hissed, and her platform boots crunched over shards of human as she raced over to the remains. She knelt to pick up what looked like a fragment of the man’s eye and held it up to her face with a fascinated expression. “What did it do to him?”
“No time,” I said, even though this really was fucking fascinating.
I raced over to one of the glowing circles on the ground and pressed on it experimentally with my foot.
Just like in the weapons lab, the segment of floor slid smoothly upward to reveal a compartment with two sides to it. This one was as big around as a bicycle wheel, though, and it was tall enough even for me to stand inside.
Its bottom only filled part of the circle, and it functioned as the top step of a staircase that dropped steeply downward.
It seemed deserted, and I decided to risk a quick trip down the stairs. I’d been to a dimension called Inox where all the monarchs’ explosives had been stored underground, and I wondered if things might be the same here.
But first I decided to drag the dead men’s bodies down so no one would be alerted from the lobby, and I shoved them behind the clusters of pipes that spanned the walls one by one.
Lu hurried downstairs after me with a man under each arm.
After that, we headed down the next staircase.
After about ten steps, I hit a point where the tunnel flattened out and split in two directions.
I looked back and forth as I debated which way to go.
Before I could choose a direction, the sound of more voices echoed from both directions.
“Follow me,” I murmured.
I cracked one of the metal doors and listened as I scoured the darkness inside with my eyes. Everything was silent, and the room was crossed by a shadowy mass of pipes, boilers, and valves that told me it must be a mechanical room.
I slipped inside and pulled Lu in after me, and then I closed the door softly.
“Don’t make a move unless they attack,” I whispered. “And for the love of god, don’t fire that weapon in the dark when we’re in such close quarters.”
She nodded silently.
“Whoever it was, they couldn’t’ve gone upstairs,” one voice was saying urgently. “That means they’ve gotta be–”
“Shut up, moron,” another voice snapped. “We need to search fast. Men, get going.”
At the sound of several voices, Lu straightened up a little, and she rubbed her hands together eagerly at the prospect of taking on multiple opponents.
I heard the sound of doors being smashed open nearby. The sound got louder and closer, and someone in the next door over shouted, “Clear!”
Our door came next.
Every nerve in my body was taut as a bowstring, and it felt like each one of my senses sharpened at the sound of feet thudding across the floor.
I swung the door open hard, and I was rewarded by a sharp thud and a groan of pain as it slammed into a man. Then I came barreling out, and Lu bounded out behind me.
The next man in line stumbled back. He flung his arm up instinctively to shield himself, but I rammed my machete up into his armpit. His body convulsed and spewed blood as I yanked my blade free, and then I shoved him into the incoming asshole directly behind him.
The man went staggering. I danced forward, snatched him by the shirt, and hauled him past me to send him in Lu’s direction.
“Merry Christmas,” I hollered over my shoulder.
Demented giggles echoed through the tunnel as Lu zeroed in on the man, but I focused on taking care of myself as I heard her going to town on the bastard.
I had some distance between myself and the next incoming attacker, so I raised my stolen revolver and fired straight at his chest.
But then the bullet lodged there like a dart in a dartboard.
A shudder went through the man and a groan burst through his lips, but then he managed to yank the projectile free.
“Great,” I muttered.
He promptly sent the bladed projectile whizzing at my head.
“Heads up, Barbie!” I yelled as I threw myself down.
But instead of going down entirely flat, I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around the man’s legs. He thrashed in my grip on the way down, but I clawed my way forward and split his chest open with my machete.
The sound of more footsteps pounding toward me from the front made me whip my head up. I managed to get one foot under me just in time, and I lunged upward with my blade raised.
This dude was wearing some type of armored fabric, too, but he still let out a guttural grunt at the blunt force of the weapon jabbing into his gut. I let my momentum carry me upward and leveraged myself around to slam him into the wall.
A white, giggling blur sailed past my back as I sliced the man’s throat open. Nearby there were more grunts, thuds, and groans as Lu took out one man after another.
Finally, we were surrounded by nothing but silence and the soft splat of blood dripping onto the ground nearby.
I darted down the tunnel and opened a few more doors, but all I saw was more pipes and boilers.
“Let’s get upstairs,” I said.
We moved out into the hallway.
“Wait a sec,” Lu breathed. She glanced into the room we were passing by. “All those pipes…”
“Get to the point,” I commanded.
Lu didn’t respond with words. She just slipped her axe out of its sling, jumped high, and swung it at the bundle of pipes with all her strength.
The angle made her look absurd, almost like a cartoon character mining for gold. But the slender muscles that flexed taut in her body were filled with something more than normal human strength.
A lot more.
After the second strike, the pipes burst.
Green goo sprayed in every direction, and Lu let out a giggling shriek.
“Okay,” she panted. “Let’s go, but I’m gonna keep breaking pipes on the way, ’kay? ’Kay.”
I shrugged without concern and took off for the stairs.
Lu paused regularly to go destructo on each mechanical room we passed, but she always caught up with me again within seconds.
When we reached the surface, the tunnels behind us were echoing with the rush and slosh of green goo flooding through them. Everything was empty, though.
I chose a door at random and shoved it open. A dark metal staircase ascended into the hallway above us, and it had two shiny black doors at its crest. The walls were covered in thin metallic panels.
My foot was on the first step when shit started to happen.
My stride hitched as the stair under me tilted. There was a sharp crack as the other stairs did the same. A second later, I was looking at a perfectly smooth stone ramp beneath me.
My feet slid slightly on the glossy surface, and I grunted as I managed to regain my footing.
Then, without warning, jets of clear liquid sluiced out from the top of the stairs.
It happened so fast that I was caught off guard, and before I knew it, I was sliding down in a deluge of not water, but oil.
“What the fuck kind of Scooby Doo shit is this?” Lu hissed as she leaped onto the ramp.
Her legs churned and her arms windmilled with the effort of trying to do anything other than fall on her ass.
A bunch of soft clicking sounds made me turn to the side, and I saw that the metallic wall panels had leaped from the wall of their own accord. I raised my acid gun as they whipped together into a complex framework that loomed over us.
The panels had formed into something like a giant, segmented spider with blades for legs.
“Oh, hell no,” I growled.
I fired at it with my shatter gun. One whole leg quivered and screeched as it flew apart, but I was still left with seven more.
I dodged one that flew dangerously close to my face. On the other side of the room, Lu taunted the metal beast with names as she danced aside from its bladed leg. She sawed through two of them with her acid gun, then snatched the severed portions and started fencing with the remaining leg blades.
“Quit fucking around,” I snarled over the clash and ping of blade against blade.
Now that there were less legs getting in my way, I took aim at the spider’s body with my shatter gun, but the projectile lodged there with a low, quivering hum.
Then Lu sent a jet of green acid lancing up at it.
The whole spider exploded upward and outward into gleaming green shards of light. I threw myself to the ground, and Lu’s body thudded down next to mine.
A few stray pieces clinked to the ground, but most of them were stuck to the walls and ceiling as I cautiously straightened up.
“That was fun,” Lu sang. “Did you see the way I–”
“Shut up,” I sighed.
I didn’t wait for a response. I just stepped back and then sprinted at the nearby wall.
I angled my body sideways as I leaped through the air and planted my foot against the solid stone, and I launched myself up toward the door with all my strength. A big guy like me didn’t have as easy of a time with the spinning-through-the-air, acrobatic type shit as a slender creature like Lu, but when it came down to stuff like this, I was strong enough to make up for the extra bulk.
Blondie gaped at me as I hurtled through the air and wrapped my fingers around the door handle.
There was just one small problem.
“Of course it’s… fucking… locked,” I growled through clenched teeth.
Under normal circumstances, I probably could’ve torn my way through this door with relative ease. But below me there was oil sluicing out from the fucking doorstep, and a steep slope along with it.
Then, all of a sudden, the doorknob rattled and turned.
I cursed under my breath and clung on tight as it twisted under my fingers, and then it swung open and outward.
I swayed wildly sideways through the air, but there was no stopping it. And there was also no missing the sight of a furious and terrified face staring down the barrel of a gun at me as I swung through the air.
I only had a moment to react. I threw all my weight into carrying the momentum of the swing, so the door arced wide open.
Then I planted my feet against the wall and shoved.
The door swung back inward with a shriek of protest, and I leveraged my legs around so hard and so fast that I felt sure something popped.
My toes belted right into the bastard’s face.
I got a glimpse of a crumpled nose and a row of shattered teeth before he doubled over in pain. His gun slipped to the ground and slid downward into the torrent of gleaming oil, but he managed to claw his way to his feet as he struggled to regain himself. His hand groped down to his waistband in search of another weapon, but I arced my body around with every ounce of my strength to push off the wall again.
The snarling, bleeding man clearly anticipated my move as he stepped forward with a new, smaller weapon in his hand, but he brought his hands up high, and I went low.
He let out a strangled grunt of pain through his shattered teeth as my feet hammered into his crotch, and he fell to his hands and knees.
One more swing.
This time, I angled my feet down vertically to get them under me as I released my grip on the door handle.
I managed it, but I had to turn the motion into an awkward, frog-like leap to avoid tripping on the Unit man. I heard a shout of protest from Lu just before the door slammed shut behind me.
But there was nothing I could do about that at the moment. The Unit man rolled right over and fired his weapon at me. A familiar, polygon-shaped projectile flashed past my face. I brought my fist slamming into the man’s jaw, and then I carved a jagged green path through his chest with my acid gun.
