Gudsriki (26 page)

“Let me tell you something. Even if you got free in this fortress, you'd have no luck whatsoever. You would be instantly recognized from any of five hundred cameras, any blonde would. We disposed of them all, his collection. Or so we said. I kept a few for myself, yes, in my wing of the fortress where Wulfgar never goes. If you weren't so dangerous, I would keep you too. Perhaps once we've lobotomized you, I will yet, yes….”

He motioned toward the guards.

“Bring the system.”

The guards left. The instant the door closed, Nel pushed the arm off herself like it was balsa wood, reached across the room to the man, grabbed him by the neck, and crushed his larynx.

“You're a nasty little fellow,” said Vibeke.

He looked at them, horrified.

“He's bound to be right, though,” Vibeke added. “If there are no blondes—”

“No problem,” said Nel. She snapped his neck and tightened her grasp until her hand was closed all the way around it. Then she flicked it up with her thumb, popping his head off like the top of a dandelion. She immediately ducked down into the spurting blood from his carotids. When she came back up, she was a redhead. Vibeke stared at her.

“Will this do?” Nel asked.

“Yeah, you look good in red.”

“The guards will be back momentarily to lobotomize us.”

They stood by the door. The guards came soon enough and fell instantly to Nel's double kick.

“You've gotta leave some for me, Nel.”

“Sorry.”

They left the guards there and proceeded into the fortress halls. It was a labyrinth in which they'd started out lost.

“I studied the place briefly a year ago but didn't store anything in partitions. I only vaguely remember the layout. The command center was in the middle of the bottom floor, though. The main halls all seemed to spiral inward to central rooms.”

They kept to the right wall until they reached a door. It held stairs, so they headed down. At the lowest floor, they cautiously left the stairwell to find another coil of halls. They proceeded down each hall, each corner turning left and each passage growing shorter and shorter. They were approaching the core of the maze.

 

 

T
HE
ASSEMBLY
sat at the table in the center of the boardroom. Water gently rolled down the glass to either side and through luxurious canals at the edge of the room. Wulfgar stood before them, happier than they'd seen him in days, with Michelle and Hati by his side.

Hati didn't know if her father would let her go. Half of her said it was a certainty he would after what she'd said; half of her was certain he'd put her threat to the test and lock her away. He was a scary man, he always was. But he loved her. He really did. And he would do what he needed to do for her. She hoped.

Wulfgar maintained proper decorum and resolved not to announce her departure until the end of the meeting, at the proper time for such announcements. It wouldn't be long. There was only one matter of business to tackle first.

“Christianity… is a symptom, not the disease. Religion—all religion exists because the world is broken and those broken seek to be fixed. Religion, of course, cannot fix them. So we must offer, in place of religion, a solution that works. Ulver must become that solution.

“For thousands of years, religion cursed this planet. Even after its ban, the Catholics rose up, the Mormons committed mass suicide, the Muslims, the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists…. Religion was never cleared properly from this globe, and now it sprouts up again. The cancer was never wiped out completely, and now it has grown back and metastasized.

“Michelle helped me see it as a disease and inspired the idea… the solution I'll share with you all today. We can end religion within the month, and all we have to do is—”

The door burst open. Vibeke and Nel stood with microwaves drawn: Vibeke's in her hand and Nel's deployed from within her arm.

“Assassins!” shouted Michelle.

Gerät pulled his heavy sidearm only to be shot by Vibeke's, burning through his bicep and bone, severing his arm at the elbow.

Security forces stormed forward from behind the waterfalls, forcing their way past Wulfgar's executives. Nel targeted them all and hit them with expansion missiles from her forearms. They all stood reeling for a moment before they burst, their heads and chests exploding. The security guards fell, along with several others hit by the missiles. Temujin's chest was gone. He collapsed like a rag doll. Stiletto broke down, missing half his body, and died, pouring blood like an open sluice. Gerät fell, missing his arm and the top half of his head.

And Hati fell beside him, the remnants of her liquefied brain spilling before her father's boots.

Wulfgar stood motionless. It wasn't registering. It had been too horrible, the hits of the tiny missiles, the burst of her forehead. It couldn't have been her… Hati… something was wrong, incorrect.

He himself was malfunctioning, he knew. He couldn't feel the terror he knew he should have felt. If anything he was in a strange sublime state, a merciful twist of his synapses that wouldn't let him register Hati's gruesome death despite his stare. His eyes took in her body, the backs of her eyes now visible in the gore, her hair soaked in blood and brain. The utter sudden lifelessness of her remains.

Nel walked forward, stepping in Hati's spilled gray matter. She seized Wulfgar by the hair. She split her fingers to crack open his jaw. He didn't move. He didn't know how to move just then. She ripped out the inhibitor control and sent the teeth into a fast chainsaw cycle. Then she forced him onto the hard concrete step at the water's edge, where his daughter lay beside him.

“Why?” he asked gently, above the sound of his jaw.

“For Violet MacRae,” said Nel.

Wulfgar breathed out a word as she raised her foot.

“Who?”

Nel stomped down. The force of her hydraulic leg forced his head into the teeth, which ground through it rapidly until they started hitting her boot. Only his jaw remained, its teeth cycling uselessly in the shallow red water.

“What have you done?” shouted Michelle. The few surviving others looked around in desperation or put their hands up.

Vibeke looked around. It had been a board meeting, with Wulfgar at the head of the table. Clearly he was planning something; with some luck, they'd never know what. They pushed on through the room and out the opposite door. Nearby was an emergency pod. They crammed in and ejected as guards stormed the board room.

The pod shot down through permeable radiation barriers and one-way fields into the open air beneath the fortress. They landed on an Elba street, fracturing it and burrowing almost a meter down. The pod stood up and opened, disgorging the two into the black snow.

They stood and headed for the shore.

“That went well,” said Vibeke.

“Yes it did.”

“Any sense of triumph?”

“Not like Violet would've felt.”

“You really know how to wreck a great moment.”

“You're the one who let her die.”

“Keep harping on it, why don't you. It's not like I hate myself for it.”

“Not half enough.”

Vibeke stopped in her tracks. “We just killed her damn archenemy. Can't you lighten up?”

“This is me happy.”

“You're mean. You're a mean, rude, heartless fucking bitch.”

“You know I'm not heartless.”

“I should've had Niide grow me a gerbil.”

“A gerbil can't help you kill Mishka.”

“Will you?”

“Of course.”

“Will you stop acting like a goddamn harpy?”

“Probably not.”

“What's it gonna take to shut you up?”

“You could in theory disconnect my control by hacking my vocal distributors.”

“Don't tempt me.”

Vibeke walked on toward the shore. Nel slowly followed after. The thought of Vibeke harming her was laughable. She reminded her of that fact.

“I could tear your limbs off in a split second, you know.”

“I know.”

“So why do you persist?”

Vibeke gave it a second of genuine thought. That's all it took.

“Because you're an insult to Violet. Her, but done wrong. She was mean too, ravenous and odd. But you're… off. You're just off, and it's grating to be around you.”

“We could go our separate ways.”

“You're also all I've got in the world.”

“Likewise.”

“So maybe we can try, just try to play nice?”

“Don't count on it.”

Vibeke gave her an angry but almost playful shove. Nel lightly shoved back and threw her ten feet, smashing her into a brick wall.

Twenty meters over their heads, Umberto awaited his afternoon clam, but Wulfgar didn't show. He waited and waited, and eventually he was fed but not by the man with the shiny jaw.

Umberto never gave up on the man. He waited for him every day. He waited as the small humans packed him on a ship and took him back to the North. He waited as he found the survivors of his old pod. He waited as the seas thawed and rose and as he watched his first pup grow mature and take over the pod.

But the human and his sweet shell-less clams never showed up again. As fat as he grew, as long as he lived, Umberto never forgot the human with the shiny jaw.

 

 

“Y
OU
'
RE
HAPPY
.
You killed… someone?”
said the thought. Nel ignored it.

“What's your name?”
it asked Nel.

“Go away,”
she replied.

“If I have a new voice in my head I have a right to know its name.”

She wasn't afraid to say her name. She was afraid to ask its name. Afraid it would be someone very specific. Someone she didn't want it to be.

“Are you afraid? I feel afraid,”
it said.

“Why are you afraid?”

“I can't control my body.”

Nel could sympathize.
“I can't control my mind as long as you're around.”

“I think you can. I can. I just hear you in it. Is that what it's like for you?”

“Yes…. Yes, I think so.”

She reflected on it. Whoever the voice was, it was a different mind. Not hers going insane, but someone she could talk to. Perhaps not an enemy within. Nel spoke frankly.

“Why can't you control your body?”

“I died. My girlfriend replaced it with a new one, but when I try to move it….”

Nel couldn't hear any more. She was certain now who she was speaking to. But she couldn't admit it.

“Stop,”
Nel thought.

“Why?”

“Just stop.”

The voice went silent.

“Tell me your name,”
demanded Nel.

“You're afraid of hearing my name, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“You're not a Valkyrie, are you?”

“No.”

“I am. I was.”

“I know.”

“You know who I am.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“Violet MacRae.”

The voice went silent. Nel wondered what had happened. How Violet's mind could have found its way into her new brain. It was Violet's brain but grown fresh, only implanted with her memories like so much video. Violet couldn't possibly exist.

“Are you Violet?”
Nel asked.

“Violet's dead,”
said the voice. And then it went silent.

 

 

“T
HERE
IS
no question I would have been his successor,” said Uggs. “I was with him from Venus.”

“Seniority is not a requisite,” said Grunth. “Loyalty to his plans is. You wouldn't follow Wulfgar's plans!”

“Perhaps,” said Shinji, “a neutral party on that issue should be appointed as interim head of state until—”

“And let me guess, that would be you?”

“Well, I am most qualified to—”

“You lie! I am the most qualified,” declared Leonard. “If you had any sense, you'd have appointed me already!”

“We have the sense not to let you anywhere near the throne, Leon. The law is clear. I am second in the line of succession. I am in power,” Indigo insisted to the applause of her supporters.

Uggs began shouting, “The line of succession is not intended for emergencies, and Wulfgar's death puts us in a state of emergency where I am legally obligated to take over the—”

The Geki appeared. Terror struck the secondary boardroom.

“Who among you rules Ulver?”

Every candidate responded at the same time, forced to by the pulse. “I do!”

“Who leads the crusade that seized your 6th Army?”

Uggs alone spoke. “I will when they find out Wulfgar is dead! We will merge with the Christians and form a holy empire the likes of which the world—”

Suddenly the Geki fire erupted from under the elder's cloak and burned a tornado around him, reducing him to nothingness in a hot red flash.

“Now who's next in the line of succession?”

Not a single board member restated their claim.

“We seek the leaders of the cult that took your 6th Army,”
said Varg.
“We will destroy them for you. Who was in charge of fighting them?”

Michelle squeaked in horror.

“Your intel! Who leads the cult?”