New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (20 page)

“Death was the key,” the Lurker said, answering Kenneth’s thoughts as if he had spoken them out loud. “Mind-Soul patterns cannot be copied. They can’t be in two places at once, you see. For the most part, they can be transferred only if the original anchor point is destroyed, namely the human body. There are ways around that limitation; the Mind-Soul is a holographic construct, and a fragment can retain much of the information of the original, but, again, that can only happen after the death of one’s physical incarnation. You persisted in seeing the mind as just a collection of chemically-stored information, and thus failed to understand it.”

The idea that his mind was a metaphysical construct that couldn’t be duplicated offended Kenneth’s sensibilities. He’d always been a good materialist, utterly convinced that even the mysteries of Parahumanity had perfectly mundane explanations that someone – hopefully he himself – would eventually discover. He told himself that even if the Lurker’s words were true, there could still be a materialistic explanation to the phenomenon. In any case, it appeared his demise had led to a mental transfer to the Muninn Device, which meant his mind was trapped inside an untested machine in the Sanctum.

The White Sanctum had been a joint project, something he and John Clarke had spent years building, a secret place where they could retreat from the world for a time. They had come up with it together, when they realized the Freedom Legion was to become an ongoing project that would consume their entire lives, even though at the time neither of them had realized how long those lives would be. They had built the Sanctum in the frozen wastes of the Artic with no outside help, and hidden the facility deep beneath a perennial block of ice. The retreat had served both of them well, providing a place to meditate, relax and replenish their energies. For the most part, they had scheduled their visits so they could each be alone there.

“How did you find the device?” Kenneth asked the Lurker. “And how were you able to access it?”

“When my consciousness fragmented after death, one of its pieces found the Muninn Device. Unfortunately, it was attuned to a specific mind, and I found myself an unwelcome guest. I was about to depart when your own demise changed things.”

“You are dead as well, then,” Kenneth said. He found he did not like to play the role of ignorant interlocutor, and felt a twinge of sympathy for the friends and associates he’d forced to ask leading questions and wait expectantly for his explanations. Even as he made the statements, memories of his last talk with John resurfaced. John had mentioned the Lurker was presumed to have died, hadn’t he?

“Yes, for about thirty-five hours. Death was something of a relief, to be honest. I was quite mad at the time, and the destruction of my body broke up my Mind-Soul into several pieces. One of those pieces remains infected with the Taint that was afflicting me; I fear it will prove to be a nuisance in the near future. This version of myself feels much cleaner, much saner. I haven’t felt so well since before the Great War.”

“I still don’t understand how we managed to upload our consciousness into the device. As far as I know, the machine has been deactivated for years and is gathering dust in a facility in the Artic.”

The Lurker laughed again, setting Kenneth’s teeth on edge. He had to fight a sudden urge to lunge at the man in the gas mask and beat him into submission.

“You keep making assumptions, Brass Man. I don’t know where the original device is, but the one we accessed is active. It’s a copy of your creation, meant for somebody else. Fortunately, your original matrix was not completely erased when the machine was repurposed for its current owner, and it called your Mind-Soul into it, as it was first meant to do. Still, you wouldn’t have been able to upload your consciousness without my help. I know a few tricks, some of which came in handy here. We can’t stay here long, however. We have to transfer ourselves onto the blank clone body connected to the device.”

A clone body? “The use of clone bodies is illegal,” Kenneth said.

“True. Which means the device is in the hands of a criminal. But if you want to avoid dissolution, you are going to have to join me and take over that clone, Doctor. It’s going to be tricky, sharing a body with two minds, let alone a body that is not meant to host either of us. I’m willing to do so, because the stakes are very high indeed. How about you?”

“I must.” As the Lurker said, too much was at stake. Kenneth would have to deal with any ethical issues later. “What do we do?”

“This will mostly be an exercise of will. We are going to have to change the neural wiring in our new body’s brain. The process is going to be very unpleasant.”

“Given that we are taking over a body that doesn’t belong to us, unpleasantness is the least we deserve.”

The Lurker shrugged. “Are you ready?”

Kenneth nodded. A moment later, the false panorama vanished, and the darkness returned.

Unpleasantness aplenty awaited them.

Chapter Nine

Janus

Olympus Mons Summit, Planet Mars, March 16h, 2013

Cassius Jones emerged from the gate and fell to his knees. He took a perfunctory breath; the thin and frigid Martian air filled his lungs, providing nothing of value. Neither the unbreathable atmosphere nor the freezing temperatures – a mere hundred degrees above absolute zero – bothered him. The wounds he had sustained during the brief but intense battle in Nevada did, however. Blood still flowed from half a dozen injuries; the fluid froze solid as soon as it seeped past his skin-tight protective aura. He would heal soon enough, though.

John had fallen. Dead or captured, Cassius did not know.

Kenneth Slaughter was dead.

Cassius had never been close to Kenneth; Doc Slaughter had been too cool and aloof, too wrapped up in his own thoughts. The fact that Cassius found the blonde genius incredibly attractive had also cast a pall on their relationship. He’d never made his attraction an issue, but Doc had noticed it nonetheless. Kenneth was open-minded, but in many ways he remained a man of his times, and he’d never quite gotten over his prejudices, although he’d always been unfailingly polite. For all their differences, they had respected each other. Cassius mourned his loss.

Daedalus Smith was the traitor.

Cassius had always detested the man’s politics and attitude. Daedalus’ tireless campaigning for Ronald Reagan had helped defeat Cassius’ try for the White House, although he had to admit his campaign had probably been doomed for the start. The Democratic Party had always been highly ambivalent towards Neolympians even before the fall of the Kennedy administration, let alone in the ensuing decades. Cassius’ credentials in the struggle for civil rights and a myriad other progressive causes had not been enough to compensate for that. Daedalus had not helped matters one bit, however: he’d made a point of reminding everyone that Cassius had spent most of his life working for an international institution and implying he was unlikely to have the US’ best interests at heart. The unfair accusations, on top of simple racism and anti-Neo bigotry, had all managed to deny him his dream of leading the country of his birth into a better future. He’d never forgiven Daedalus for that.

To find the man was a traitor was still a shock. The inventor had been laughing at them all along, hiding his treachery behind his irreverent attitude. Cassius had thought he was beyond caring, but he’d been wrong. He wanted, he
needed
to confront the smirking billionaire and make him pay for his crimes. The smug bastard had been wealthy and privileged all his life, and then become part of an even greater elite. He was one of the richest and most influential men in the world, not to mention immortal and above the frailties of humanity, and none of that had been enough. Whatever Daedalus wanted, Cassius would find a way to deny it to him.

He looked down at the twinkling lights of Mars Base Three, nestled at the bottom of the massive mountain range. By now they must have picked up his transponder signal and called for help. Cassius wasn’t worried: it would take several minutes for the alarm to reach Earth, and none of the Neos in any of the Mars bases posed any threat to him. In any case, the Legion wouldn’t bother trying to reach him here, since he could travel elsewhere with a thought. His power set was a tactical nightmare for his enemies.

Once upon a time, Cassius had thought he was truly invincible, his only threat the growing sense of ennui that had led him to the stars. That had ended during his encounter with the mad god of SS-9183 and his enforced years of captivity. He’d experienced plenty of rage, helplessness and despair, feelings that had brought him back to his life before the ascent to near-godhood. 

Star System 9183, Milky Way Galaxy, Year Seventeen (Personal Frame of Reference)

“Boy.”

Such a simple word: boy. Outwardly, it was nowhere near as nasty as nigger. Boy. It could even be used as a term of endearment. Except when it was used by a white to address an adult black man. Then it encapsulated centuries of endless contempt.

“You stop right there, boy, y’hear?”

He kept walking, following the script of the dream, dancing to the music of the dread memory. They would catch him, those buckra boys would; they would catch him and beat him to a pulp and dump his seemingly-lifeless body down a dry well. He would wake up the next day, transformed into something else, but that didn’t matter to his dream self. What mattered was the fear and humiliation, the knowledge of what was to come, and his utter inability to do anything about it.

Cassius never knew why the four men had marked him for death. He eventually learned their names and kept track of them, but otherwise ignored them, and they never knew that the man they’d nearly killed had become the renowned hero of the century. Years later, in a fit of drunken rage, he had finally gone after them. He’d never bothered to ask them any questions before he killed them one by one, plucking them from their beds and living rooms, from moving cars or while walking down the street. He’d carried them off and released them miles high in the air, letting them fall to their deaths onto the empty expanses of the Pacific Ocean. The executions had been quick and wordless. He’d felt no need to know their reasons, not then.

Maybe it had been his schoolteacher clothes that spurred them on, or maybe they’d just been mean with drink and looking for something to hurt. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the fear and the pain they had inflicted. Maybe if he’d just laid there and endured the beating they might have let him go after they tired of their sport. In any case, he had fought back, flailing his fists, even though he’d known he would pay dearly for the privilege of breaking a buckra’s nose. Soon enough, their blows had laid him low, and he’d collapsed at their feet as they kicked him over and over again.

The pain had been bad, but the helplessness had been worse.

YOU KEEP RELIVING THAT UNPLEASANT MEMORY. IS IT BECAUSE IT REMINDS YOU OF YOUR CURRENT STATUS?

The Genocide’s mental voice was painfully strident. It either hadn’t figured how to moderate its volume, despite months of practice, or, more likely, it didn’t care to. The thunderous telepathic intrusion brought Cassius back to the here-and-now. He was suspended in a jelly-like substance like a fly caught in amber. That’s where he had spent some untold amount of time while his captor had its fun with him.

A QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED, the alien said after Cassius didn’t reply fast enough.

Yes
, he sent forth.
Once again, I’m in the hands of irrational tormentors. I look forward to resolving this situation the same way I resolved the previous one.

YOU CANNOT RESOLVE THIS SITUATION. YOU CANNOT OVERCOME ME. SHALL WE TRY AGAIN, TO CONFIRM WHAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS BY NOW?

It happened every few… Days? Weeks? He wasn’t sure. The alien would challenge Cassius to fight. When he accepted the challenge – he did so about half the time – they would fight, and he would lose. Losing was an extremely painful outcome.

Not today, thank you.

The last fight had been the worst. After shrugging off Cassius’ attacks and beating him into submission, the Genocide had decided some vivisection was in order. He still hadn’t recovered from the rather unique experience of being partially disassembled and put back together, all done without any form of anesthesia and with the alien’s telepathic shouting ensuring Cassius remained conscious and aware the entire time. No, today wasn’t a good day to fight.

He would fight again, however. It wasn’t just a matter of defiance, although that was part of it. Each duel was a chance, however slim, that he would be able to disable the alien long enough for him to escape. He’d also learned a lot about the Genocide’s powers along the way. The pain and degradation were a price he was willing to pay if he could find a weakness he might exploit.

ONCE YOU HAD POWER, YOU AVENGED YOURSELF, the Genocide went on; its mental voice was smug. THAT IS GOOD. I TOO SETTLED ALL MY SCORES WHEN I WAS GRANTED POWER. YOU WILL NEVER BE IN THAT POSITION AGAIN, HOWEVER. ENJOY THE MEMORIES OF REVENGE. THEY WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH ALL THE ENJOYMENT YOU WILL HAVE.

What happened to you?
Cassius asked for the umpteenth time, ignoring the taunts.
Why did you kill everyone else?

He didn’t expect a direct answer. Every time he’d asked those two questions, the Genocide had either flown into a violent rage or answered with coy generalities that revealed next to nothing. Either response suited him: an outburst would give him a chance to learn more about his captor’s power, however painfully, and each vague answer had revealed a little more than the previous one.

WE ALL FOUGHT, THOSE OF US WITH THE POWER. I PREVAILED. That useless answer was par for the course, but the alien went further this time: WE WERE ONCE FRIENDS, MY RIVALS AND I, BUT THE WHISPERER IN SHADOW TURNED US AGAINST EACH OTHER. EVEN THOUGH I SLEW THE WHISPERER, IT WAS TOO LATE. EVERYONE ELSE WAS CONTAMINATED WITH ITS DARKNESS. TO CLEANSE I HAD TO DESTROY.