Ragnarok

THIRTY-ONE

Exxon Building, New York, NY

Jack Sigler, the man known as King in the field, felt fine.

Not fine. Fantastic.

He wondered if he had ever felt better. The light from the portal glowed and beautifully. He breathed in deeply and relished the taste of the air. He knew it would be even better if he took the helmet off.

He unfastened the clasps at his neck and lifted it up off his head. He didn’t carefully place the helmet on the ground-he just let it fall from his fingers. The helmet thumped with a dull sound when it hit the carpeted hallway floor, but King paid it no mind, because now he could hear the portal as well as see it.

And it sang to him.

He smiled broadly. This must be what it’s like for Fiona when she hears the mother tongue. His foster daughter was unique in her ability to see and hear the protolanguage of the world in paintings and sculptures, in music and in nature. She had used that ability to help Chess Team and save mankind on more than one occasion. But such important thoughts couldn’t find a hold on the slippery surface of King’s mind, lost in ecstasy as it was. Instead, he let thoughts of the team and the world fall away, like small bits of paper caught in a breeze.

It’s so beautiful.

King inhaled the air deeply, smelling lush fragrance and clean mountain air all in one breath. That he stood in a sterile air-conditioned corridor in a modern building seemed a faraway notion, and because it ran counter to how good the air smelled and tasted, he let that idea go too. It fluttered away just as his worries had. In Chicago the light had been bright, glaring and full of electric danger. Now it shimmered with a luster he felt soothing and exciting all at the same time. He felt calm and in control for the first time in his life. He felt both purpose and the complete lack for a need of purpose. He just was.

King smiled again at the strange wall of light in front of his face.

He glanced around him and saw three of the dire wolves moving slowly around his body, looking both at him and down the corridor behind him. He didn’t really care what they were looking at. They didn’t frighten him at all, and he felt no animosity toward the creatures. He reached out his hand to touch the skin of one and found he couldn’t feel it because of his glove. He pulled his hand back and removed the glove with the other hand, then reached back out to stroke the dire wolf’s chest with his naked fingers.

They are so soft! The creature had a very fine downy hair on its body, almost invisible to the human eye, like the fuzz on a ripe peach. Like the feeling of a high-end stuffed animal.

King ran his hand over the dire wolf’s chest and the creature simply stood there allowing it. The eye facing King warbled in the orb on the side of its head, regarding him carefully. King wasn’t frightened of the creature at all now. Instead, he felt affection akin to love for the beast.

But somewhere small at the back of his mind was a tiny voice screaming that this whole situation was wrong. King ignored the voice and moved forward, placing his cheek against the dire wolf’s shoulder. He rubbed the soft down against his face.

“You’re nice,” he spoke aloud and the dreamy quality of his voice made him giggle.

The dire wolf moved away from him and another came closer, sniffing at him. He liked this new one even better. Friendly. Fiona would like him.

But this second thought of Fiona gave power to the insistent, niggling voice at the back of his brain.

No. She wouldn’t. No! This is wrong.

“Go away,” he told the voice, and it died a quiet death in his subconscious. The dire wolf didn’t move away from him.

He knows I’m not talking to him. Or is it an it? I didn’t see any naughty bits.

King assessed the beast again, but came away from the glance only feeling better, if that was possible. His thought of determining its gender, if any, was swept away, as if a glorious breeze had just rushed by him, carrying scents of his favorite foods, the sea after a storm and gentle winds from an almost artificially green Alpine valley he had once visited in Switzerland.

This place is so good. I should bring Sara here. He grinned a huge grin.

No. The quiet voice returned. You have to keep them safe.

His grin faltered as images of cities being devoured by globes of devastating lightning-hurling energy filled his mind. But the pretty King tightly squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the glistening wall of the portal in front of him. No longer looking at the soft, friendly dire wolves. The images were still in his head though. The horror of people killed and cities scooped out of the ground by a cosmic event unlike anything before it.

You have to keep them safe.

Thoughts of his girlfriend, adopted daughter, team members and friends like George Pierce filled his mind. His memories of them made resisting the euphoria that much easier. There was a nuclear weapon in a satchel at his ankles, and he remembered what he was supposed to do with it. But it was hard, so very hard. Fighting against that warm happy place, where he had been for days-or had it just been moments-was the hardest fight of his life.

He sensed his resistance slipping. He wouldn’t last much longer. He yearned to go back to the bright light and the wonderful smells of autumn in Vermont, skiing in Europe, the beach in Florida… Florida. He remembered Disney and the Russian helicopter.

In one sudden, lunging movement, he reached down and grabbed the satchel with the nuclear weapon. He spun in a fast circle and flung the backpack into the wall of bright light before him. It disappeared as it hit the edge of the portal. He could only hope that it had gone in far enough.

Then as the warm happy feelings began to engulf him again, filling up all the empty places in his soul with a pulsing joy, the likes of which he had never even imagined existed, it happened.

That tiny voice that had brought him back to sanity for one brief moment spoke again. A doubt. A whimper. Little more than a squeak.

You didn’t arm the device.

King didn’t care.

The warm glory of God Himself wrapped him in a loving embrace.