The Alignment: Ingress

CHAPTER 16

Before Conrad could hear Hank’s last word, a shockwave rocked the caverns. Conrad ducked for cover as the great XM pool erupted, its limbs of dark energy writhing. Exotic goo whipped out from the chaos, splattering him across the face. He expected it to burn like acid, but it didn’t. It simply tingled. Then he felt something like a pebble in his mouth and spit it out into his hand.

It was a tooth.

It had fallen out. He felt another spasm in his gums, and now a second tooth fell out, dropping loosely to the ground.

What’s happening to me?

“Hank!” Conrad shouted.

Hank was busy firing on Smith’s extremo-ware goons, who had now spotted them. He trained his sights on Chen, who was trying to deploy another resonator. The bullet was lost in the eruption of energy.

Hank!

Conrad pulled out his phone and peered into the camera. He started as he looked at himself on the screen. His right eye was no longer blue. The iris had dispersed into a galaxy-like spiral of red specks.

Something was horribly wrong, he knew with a stab of shock. And yet he could still see himself in the mirror through both eyes.

The phone shattered from a gunshot to his left. Conrad turned to see several figures running through a gateway. He hadn’t noticed it before. Even in the lambent, strobing light, he recognized Colonel Zawas and his handful of surviving troops.

Conrad fired off a round from his M16, taking one down. Two others fired back at him, raking the wall of stone over his head. The other Egyptians turned their attention to the SE mercs below.

It had just turned into a three-way furball. Total bedlam.

Antoine Smith methodically fired bursts of lethality throughout the stygian cavern. Chen deployed another resonator, adding to the cosmic chaos. Tentacles of energy whipped, lightning flashed and metal rained throughout the chamber. Hank deployed his shield, but it was too late. Conrad saw Hank’s body get splattered with glowing bits of chaos like a fluorescent leopard. When he turned to shout at Conrad, Conrad’s horror grew. Hank’s eyes glowed red, his face was an unnatural gray, and liquid metal dripped down his face.

Conrad said, “You look like a damn monster.”

“You should see yourself, Conrad. Welcome to hell! Get ready to run!”

If Conrad hadn’t believed in transdimensional matter before this, he did now. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to deploy a power cube. I don’t think we’re going to make it. I think we’re going to die. But it might counter the dark XM.”

“You said a power cube almost blew up CERN!” Conrad shouted. “You said it’s unstable as hell.”

Hank nodded. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

All of a sudden a glowing object materialized and flickered before them. A floating cube, relentlessly pulsing in and out of their dimension. It looked like a videogame object, but it was very real.

This can’t be the end. It wasn’t the end. Not for the Queen of Sheba. There had to be a way.

And suddenly he knew.

“I know where to go!” Conrad shouted. “Follow me!”

In the poisonous strobing light, Conrad could barely see his way out, and he couldn’t see either Zawas’ men or the mercs below. Multiple resonators crashed, tentacles and shocks radiated out. The air was electric. Everything tingled.

Conrad charged toward the entrance of the tunnel, maybe 50 meters away up the dirt ramp. Bullets whistled through the air. Hank ran after him, covering his back and firing at the area where the Zawas troops had been and then blind-spraying at the mercs, now obscured by the chaos of tentacles, lightning and metallic mist.

Conrad stumbled on a short stalagmite and nearly impaled himself on another. Hank tripped over him and slid along the metallic and rock ramp, nearly falling over.

The power cube began to pulse critical behind them, turning everything bright.

Conrad glanced at Hank, who grinned and said, “We’re not gonna make it…”

“Move your ass!” Conrad barked with a whistle through his remaining teeth.

“Save your breath,” Hank said when they made it out the tunnel into the small rotunda behind the great arch with the two pillars and missing doors. “I can’t understand a damn thing you’re saying.”

Conrad pointed to the inscription above the tunnel they had just emerged from. “Turn back to the Lord,” he said, enunciating the words with precision, and then ran into the narrow tunnel on the opposite wall.

“Of course!” Hank said, sprinting behind him as the narrow, jagged walls seemed to close in.

Conrad tore his shoulder on a protruding rock and realized he had actually left a chunk of his flesh behind. He was completely breaking down at some biological and even molecular level.

Then the walls seemed to part to reveal an octogonal cavern with a floor of gold. On either side were two great sculpted cherubs, also made of pure gold. The two cherubs faced one another, their outstretched wings touching each other and forming a canopy over Conrad and Hank in the center.

“They replicated the Ark!” Hank shouted, as flashes of light seemed to swirl through the gold around them. “This is the tech Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba! Lightning in a box!”

Unfortunately, it was a box. As Conrad looked up and beyond the wings of the cherubs he could see the roof of the chamber. There was no opening, no outlet, no escape.

All of a sudden the world went white as the power cube Hank had set exploded in the distance.

For just a moment, Conrad thought he saw an entity standing in the cube flash. It was 15 meters tall. Not human, but definitely a living being.

Conrad felt his body disintegrating into bits and swept into a twister of energy, rising up into a tunnel of light. At the end of the tunnel he saw the face of an angel, and when she pressed her soft lips to his own, he recognized Serena Serghetti. Then everything faded away in an explosion of blinding white.