The Prometheus Objective

35

She handed out weapons from the satchel after the others had gingerly climbed through the wreckage and over the Sno-Cat’s mangled rollers.

An MP5 for Phoebe, who hefted it carefully, then released the chamber, sighted and nodded. Aria took a Taurus .45 and did the same. Alexander shook his head at the offered Beretta, and then reluctantly accepted it. Nina reached in for one more, looking at Orlando who waited beside Phoebe, and rubbed his hands together for warmth.

Nina shook her head. “Nah, you’re good. Just follow along.”

She turned, and with a cautious glance over the edge, just past the Sno-Cat’s crushed front grill, she held the others back, and led them toward the wall. They started down the incline, but Alexander kept veering toward the edge. No railing, nothing but open space, and the hint of shapes and illumination below.

“Something’s on fire down there,” he said with urgency. The walls glowed too with inherent luminosity from gems, striated lichens and other marbled colors pulsing in the murals, from the eyes of statues, from the runic script and dazzling histories emblazing the walls like some prelude to a Disney ride.

“Settle down,” Nina said. “Don’t know what kind of traps or enemies are waiting, and I’m not letting any of you go—”

Orlando, clutching Phoebe’s arm, rushed forward. “They’re dying!” he shouted, and they both rushed past Nina, almost knocking her over.

“Shit!” Nina rolled her eyes, shrugged at Alexander and Aria, and said: “So much for sightseeing. Run!”

They ran.

And Alexander, as he raced hard on Nina’s heels, with Aria matching him stride for stride, prayed.

Prayed they wouldn’t slip. Prayed the statues or artifacts wouldn’t spring to life like in Khan’s tomb and launch arrows at them. Prayed the walkway wouldn’t fall from under them into a pit of spikes, or worse. Prayed most of all that down there, where the flaming sword-like thing waited, his father was still alive. That the twins were still alive.

That the world still had a chance.

On the second bend, Orlando almost collided with Phoebe, then almost overcompensated and tripped on his own feet and slid over the side. She grabbed him at the last moment, pulled him back and together they stumbled around and regained their momentum. Nina and Aria were already way ahead, in the flickering shadows.

The tree-thing to their right, always on their right, loomed and breathed and shuddered like some undead husk.

Is it alive? Sensing us?

He thought back to his experience in the other dimension, his other self. So alien and foreign and yet, so him. The tree and the kids… He was again running toward it, toward them, toward the entrance, but could he enter again? Could he ever regain that state?

You have to, he thought.

Have to, and this is one time she couldn’t go with him.

Phoebe. She had to stay out of this, he knew. The other place would shatter her reality. She was too down-to-earth, a rock. Always his rock, grounding him, focusing his thoughts, serving as a beacon for his ever-higher flights of fancy.

The other world tugged at him, beckoned him to rejoin the bits and bytes, the quarks and nano-particles of theoretical gobbledygook; the dark matter, the anti-reality that he had so often dreamt about, only one day, for a brief time, to jump into its pool and swim around.

Focus, he thought, turning once more as Alexander ripped past them on the outside track.

“Move it, slowpoke!” Phoebe yelled, and even she picked up the pace.

The walls glittered, gems sparkled, and fairy dust sprinkled from the tree, or the ageless sloping ceiling. Murals promised artistic visions of grace and longing, offered a substitution for the world of white and grey, and statues with knowing expressions seemed to bristle at this disturbance.

Up ahead, gunshots echoed, and the screams cut the silence.

Alexander ran headlong, desperate to catch Aria, or at least be there beside her when they reached the landing, when they reached the rift — and his father. The nagging fear grew and grew with every step. Something waited, something more than just the protective sword. Something far more natural.

He had a flash of something with a lupine head and a weapon like a mace but ten feet long, and thick plate armor, jet-black, like it could blend in with the statues in the shadows.

Not just one, he thought. A pair…

But that was his last thought before something crunched into his left side and sent him sprawling toward the edge. His gun, already barely held with any strength, was gone, skittering away as he scrambled to grab onto anything with both hands. The air left his lungs, and as he rolled he saw the teeth, red eyes and that sickly tree, reaching its skeletal arms toward him to drag him the last few inches over the side.

Loud shots rocked his ears, dispelling the ringing and the roaring pain thrumming up from his chest and pounding his head. The wolf-jackal creature had turned from him, as if having knocked off the weakest, potentially pesky adversary, it could now turn its attention to the boss.

But this boss, in this case, was pissed. Bad move, Alex thought, wincing and just arresting his fall partway to the edge. He looked down but could barely see anything in the haze of pain and bright spots.

More gunshots, thumps, howls and screams, and when he turned back, he saw flashes off the defender’s armor as someone advanced on him, firing the .45 with a shaky hand.

Oh shit.

Aria!

She heard Alex grunt and cry out, a cry she never wanted to hear again. For a gut-wrenching instant, she was back in the Afghanistan desert, restrained by the terrorist leader known as The Eye, forced to watch (and hear) her parents tortured. Punched, kicked, beaten.

The same sounds and cries… She wasn’t going to stand for it any more. Not this time. She was older. Stronger.

And armed.

She’d lost track of Nina. Of Phoebe and Orlando. Maybe they were still running down the ramp. Maybe they’d passed her. Maybe they were dead.

All she knew now was this thing had hurt the boy she cared about. Maybe even… loved. He was vulnerable, and this monster was in her way.

She fired, aiming for the big target of his shiny black chest. Four shots later, as she screamed with each intense recoil (wishing she’d spent more time on the firing range when Alex had invited her), she realized the shell was some kind of plating. Kevlar, bullet resistant…

Realized too late, as the jackal-headed warrior howled at her and launched himself in the air, with the giant scythe-mace thing swishing out of the shadows, bearing down on her skull.

She screamed as something slammed into her side and rolled with her out of the way. The mace crunched into the floor and the scythe sparked — and Nina pounced back up onto the balls of her feet over Aria.

The mace swung around again, a long slow strike that Nina easily anticipated and ducked — but not the other blur from behind.

Another one! It leapt over Aria and ensnared Nina in a great bear hug as soon as she rose. Her MP5 dropped to the ground under her kicking feet. Nina slammed her head back, but her skull only bashed against the metallic helmet’s snout. The one with the mace raised it up over his head, but Nina reared back, the head butt a feint, and kicked out, hitting the warrior’s chest and using the weight of his mace to drive him back, off balance. He fell hard, as Nina struggled and cried out in pain as the great arms (bare, Aria noticed), squeezed the life out of her.

Aria rolled, reached the MP5 and, balancing on the ground, fired up. Hoping the recoil wouldn’t be too wild, or the bullets wouldn’t ricochet back at her, she aimed for the biceps and shoulders. Barely able to steady the weapon, she kept the trigger down, ripping sparks across the warrior’s back and crunching through the bones and muscle on his arm.

Nina dropped, flexed and leapt onto the huge warrior trying to get up in front of her. Not weaponless by any means, she somehow flicked a long blade from under her wrist sleeve, grabbed the figure by its snout-helmet and pulled it back — and drove the blade up and under the gap, into the throat.

He backhanded her, sending her flying over toward Alex. Then he stood up, making a gurgling sound as his free hand went to his throat, trying to stop the blood flow. He wobbled backwards, still trying to raise the mace.

The other warrior spun around and kicked at Aria’s hand, knocking the gun free. His left arm was a shredded, bleeding mess, but his right held a wicked scythe now, drawn from a sheathe on his back.

The crimson eyes — jeweled lenses over the mask’s eye-holes, froze Aria in terror as the sickle cut through the air. She heard Alex’s shout, then right over her head, a blast that almost shattered her eardrums.

Phoebe! She’d come to a sliding halt, on one knee, sawed-off shotgun raised.

The sickle-wielding warrior rocked back. The chest armor shattered, half the snout blew clear off, and part of his shoulder was reduced to bone and gristle. He staggered, but came right back, as Phoebe fired the second round—

A round Aria barely heard as a muffled thump, along with some kind of cry of ‘Die, motherf—!”

The mask blew apart in a shower of metal, dust and fragments, and blood and bone exploded outward as he tilted back, dropped the sickle, then toppled over.

Another scream, and Orlando barreled through and launched himself at where the warrior had been. Maybe he had been planning to use his speed and just ram the guy, as it was all he could do without a weapon. Aria had a fleeting feeling of pride and thought Phoebe might even be turned on by Orlando’s absolute disregard for his own safety in order to protect her.

Whichever the case, the timing was horribly wrong, and he tripped over the dying warrior, stumbled and went veering right into the other. Knocking him back, right toward Nina, who still had her knife at the ready.

She ducked low and used the backtracking enemy’s momentum, and slashed at the exposed calf, severing the hamstring.

The warrior howled and toppled as Nina rolled forward, sweeping his legs just as Orlando finished bouncing off the armor. The warrior fell, landed hard, still holding to the heavy mace as it went over the edge — and started to take him with it. He teetered on the edge, making a choking, gurgling sound, and getting to his knees — inviting a last hard kick from Nina, who delivered. Ruthlessly, and sent him over into the abyss.

Orlando scrambled fast the from the brink, out of the pool of blood, skittering away like a crab until bumping against Phoebe, who dropped the shotgun and threw her arms around him.

“Damn, woman. You can shoot!”

“And you can trip — with the best of them.”

Shaking, he grinned and hugged her as they reached out to Aria. Alexander got to his feet, with help from Nina, as they cautiously looked around. Both were holding their ribs and doubled over.

“That better have been all of them.”

“Yeah, down here,” Aria said, regaining her feet and coming over to help Alexander. “More… conventional enemies are coming from outside. We don’t have much time.”

She handed the MP5 back to Nina, who took it gingerly.

“Nice shooting,” Nina acknowledged.

“Now, let’s—”

She looked around, frowning as a gasp came from around the corner.

“Damn it,” Phoebe said, jumping to her feet. She ran past the injured Nina and Alexander. “Orlando!”

“That guy’s gonna kill us all.”

Phoebe rounded the corner, coming upon the expanded chamber, just as a glimpse of the past hit her: the men in parkas, the cameras and drilling equipment, superimposed like a black and white noir movie over this reality: Orlando hunched over a thin table, one of seven or eight arranged in a circle, each supporting a body, condition unknown.

Phoebe skidded to a halt. She heard footsteps behind her, slower and pained but just as urgent. Cautious, lest there were more guards. Or traps, or that sword-like flaming projection there, throwing off waves of strange vibrations and strangely little heat, humming and thrumming in her veins.

At one table, she saw the little feet and hands beside Orlando. So still…

“Are they…?” She inched forward, too scared to see, too scared to hear the response that came nonetheless.

“Alive.” Orlando bowed his head, seemed to be hugging them both, then stood and turned as Phoebe neared.

He had something in his arm.

A needle. A very. Large one. He pressed the plunger as his eyes took on a lost, faraway glaze. “Last dose.”

Phoebe rushed to him and caught his arm, trying to pull out the needle, even though it was too late. The silvery liquid was already gone, coursing through Orlando’s system. “What the hell was that?”

He staggered back, then slid a hand around her waist, pulling himself to her.

“Don’t let me go,” his words were fading. “At least, not…”

His lips brushed against her cheek, an instant before she screamed his name, before Nina and Alexander and Aria came thundering along behind them. Before that flame-shrouded portal flickered as if accepting an invisible visitor.

Someone stoic, cautious, and afraid.

Someone not unfamiliar with the other side, and yet… Phoebe trembled because she saw it now, holding his body close, knowing he was already gone from it.

…and stepping through the rift, with just a glance back. His glowing, sparkling form still undeniably shaped by his perception of the lanky, lovable lug that he was, turning just once to her.

And she heard it in her mind.

… not forever. Bring me back.

And then her cry of loss and helplessness cut through the air. She ran toward the rift, but several sets of hands caught her just in time, before the blast of heat and the surge of energy sent them all reeling back in a heap, dazed, singed and bruised.

Helpless amidst the bodies of those she loved. Caleb, Orlando. The children.

All so close and yet a universe away.