"Let's do it," said Keenan, and kissed Pippa again.
They moved to Lunatrick, and Keenan shook the huge man's hand. "Wish us luck, Big Guy."
"Keenan, be careful down there. Trust nothing, nobody, trust not your senses, nor your instincts. VOLOS is old, older than you could ever believe possible; older than worlds, older than Leviathan."
"There's that name again," muttered Franco.
"Not now," said Keenan. "That's a battle for a different time; a different age."
"Are you returning to the Asylum?"
"Yes." Lunatrick nodded. "The inmates will have formed barricades, battle walls, defence lines; long have we waited for such an attack. I just never realised your arrival would be the trigger to initiate hostilities. Still, we will hold, Keenan, my lads are a brave lot. We will hold, waiting for you to return. To fulfil your promise."
Keenan looked into Lunatrick's eyes, and saw that the great man believed it. He nodded, and understanding was there. Lunatrick had to believe in Keenan, for without that belief he would have to give up hope of ever saving his people; of ever freeing them from the slavery imposed by VOLOS.
"VOLOS is greater than a god," said Lunatrick. "Be careful."
"Ach, I'll look after him!" boomed Franco, and slapped Lunatrick on the back, a move which made Lunatrick turn slowly to survey the little ginger squaddie with a baleful scowl.
"Hmm," said Lunatrick.
"So, we just jump in then?" said Franco.
"Yes." Lunatrick gave a sombre nod. "Jump in, and swim
down.
Swim down as if your lives depend on it. Because they surely do."
Franco turned, just as Keenan placed a home-rolled cigarette between his lips. He lifted his lighter, and Franco leapt forward, grabbing the small Zippo and closing his fist.
Keenan stared at him. "Yeah?" he said.
Franco grinned weakly. "That Star Lake, Keenan. I don't know what exactly is in it, but it's volatile.
Dangerous.
I knows my bombs, reet? Best not to be lighting fags around this gooey colourful shit. After all, we've got the Asylum directly above us. You could have blown it to Kingdom Come!"
Keenan removed the Widow Maker, and looked forlornly at the bedraggled weed. "I was so looking forward to that. It might have been my last cigarette... ever."
"Yeah. Well. Time for a swim, I'm thinking. But think on this. If we need an instant mega-bomb..." he rolled his eyes madly, and gestured with his shaved head, "here's the stuff, baby, a trillion fucking gallons of it, you get what I'm saying? Y'know? For that last minute
Deus Ex Machina
type shit going down that you see at the end of films and stuff? The Big Bang? Indeed, the
fucking
Big Bang. To, y'know, maybe blow up VOLOS, and stuff?"
"Yes." Keenan coughed. "Whatever. After you." Keenan forced a smile.
"Hey, no problem! They don't call me Franco 'Swimming Through Shit Champion' Haggis for nothing, you know." With that, he stepped from the platform, tipped into a dive, and zipped neatly below the surface of the Star Lake.
The others followed, one by one, until only Keenan, Pippa and Lunatrick stood. Pippa dived in an elegant arc, and disappeared. Again, Lunatrick took Keenan's hand.
"Free my people," he said. "Free Sick World."
"I'll do my best," said Keenan, and dived into the Star Lake...
To be consumed by the birthing agent of stars.
Franco pummelled his way downwards as if fighting his bedclothes in his sleep, and was soon overtaken by Pippa with her long, graceful, elegant strokes. Down they swam, as if through honey, through a billion billion twisting threads of gold and silver and rainbow hues, all flickering and twirling, down down down through strands and although there was no oxygen to breathe and none of the squad attempted to breathe, they were sustained. Franco fought his way ever downwards, and found his mind drifting, the world drifting, and everything was so beautiful, so totally serene and two elements flooded his mind like an overdose of brilliant happy narcotic - realisation and fulfilment. Here, Franco was perfect, this place was perfect, and there was no fear, no hate, no war, no death, and Franco knew he could live out an eternity of perfection and he need never worry again, never feel fear or anger or frustration again. All he had to do was cease his swimming, cease his struggle, and just... hang, baby.
It's a trap,
squeaked a little voice in the back of his mind.
Like a fly in a spider's web.
A flapping fish in a shark's radar.
An organic crumb in a SPAW's radiation field...
Franco fought the urge to give up and, twisting, he saw Pippa falling behind him and he slowed his descent, realising it had her; but Keenan swam down behind, grabbed her, shook her and she nodded, gave him a thumbs up, and then they were swimming again and Franco fought his way down.
Down.
Down through colours, down through threads, down through a living matter of sub-organic protons...
And Franco saw gems, diamonds and rubies and emeralds, floating beside him close enough to reach. He passed a diamond the size of a Buggy 6X6, and a sapphire the size of a house. Eyes wide, Franco slowed and turned, and saw Snake homing in on him. Franco gestured, and Snake nodded, single eye mercenary-wide, understanding passing between the two greedy money-orientated gold-grabbing bastards... here was wealth, the greatest wealth they had ever set eyes upon! Only three eyes, but enough eyes to see they could be rich! And it could all be theirs! All they had to do was find a Freighter, rig it with kilometre long slings, and
bam!
they could be so much Richer than a Very Rich Rich Man.
Keenan's hand slapped Franco's face, a slow-motion blow which nevertheless stung like a bitch and brought Franco kicking back to reality. He blinked, and the images of wealth faded and he saw Keenan give a little shake of his head, and shame burned Franco, burned his cheeks with the burning red brand of Greed. Am I that bad? he asked himself. Am I really that greedy, that base, that uncouth and petty and driven purely by money? Well, money and sex? Am I so bloody
impure?
He considered this.
Yes
, he thought.
I am.
He swam down.
But hell, it
was
a fucking BIG sapphire.
Down he swam, following Keenan now with Snake close behind, and the swim, the experience as a whole seemed to go on and on, for hours, for days, for weeks and time no longer had any meaning and Franco remembered thinking that this journey might never end but then, that was a good thing, because the world within the Star Lake was perfect.
A perfect place to live.
And a perfect place to
die.
Franco blinked, and heard a splash, and then he was falling through a complete and total darkness. He fell rather a long way, and hit the ground very hard. Consciousness left him, and he had a short vicious dream about big worms with lots of vicious bastard teeth.
When he awoke, he could smell chloroform.
Keenan sat up in total darkness. He coughed, and seemed to vomit a long, long stream of viscous fluid which burned him on rapid exit. Crawling onto his hands and knees, all pleasant memories of being inside the Star Lake vanished, to be replaced by a reality of pain, and burning, and a feeling that his body, his every atom, had been raped by some alien force he did not comprehend.
"Kee?"
"Pippa."
A light came on, fixed to the barrel of Pippa's D5. Slowly, the others came round, all vomiting thick brown streams to the damp black stone floor. As the group pulled itself together, Pippa's light played around the place and they found themselves in a wide, ancient corridor. Old pipes, rusted and green, ran at ceiling height, although there was no ceiling, just a vast and cool openness. Somewhere, up there, was the Star Lake. They had passed through with their lives, but only just; each and every member recognised the danger of what they had just survived. It had been a reawakening of their insecurities; their private lusts. And it scared them all to the core.
"It was a mind trick," said Franco, at last, spitting on the ground and hawking up another ball of phlegm. "Designed to keep us from reaching... here. Wherever the hell
here
is."
"This is Vela," said Keenan, eyes dark.
"Yes," said a voice, although it wasn't a voice that transcribed through air, it was an essence, a being, it was something created inside each person's head and imprinted like hot brands of fire on the front of their brains.
"And you are VOLOS." Keenan's voice was halfway between snarl and spit.
"Perceptive, Mr. Keenan." They got the impression of a smile. Of humour. And humour denoted life, or at least, life as far as Combat-K could understand it.
VOLOS seemed to sigh. The world seemed to hold its breath.
"Welcome to Vela," said VOLOS. "Welcome to my Underworld.'
There was a long pause, an eternity, so it seemed. Long enough for stars to be born, and for stars to die.
"What happens next?" whispered Franco.
"He watches us," said Keenan, gently. "He's been watching us all the time, haven't you VOLOS, you fucker?"
There was no answer.
Light swept into the corridor, as if painted sideways by a brush. The slow-motion action imbued disconcertion.
Combat K gazed around and Snake stepped forward, rubbing wearily at his eye-patch as if satisfying an itch beneath. "Well," he said, "this sure is a
shit-
hole. I kind of expected the lair of the great VOLOS to be something better, something far more magnificent."
Keenan looked across at Snake then, and frowned. "You sound like you expect a certain... standard." An intuition took Keenan in its fist and squeezed his guts. "You're here, aren't you? Here for VOLOS?"
"Yes."
"And I thought you were a cheap mercenary."
"Just tagging a ride, Keenan. Just using you and Combat-K as a donkey; you have no idea what you've stumbled into, my friend. You have no idea how big the Game is, no concept of the complexity of the Puzzle."
"It can't be bigger than your ego," said Keenan, gently.
He turned then, to the left, and watched a figure approaching down the decrepit corridor. His eyes tracked left and right, surveying debris, the entropy, the rusted pipes hissing steam, the dangling cables sparking with discharges of electricity. Everything had a damp, ancient feel, like a long abandoned warehouse. Yeah, he thought with a grim internal smile; a million year abandonment.
The figure was small, slim, and clothed in a simple grey robe. It was impossible to determine sex, but his, or her, skin was a pale and flawless white, milky to the stage of translucency. However, what made Keenan breathe deep and brought a rattle of weapons from the rest of the group was the face, for the hairless head and face were featureless, a blank oval, like a pale and milky peeled egg.
The figure stopped.
"Let me take it," whispered Franco, quad-barrel Kekra by his cheek.
Keenan waved Franco away and moved forward; only after a few footsteps did he realise Snake was right behind him, at his heel, like a faithful hound. Keenan masked his irritation and stopped, staring at the flat blank platter of skin.
"You are VOLOS?"
"Yes." The blank face seemed to swim, as if formed from viscous liquid, and a mouth opened at the centre of the face to utter the single word; then rolled back into position, languidly, like a ripple of molten wax.
"He's lying," hissed Snake in Keenan's ear.
Keenan turned a little. "Will you
fuck off."
The figure lifted a hand, and Keenan felt a
blast
of pressure slam past his cheek. Snake was picked up and tossed a hundred feet down the corridor, wailing, arms flapping in a vicious acceleration that slammed and battered him from pipes and abandoned furniture like a toy ragdoll; he hit the ground, rolling over and over and over. He lay still.
"Did he really think he could come here and fool me?" said the blank-faced creature. Then the mouth formed a smile. "He is a Spinner. He can take a room and spin it through time. Quad-Gal Military's greatest weapon, I fear." The figure laughed, a soft melodious sound. "He is here to kill me, or so he believes, and yet he does not truly understand VOLOS." There came a deep sigh. "VOLOS is open and honest. Snake is... a snake. He believes what he believes. VOLOS is misrepresented in all of this game. This charade. This battle. This war."
Keenan turned, and stared at Pippa and Franco. "A Spinner?" he mouthed, and they both shrugged. Keenan could not help but notice fingers tight on triggers. Snake's acceleration had nearly taken their heads clean off.
Keenan turned back, and his eyes narrowed. "I don't think you're being quite straight with me," he said. He watched the face, but could discern no reaction, no emotion, for there were no features to read. "I don't think you are VOLOS. I think you are a servant. A messenger, of sorts."
"Very astute." The face seemed to flicker a smile. "I am the avatar of VOLOS, but I contain his mind, contain his blood, what you would know of his soul. I am an extension, if you like; in a way you would extend your hand, and your fingers are still your own flesh, your own organic matter. Thus, I am a limb of VOLOS."