The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (35 page)

Thankfully for Haven, she’s headed south, not east.
But south (assuming she makes it back across the Lake) are her own
people, and the Pax.

I remember my survival lessons: Radiation poisoning
hits the guts and the skin first, then kills the marrow. Then it
affects the brain. Then all the tissues fail, their DNA
corrupted.

Terina could be delirious, disoriented. Or worse. I
hear Asmodeus’ taunts in my head, about how a Companion won’t
restore a damaged brain, at least not to the person she was.

And if her DNA has been hopelessly corrupted…

Ram steps up to the water’s edge, spreads his arms
and shouts at the deep purple evening sky

“
YOD!!!
”

I don’t think he’s surprised when he gets no answer,
but he persists.

“
THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR YOUR FUCKING BEHAVIORAL
ASSESSMENTS!!! PEOPLE ARE AT RISK!! INNOCENT PEOPLE!!
”

Only the evening winds answer him, making their
rushing sounds over the top of the water.

He takes off his helmet and throws it out into the
Lake. It makes a distant splash in the dark. Now he speaks to the
wind:

“You told me they were in you, part of you… Doc. Dee.
You told me
I
was part of you. Just like you told me we did
this, you and I, for some greater good, to save humanity. But those
parts of you need to remember when saving innocent lives was
important. If those lives
are
real, if they’re not just
things
you created to replace us, then stop playing this
game, just for one fucking hour. One fucking hour where no one can
see…”

Nothing happens. Ram looks beaten, broken. I can
still feel his helpless rage like a tangible thing. I think it’s
all that’s keeping him upright.

We have to walk all the way back across the…

The rushing of the wind ramps up, becomes deafening.
But the wind isn’t coming from the west anymore. It’s coming
straight at us across the Lake, from the south. We can barely stand
our ground. The sand under our feet begins getting stripped away to
rock, blasted back into the mountain. And then the surface of the
water begins to tear, begins to pull apart.

Before my eyes, the Lake splits as if blown apart,
like a puddle divided by someone blowing across the middle of it,
only on an unbelievable scale. I’m looking down a trench that
stretches straight south, walled by water, that just gets deeper
and deeper as it goes further out. I can’t remotely see the end of
it, not even with my enhanced vision, but I’m sure it stretches all
the way to the other shore.

I’m remembering a story out of The Book of the
Hebrews, of the miracles of the true God, of Moses and the great
Exodus from Egypt, when I see Ram shake his head and hear him
grumble

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

I can’t help but laugh at it, giddy like a child.
Erickson just stares at it mouth open like his brain can’t make
sense of what he’s seeing—I’m surprised he doesn’t drop his
Blade.

But we take the path we’ve been given, however muddy
and terrifying.

We find Ram’s helmet in the mud about forty meters
in. He picks it up begrudgingly, but doesn’t put it back on. He
folds it flat and stores it in his robes like a necessary burden,
or perhaps a penalty he still needs to pay.

Then we keep walking through the artificial miracle,
the wind pushing at our backs.

We trudge through the slick, sticky mud as quickly as
we can, as the walls of water get unnervingly higher on either side
of us, eventually reaching hundreds of meters straight up. With the
curiosity of a child, Peter walks us up to one of those massive
liquid walls and puts our gloved fingers through the surface,
cautiously at first, like he expects breaking the tension will
rupture the barrier and bring the Lake down on us. But the liquid
wall doesn’t respond to our invasion. There’s no resistance other
than the water itself, and I can feel it gently flowing perpetually
upwards against gravity.

Peter marvels at how Yod can control something so
elemental on such a scale. I remind him that Yod was apparently
able to manipulate entire
worlds
on a sub-atomic level, but
I can’t help but be both amazed and deeply disturbed to see that
power blatantly displayed like this. I can only imagine what it
would have been like to witness the remaking of reality all those
years ago. I wonder if Yod allowed anyone to witness it, or if he
knew it would drive a human mind into shock and madness. I can
barely conceptualize this relatively simple, localized
demonstration, and not break down in terror. I feel very very small
before it, weak, insignificant, and worst of all, completely
helpless. I think I see similar combinations of awe and horror on
the faces of my companions, though Ram does a good job of masking
his with his rage.

I’m sure Peter would like to linger and study the
phenomenon, but we have a much more pressing concern, so we keep
trudging through the sloppy, pasty wet sand that used to be
underneath hundreds of meters of water, and try to ignore the
breathtakingly amazing on either side of us.

As if to prod us on our way, our passage begins to
close up behind us, about seventy-five meters back. Looking ahead,
I wonder if Yod’s given similar consideration to Terina, or if he’s
let the Lake impede her so we can catch up, catch her before she
reaches some unsuspecting and vulnerable population in whatever
debilitated and desperate state she’s in. (Will she still know us?
Will we even be able to recognize her?)

The sky over our heads is dark and full of stars, our
way through the narrow canyon of water lit by my eyes artificially
enhancing their light. I can only wonder if these are the real
stars, or still Yod’s illusions, the fake sky of the preserved
bubble-world of Haven.

My navigation systems have been stuttering in-and-out
of function, enough to realize that our chase may not be as urgent
as we thought. Our path, assuming it’s taking us to Terina, is
straight south, not southwest toward Pax or south-southwest toward
Katar. We’ll be emerging from the forbidden world well to the east
of the Katar canyon. (But why there?)

It takes us nearly four hours to make the southern
shore at our best pace, and even my Modded legs are aching from the
effort of repetitively dragging my feet out of the muck. I expected
the Lake to have simply vanished long before this, like it did when
our return trip on the Charon met an audience from the world where
the Lake isn’t supposed to exist, but it’s still present and
visible until we climb up onto the dry sand. We turn and watch the
corridor finish closing behind us with a loud rushing. Then, under
the distant starlight, the Lake simply fades like an illusion,
replaced by the dry scrubby valley floor. Even our boot prints are
gone.

As if an afterthought, the stars fade above us,
letting us know that Asmodeus’ cloak of haze is still in effect.
And, as if warning us that Yod’s order won’t be idly challenged,
the radiation levels rise to the north. The boundary is closed.

Ram faces west, roughly toward Katar. I realize he’s
searching for common signals, and I hear him call out to Straker to
report our return.

“Did you find her, sir?” I hear her in my own
head.

“Not yet, Lieutenant. In pursuit. About six klicks
east of you. Condition undetermined, but she’s on the move. And
Chang isn’t where you left him. Possibly days gone.”

“He may have gone back to Haven,” she surmises after
a moment’s processing. Then she gives her own dire report. “We have
a new problem. The three Katar wounded began showing disturbing
symptoms. Elias and I ran scans… The two dead as well… Dee found
some of the bot guns were modified, loaded with shells containing
Harvester Seeds.”

I feel a new sick rise in my gut. But like Ram, I’ve
become good at treating it with rage.

“Pax?” he wants to know.

“Bel reports six cases… We had no choice. We made it
quick. Better than the alternative.” She sounds frustrated,
beaten.

“We need to find a cure,” Erickson growls.

It’s Peter that comes up with the obvious one. I let
him speak it through me.

“We need to find Asmodeus and stick a fucking sword
through his head.”

I get no argument, but Ram doesn’t let us dwell.

“Erickson. Your sword, please…”

Erickson draws his Blade and holds it upright in
salute. Ram steps up to him and lays his hands over Erickson’s. I
can feel them signal, reach out. After a few moments, I “hear” a
weak ping. It feels like it’s somewhere east of us.

We linger just long enough to gather some edibles for
the hike. While we’re doing it, I think Erickson is not looking his
usual self, but it’s hard to tell in the ghostly glow of night
vision. He looks ill, almost feverish, and moving seems to be
taking some effort. I also notice he doesn’t eat anything we’ve
gathered, but discreetly absorbs directly through his hands. When
he catches me looking at him, he simply turns away, and we move
out.

I shift spectrums. We’re all still glowing with
radiation.

On my restored navigation systems, we have indeed
come out of the Lake about six kilometers east of Katar. The ping
that may or may not be another Companion is holding roughly due
east of us, but as it doesn’t get closer quite as fast as we’re
moving through the green, that tells me Terina (if it is Terina) is
also moving east away from us. But to where? Is she just trying to
get as far as possible away from her people? Or is she being drawn
to
something?

Now that I’ve noticed his apparent fatigue, I see
that Erickson is definitely lagging, struggling to keep up and
trying not to show it. As I feel fundamentally fine (if anything
about my current condition could be considered normal) except for a
higher-than-usual appetite, I consider asking Ram if he knows how
Seed Mods versus Companion Mods compare in matters of radiation
treatment. But I don’t want Erickson to hear me worrying about him,
so I keep my thoughts on my “side” of Peter’s administrator access,
and build a buffer of “white noise”. And while I am worried that
Erickson may have damaged himself beyond his Companion’s ability to
heal, I’m more worried about Terina, as she must be in far worse
condition.

(I wonder if Erickson’s people have their own
treatments for radiation poisoning. And if so, would they share
them with Terina?)

After only about a klick-and-a-half, we find Terina’s
trail. It’s marked by desiccated plants, and thankfully, the
radiation trace has decreased significantly.

“Passing back through the Lake may have scrubbed her
of some of it,” Ram guesses, but he doesn’t sound confident.

“Or her Mods are working,” Erickson hopes, sounding
out of breath.

“Yours aren’t,” Ram reveals him. “You need rest and
better resources. Protein. The plants aren’t enough.”

Erickson doesn’t look like he’s remotely willing to
retire from the pursuit. So Ram lets him know:

“We all have significant cell damage. We could get
meat from the Katar or the Pax. Or we need to play ghoul.”

“Terina’s in worse shape than we are,” I remind them
needlessly.

“I’ll be fine,” Erickson insists, however
unconvincingly.

We continue to follow the trail on the dark.

The overnight cold is burning more energy than we can
spare—we have to keep slowing to forage. But Ram’s right: no matter
how much of the plants we consume, there’s something missing, a
dire need un-sated.

After a four kilometer hike, Terina’s ping has
stopped keeping ahead of us. She seems to have stopped. I call up
my maps in the dark. Another klick up ahead is a low mountain, two
klicks wide, four long and about five hundred meters high at a trio
of sharp peaks. It sits out by itself in what would be the “stem”
of the double-ended fork of the Vajra. The ping looks like it’s
coming from the near western slope, only a few hundred meters
upslope. But there’s something wrong with our tracking: It looks
like there’s an echo, a second ping almost on top of the first.

I begin to see flashes of light in the sky above the
green in that direction. Each visible flash is paired with a burst
of interference in my head, distorting Terina’s tracking, but in
the after-echoes, I begin to see and hear a familiar signal.

Thel.

Not waiting for the others, I start running as fast
as I can.

We come upon the epicenter of the light and EMR storm
just far enough upslope to be above the thicker growth. The action
is lit in arc-weld-bright flashes, interfering with my night
vision, making it hard to see what’s happening. But I do see two
distinct figures, circling each other on the treacherous ground.
One is definitely Thel, his Staff blazing with plasma as he holds
off the other with a flurry of blows. That other I can barely make
out, much less recognize.

“
Terina!!
” I shout, but get no response.

She’s moving more like one of the Bug bots than a
human, low to the rocks, limbs flexing and extending unnaturally.
And it’s hard to tell in the alternating flares and darkness, but
her skin looks pale and strangely glossy. In her hands is a
stylized version of her people’s Naginata, but I know it’s more
than that. It twirls and cuts the air as she moves, so fast I can
hear the air ripping. She’s facing away from me, her long dark hair
a wild mess, so I can’t see her face.

I climb the slope, and stepping between rocks, my
boot sinks in something that both crunches and squishes, and I’m
hit by the stink of death. I look down, ramping up the
illumination. I’m standing in the torso of a partially-desiccated
corpse. The face has been smashed in and split open to reveal the
remains of a Harvester module, inert.