Chapter 4
Finders have proven the existence of disembodied spirits. Thus, I’ve had to revise my opinions on the nature of such spiritualist matters. If we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.
—Thomas Edison,
New York Times, 1921
Menlo Park, New Jersey
Sullivan took a seat next to the electrical monstrosity and waited to receive a call from hell. The chair rested on a rubber mat, as if that would somehow help protect him if the energy inside the box escaped. The glass wasn’t even warm, but that didn’t make him feel any safer. The phone itself looked normal. Nothing else was.
Several different audio recording devices had been set around the table. Two film cameras were rolling, one electrical and one hand crank, just in case. Judging from the sheer amount of finger nail biting this was a momentous occasion for the EGE scientists. The Naval Intelligence people were having conniption fits. Sullivan had been given a typed list of questions to ask the Chairman’s ghost. The connections did not usually hold for long. Time would be of the essence.
The longest that EGE had ever been able to keep a connection was five minutes. A team of six men were sitting at one console, fiddling with dials, wearing headphones and concerned expressions. The scientist that Sullivan had mentally christened Clipboard Man was watching the clock on the wall. He interrupted his nervous sweat dabbing long enough to begin a countdown. “Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . .”
Briiiiiiiing.
The bell sounded like a perfectly normal telephone. It was sort of sad, that after all the labor of constructing this terrible abomination in the sight of God, Edison couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything more impressive for the ringer.
“He’s early!” Clipboard Man turned deathly pale. “Why is he early? Oh no. What do we do?”
Briiiiiiiing.
Sullivan simply answered the phone. He put the ear piece against his head and the connection made an unpleasant hum. He leaned in closer to the microphone. “Hello?”
“Mr. Sullivan.” The voice seemed to come from a billion miles away, and maybe it was. “It is I, Okubo Tokugawa.”
It sounded like him, but it could be a trick. “Prove it.”
“We spoke for the first time in the between place, where the dead go to dream, where the Power dwells. For you it is a haunted place of barbed wire and muddy bones.” The voice grew stronger. Closer. Steady and calm. “The last time we met was aboard my flagship. After you fed your own brother a sword, I asked you to stand with me to watch an old world die as a new one was born.”
“Chairman.”
“I was. Am. It is hard to know. Things are . . . sluggish in this place. So cold. So very dark . . . It is hard to see and harder to think. When are you?”
“It’s February sixteenth, nineteen thirty-three.”
“I have not been gone long then . . . Does the world miss me yet?”
Perhaps it wasn’t an odd question, coming from a dead man. “No.”
“They will soon enough.” The sound that came next might have been a sad chuckle.
“Your Imperium still thinks you’re alive.”
“Indeed? That is for the best. They will need to be strong for what is coming.”
The Chairman had not pierced the veil to make small talk. “What’s this about?”
“I cannot reach my followers, but a warning must be given. I can no longer find the dream of the Power. My sons can no longer hear my words. I despaired, for I saw what had come, yet had no one to give my message to. Until I found this light in the void. There is no marvelous device such as this in the Imperium. It is difficult, but in this cube, my words can be heard, even if only by my enemies.”
Sullivan looked over at the glass nervously. The pulsating energy was eerily quiet. Was the Chairman’s ghost actually inside?
“But we are no longer enemies. The dead have no enemies, only memories like fog and kingdoms are like dust. Japanese, American, it matters not. All will die if I cannot prepare them. Yet, who among you would heed my warning? And I knew . . . The strongest among my foes would understand.”
The Chairman’s entire doctrine had been based upon survival of the fittest, and Sullivan had been the one to defeat the Imperium’s finest Iron Guard, but it had been a crazy little Okie girl that had done the impossible and crippled the Chairman himself. “You want the strongest?” It was probably a sin to goad the restless dead, but he couldn’t resist. “I should go get Faye, then.”
“Perhaps she will be someday. The Power has blessed her with a bond beyond anything I have ever seen. I do not understand why it chose her, but she has her own part to play in the events to come. You will have to do, for you have seen the Power as it really is.”
“What do you want?”
“The Enemy has caught the scent of the Power. It will soon be on Earth.”
Sullivan exhaled slowly. He was one of the only people in the world who understood what magic really was. It had travelled from world to world for who knew how long, bonding magic to intelligent creatures, letting their magic grow, and consuming that magic when they died. The abilities that had appeared in the last century weren’t miracles, they were just manifestations of a being that could influence the natural world. It was a repetitive cycle.
Sadly, he’d also learned that the Power was not the top of its food chain. Something else fed on the Power, just as it fed on them. And the Power fleeing and leaving its hosts to be destroyed by its predator was just part of the cycle. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the Enemy.”
“It will consume the Power until the Power has no choice but to flee. When that happens, the Enemy will wreck this world like it has done so many times before. You must defeat it before it takes hold.”
“How?”
“First there will come a scout. This is the Pathfinder. The enemy sends them ahead to many worlds, searching for prey, but the spaces between are vast and deep. The Pathfinder must gather enough energy to send a message back to the Enemy, and it must be destroyed before it can do that. I have done this myself, twice before.”
“Where is it?”
Clipboard Man shouted, “The signal is breaking up.”
The Chairman’s voice had grown distant again. “The coming of the Pathfinder woke me from my sleep, and already I can feel myself drifting away. It will arrive soon. The time is short. It is . . . confusing. I can no longer think clearly. My children, my Iron Guard . . . I taught them how to search, but you must warn them. They will know what to do.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Weeks, perhaps months. Certainly not years. Time is different here.” The Chairman kept talking, but it was too faint. Sullivan didn’t understand. The background noise was louder. It sounded like a crowd of thousands screaming, until it all coalesced into one hoarse buzz.
“We’re losing the connection.”
“Sullivan, ask the questions!” shouted the Navy captain, pointed madly at the papers on the table. “The questions!”
But the Navy questionnaire was forgotten. It was about things like who tried to assassinate the president and Imperium weapon systems. Those things meant nothing compared to this. “How do I kill the Pathfinder?”
“Each one is different, but each . . . So very powerful.”
“Better than you were?”
“Yes.” The word trailed off into a hiss. “I was the first of our kind. The Power learned on me, but there are others like me, almost as old . . . If you can find them, convince them, they can hel—”
The line was nothing but the empty wailing of the damned. “Get him back.”
“We’re trying,” said Clipboard.
Suddenly, the Chairman’s voice returned. “—d. I think it has found me. I do not know how. A piece of the Pathfinder is here to silence me. Listen carefully. You must warn my children, my Iron Guard. They will know what to do.”
“Why would they trust me?”
“There is no time now. It is upon me. I leave you with a gift. Prepare your mind.”
A terrible pain struck him in the temple. Sullivan flinched and dropped the phone. The lights flickered and the tank of Power flashed. Then just as quickly as the pain had come, it was gone. He picked up the ear piece.
The line was silent for a time. Sullivan could hear his own pulse.
“Dark Ocean is the key. You are on your own now, Mr. Sullivan. Farewell.”
A horrible screeching noise came from the phone. Sullivan jerked it away from his ear.
Clipboard was running back and forth watching needles bounce and lights flash on the console. “The connection’s back, but there’s something—” A warning buzzer sounded. “Surge! We’ve got a surge. Oh no. Shut it down! Shut it down, now!” The lights flickered.
Pop.
Everyone in the room turned to look at the glass cube and the spider web of cracks spreading across its face. Pop. Poppoppop. The break grew wider. The Power contained inside licked the edges and tasted freedom.
POP.
“Run for your lives!” Clipboard screamed.
Knocking over the phone, Sullivan jumped from the table and followed the crowd toward the exit. An alarm klaxon sounded. Red lights embedded in the ceiling began flashing. He had not noticed it before, but there was some sort of huge steel shield suspended over the door and it began to slide down on smooth hydraulics to seal the room.
He had been the closest to the cube and the furthest from safety. “Shit.” Sullivan sprinted for the rapidly shortening doorway. The others were going through, and the last few had to duck, but Hammer was waiting for him. “Hurry!” The blast door was closing behind her. She looked at it, then back at him, then went to her hands and knees and scurried through.
CRACK. Flakes of glass struck him in the back. The room shook. Sullivan had played a lot of baseball as a boy, and he slid like he was trying for home plate. He barely made it through on his side. The fat lip of descending steel nicked the side of his head. He rolled into the hallway, knocking down Hammer as the blast door sealed shut.
The red lights were flashing. Sullivan stood up, wincing at the bump on his forehead. “Will that hold?” Then he realized that was a dumb question, since all of the technical types that knew better were still running. He grabbed Hammer’s outstretched hand and pulled her up. “Come on!”
They had made it about twenty feet when the containment for the spirit phone failed. The release made a terrible WHUMP. The basement shook so hard that Sullivan and Hammer were knocked off their feet. Dust and concrete bits fell from the ceiling. The blast door had held, though it had been stretched and bowed like the edge of a steel bubble and the thick walls around it were cracked and steaming.
The alarm was still sounding. The lights in the hall were red as blood. Someone got on an intercom and told damage control teams to report to Room 13 and for everyone else to evacuate in an orderly fashion. Several scientists ran past screaming and crying. Hammer sat up and coughed. “Hope that isn’t coming out of my paycheck.”
Sullivan touched the cut on his scalp. It wasn’t too bad, nothing the Healing spell on his chest couldn’t handle. It would be just another beauty mark in no time. “I’d like to stay and shed a tear for your fancy phone, but I’ve got important business to attend to.”
Hammer stood up and cringed when she put weight on one leg. “Thanks for clipping me there, buddy. It was like getting run over by a car.”
“Sorry.” Objects in motion tends to stay in motion, and he was a very big object. “I need to go. You heard what the Chairman said.”
“I didn’t understand any of it, but come on. The alarm has sounded so the second layer of security will lock this place down tight.”
Everyone else was ahead of them. He took one of Hammer’s arms and helped her walk. His clumsy slide had managed to twist her ankle. They went back the way they’d come in, past the doors marked with roman numerals. After seeing the terrible thing that was behind one of the doors, it made him wonder what was behind the rest. Despite being an intensely curious man, he decided that he really didn’t want to know . . . Right this minute, anyway.
The red emergency lighting was dim, so he had to do a double take when something huge and misshapen clanked past in the intersection of hallway ahead. It was only visible for a second, but it had been a foot taller than Sullivan and twice as big around. He pulled Hammer to the side and took cover in the shadow of door IV. He squeezed her tight and watched. “Shhh. Demon.”
“That? It’s okay,” she reassured him. “That’s part of the second layer of security I was telling you about.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like Summoned. Especially a big one like that. I can’t believe you’d keep one of those things around.” The intersection seemed clear. “Greater demons are aggressive. Way too dangerous outside of a warzone. You better have a master Summoner babysitting it nonstop.”
Hammer chuckled. “Oh, Mr. Sullivan. That’s no demon. That’s a tele-automaton. EGE’s board just isn’t ready to unveil them to the public yet. They’re still working the bugs out. Come on. It won’t hurt us . . .” She looked up at him. “Seriously. Let go.”
Sullivan released her. “Sorry.”
“Thanks for trying to protect me from imaginary Summoned.” She stepped into the hallway and adjusted her dress. “But you’re rather rough with the ladies.”
“My last girlfriend was a Brute.” Sullivan grunted. He stepped out after her and froze. The four men that had been out of place at the spirit phone were heading their way. They had guns in their hands and the one in the lead was screwing something on to the end of his that could only be a sound muffler. They saw each other at the same time. They began running his way with murderous intent.
“You set me up,” Sullivan said to Hammer. “Should have known.”
“No wai—” Hammer began, but then she jumped back as a bullet struck the wall next to Sullivan. “Hell!” She ran the other way, but they weren’t shooting at her. The gunmen were aiming for him.
The door marked IV was heavy and solid, but so was Sullivan. He flared his Power, increased his mass, and slammed his shoulder into it. The lock failed and he crashed inside. It was another large space, but so cloaked in shadow that he couldn’t tell how big. There were only a few red emergency lights flashing above.
The floor was made of a metal grate. There were darker shapes on each side, tall units, shaped like standing coffins built to hold giants. They stretched into the distance. Pipes and cables stretched from the ceiling into the tops of the devices. He passed at least five of the things, before Sullivan ran to the side and took cover behind one of the units. He hid just as the footfalls of his pursuers hit the metal floor.
“Come on out, Heavy. We just want to talk.”
And sell me a bridge in Brooklyn. Sullivan stayed mum. He’d let them all come inside, then he’d Spike them through the roof. Light beams flickered back and forth. Some of them had hand torches. He crept around the cold metal edge and spotted the four silhouettes. They were confident, but he’d see how confident they’d be when up became down. Sullivan focused and Spiked hard.
Gravity didn’t change. He tried again. Nothing happened. Confused, Sullivan pulled back.
“You feel that?” one of the men asked.
“Yeah, I felt it.” Their leader raised his voice. “You trying to use magic on us, Sullivan? It won’t work. You might as well come out in the open and face us like a man. I want to get out of here before this place falls down on our heads.”
It was rather unnerving to have his magic not work on demand like it always had, but Jake Sullivan wasn’t the panicking type. He was, however, the analytical type. First he took inventory of the Power gathered in his chest. It was there, he could feel it, but it was like something was keeping him from using it. It was like a blindfold for his eyes or ear plugs . . . Everything was where it should be, but muffled.
Concentrating, he felt the spells etched into his flesh. They were still alive with Power, but it was as if he couldn’t access them. The laceration on his head should have been tingling with Healing magic, but it wasn’t. Even his Grimnoir ring felt dead.
Interesting. Somehow these men were blocking his access to the Power. But that puzzle would have to wait. He had to get out alive first, which meant either taking out four armed men with just his hands or escaping. Smart money was on escaping.
Sullivan moved quietly down the grate. He had the wall to his right and the giant coffins to his left. If he was lucky there would be another door at the other end.
“We going to do this the hard way then, Sullivan? Your call.”
Sullivan hit the far wall. It was a dead end. There was a heating vent he thought about trying, but who was he kidding? There was no way in the world that he would be able to fit in there, and he didn’t want the indignity of getting shot in the ass while his shoulders were stuck in a duct. That meant fighting his way out. His hand landed on something leaning against the wall. It was a big spanner. Nice and long with all the weight at the end. Perfect for cracking skulls. Sullivan took the wrench in hand.
He risked a peek. The leader gave some hand signals. The four men spread out, one on each of the far walls, two in the center. Once they were formed up, they all started walking his way, torches bobbing along ahead of them. They were treating this like a pheasant hunt, walking the field, down the levies in a line, keeping an eye on each other so he couldn’t sneak between them, until he had nowhere else to run. They intended to flush him out.
The gunmen were halfway down the room, nearing where Sullivan was clutching his spanner, when there was a loud rumble from the hallway. At first he thought that another part of the building had fallen down. The rumble came again and he realized it was a footstep.
“What the hell was that?” The flashlight approaching on his side bobbed away.
“Quiet!” snapped the leader.
Sullivan used the distraction to his advantage. He covered the distance between the coffins swiftly. The light came back around. Sullivan caught the man by the gun hand and swung him face first into the nearest metal coffin. He tried to fire his gun, but Sullivan blocked the hammer with his thumb. He tried to push away so Sullivan clubbed him on the back of the head with the wrench.
Lights flashed his way as Sullivan shoved the dazed man into the open. The others opened fire. His victim took a round in the chest and sprawled forward. Sullivan felt a bullet burn across the back of his hand. He dodged back around the coffin, but the pistol he’d hoped to secure went bouncing across the grate to disappear into the shadows.
The guns were quieter with the mufflers attached, but the bullets sure made a lot of racket as they punched holes in the sheet metal he was hiding behind. There was a lull as empty magazines were dropped and new ones slammed home.
“We got you now, Heavy. Nowhere for you to hide.”
There were three of them left and they knew exactly where he was. He was pinned down. They’d fan out and soon enough one of them would have a clean shot . . . He had to get out of here. It was hard to hit something with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other, which might give him a chance, but he’d probably still get ventilated. Sullivan prepared to run for it.
There was a metallic thud as something shook the grating. “Greetings, EGE guests. Allow me to help make your visit a pleasant one,” a new voice boomed.
“What the hell is that?”
Sullivan peered around the corner. It was the thing he’d glimpsed in the hall. The flashlights gave him a better look at it this time. It was shaped like a man, mostly. The head was a disproportionately small oval ball with two rectangular glowing eyes. The torso was round too, like a pot bellied stove. The arms and legs were too long and too thin, with bones of pipe encircled in metal skin. The feet were huge and splayed like a duck, probably so that the mechanical oddity could keep its balance.
There was a scratching of a record, like an automated player making a new selection. “Due to the delicate nature of EGE scientific equipment, no weapons are permitted in EGE Shelved Projects areas. Please, place your weapons on the floor and wait for an EGE representative to secure them for you. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Well, ain’t that something? It’s one of those mechanical men I read about in Popular Mechanics. Welcome to the future, boys.”
“We don’t have time for this. Shoot it, Willis.”
There was the muffled snap of a silenced pistol and a ding noise as the bullet bounced off the mechanical man’s rounded torso. It barely even swayed.
The record player scratched and rattled as a new track was put on the turntable. “Warning. Please desist from damaging or defacing EGE property.” Logically, Sullivan knew that it was impossible for the prerecorded voice to know, but he could have sworn the mechanical man sounded annoyed.
Willis shot the mechanical man four more times.
This time there was no warning. The mechanical man raised one arm. There was a loud clack that Sullivan recognized as the charging handle being worked on a Browning 1919. The thunder of the thirty caliber machinegun filled the room. Sullivan covered his ears.
The three men twitched and jerked as shell casings spilled from the machine’s arm and fell through the floor grate. After a ten second burst, the firing stopped, and the smoking metal arm was lowered. They were well past dead.
The mechanical man made a rumble as its torso swiveled toward the coffin Sullivan was hiding behind. The record player scratched. “Due to the delicate nature of EGE scientific equipment, no weapons are permitted in EGE Shelved Projects areas. Please, place your weapons on the floor and wait for an EGE representative to secure them for you. Thank you for your cooperation.”
The wrench hit the floor immediately. Sullivan came out with his hands up.
Brief pause. “Thank you for your cooperation. EGE representatives will be along shortly. Please enjoy your visit to the Shelved Projects Branch.”
“Thank you,” Sullivan said. “You mind if I search those fellas?”
It took awhile for the mechanical man to pick the right record. “I’m sorry. I do not understand your question.”
“Great. Just tell me if I start to do something against the rules.” He picked the one that had been acting as the leader. Sullivan checked his pockets, careful not to get blood on himself. There was a wallet and a badge holder, which he took, though he was careful not to pick up any of the perfectly good guns that were lying around.
The mechanical man lumbered closer to see what Sullivan was doing.
“What are you?”
“I am an EGE Tele-Automaton Mark Five. I ensure the safety of the EGE Shelved Projects Branch.”
“How do you work?”
“Through a strategic partnership between Cseska Robotica and Edision General Electric, the EGE Mark Five series operates on a proprietary system combining state of the art scientific methods and ultramodern engineering.”
“Uh huh . . .” Sullivan could see the lightly glowing carvings on various parts of mechanical man’s body. It was spellbound. Cog science had figured out a way to connect this thing directly to the Power. And thinking of Power . . . How had these guys been able to block his? Sullivan continued his pat down and found something odd. One of the men had a small orange Bakelite box in his pocket. Sullivan opened it up and saw that it had some sort of gem inside. One fingertip set it spinning.
“Warning. Please desist from damaging or defacing EGE property.”
Sullivan looked up at the mechanical man. “What?” The mechanical man shook as he lifted the box. “This thing hurting you?” The glowing spells seemed to flicker. Sullivan took a step closer and the mechanical man drooped. The arms fell with a grinding noise and hung limp. The lights behind the eye holes gradually went dark. He walked over and knocked on its chest. It was dead or asleep. Sullivan looked down at the mysterious box, shrugged, and shoved it in his pocket.
Picking up one of the hand torches, Sullivan inspected the coffins. Now with more light, he could see that there was a porthole in each one. A quick look inside revealed that there was a different type of mechanical man in each one. Some looked quite a bit like his new friend, bulbous and odd, others were rougher, like boxes with girders for limbs, while a few were much more streamlined, man-sized and looking like a knight in a suit of armor. All had been spellbound, though these seemed inactive. Too bad he didn’t have more time to explore, but he had to get out of here.
He made his way out through the chaos. The facility had taken quite a blow from the collapsing spirit phone and the night-shift was being evacuated. The power was out almost everywhere and from the smell, something had caught fire. At one point he saw some of the Navy people shouting his name, searching for him, but Sullivan kept his head down and ducked behind a fire truck. He didn’t know how many other enemies he had here. There was no sign of Hammer either. He stopped at the front office, which was luckily deserted, broke open the lock box with one solid kick and retrieved his pistol.
Hammer’s giant Ford Hyperion was in the garage with the keys still in it. The starter turned over on the first try despite the cold. He didn’t like stealing, but it was a question of priorities. Somebody was going to come looking for the men that had tried to kill him, so he wanted as much of a head start as possible. He’d leave the Hyperion someplace it could be found easily and even top off the tank, but it served her right for setting him up. He hit the road and gunned it in order to leave Jersey behind.
The night had raised a lot of questions and not very many answers. Dead men calling, presidential assassinations, Pathfinders, dark oceans, devices that could quell magic, and mechanical men . . . It was enough to make a poor Gravity Spiker’s head swim. He needed help. It was time to call the Grimnoir.