New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (15 page)

And I’ll also need to figure out where all this extra Outsider energy is coming from
.

If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect Mister Night was involved.

New York City, New York, July 18, 2014

“You jumped the gun, mistress mine,” Daedalus Smith said, with too much smugness in his voice.

What followed over the next few minutes was painful and very, very nasty. It was a memorable experience, even for someone who had spent some very rough months in the hands of the master torturers of the Dragon Empire.

“Are you going to diss me again, d-bag?” Dark Christine asked him sweetly as he stared fixedly into space.

“Probably,” he said, and he felt a thrill of pleasure at the sight of her shocked expression. “Pain is just noise generated by the nervous system. It’s meaningless except as a warning system, and in this case the warning is unnecessary. You aren’t going to kill me while I’m still of use to you. And I am damned, remember? Oblivion is my inevitable end state, once the Outsiders are done with me. It’s not only inevitable, it’s what I desire most. The only reason I don’t kill myself is that I fear that our Masters won’t let me die until I’m done being useful, and will punish me for trying.”

Dark Christine sighed. “You know, it’s been a while since somebody was this honest with me.”

“Do you find it refreshing?”

“I kinda hate it, actually. But I guess I’ll have to live with it. So what’s your problem, Dee?”

“You’re taking too many risks. Ultimate is getting suspicious. One careless sentence, a second of bad luck, and the truth’s going to come out. I watched the footage of your little roll in the hay. He’s beginning to suspect something’s wrong with Christine. Asking him to slap you was totally out of character.”

“It’s a calculated risk. I need to lead him into temptation, remember? The nastier our sex life gets, the more corrupted he becomes. I needed him primed for tomorrow’s main event.”

“John’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, but he almost figured it out. And now everything has to go off perfectly tomorrow, or the whole plan is ruined. Multiple failure points. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

“Everything is in place, isn’t it? Just by being on this world, I’ve raised ambient levels of Outsider energy. Janus almost turned on his own. He would have, if Chrissy hadn’t spoiled the fun. But it doesn’t matter. John’s pretty close to the breaking point. All we have to do now is get him mad enough to make him cross the line and damn himself. I’ve got several nice lines for him to cross; even finding out the truth might piss him off enough to do the trick. Then he’ll be one of us. Just like Mister Night always wanted. He was so disappointed when all his tricks to turn him evil failed.”

“I suspected as much,” Daedalus said. “I didn’t want John to become a tool of the Outsiders. I just wanted him to become my tool.”

“And now?”

“Now I am your faithful servitor, of course. Watching John turn into one of the damned will be a pleasure.”

“Good. With him by our side, we can’t lose,” Dark Christine said.

“Which is why I’ve been advising against rushing things. You’re risking everything just because you want to mess with the girl. We should just kill her and be done with it.”

“Killing her is easier said than done, Dee. I don’t think I can take her right now. I’m not drawing on the full power of the Source anymore. All I have is what I’ve got in my inner batteries, so to speak. Granted, they are some big-ass batteries, if I say so myself. But until I can hook up to the local Source, I would have to get lucky and take her out before she drew on more power than I have, or get her mad enough I can Taint her. Not great odds, either way. When I have John, it’ll be different.”

“And if that fails...”

“Then I roll the dice. Fight her, and hope to push her into the dark side. And then the little antimatter bombs inside her head will do the job for me. Figure it’s a fifty-fifty chance, and I prefer to hedge my bets. Getting Marky-Mark killed would improve the odds, though, and if things go as planned he’ll be the first to go.”

“Assuming Martinez and Ultimate get on with the program.”

“There’s always one thing you can count on when it comes to Mark. ‘His unending fury,’ to quote the King.

“And in a few hours, he’s going to be very, very pissed off.”

Earth FUBAR, Day Twenty-Seven

She didn’t have to put on a show every day. Just every three, four days or so. It’d been twenty-seven days since the nightmare had started: eight bouts and nineteen fatalities, eight of them at her hands. Eight people she’d killed at arm’s length, close enough to see the lights go out, to smell their bowels letting go and hear their final gasps as their legs kicked and they did all the horrible, undignified things living beings do when they die.

No other ‘contestant’ had made it that far. The Laughing Woman – her real name had been Maria Guzman – had lasted one more show before the featured challenger, a blood-sucking monster by the name of Norman Nosferatu – ripped her throat open just before Christine was able to drive a knife into the base of his skull. Maria had died in her arms, looking at her pleadingly to save her, to make it better. Once she might have been able to, but not now.

And so it went. Every fight, she’d managed to survive, but at least one of her fellow gladiators had died. A couple of times, both had. She was turning into a holy terror now that she could invoke Snipe’s spirit, and was getting better with practice, but people still died on her. Some superhero she was.

The Party Planner was talking about making her a champion, which meant they would pit her against three girls who’d somehow pissed off the Goddess or her henchmen, or who’d been rounded up for the crime of being good-looking or tougher than average. Christine didn’t know what she would do then. Killing the professional gladiators that specialized in murdering helpless women, she could sort of stomach. Turning into one of them? At what point did the price of survival become too high to be worth paying?

She was afraid she might have already gone past that point. Was her life worth eight others?

Well, if she ever decided it wasn’t worth it anymore, there was an easy way out. Life was damn cheap around these parts; she’d found that out within seconds of arriving to Earth Shitty. All she had to do was duck a little bit too slowly next time someone tried to murder her.

I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to live like this
.

Tomorrow would be her ninth fight. The previous record holder in her category had made it through six bouts. From what she’d heard, she had done it mostly by getting the crowd to give her the thumbs up, sparing her life; she’d only won three of her fights fair and square, which, considering that her foes had all been given some kind of superpowers, had been pretty impressive. Christine, on the other hand, had beaten every opponent they’d sent against her. It beat being dead, but she’d attracted too much attention along the way. They had to suspect something was up. She had a bad feeling about her upcoming match.

Nothing you can do. Concentrate on the important stuff
.

The important stuff was what she did in her spare time, when they left her alone in her cell beneath the coliseum. She spent her time meditating, banking the trickle of power she was still getting from the Source. The one from Earth Alpha; she had no connection with the Source of this world, and she didn’t want to build one; she couldn’t think of a surer way to alert her evil twin that she was there.

First, she’d rid herself of the Outside Taint. That had taken her weeks to do, since every time she fought her anger fed the poison in her system, but she’d finally managed to cleanse herself. Now she was charging her batteries for something else.

Once she had gathered enough energy, she was going to teleport away. Try to, at least.

As a plan, it sucked on several levels. For one, she hadn’t mastered the right Codex Word, the unoriginally named Jump. She hadn’t really applied herself, between mourning Mark, burning out her connection to the Source, and then dealing with the Genocide. Chances were it wouldn’t work. Even worse, teleporting wasn’t the same as
dimensionally
teleporting, as any fantasy gamer would be happy to point out. The former allowed you to move between two points in space, but they had to be in the same universe. Uncle Adam could jump all over the landscape on Earth Alpha, but hadn’t figured out how to take Christine back to Earth Prime. Trying to use the half-learned Word to bridge the gap between realities was likely to end in an epic fail.

She’d probably end up stranded in the shadowy realm between spaces, which was a nasty place to visit and would likely be an even worse permanent residence. Or she might just die.

Plan B wasn’t much better. It involved gathering enough power and courage to link to the local Source. Then she would juice herself up and confront her evil self. Once she was a fully operational Death Christine, she might be able to take down the Goddess.

Sure. The Goddess that defeated the Genocide on her own. That Goddess

Yeah, Plan B wasn’t going to win any awards, either.

Plan C was the worst one, of course: doing what she was doing until she lost a fight, her identity was discovered, or she came to some other bad end.

There was no Plan D.

Christine sat down lotus style and did her breathing exercises, forcing herself to relax. After a while, all her worries and fears faded away, as well as her almost unceasing train of thought. All that remained was a spreading warmth inside of her, the flow of power that had turned her into something more than human, and which was doing so once again. Her cuts and bruises from the last match had faded away surprisingly fast; she wasn’t back to her better-than-Wolverine healing levels, but she was getting there, slowly but surely.

Unfortunately, not all the changes were internal. She’d noticed her dark brown eyes had begun to grow lighter; they were a lot closer to a greenish hazel by now. And her hair was also sporting some auburn highlights. So far nobody had noticed – people were good at editing out stuff that didn’t match their preconceived notions, especially when they had better things to do, like making sure they stayed in the Goddess and her flunkies’ good graces – but it was only a matter of time.

No thinking
, she admonished herself when her worries began to interfere with her meditation.

The Earth Alpha Source was impossibly far away, not in three-dimensional physical space, but on a whole different level, in one of those dimensions hinted at by string theory. But her link to it still existed, and was getting stronger. A few more days, and she would be strong enough to make her move. She…

A psychic echo reached her, so faint that at first she thought she was imagining it. It got louder, derailing her meditative state. A moment later, she recognized it, which derailed everything, including every last trace of her peace of mind.

Mark
.

Mark, screaming in agony inside her head.

How? How can he be here?

It took her a second longer than it should have, but she figured it out.

Not my Mark. Her Mark. Trapped inside Mister Night’s Hell
.

She should have known, not that there was anything she could do about it. In her universe, when her Mark had died, his mind or soul or whatever had ended up trapped in a mental construct Mister Night had created for his victims. It only stood to reason that the same thing had happened to the Mark on Earth FUBAR. Now that her powers had come back, she could pick up his mindless cries of pain. Her mental bond with Mark was still on, and apparently his local counterpart was similar enough that it worked on him as well.

Could I..? Do I dare?

Bad idea. Really bad idea.

Who cares? I’m almost certainly dead anyway. If I could see him again, even if only to say goodbye... If I could ease his pain, even for a little while…

If, if, if. If Mister Night spots you rummaging around his amusement park, then what? If you end up trapped in there, getting brutalized for all eternity, how much fun will that be? If your evil twin decides to join in the fun… How about those possibilities?

Her brain, as usual, made the most sense. She should just block out the screams of agony and get back to work.

Except she couldn’t do that. That wasn’t who she was.

You’ll be sorry
, her brain promised.

She was already sorry, but she didn’t stop.

It was déjà vu all over again. Christine had done all of this before, using her link with Mark to project her consciousness into the hellish mental construct that served as his prison. She knew her personal connection with him was nearly impossible to detect, and she was sure that her evil counterpart no longer had that connection; she didn’t think Dark Christine could be so monstrously uncaring if she did. It took more effort than before, since she still wasn’t functioning at a hundred percent capacity, or even three percent. But she did it.

She wasn’t in her cell anymore. She was in a world of blacks and grays, full of the screams of the damned. And she was Snipe yet again, which was almost better than being herself. Snipe had never screwed up, given up or otherwise disappointed her.

Up and at ‘em
.

It didn’t take very long to find him. Mark was cowering against a wall while his stepfather and a couple other guys she didn’t recognize went medieval on him with a variety of improvised weapons: broken bottles, clubs with nails sticking out of them, crude knives made out of sharpened can lids and duct tape. Mark was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and he wasn’t fighting back. He was in a helpless daze, just as he’d been in her world, before she accidentally woke him up.

Rage overcame her. She stepped forward, twin knives ready, and stabbed the closest two d-bags in their respective kidneys, which were turning into her go-to organ when it came to bringing down the pain. The remaining tormentors tried to fight back. All they accomplished was prolonging their misery as she literally cut them to pieces. That was fine by her; she knew intellectually that they were just twisted memories given shape and a semblance of sentience, but right now she didn’t give a crap.

The fight – more of a massacre – didn’t last long, and soon it was just her and Mark’s stepfather. She recognized him immediately: a big beefy guy wearing stained mechanic overalls, with squinty eyes and a perpetual scowl on his face. He put up more of a fight, swinging a club with superhuman speed and power. Mark’s fear gave the ghoul strength. Christine/Snipe had to work at it, but eventually she timed his swings and managed to chop off one of his hands at the wrist. After that, it became butchery.

When it was over, she turned her attention to Mark, still overcome with uncomprehending agony.

Have some healz
. His wounds closed up. Getting him to wake up was harder, however.

Mark
.

Pain and terror were his only response, filling up all the psychic bandwidth of their private connection like so much white noise. He was transmitting, but he wasn’t receiving. That part of their connection had been blocked – severed, actually.

Mark, wake up!

A child’s voice emerged from the fog of suffering.
Make it stop. Please make it stop
.

I have. Wake up
.

He did. It happened suddenly: one second he was just a lump of mindless misery, and the next Mark Martinez was looking at her through his nonexistent eyes.

A burst of pure terror exploded from him, so strong it paralyzed her. It was followed by a stronger wave of hatred and rage.

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” he screamed, lunging at her. His hands were around her throat before she could do or say anything.

He started choking the life out of her.

Dreamland, July 19, 2014

“He thought you were her,” Mark said when she paused her dog and pony show.

She nodded. His current emotional state was hurting her badly, and she hadn’t even gotten to the really bad parts yet.

“As it turns out, she’d been there before,” she told him. “She would drop by to visit whenever she was bored. She would wake him up, make him remember everything, and then she’d… do stuff to him.”

“I guess I was lucky. Just knowing you’d turned bad, that I didn’t cut our connection before you got infected… That would have been worse than anything she could do to me.”

“There’s more, Mark.”

“Well, yeah. I figure you didn’t escape from Earth FUBAR right after my alternate attacked you.”

“Nope.”

“Just show me. Or tell me if it’s easier. I think I know where this is going.”

“I’ll show you.”

Earth FUBAR

Christine couldn’t breathe, but what almost killed her was the sheer hatred coming from him. For a moment, she didn’t fight back. Maybe she deserved to go like this. At least it would give him the satisfaction of getting a measure of revenge.

Are you fucking kidding me?

She snapped out of it just as she felt her windpipe begin to give under the relentless pressure. Breaking free wasn’t difficult; he wasn’t using any technique, just brute strength, and her Snipe reflexes and Elven muscles were more than a match for him. She pushed her forearms between his and brought them apart, breaking his grip. They wrestled for a bit, in a grotesque parody of lovemaking, until she managed to judo-throw him off of her. Christine sprang to her feet just as Mark did. He charged her again, and she sidestepped and tripped him, much like she’d done to that bully in the town of Heaven, about a month and a lifetime ago.