Spires of Infinity (2 page)

He looked more like a hardened gunslinger rather than a respectable defense attorney.

The face staring back at him looked like it should belong to his older, manlier brother.

“Who are you,” Gabriel asked the reflection. To his dismay he caught the sight of several gold teeth. He’d spent thousands of dollars to keep his teeth radioactively white.

Unable to look at his reflection any longer, Gabriel stuffed the mirror back into the saddlebag and looked around at the desolate landscape. He’d been to the Utah Salt Flats once, and they were the closest thing he’d ever seen to the wasteland surrounding him. The ground was flat as a board for miles in every direction. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sandy ground was hard and reddish brown, with those strange purple plants scattered every here and there.

The thing that made him stop and stare was not the mutant horse-cat, nor was it the flat wasteland or the purple plants. Not even the face that was not his face had shocked him so badly as what he saw in the sky above. The sun was huge in the sky, and it blazed the color of blood, yet it gave little warmth. Opposite the sun was a huge gas giant, made up of swirling hues of blue, and red, and purple. There was a scattering of moons around it, filling up the sky. It was a truly breathtaking sight.

“Eat your heart out Tom Baker,” Gabriel said in awe, unable to tear his eyes away from the planet looming large in the sky. “Where the hell am I?”

His knees wobbled and gave out, depositing him on the hard ground, but he still could not look away. He began to laugh, completely unable to stop. It actually, physically hurt, and he could feel something rather important in his mind straining toward breaking, but he could not stop laughing. Just ten minutes ago he’d been leaving his Porsche behind and getting ready to board a train to a nasty part of town, and now he was on an alien moon staring up at a gas giant in the sky that was obviously orbiting a red giant star. His inner geek was having a hysterical multiple joygasm, but the rest of him was certain he was in a coma in some hospital, perhaps County General, and he would eventually wake from this nightmare.

Getting control of his laughter, Gabriel dragged himself to his feet. He noticed that his black leather gloves had circular holes cut in the backs, and there was metal glinting on his skin. A closer examination revealed that he had two metallic implants that looked something like headphone jacks, one on the back of each hand. He rubbed at one and felt the metal moving around deep within his hand between the bones, causing a shiver to run up his spine.

“What in the hell are these,” Gabriel mused aloud. “Cyborg implants?”

The horse-cat looked at him again over a mouthful of purple grass.

“Can you say Star Trek?”

Chewing its purple grass, the horse-cat looked past him with something nearing mild interest. Following its line of sight, Gabriel could see dust rising from the horizon.

After a few minutes a figure riding a horse-cat materialized in the dust. It moved with a strange grace, a combination of a horse galloping and a cat stalking.

It occurred to Gabriel that the person might not be altogether friendly. There had to be a reason for the guns and knife on his belts, right? He also noticed a shotgun large enough to put a hole clean through an elephant in a saddle holster and pulled it out. He was familiar with guns. It was a yuppie pastime to go to the shooting range where he came from. Some of his associates thought themselves manly because they owned a gun and could hit a target. Gabriel made sure that the shotgun was loaded and cocked it one-handed in the way he’d seen John Wayne do it as a child, and more recently the Terminator. Holding it at ready, he did not aim at the approaching rider, but it was an easy motion away from it.

Slurring drunkenly, the voice of his father rose up to taunt him again in the back of his mind, telling him he didn’t have the guts to shoot someone, much less take a life.

His temples began to ache with an impending headache. Snarling, Gabriel pushed the voice away and turned his attention back to the incoming rider.

The rider pulled up to a stop and her horse-cat reared. Its massive paws flashed claws the length of Gabriel’s forearm. Pushing back a fedora, the rider lowered a dirty bandana to reveal her ugly face.

“You’re Gabriel Reeve,” she asked in a voice so gravelly that she must have been chain smoking from the cradle. As Gabriel nodded she pulled out a hand rolled cigarette and lit it from a match that she struck on the heel of her palm.

“Oh put that thing away! Mister big time lawyer, you’ve probably never seen a real gun before.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know—“

“Oh shut up,” the woman snapped over him. She leaned down from her saddle to

spit a long stream of black fluid at his feet.

Gabriel took a step back to keep from getting any on his heavy leather boots. She was chewing tobacco
while
smoking? That was a new one. Double the pleasure. Double the fun. Her breath had to be atrocious!

“I don’t like having to come all the way out here, so you listen good, because I’m not going to repeat myself,” she grated. “I’m Millie, and the Northern Sage sent me.”

Gabriel lowered the shotgun, but did not reholster it.

“You’ll find two jewels in the pocket inside your coat,” Millie said.

Gabriel reached into the pocket he’d been unaware of until then and pulled out two hexagonal, faceted jewels about as big around as a quarter, one red the other blue.

There was a long spike on the underside of each that he could see circuitry inside of.

“Plug them into the jacks in the backs of your hands,” Millie ordered. “Red left, blue right.”

Gabriel grimaced and did as told. As the jewels slid into the metallic holes in the backs of his hands he felt a very strange and generally unpleasant sensation of something being stuck deep within his flesh. They clicked into place and glittered in the red sunlight and purplish light from the planet above.

“Those are called Sa’Dhi,” Millie explained. “They’re like flash drives. Verbal commands will trigger them to load information directly into your brain. The blue one contains all of the knowledge and skills of a gun and knife fighter, and its keyword is wingless. The red one is a field log, something that what passes for law enforcement around here uses to record evidence. Say halo, and everything you see and hear will be recorded on it. You can also record copies of skill sets from the blue one with keywords to be used at later times onto it, a sort of last resort, one time use sort of thing. There should be an instruction book on how to do that in your saddlebags somewhere. You have to build an affinity for them through use. As a beginner, you’ll get maybe ten minutes at the maximum. As you use them more you’ll be able to handle them for longer and longer.”

“I’m trapped in an RPG,” Gabriel muttered. “Am I tripping on acid?”

“No,” Millie replied.

“Are you?”

“I’m afraid this is really happening,” Millie said. “Now for your quest.”

“Fine, what does the slave driver want me to do?”

“Go to the Spires of Infinity,” Millie said.

“And?”

“Find a girl named Allie. She’s been informed of your impending arrival and is quite excited. She hasn’t had a visitor in a
very
long time. She’ll fill you in on the rest of what you’re supposed to do.”

“And, uh, where are the Spires of Infinity?”

Millie shrugged and pointed. “Not my problem. Have fun. There’s a town about a half-day’s ride in that direction. Someone at the Hunter’s Guild might be stupid enough to go traipsing around the Red Zone with you, looking for the Spires, for a large enough handful of chits, but I sure as hell won’t.”

When it became clear Millie was done speaking, Gabriel walked over to his

horse-cat and holstered the shotgun. He put a foot in the stirrup and tried to throw his leg over the saddle, but it moved away from him, causing him to hop to keep from falling over. He tried again, and again, but the horse-cat always moved away from him.

Millie was laughing at him.

“You’re mounting the wrong side, dumbass,” she said as she reined her horse-cat to face the direction she’d come from. “Oh, I should probably warn you. Things on this world are a little different from what you’re used to. Women who want children seek out men with pure DNA, no mutations or genetic drift, and take what they need to conceive whatever the man wants. The ladies will be after you if they find out you’re one hundred percent human. If anyone asks, you’ve got twenty-one percent drift and for god’s sake don’t let any of them get a blood sample. Women in this world will gang up when they find a man with pure DNA. It’s amazing how many women a single man can impregnate in a relatively short time given the proper incentive, like being allowed to continue breathing. Now, I never want to see you again. Goodbye.”

With that she kicked her horse-cat to speed and was off in a cloud of dust.

“Trying to mount the wrong side dumbass,” Gabriel mimicked in her grating

smoker’s voice as he walked around to the other side of his own beast. This time it let him mount with no problems. There was nothing within sight resembling civilization in the direction Millie indicated.

“Now how the hell do I get you to move,” he asked the animal. “God, what am I even doing here? Packs of women that rape men? I’m in hell, or the best sex fantasy
ever.
This has to be a dream!”

Looking up at the spectacular sky, Gabriel sighed deeply. He would have given anything to be taken here as a child, if only to get away from his father, but now that he was here, all he could think about was going back to the comfort, fame and luxury of his old life.

“You could have at
least
let me keep my MP3 player,” Gabriel growled up at the sky. He had no idea if the Northern Sage could hear him.

In frustration and anger Gabriel screamed out that most horrible of curse words, the one beginning with fornication, and ending with king.

Chapter 2: The Apostle is Born

The knife glittered point first in the sand halfway between Subject 32 and Subject 27. It meant death for one of them and life for the other. It meant freedom, revenge, hatred, slavery, and sorrow. With it, Subject 32 had killed twenty-five other Subjects in combat. She had one more to kill.

The arena was small, cold and dark, like the cell she was locked into while not training or giving devotion to Cain, the one true god. Subject 32 did not resent the arena, or that her comrades tried their hardest to kill her in it. She did not resent the fact that she had never, not once in her life, been the recipient of a single act of love or kindness. She did resent the single knife, and what it represented.

The Council of the World Closest to Perdition demanded proof of their faith and training. Only two Subjects remained of one hundred. The blood of the others stained the sand of the arena. Only fifty returned from the first round of one-on-one duels, and twenty-five after the second. Subject 32 proved herself to be the most skilled of the survivors, and was then forced to fight duels with the remaining twenty-four other Subjects. Had she been defeated, the victor would have gone on in her place.

A chill ran down Subject 32’s spine, causing her to shudder from the tips of her wolflike ears to the end of her wolflike tail. Despite the cold, nervous sweat beaded on her skin in anticipation of the horror she was about to commit. The single ray of hope in her miserable life was that she only had to kill one more of her own to earn her freedom and the title of Apostle.

Once she was free she would have vengeance. In the cold, dark nights when she had nothing but her own sobs to keep her warm, the fires of rage built in her heart and kept her going ever onward. She
would
become the Apostle, and then would come what she’d dreamt about since she was young. She’d take that knife and ram it down every Council Member’s throat.

Subject 32’s sweat began to freeze on her mostly bare skin, causing another shiver to run through her. She wore only short shorts and a tattered sports bra. Both were stained, full of holes despite many patches, and nearly worn away to nothing. It was the only clothing she’d ever owned, earned with the blood of her fellow Subjects. Before that time she’d known little of modesty, unashamed of her nudity, and unaware that she should be ashamed. Now she clung to what she had, not wanting to be seen naked by anyone ever again.

Across the arena, Subject 27’s eyes seemed to gather and reflect the dim

illumination of the single neon light hanging above them. Her own eyes would appear to glow as well. He was nearly twice her body mass, and physically much stronger than she. His shorts were stretched tight over the bulk of his muscles. His catlike tail swished lazily as his gaze moved between her and the knife, waiting for the command to begin.

Shifting her feet, callused by a lifetime of never having worn shoes, Subject 32 let her gaze wander. The circle of bloody sand was surrounded by twelve Centuries, large, hulking, metal monstrosities that could nearly match a Subject for physical ability. The Centuries kept the Subjects in line, delivering electric shocks to stun any that became unruly. The bones of Subjects were made of metal, and even a light shock could be completely incapacitating, perhaps even fatal.

Above each of the Centuries was a large window from which Council Members

watched the duels. A dim light far from the glass lit each from within, but Subject 32 had never even seen so much as a shadow in any of them. She was certain that she could snatch the knife from the middle of the arena, calculate the trajectories needed to break the glass and bounce the blade off of the wall and into the caster of a shadow. She was sure that she could do it before the Centuries reached her. Unfortunately, she never saw any proof that any of the rooms were even occupied.

“Today we choose an Apostle,” a red light flashed above one of the windows as

one of the Council Members spoke.

“This two-hundred year experiment has yielded two candidates,” another red light flashed above a different window.