The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 10

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Chapter 10

“Aren’t you a pretty picture,” I said.

“Thanks to you and your lying little mouth, Miss Monday.” Jack replied, removing his respirator. He issued a spectacular series of coughs and sputters. Whatever had gotten into him…and I had little doubt I knew what had…it had burned at least part of his throat.

“So, you survived,” Thursday added.

“If you can call this survival,” Jack said, his voice hoarse and full of gravel, a sight different than his usual high-pitched yammering. “I’m afraid my former men can’t lay claim to such status, however.”

 “That’s on you. You gave the order!” I said angrily. “I was only defending myself!”

“I paid my dues in that regard, girl. One arm, two legs, and half my face. We’re square. Up and flippity, serendipity, even as Steven, tic, tac, and toe, checkmate and king me, I scratched your back and you scratched mine. Oh yes, you certainly did scratch mine, didn’t you!”

I scoffed. “I didn’t cast any spells from the infernal college.”

“True enough. But whatever charm you whipped up, managed not only to send me flying, it blasted the junk pile I’d used for cover, like a grenade would to a bowl of pudding. There were several sharp objects in the garbage, some of which severed three of my limbs. Your spell also split open a number of frozen power cell batteries. Their fuel splashed across this grizzled walnut I used to call a face. Outlandishly excessive force. If I’d but known.”

“Cry me a river. If you weren’t a kidnapping scumbag, none of that would’ve happened,” I said. “Don’t tell me you came all the way out here to the sticks to make another run at me.”

He grinned. A trickle of pus ran down his neckline from his face plate seam.

Thursday was confused. “You shouldn’t have survived that blast. How did you get down from the mountain? Why didn’t you bleed out?”

“Yeah. You should be feed for the dogs of the Dead Lands.” I added.

“That’s between me and my gods. Excuse me one moment, Miss Monday,” said Jack. Cool as a cucumber, he raised a forefinger on his prosthetic hand and pointed it toward the guards of House Arroyo. Two iridescent beams of blue pulse energy, one after the other, burst from his fingertip. The House Arroyo guards collapsed to the deck, dead before they hit the floor. Dark holes smoked in the centers of their foreheads. Their rifles clattered away.

I pulled the twinkie’s first trigger. With a speed he’d theretofore not shown, Jack ducked under the blast radius and thrust forward at me, grabbing the double barrel with his normal hand as the gun fired, forcing it upward. The shot went wild, blowing a spray of yellowcake buckshot into the car’s ceiling. Flaxen dust fell over our struggle.

Then Thursday threw his knife. It was a bull’s eye, or would have been, if it hadn’t ricocheted off Jack’s metal face implant with a loud clang. I tore the twinkie away from Jack’s grip. He pivoted to one side as he dodged a rush from Thursday, tripping him up. Thursday went sprawling to the floor. I brought the gun up for a second shot as Jack landed a teeth-rattling blow aside my head. The serrated greave plate of his cybernetic hand ripped across my ear, tearing through my hair. I staggered away. Blood streamed down my neck from my head.

My heart pounded. I looked around for Thursday. He rose behind Jack, who spun to meet him, his purple cloak flapping. He swung his normal arm in a roundhouse blow and punched Thursday square in the chops. Thursday stumbled backward, tripping over one of the dead guard’s bodies, and went down again. I took aim with the twinkie.  

“Stop,” Jack commanded. He put one of his heavy boots atop Thursday’s chest. Thursday grunted, his eyes widened, the wind knocked out of him. A trickle of blood ran down his chin from his mouth. He gasped for air. Jack pointed his metal finger at Thursday’s head. “You’ve made your showings, and I’m sure your ancestors are proud. Put away your weapon, or I’m turning the dome kid’s head into a bucket.”

I paused, fuming. The buckshot radius would catch Thursday at this range.

I lowered the gun.

“Get off him!” I blurted out, trying to clear my muddied head.

“On the table,” Jack said, motioning to the twinkie. I set it down on the counter top. “Don’t forget the backup,” he added. I took my sidearm pistol from its holster and set it aside the twinkie. “Now, shall we resume our palaver?”

He picked up one of the dead guards’ sniper rifles and crushed it with his augmented prosthetic. Its broken barrel and stock fell to the floor. Then he did the same to the second rifle. He walked back to our table and sat, confident in his control of the situation. The automaton came out of its kitchen bay and rolled around the train car. It projected a holo menu to one of the dead guard’s bodies.

Jack motioned for us to join him. Thursday rose to his feet, taking deep breaths. We sat down opposite of Jack, humiliated, tails tucked. It was not a feeling with which I was familiar. I simmered.

Dope, girl. The federal got the drop on you. Super dank courier.

As if he could read my mind, Jack said, “Don’t bother with the abracadabra ace in the hole. The first light I catch in your eyes, poof! Frontal lobotomy in less than a half second. Let’s hope neither of you sees any jackrabbits out the window.” He cackled and coughed. It was a throaty, malevolent sound. He took the twinkie in his cybernetic hand and squeezed. He grunted, putting the servo joints in his prosthetic hand to the test, its hydraulics whining. Both the ironwood stock and the twin barrels refused to give. He put the weapon back on the table. “Protective spell? Perhaps I’ll spare your knee-capper here as a keepsake. I’m still getting used to these upgrades. While I miss my original equipment, I must confess the enhancements are addicting.”

“Your original equipment wasn’t much to speak of, anyway. How’s that healing going? The odor is delightful,” I taunted.

Perhaps there was a way to set him off balance.

“Isn’t it? It’s a veritable picnic. So smelly, unlike toast and jelly.”

“What do you want with us?” Thursday asked.

“Same thing I did before. Your associate here had it right the first time. I’m collecting tricksy rabbits for a special interest.”

“That’s it? You’re just another dime-a-dozen slaver?” I demanded.

“Hardly, Miss Monday.” The ‘bot navigated to the second guard’s corpse and presented its holo offerings yet again. “Poor little guy,” Jack said as he looked on, amused. “He hasn’t yet been taught the difference between life and death. But we all get there eventually, don’t we? I’m on my ninth life here. Soon enough, I’ll be serving drinks right alongside that bot.”

“Do you really expect us to come with you? You know we won’t,” I said.

“Which is exactly what I’d prefer,” Jack said, nonchalant. I glanced at Thursday. He was as puzzled as I was. “I must enforce the statutes of my contract to the extent of my persuasive abilities, but unlike my employer, I am not convinced of your intrinsic value. More important, I owe you two mewling cretins a blood debt, one I expect to be paid at some point or another, be it now, or after your services are no longer required.”

“Let me get this straight,” Thursday said. “You’re saying we’re going to die whether we go with you or not.”

“Pretty much. Especially you, Miss Monday. I’ll truly appreciate the end of your days. Your death will be sweeter than mother’s lemon tea.”

“How do you know we wouldn’t have gone willingly, if you’d just explained what it is your employer wants?” Thursday implored.

“Why does a cat play with its prey?”

“All this is about stupid magic,” I murmured.

“Obviously,” Jack affirmed. “The man who hired me thinks you’re valuable enough to take alive. If it were up to me, I’d dump you both in the deepest pit at my correctional facility and leave you to rot. Or better yet, off with your heads right in the here and now.”

“But what does he want with us?” I asked.

“What all men want, I wager. Power. Fortune. Glory. You two are among the rarest of commodities in a barren world. Corporate interests and crime syndicates have been searching for decades for people who can actually wield magicks, or can properly use the arcane rarities found about the outlands. That goes without saying, does it not? Now me, Miss Monday, believe it or not, we’re of like minds regarding arcana. I too, think it’s a worthless pursuit, and would much rather bank on steady hands, steel, and lead. Didn’t we get to know each other too well, during our adventures up the Sierra flank?”

I stared him down, fuming within.

“For all I know, my employer is enlisting you in his organization. Maybe he wants you to storm the gates of Washoe and burn the place to the ground. Maybe he’s looking to activate some fantastic weapon only mages of genuine article can operate. Perhaps he’s looking to trim the world of its fairies and leprechauns. I don’t know, and I don’t care either. The sum of gold for bringing both of you magical reprobates in will put me in style for the remainder of my days, and maybe, just maybe, being turned into a paperweight might be worth the price. So…you kiddies coming with Uncle Jacko, or do we settle up here on the choo-choo?”

He wagged his finger back and forth, first to me, then to Thursday. Its tip glowed with white hot light. While he’d prattled on, I’d spotted some of its op-specs. It was a simple auto-feed chamber with a power source hidden somewhere in the forearm greave. He didn’t have any neural feed wires attached to his head, so he probably primed and loaded the weapon manually by manipulating one of the glove’s digits. I wondered why Jack’s employer thought he was a worthy enough underling to expedite a med-evac from the frozen Sierra for emergency triage. I had seen little in the greasy henchman that warranted such expenditures.

I struggled with alternatives. If I was alone, I might’ve trusted to my speed in distracting Jack long enough to either grab one of my guns, or work up a bit of sorcery, but there was Thursday to consider. I doubted he was fast enough to avoid a pulse weapon from a few feet away. I wasn’t quite sure I was. I pondered my limited options as Thursday studied Jack, his eyes squinting, his lips pursed tight. A tiny bead of sweat dripped down the side of his cheek.

Wait!

But I had no time to finish the thought before the car plunged into darkness. The train’s windows instantly morphed from sun-baked white to blackest night. Even Jack’s primed fingertip lost luminosity. I took advantage of the distraction and dragged Thursday down to the floor, hoping he could hold his focus. We scrambled away on all fours, side by side. Jack howled in frustration. He fired, indiscriminate, throughout the car. The chirping sounds of wild pulse fire echoed about the cabin. Because of the darkspell’s effect, the weapon’s discharges fired without muzzle flash.

Several shots whizzed past us as we crawled toward the rear of the car, shimmying over burn holes left by pulse fire, piping hot to the touch. I took one through the side of my duster coat to my thigh. It was a through and through flesh wound, didn’t hit bone nor artery, but it burned like hell. It took everything I had not to cry out. To his credit, Thursday was silent, all while scrambling on the floor and simultaneously sustaining the darkspell. It was impressive. I couldn’t have done it.

We reached the back wall of the car, squeezed into a corner, and turned to face our assailant’s vicinity. My leg sang with searing pain. It was impossible to see Jack. I hoped he wouldn’t find an unluckier target than the spongy part of my upper leg. The void was so dense. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I took hold of Thursday’s right hand to my left and squeezed, letting him know I was there. He squeezed back. In that dark of darks, we understood each other. The smart move was to stay zipped and on the down low. I wondered how far the spell effect extended, whether it reached outside the car, and how the bullet train at full speed, its last car engulfed in a cloud of nothingness, might appear to onlookers.

Jack stopped firing. His raspy breathing labored from across the room. “Neat trick,” he called out. “Well done. Which of you has studied the optics college? How did you mask your pretty little eyes from lighting up?” He was surly. I allowed myself a brief thrill. “All right then. I’m happy you’ve elected to take the low road. Now I can report back you resisted beyond both acquiescence and force, and there was no choice but to terminate. I only wish I could watch it live. You’ve given me little choice in that regard. Luckily, I was prepared before I boarded.”

I heard him whisk aside the folds of his cloak. It sounded like he was fiddling around with something in his hardware. “Ready for extraction. T-minus sixty seconds,” he muttered. I held my breath. Thursday bristled. His hand was wet and clammy. The focus required to hold the darkspell for this long, under this much duress, had to be considerable. “Time for me to go, kids. You have one last decision to make, and it’s regarding the manner in which you will die. My agents at House Cheyenne rigged your rail roadster here with explosives hidden beneath the engine car, set to detonate one minute after my departure. You can either find out what it’s like to disembark off a high-speed rail car at full pace, or you can experience a derailment from within. I daresay your chances are slightly better if you try to jump the train. Maybe your necks won’t snap from whiplash, once you pop the emergency door. It was a distinct displeasure getting to know you, Miss Monday. I can only hope the painful death awaiting you gives me solace in my elder years.”

He cackled. In that black gulf, he sounded like the devil himself. There came an awful, tinny sound from the darkness, a whining, grating reverberation that made my skin crawl. The cabin vibrated. I felt a wave, an expulsion of energy invisible to the naked eye. I grit my teeth as I heard Thursday suck in a heavy breath. The abrasive noise was difficult to endure. Then the weird clamor subsided, and the car was silent, save for the train’s maglev cycle.

“He’s gone,” I assured Thursday. “You can cut the nighttime.”

Thursday exhaled, puffing. A burst of sunlight flooded the car. I squinted through the haze, half-blinded by the sudden departure of null space, ensuring Jack had indeed departed. The car was peppered with many dozens of his discharges, tiny burn holes floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Several windows were smudged with blackened blast marks. I turned to Thursday. He grew dismayed as he noticed the blood trickling from my head where Jack clocked me. I moaned as I put a hand atop my leg wound, gently gauging the extent of the flash-burn.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s painful, but it’s already cauterized. I’ll walk it off. You?”

“I’m good. Where’d he go?”

“He ‘ported out somehow. We have less than a minute before things go boom, if he wasn’t lying,” I said, limping over to the table and retrieving my guns. I grabbed our packs and tossed his to him.

“There’s no compartment we can hole up in, maybe ride it out?” he asked.

“Nothing inside this passenger car will protect us from a derailment at this speed,” I said.

“Then it’s arcana or death. What of the contego spell?”

“That’s just for keeping the rain off our heads, maybe an occasional bullet. It’s a rookie charm. It’s nowhere near enough to shelter us from what’s about to happen. This car is going to crumple like a tin can.”

“Maybe it’ll withstand the initial impact if we jump.”

“It’s not strong enough for that, Joop! Do you understand how fast three hundred clicks per hour is?”

“You forget,” Thursday said, “we’re stronger together. All the way to the end, right?”

His eyes tinkled, like diamonds in a pond. Though my life was more or less forfeit, though I hadn’t quite figured out yet if I could trust him or not, I would’ve hiked through the glass lands in my bare feet just to stay in that moment with him.

Omigosh, such a damsel.

Shut it, you.

“We’ll still splat like bugs,” I insisted.

“You specialize in telekinetics. With our combined mojo, our fields might absorb enough force to survive. It won’t be pretty. The ensuing wake will blow us out into the desert away from the causeway.”

“Where we’ll be pulverized by the nearest rock.”

“Do we have a choice?”

Thirty seconds. Get it together, or die trying.

“Guess not. Let’s do it,” I said, breathless.

“We need to direct the energy into viscosity, rather than diameter. Increase intensity as much as you can. I’ll be doing the same. It’s gotta be as close to impermeable as we can get.” Thursday said.

“Copy that,” I said. It would take mad concentration to hold a shield of force together while jumping from a transport at such high speed. He was already spent, and I was distracted by pain. He was right. Our proximity to each other was our best hope.

Thursday glanced at each door in the cabin, an emergency exit at port, the main entry starboard. “Eeenie, meenie, miney, moe,” he mumbled, and ran to the starboard door and pulled a red escape lever. The door popped away, as the hermetical seal broke and the escaping air vacuum almost sucked us both outside. Landscape whizzed by in a blur of sand and scrub. “We’ll have to make a running start, and try to clear the ballast bank as much as we can,” he yelled over the wind storm. Then he took my hands in his. His fingers trembled. “Ladies first. The first brunt is going to be a doozy. We won’t be able to hold the field beyond that. Tuck and roll. I’m right behind you.”

I nodded. We took a few steps back. I cleared my mind, focused my thoughts on the density of the field I was hoping to create, and took in a deep breath. I ran to the opening and launched myself. The contego spell extended as the train’s wake caught me and whipped me backward.

Then I heard the explosion.

I strained to focus as I prayed Thursday made it off the train. I hit the ground with a monstrous thud. My shield’s outer carapace of energy took on the kinetic force of impact to a point of near collapse, but I held it…barely. Then as expected, it fizzled out, and I tumbled, over and over, through sand dunes, shrubs, and assorted chaff scattered across the desert floor. I rolled, frantically trying to slow my toppling through the hardtack. Off in the forward distance, I spied boxcars flying away from their berths in opposite directions. The tank car exploded in a watery eruption.

What remained of the engine crumpled to a twisted husk amidst a violent spray of ballast granite and metal. Yet still I rolled, fast, far too fast. I narrowly missed a petrified oak tree, then the edge of a large, sandstone boulder. I sailed straight through a thicket of tumbleweed, my wounded leg crying foul once more. A bone in my right little finger snapped like a twig. At last, I came to a halt, face down in the dirt.

The pain throughout my battered body was considerable, but my only thoughts were of Thursday. I rose to my knees, my eyes glazed, my hair full of thorn and dirt, and looked around for him. There he was, fifty yards south, stumbling about and gasping for breath. He staggered over to me, his gait uneven and shaky. His coiffed hair was rumpled and full of sand. His New Angeles tunic and trousers were shredded. Something protruded from a bloodied hole in his belly.

“Well, that was easy as mom’s apple pie,” he said, chuckling.

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