July 18th, 2410 19:53
Hell's Kitchen, New Avalon
In Hell's Kitchen, it wasn't hard to believe that someone would be sneaking around. Legitimate souls kept themselves out of sight as best they could in order to avoid the attentions of the illegitimate ones who kept to the shadows to avoid being seen by each other.
In this particular case though, the figure doing the sneaking was doing so from more than self-protective instinct. From his appearance he might have been considered a legitimate soul that had taken a wrong turning, were it not for the fact that his turning had taken him onto a warehouse roof. But his movements, skilled, sharp and with an air of caution to them, belie the innocent appearance and suggest a level of lethality that most of the more dangerous denizens of Hell's Kitchen would have given their souls for.
He moved quickly across the warehouse roof, dropping lightly down to a walkway and moving over to the door at the end of it. He paused to consult a faintly humming contraption comprised of a crucifix bonded with a magnetic tape recorder, two egg whisks, and a nasty looking twisted piece of steel wire, bits of which seemed to move through each other as the device was moved.
The device clicked and hummed somewhat erratically, and hints of something that might have been music, or a choir singing could occasionally be heard from somewhere within it. The choral sounds were sufficient that it actually took several seconds for the similar sounds from inside the building to make themselves apparent; the singers inside the building were working to a different beat, but there was the same feeling of a choir in harmony.
Or disharmony anyway; the singers in the warehouse were either tone deaf or honestly weren't bothered by the fact that they only seemed to be keeping to the same rhythm by chance and only keeping to the same key at random. Many of the voices were a lot more harsh or guttural than might also be expected from a holy choir as well.
Apparently satisfied with the result that was being retrieved from the device, though not sufficiently for it to show on his somewhat disgruntled expression, the figure slipped the device into a holster on his belt which kept the pieces of wire from touching anything, pulled a weapon from a holster under his jacket, and, with an urgency that had been carefully hidden by his previous actions, kicked the door open.
On the far side of the door there was a balcony overlooking a reasonably sized storeroom that had presumably been some kind of secondary storage space for the warehouse. Now a series of crude rows of seats had been set up across the room with a central aisle down the middle of the room leading to a large packing crate. On the crate stood a small wooden box, a pair of rather battered datapads, and a goblet made from crudely welded pieces of steel holding what looked disturbingly like blood.
The people in the storeroom were a motley group; most sat facing the crate and its ornaments, though a couple stood to the sides. All of them had some kind of cybernetic parts, some of them had some kind of weapon implants, and all of them had turned abruptly to look at the intruder when he entered.
The intruder took all of this in quickly, looking over the assembled group, picking out the weapons being aimed at him, guessing the comparative strength of those who were without weapons, and generally finding that this group represented a small army.
The intruder gave a weary sigh, clearly annoyed. "This is going to take all night..."
Steel Beam Productions
Presents
Puzzle Box: Best Left Closed
Weapons were being raised in the storeroom when a loud voice called out.
"HOLD! There will be no violence here!"
One of the cyborgs, looking decidedly nervous, waved a pocket knife towards the intruder on the balcony. "But Father, he must be here to arrest us! He must be with the IPO!"
"The IPO announce their entrance my son," declared the first voice, the owner now identifiable as the large figure in black standing by the crate at the front. His clothing covered him well, so the only visible cybernetics that he had were his hands and down one side of his jaw. The intruder noted in passing that, bizarrely, the figure had a white collar to go with his clothes and what sounded like an Irish accent as well. "And you will note that this individual, though facing a room full of very powerful looking individuals, has no fear." The figure looked up at the intruder. "Will you identify yourself?"
The intruder, who had drawn his own weapon before the cyborgs below had begun to move, met the figure's gaze for a second. "My name is Ben Foreman. And you are?"
"I am Father O'Haren, of the Church of Man. I will have to ask your intention here; as I said, the IPO or Experts of Justice announce their presence where you have not done so, so you are clearly not with them."
"I'm looking for something," Foreman replied cautiously. "And the Church of Man wasn't it. I apologise for intruding; I'll leave peacefully if you wish."
"May I ask what you seek," O'Haren called out as Foreman turned to go. When Foreman cast him a questioning look he continued. "You came in here looking for something dangerous; your weapon, manner and speed of entry mark that easily enough. But when confronted with a room full of cyborgs, some of them obviously combat equipped and many nervous at your intrusion, you reacted with annoyance, as if you had something urgent to deal with and did not wish for such a distraction. What were you seeking that made my congregation seem like a minor issue to a lone adventurer?"
Foreman smiled back at him for a few seconds. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he assured O'Haren.
"I live in New Avalon, the City in the Sphere," O'Haren pointed out. "My capacity for belief in the improbable is quite high."
Foreman considered for a few more seconds, then came properly onto the balcony. "I'm looking for a box," he announced. "About, yea big," he added indicating something about half a metre long, thirty centimetres deep, and twenty centimetres high. "There's something dangerous inside it." He paused for a second as if about to reconsider. "It's a demon. A plague demon."
There were murmurs of disbelief from the apparent congregation, but O'Haren simply watched Foreman for a few seconds, as if measuring his reactions. "I believe you," he announced after a moment of consideration. "May I ask why you hunt it alone? Surely the IPO-"
"For all that their organisation was born out of a failed Ragnarok," Foreman interrupted, "and that the Goddess of Technology is in charge of their R&D division, the IPO has very little general comprehension of the spiritual aspects of their work; the incredibly vast majority of them, when confronted with what I just told you, will try to find some other explanation for what happens, and won't take the correct precautions as a result." He hesitated. "Also, I'm not exactly on speaking terms with the IPO at present."
O'Haren smiled up at him. "You find yourself in good company then," he announced. "Neither are we. Join us," he offered. "We were about to perform Mass, and once we have done this, I will speak to you again."
Foreman had hung around at the back of the makeshift church, watching as the ceremony proceeded. There had been a few disgruntled glances thrown in his direction, but for the most part the congregation either ignored him or gave him a respectfully wide berth.
Once the service broke up and various members began to file out, Foreman pulled the device off his belt once more, taking out a set of fine mechanical tools and poking at it hopefully.
"May I ask what this device is?" O'Haren enquired as he approached, accompanied by three members of the congregation.
"It's what led me here," Foreman admitted. "You've heard the joke about a rev counter for use in ecclesiastic areas? Same kind of idea, only more so. I was trying to use it to track down the box. I ended up here instead; you can understand my annoyance."
"Indeed," O'Haren agreed. "Do you trust it enough now to use it again?"
"Not particularly," Foreman replied, putting away the tools. "So I'm back to... Well, before square one now; at least before I had an idea of where to look."
"We may be able to help," O'Haren said. "But first I would like to ask you about yourself and your quest. You claim to be following a plague demon..."
"I'm following the box that it was sealed inside three hundred and twenty years ago," Foreman replied. "Unlike a demon itself, the box has shipping invoices attached to it when it goes through customs, so it's a damned sight easier to track.
"I followed it from the Earth, through Vulcan, Orron, the Pageshi Cluster and the Rubric Stars... Then it came to New Avalon. And there, I lost it and had to resort to some Heath-Robinson-isms to try and follow it," he indicated the device that he had been working on. "My aim is to track it down and make sure that it's safely hidden away before someone tries opening it."
"Tries opening it?" one of the other cyborgs asked.
"We're talking about a box that was designed to hold demons for a long time, and magically sealed to prevent them getting out," Foreman replied. "It's not going to fall open by accident. Thus, anyone opening it must know how to open it, which means that they probably know what's inside it. In that case they either know how to control it, or they don't. If they don't it gets loose and New Avalon could be dead within a week. If they do then they've probably got some kind of plan, in which case New Avalon could be dead within hours instead."
There was a pause as the others digested that, before Foreman spoke again. "Tell me something: the last thing that I heard was that the Church of Man was a Humanocentric cult bordering on an outright terrorist organisation with a heavy interest in cybernetic foot-soldiers. You call yourself the Church of Man, and you've got the cyborgs, but most of these people aren't exactly the foot-soldier type, you had a Gottal in the third row, and this lady," he indicated one of the people that had accompanied O'Haren over, "is a Humanised Salusian, which doesn't exactly fit the mentality. So what are you?"
O'Haren smiled. "We are the Church of Man. And we are as we are meant to be."
"So what are the other Church of Man?" Foreman asked, his expression suggesting that he knew what the answer would be.
"They are the Church of Man as well," O'Haren replied, confirming Foreman's guess. "Are you familiar with the theory of divergent evolution? That when a single species exists in a given area it will frequently diverge into two forms?"
"Gracile and robust forms," Foreman said, taking up the explanation. "One form takes the slimmer route, one the heavier route. It's seen in a number of species that haven't suffered from unnatural selection. Humans are normally classified as the gracile form of one such divergence, though having seen some examples of Humanity you do have to wonder if the people making that classification were a bit optimistic. You are suggesting that you are such a divergence?"
"The Church of Man began, if such a thing can be said to have a true beginning, on a Salusian colony world. Human settlers who could not fit into the local culture banded together, trying to retain their own culture. At that time the divergence began. One group felt slighted by the Salusians and the Humanocentric elements came to the fore. The other group became interested in preserving their own culture, but learning about the Salusian culture.
"In time the cyborg element began to work its way in, and things changed again; the Humanocentric group found cyborgs to be an easy kind of terror weapon to wield, and began to produce them. At the same time our Church began to spread, teaching a harmony with non-Humans. Being less vocal of course we receive less attention and publicity. But then complicity sets in."
"The name of the Church of Man becomes associated with cybernetics," Foreman said, nodding his understanding. "So you begin to acquire cyborgs of your own."
"Those seeking help come to us when they find not help elsewhere. Dani is one such individual," he said indicting the Salusian. "She has a rare allergy to bacta, and as such cybernetics are her only option when serious injury sets in. Others cannot always understand this, and so she is able to find peace here."
"And the 'Church' part?" Foreman asked. "The other lot don't tend to do much praying, but I jumped in on you in the middle of Mass."
"We take such things seriously," O'Haren replied. "We are based on the Christian faith, though we draw perhaps a more liberal interpretation of the term 'in God's image' than many do."
"All races are aspects of God's image and equal before him," Foreman interjected.
"Indeed," O'Haren said, slightly surprised. "I thought that you were not familiar with our faith."
"Not the specifics," Foreman admitted, "but I've come across the same concept several times before, and always found the people upholding such tenets to be worthy allies."
O'Haren raised an eyebrow, an amused smile on his face before turning as a rangy figure in baggy clothing and with cheap augmetic work on his shoulder and chest approached them.
"Father O'Haren," the figure said bowing nervously, and clumsily.
"I have told you before Daniel, obeisance is not necessary," O'Haren declared in the patient tones on one who has indeed said such things a number of times before, and will happily say them many more if necessary.
"Yes father," Daniel replied, bowing slightly again with what appeared to be an ingrained habit. Foreman frowned, his gaze shifting to the middle distance as he considered the situation, before nodding understandingly. "I rang Michael to tell him about the sermon that you gave, and..." He held the mobile phone out to O'Haren.
O'Haren accepted the phone, his overlarge hands working the controls with incongruous delicacy as he switched the device to a speaker. "Michael," O'Haren said. "Daniel implies that you have something to tell me."
"I do Father," replied a South African accent. "Daniel mentioned someone coming into the church and mentioning a plague demon."
"That person is here with me now," O'Haren replied. "Michael works as a nurse in one of the hospitals," he explained to Foreman.
"Then perhaps he should be told that we have had an unusual number of people brought in from one district with various diseases," Michael continued. "Smallpox, bubonic plague... The other two are more obscure, but recognisable. The fifth our doctors can't even begin to identify."
O'Haren looked sharply at Foreman, who leaned forwards. "Michael," Foreman said, "what kind of area do these cases cover?"
"A couple of blocks," Michael replied. "The IPO are sending in containment teams and the Experts of Justice in case this is some kind of terrorist attack. But when Daniel mentioned a plague demon..."
"If it was the plague demon then it would have been a lot worse than you've described," Foreman declared. "Most likely this was just the aftershock from them breaking the first seal on the box."
"How many seals are there?" O'Haren asked, cautiously.
"Three," Foreman replied. "Each one is designed to release a fragment of the demon's power when it is broken, thus ensuring that whoever tries to open the box is killed in the process. Or that's the idea. In practise someone capable of opening it would be able to give themselves minimal protection at least."
"So they may still live?" O'Haren guessed.
"They may still live, and be heading somewhere to break the second seal. I need to get there quickly," Foreman announced, standing and starting for the stairs up to the balcony.
"There will be no need for you to walk," O'Haren declared. "I will accompany you."
Foreman turned sharply. "Don't," he advised. "We're talking about a thing that is the essence of disease. Cybernetics and medicine can only protect you from the biological components of a disease, but this will be pure disease with nothing for them to attack."
"And yet you walk into the mouth of it yourself," O'Haren declared. "I am a priest; my duty is clearly at your side if you fight one of the denizens of Hell."
Foreman looked at the priest for a moment, as if weighing up his options, before seemingly deciding that it wasn't worth the argument. "Very well..."
The area was under quarantine by the time they arrived, having been driven there by Dani in her car. They parked as close as they could before getting out and walking the rest of the way to the barrier manned by a group of bluesuiters.
"They've sealed off everything within a couple of blocks of that apartment block," Foreman said after they had investigated for a couple of minutes. "And they only seem to have brought body-bags out of that one building so far."
"So you believe that is where the box was?" O'Haren enquired.
"There or near enough for it to be the worst hit area," Foreman agreed. "I'm almost impressed," he added, a hint of resignation in his voice. "This was just a defence mechanism designed to stop people opening the box and the injury and fatality list is already up to the level of that which you'd normally associate with the aftermath of a K-Unit attack." He glowered around, clearly feeling impotent against this disaster and not liking it.
"We must attempt to track down the box," O'Haren reminded him. "How would we do this?"
Foreman frowned, looking around for a moment before nodding. "I need a sample of the disease in some form; I can calibrate the tracker properly then and we'll be able to home in on the box a lot more accurately. Failing that..." He looked around in a certain amount of annoyance and even distress. "I need to think about it."
Foreman had donned a hooded sweater when he left the car, and pulled the hood up as he headed into a doorway and sat down, staring at the false stars and the false night of New Avalon. When a large car with flashing lights on it, clearly not a standard design of police vehicle, appeared he pulled the hood lower over his face, huddling back into the doorway even further until it had been passed through the quarantine line and moved on.
After a moment of consideration O'Haren came and sat down beside him. "Your reactions to this," he began thoughtfully. "You know who is behind this?"
Foreman hesitated, and then nodded. "Yeah, I do. He's... He's a sorcerer, from some kind of ancient lineage going back to the Sang Brotherhood. They're a pirate cult that existed until about 1939 when their island base was destroyed. They've kept vaguely going since then, but only vaguely. This guy is probably the biggest of the lot of them since that fall.
"He made contact with me when I was trying to track down part of the Rhybus Needle. The stuff he wanted was innocent enough, and he said that he wanted it so that he could destroy it; it was a few scrolls giving details about some old curses, nothing that I was too surprised that an antiques dealer with an interest in the occult would find out about.
"Then he pointed me towards a couple of other things, paying a good retainer for the work. I was... I was glad to get the work. I've been a bit adrift recently. I mean, chasing down the Rhybus Needle? I was getting fairly desperate there, trying to take on something like that. And he gave me something to keep occupied with.
"A few months ago he passed me some details, nothing serious, about a box. The box, only I didn't know it at the time. I just went ahead and tracked it down, gave him the details I'd got, and then..." He paused, fingers digging into his forehead as he rested his head in his hands. "I recognised the box, and what it was. He must have known what it was right from the start; there's no way that he could have been that interested in it if he didn't recognise it.
"He got it moved before I could stop him. I chased it around... You probably haven't even heard of the Pageshi Cluster. Most mortals haven't. This guy gave his courier directions into it and out the other side. And don't even get me started on the Rubric Stars... But he and the box came together in New Avalon by the looks of things. And now people have died because of it."
O'Haren considered. "Would there have been anything that you could have done to prevent this?"
"Oh yes, that's the really silly part," Foreman admitted. "Ranging from a reasonably decent background search, through tarot, divination, and right up to dangerous things like Once And Future Computing, I could have found out what he was up to. I chose not to investigate them and-" He broke off as another car bearing some kind of special agent turned up.
"You have avoided the IPO thus far," O'Haren said slowly. "Surely explaining what has happened here, and why it has happened..."
"I can't," Foreman replied, seeming a lot less powerful than he had when he had seemed ready to face down a room full of cyborgs. He sighed wearily, the sound coming very close to a sob. "Does your Church practise confession?"
O'Haren considered this question. "Not directly perhaps. We have no formal process certainly. However... Many of those who come to us are in need of help; those who have been forced to rely on cybernetics and are having trouble coping with it, those who have taken cybernetics or some kind of augmentation for social reasons and find that it does not help their lives as they had hoped it would. Many of those who come to us are already healed physically, and we must heal their spirit. And so, yes, we do. Do you have something that you need to confess?"
Foreman nodded slowly, then looked around, checking that they weren't being observed before pulling down the sleeve of his jacket and showing O'Haren the faintly glowing green gem set into the silver framework that held it to his wrist. As O'Haren set eyes on it he felt something touch his mind, very faintly, very gently, just enough to tell him who the person beside him was.
"You are a Lensman?" he asked, doubly confused by this revelation. "But surely if you are-"
"I'm not," Foreman said, removing the gem and its framework from his wrist and passing it to O'Haren. The priest caught it instinctively, and only realised after a second what the problem with that was. "If that was a real Lens then you wouldn't be able to hold it like that," Foreman explained, somewhat unnecessarily. "It would be hurting you, and would kill you if you left it too long."
"But then..."
"It's a fake. The gem is something that I grew in a couple of days using a home chemistry set that I bought from a toy shop, and the framework... That cost me all of thirty credits because I got someone else to make it for me." Foreman sounded almost annoyed at himself, as if this had been too easy.
"But I heard it; it touched my mind just as a Lens would."
Foreman shook his head. "The conventional telepathic scale used by the Psi Corps and AEGIS goes from null-rated for people who can't be scanned at all, through mundanes with no ability at all but who can be read, up to P12. There's a theoretical scale that goes up to P14, but there have only been a couple of exceptional examples that have made that scale.
"I'm a combat, forensic, infiltration and medical trained P16. Faking the kind of signal used by a Lens is something that I learnt, for different reasons, quite early in my career. And I taught people down at a P8 how to do the same trick. And then I came here...
"It was early on when I was running around here. I was starting to get bored and I ran into some trouble. I could handle it, but I decided to take some backup along. So I built myself a fake Lens, and used it to recruit a group of IPO GROPOS to help me. And it worked perfectly. Until the debriefing...
"Suddenly the IPO realised that there was someone out there who was able to fake something that was advertised as being unfakable. The security of the Lens is built upon the principle that you cannot fake a Lens; anyone carrying a Lens must be a Lensman and must have passed the Test of Light. Well suddenly they found out that someone could fake it. I can't fool an actual Lensman, and I'd have trouble against anything more than a P7, but after seeing a couple of them in action I was able to fake the signal well enough to fool people who had been working with Lensmen for years.
"So I can't go to the IPO, because I'm... Well, if they didn't have a shoot-on-sight list before then I'm betting that they've got one now. News about what I can do... Can you imagine how much that would sell for to the Psi Corps? How much the IPO would be willing to pay to keep quiet the fact that their security had a hole in it that big?
"And so suddenly my very existence has forced them to reconsider their security, put in safeguards and security measures that weren't previously necessary... People are under suspicion, are being subjected to tests that they wouldn't have had to face before I showed up... I'm making life difficult for people just by existing, and now people are being hurt because I chose not to pay proper attention. And I can't even go to the people best equipped to handle the situation."
O'Haren allowed him to finish, and took a moment to consider what he had just been told. "How old are you?"
"Hm?"
"How old are you? You speak of 'mortals', and you seem to bear burdens far beyond your apparent years. What are your years?"
Foreman snorted a laugh. "I'm a lot older than my apparent years. I'm not immortal, but... I can reverse my aging to a certain degree. I've seen civilisations fall that I helped to build. I've seen things that..." He rubbed vigorously at his eyes, trying to force some life back into himself and clear the tears that were threatening to come out. "I'm old beyond my own time."
O'Haren considered the man beside him. He looked no more than thirty, if that, and though the look in his eye had been wary there had been none of the long age and experience that you might have expected to see there. And yet in his voice there was something that suggested greater pain than O'Haren had ever heard from a single individual.
It was nearly an hour before they had something suitable; Michael, at the hospital, was able to get hold of some samples of clothing that had been contaminated and they all got together with him.
Foreman worked with the samples in a sealed environment unit, the tracker sitting on top of it and singing softly to itself. As he worked the songs that could be heard from it took on a different tone, becoming firstly more seductive, then acquiring a sickly edge to them.
"That explains why I ended up tracking down you lot," Foreman said, a mildly nauseous expression on his face as he stepped away from the tracker. "I had it tuned to track down the box rather than the demon inside it; the box relied on a kind of holy power, so I found a Church."
"I am glad that this particular issue has been resolved," O'Haren said. "Are you now able to track it properly?"
"Sort of," Foreman replied. "It's still a lash-up, but..." He stepped closer, looking at the tracker again and listening to the noise it was making. "It's... About five clicks that way," he said after considering for a moment and gesturing off to the right.
A map was brought out and consulted. "That is in the middle of a business district," Dani announced, her ears twitching. "If one of the seals is broken there with the same results as the first one..."
"The first one was apartments," Foreman reminded her. "Lots of people got hurt. But that kind of corruption getting into offices... We're talking management rather than workforce here?"
"In that area it's mostly smaller offices; companies renting space for temporary offices, meetings, that sort of thing. That's still a lot of important people," Dani pointed out.
"Lots of businesses being hurt, which means people being hurt," Foreman reasoned. "New Avalon becomes no longer a safe place for people to do business, they move away, the City In The Sphere is no longer viable as anything other than a home for the IPO... And when there's only the IPO working here, that doesn't exactly make money for itself, so prosperity goes down..."
"The city will die, and with it Zeta Cygni," O'Haren declared.
"This keeps getting better, doesn't it?" Foreman said. "Let's go and hope that we stop them before they break that second seal." He started hurrying for the door, but O'Haren stopped him.
"We are not taking the tracker?"
Foreman looked at the device, sitting innocuously on top of the containment unit. "Take a few steps towards that thing, and tell me what it does to your stomach-" he paused, glancing at O'Haren's midsection as if looking for something, before looking up at the priest's face again. "Sorry about that one... Tactless of me. But move closer to it anyway and tell me if you want to share a car with that thing."
O'Haren looked at the tracker, considering for a moment, and then slowly shook his head. "I do not think that I would like to," he admitted. "Something about that device is... Wrong."
"It's resonating with the power of the plague demon," Foreman pointed out. "To be honest I think that I can't risk it existing much longer now, and I'm going to have to destroy it."
O'Haren paused for a moment, and then nodded. "How would you go about such a thing?"
"Burning is normally good for such things," Foreman replied. "As definitely as possible to be honest."
"Meaning the building itself as well," O'Haren deduced.
"We're right on the edge of the quarantine anyway," Foreman pointed out. "It'll be easy enough to set a fire that won't be noticed until we're clear and the tracker is destroyed. And the IPO will be in an ideal position to handle the fire once they do notice it."
"You speak casually of such destruction," O'Haren said mildly.
"I've cracked planets open and laid waste to whole solar systems before now," Foreman replied with the same heavy, weary tone that he had used before. "Burning out a building to destroy something this dangerous..." He shook his head, clearly annoyed at himself. "Once again, I've done something stupid and I'm having to improvise in order to deal with it." He turned and headed for the door again. "I'm not having a good time of this."
The mood was dark as they drove hurriedly to the second site. Foreman stared out of the car's window, not actually seeing anything and not seeming to want to, his gaze and thoughts a lot further away than O'Haren considered might be healthy.
"Do you know what you will face when you meet this individual?" O'Haren asked eventually. "You have said that he is a sorcerer, and he obviously has money available to him."
"He'll have a few other mages with him," Foreman said, his tone suggesting that he was answering purely on automatic, his attention firmly elsewhere. "Plus whatever hired muscle he could find. I don't know what form that will take; it probably won't be that much... Other mages will be able to shield themselves from the traps on the box. But if he was counting on androids or something then I don't think he'll be in luck; a plague demon like that will have hit them just as hard as it did everyone else."
"Surely an android would be immune to plagues?" O'Haren said slowly.
"You've never heard of computer viruses then?" Foreman replied, casting a slow look at O'Haren. "They'll be as badly affected as anyone else. Even cyborgs will be affected; twice as much if anything, because you've got organic parts and mechanical ones that can be affected."
"But a demon that creates computer viruses?"
"Personally, I wouldn't want to belong to a species that could come up with something that malignant," Foreman replied. "Trust me on this; mortal races can't take the credit for that one."
"So should we expect a fight or not?" Dani asked from the driver's seat.
"Probably," Foreman replied. "Which is why I'm recommending that you lot keep back. I appreciate the lift, and the help so far, but this won't be the kind of thing that you're built for."
O'Haren shook his head slowly. "I have no doubts about your determination to see this battle done, or to see this demon stopped. However I have some reservations about your state of mind; we will accompany you, as far as we can."
Foreman looked at the priest, his expression somewhere between resignation and scorn. "What? You're going to try and guilt-trip me into staying alive? I'm not that keen to die."
O'Haren didn't answer for a moment. "You speak those words, but your heart says something else. I may not be a telepath like you, but some things I can still see, perhaps more clearly than a telepath might. Your age tells on you, and you tire of it. Time is a burden to you, and the responsibilities that you have shouldered here, justifiably or otherwise, are weighing more heavily than you are used to."
"And you would rather I continued to shoulder those burdens?" Foreman asked sharply.
"I would rather that you spoke now of what you have seen done, rather than undone," O'Haren replied, leaning back. "You spoke of civilisations that you have helped to build; describe one of them."
Foreman snorted and turned to face the window once more, but there was a restlessness to his stance that had not been there before. He fidgeted for a moment, before turning back sharply to O'Haren. "The Debarin," he said, his tone matching his stormy expression. "I met them when they were still at a tribal stage. You've probably never even heard of them; you couldn't have actually, because a meteor wiped them out in this universe...
"They're... They were," he said, his tone shifting to annoyance at his own tenses betraying him, "an amphibious race; kind of like seals to look at, but with a more tropical bent to them so they had less blubber. They had skin that was almost crystalline, that caught the light like a layer of liquid diamond.
"They were already started on the road to machinery fairly well by the time I showed up; not being able to walk and carry things in their hands – their flippers had six long fingers and two opposable thumbs – gave them a natural inclination to build things like harnesses and carts. They were building clockwork robots at a stage when Humans would have been getting the hang of clocks at all.
"I gave them a hand here and there. I was a bit of an oddity to them; a biped on a planet of creatures that have two arms and a tail with flippers. They took to me somehow though, and I hung around. When they began to communicate across long distances, by telegraph initially, then by radio, I helped them to get past some language barriers, taught them about codes and ciphers, and helped them with ideas of governments...
"I'd been there nearly five hundred years when they met another race. The Whee'doh are scavengers, but they don't mind killing things before they scavenge from them. Istara was only hit by a small splinter fleet of them, but that still left the entire population of Debarin going literally one-to-one against the Whee'doh.
"I helped them to fight. I built them weapons, and did what I could to protect them. The Whee'doh are one of those enemies that, until you actually fight, you can't really appreciate. You can't reason with them, because they can't understand the idea of being able to reason with anything other than each other. And even then they have trouble; about ten percent of Whee'doh casualties in any war tend to be from friendly fire when they get bored or hungry and there aren't any enemies around.
"Anyway, we won. The Debarin were down to about half the population that they had had before, but most of the... breeders... survived, so they were going to be able to rebuild. But by that time the military were in power. They wanted to start a war against the rest of the universe, and damn the consequences.
"I knew something about that universe of course; it was wild space, fairly lawless and aggressive, and mostly a lot more experienced at being aggressive. To top it all, the Thinks-All was going to be passing close by their space in a few generations. And yes, that would take out most of their opposition, not to mention about eight percent of the Whee'doh in the region. But that would also clear the way for the Brombarb, who... Well, they're later on.
"Anyway, between the militants and the Thinks-All, I had only one option; I launched a revolution of ludite pacifists, aiming to break down the weapons that I had helped to build, keeping the shields of course, and put a stop to their space program before they got embroiled in the galaxy and drew unwelcome attention to themselves.
"It was bloody, but five generations on I worked out that it was safe again and we restarted the space program. I gave them a hand there as well, assisting with the plans for an FTL drive and stuff. And I hadn't been lax in my efforts in the mean time; what left Istara on that maiden voyage was a delegation of the Keem'vor, the order of warrior-priests that I helped to found during my early time there. Peaceful contact followed.
"You know how big the Federation is? How much territory that covers and how prevalent Humans are in it? It's nothing compared to what the Debarin built over the next four hundred years. They led an Empire of races into an era of peace and prosperity; there were legends around ten thousand years later about the Great and Bountiful Debarin Empire and its reign.
"They tamed the Roaming Stars. They mapped the Meeras Gap. When the Brombarb woke up the Empire led the war to put them down and secure their worlds. They had achievements that make what the United Federation of Planets has achieved look insignificant..."
"And you helped to build those achievements," O'Haren reminded him. "One way or another they would have perished without your aid."
Further discussion was cut short very abruptly as several of the buildings ahead of them flared a sickly and diseased shade of green. The traffic ahead of them began to swerve and veer as people tried to stop or avoid other people who were stopping.
Dani tried to avoid the car ahead of them, but clipped it, ricocheting onto the pavement and scraping along the wall for nearly ten metres before grinding to a halt in the entrance to an alley.
Foreman and O'Haren recovered first, throwing off their seatbelts and climbing out, Foreman ending up in the alley as he clambered through the window and O'Haren having to climb out of the back window as a car slewed to a halt, blocking the side doors of Dani's car.
"That wasn't good," Foreman called to O'Haren almost tearing the passenger door off its hinges as he helped a young man called Coyle out. Coyle didn't look injured, but did look quite dazed. Then again he had looked that way for most of the night; the medication that he was on to cover the pain from some improperly fitted cybernetic joints left him slightly fuzzy all the time.
O'Haren looked surprised for a second at the ease with which the misaligned door had been opened, but clambered around the side of the car, doing his best to help a badly shaken Dani to squeeze out of the minimal gap that was formed when the door was opened.
They got Coyle and Dani settled in the alley, before Foreman turned and leapt up onto the car's bonnet, looking down the road towards the focus of the trouble. For a moment he was silent, just watching carefully, before heading back into the alley, cursing furiously under his breath.
"The second seal I take it," O'Haren guessed.
"It had to be," Foreman agreed. "There's already a charnel house stink on the wind. A lot more people will have been dead from this one than the first seal. We should..." He turned randomly, not seeming to be able to decide coherently what was going to happen next. "We... We should have been able to stop it," he stammered, whatever peace he had found during the drive evaporating fast.
"We came as fast as we were able to," O'Haren replied, making sure that Dani was comfortable, using her jacket as a pillow.
"It wasn't fast enough though," Foreman replied, his voice rising, his tone not allowing for argument. "Everything in this situation... I've been too slow, or too stupid to deal with it! I know I'm not all powerful but this..."
"While the Church does not have a formal process of confession, we do have one for dealing with situations," O'Haren declared. "We find a place where we will not inconvenience anyone, and we shout. We hurl our voice to the wind as loud as we can, and we keep doing so until we cannot keep doing so."
Foreman's gaze shifted around the alley, his expression suggesting that he hadn't really understood, or even heard, what had been said to him. Then he shouted.
O'Haren was certain that Foreman had shouted; he had heard the shout begin and the man's mouth had been open almost constantly during it. But he hurled not just his voice; he gestured down the alley, away from the road, as if he was throwing something. Whatever he might have shouted was lost in the crack of displaced air as a wall of force blasted down the alley, trailing fire and lightning in its wake as it went.
The walls and pavement cracked and shattered, dust and shrapnel flying into the air. A pile of boxes were reduced to powder and tossed to the wind as the wave passed over them. The displaced air brought up a wind which tore at O'Haren even as it assaulted his ears. The fire scorched everything, charring and melting everything it touched even as the lightning earthed itself through the cloud that was kicked up.
It only lasted a few seconds, but those few seconds were more than enough for O'Haren. He cowered protectively over Dani, shielding her as best he could as the dust settled over everything like icing.
As the wave died out Foreman collapsed onto his knees, resting his hands on them and leaning forwards, breathing hard as he did so. He remained there for a moment after O'Haren had looked up and begun tending to Dani and Coyle once more.
Eventually though, he looked up, watching O'Haren with a kind of detached interest. The priest waved his hand over Dani's shoulder, nodding knowingly to himself before resting his hand on a bruise that was forming on the Salusian's shoulder from her seatbelt.
Foreman staggered to his feet and moved closer, his attention firmly on the shoulder as O'Haren removed his hand, revealing that the bruise had vanished altogether.
"Healing hands," Foreman declared, looking intently at O'Haren's face.
"I do the Lord's work," the priest replied, slightly disconcerted by this sudden shift in attitude.
Foreman sat on his haunches next to the priest, and then gently took the priest's hands. They were oversized, clumsy looking cybernetic constructions, perfectly functional, but lacking in the facility for fine work. Without actually looking at them Foreman turned them over as if examining them from various angles, his gaze still locked with O'Haren's.
"These are... Medical sensors, dermal regenerators... That's a neural stimulator," he said, raising his eyebrows as if he had just seen something interesting. "These are... These hands are works of art..."
"They are the Lord's gifts," O'Haren replied. "I use them, and the opportunity that the loss of my original hands presented me with, to the best of my ability."
Foreman let go of O'Haren's hands, straightening up a bit. "I should really learn something from that," he declared thoughtfully, before leaning over and resting his hand on Coyle's chest.
He focused, concentrating on some inner place, and O'Haren wasn't entirely surprised when Coyle suddenly took a deep breath, his eyes closing and then opening again, the slightly glazed look now gone from them. Foreman slumped, collapsing to a sitting position and catching himself there before he fell over entirely.
Coyle sat up, no longer dazed, and rolled his shoulders and flexed his knees experimentally. His face lit up with a kind of wonder, as if the world had just changed for the better in some dramatic way, and he focused an awed expression on Foreman.
For his part Foreman was looking a bit glazed, as if the process, combined with his devastation of the alley, had left him exhausted. He shook his head a couple of times, blinking a bit blearily. "Where were we?" he asked after a few seconds, as if waking up in the middle of a conversation.
"You were about to work out where they will be opening the third seal," O'Haren prompted gently. "These two locations will surely not have been chosen by chance."
"No, they wouldn't," Foreman agreed vaguely, his thoughts wandering again. "You don't break seals like that at random... They would have to spend time preparing each site, setting up wards to protect themselves..." His eyes lost focus for a second, and then very abruptly his gaze returned to the present. "Unless... Oh... Oh, he would, wouldn't he?" he said, his tone somewhere between excitement and disbelief. "He'd have to. He certainly knows how to. Oh!" He slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead, and then hurriedly caught himself before he fell over.
"You know where to look?" O'Haren asked.
"Not exactly," Foreman declared, surging to his feet. "But I know where to start looking for where to look. I need a map of New Avalon, a notepad, and a pen."
The map, when recovered from the glove compartment of Dani's car and laid out on the remains of the car's bonnet, rapidly acquired a series of curved lines and crosses, some being erased and other added. Two very definite marks were centred on the sites where the first two seals had been broken, whilst a third was prominently centred on Knights Field ballpark in Puckett's Landing.
"Why there?" O'Haren asked, indicating Knights Field.
"It's one of the places that I know that there are leylines in New Avalon," Foreman replied distractedly, still scribbling notes on the map. Some of them were simple numbers, whilst others more closely resembled music or geometric patterns. A couple seemed to bend in ways that something written on a piece of paper shouldn't be able to, and O'Haren noticed that even Foreman only glanced sideways at these rather than looking at them directly.
"You are mapping leylines?" O'Haren asked, not entirely sure how seriously to take this effort.
"I'm attempting to apply a kind of mathematics to something that has an inherent error factor of plus-or-minus anything up to a hundred metres," Foreman replied. "It's tricky, and not entirely possible. I'm taking a couple of risks by applying some fringe Once And Future Computing to help me out though, so we're getting somewhere."
"And where is somewhere?" O'Haren asked.
Foreman paused, taking a step back and looking at his handiwork carefully. "As far as I can tell, the two sites that the seals were broken on were medium powered leylines. It caught me off-guard how powerful it was when the seals were broken, because they're only meant to affect the local area. Instead though the leyline channelled the power, making it easier for them to protect themselves, and spreading the effect.
"Now during those few seconds while the seal was breaking and the power was being released, the leyline drew on that power and enhanced it, but also enhanced itself. For those few seconds both of them were in feedback, so the leyline is now effectively supercharged by the box.
"The second seal though... That was a lot more powerful..." He ran his finger over various curves that he had drawn on the map, shaking his head. "Even allowing for the box supercharging the first leyline like that, the second one..." He trailed off as his wandering fingers dragged themselves to a stop over a spot where three lines came together. "Oh he wouldn't..."
"Wouldn't what?" Dani asked, looking over his shoulder.
"The first leyline amplified the power of the box and became supercharged in the process," Foreman explained slowly, as if hoping that he would think of something that he had missed which would contradict his line of thinking. "The second one though... It shouldn't have been that powerful. Yes, the leylines are linked, and yes the box was supercharging it again, but it wasn't doing it that much... The kind of flaring that we saw would need power from an outside source..."
"The mage himself?" O'Haren asked.
"Not nearly powerful enough," Foreman replied. "And then we take into account this point here," he said, tapping the point on the map that he had found before. "There's a leyline here as well. Only a minor one, not very significant. But it's linked to the other two. When they were supercharged, so was it. And right now, if I'm doing the maths right, it's more powerful than either of the other two."
"So if they break the third seal there," O'Haren began before Foreman interrupted.
"You're forgetting two things there; the third seal is the last, so all of the demon's power gets out in one go at that point. And secondly that extra power at the second seal."
"What of it?" O'Haren asked. "Presumably it came from somewhere significant?"
"Yes, it had to come from somewhere significant," Foreman agreed. "Somewhere powerful, that could access the leyline and which was compatible with both the leyline and the power of the demon, and which would stand to gain from the power of the seal being enhanced like that." He looked at O'Haren expectantly. "Which means..."
"Another demon?" O'Haren whispered.
"That's the one," Foreman agreed. "Lending its power to the process. The deaths we've seen thus far weren't a mistake or a side-effect, they were sacrifices! Once they got the first seal open the demon helped out with the second one, netting itself, what? Ten times the number of fatalities? Allowing for over-stressed medical services and incurable diseases, maybe twelve or thirteen times the number from the second as there were in the first.
"Then we come to the third leyline. The demon itself gets out, which is a major boost in power. Plus the other demon lending still more power now that it's had a chance to work out that it's definitely going to get something out of this. Add in the leylines as well..." He trailed off.
"The whole of New Avalon will be dead," O'Haren said soberly.
"It's worse than that," Foreman said slowly. "Because that amount of power isn't likely to be wasted on poisoning people or throwing plagues around. They'll have enough power before they even start to contain the burst of power when the third seal breaks, so they can channel it rather than wasting it. And there aren't many people around that area to affect anyway, so they would have to throw it quite far afield to have any real effect. No, they'll conserve that power, and use it to charge up that leyline even further."
"But why?" Dani asked. "They're just going to get even more power, but the demon will be loose already."
"So they're going to use the power for something instead of just throwing it away," Foreman replied, running his fingers over some of the calculations as he did. "And with that amount of power... They could open a hole. A Hellmouth..."
"A doorway into hell itself?" O'Haren said faintly, clearly not liking where this was going. "Through which an army could invade..."
"A army of demons swarming over New Avalon would be a bad thing, yes," Foreman agreed, "but there's something worse. Rather than the demon bringing anything here, what if it returns to hell?"
"Well, that wouldn't be too bad, right?" Coyle asked. "I mean, it's leaving us alone..."
"I never said that," Foreman pointed out. "I said 'returning to hell'. And the kind of power that it's going to have from that leyline... We're talking about a hole roughly... Oh... About one AU in radius..."
Coyle looked confused at the term, but O'Haren understood it plainly enough, though he wished that he didn't. "Such a hole would be big enough to drop Zeta Cygni itself into."
"If that demon goes back to hell, it'll be taking not just New Avalon, but the entire Dyson Sphere with it, along with all of the traffic nearby and the star itself," Foreman said, his gaze jumping from one of them to the other as he spoke, making sure that he had their attention. "Assuming that the hole closes up behind it, which is by no means certain," he added hastily, "that still leaves all of us being dropped into damnation. That many living souls being cast upon hell's mercies? Especially when they might net a goddess or two from the IPO..." He shook his head at the magnitude of it. "We're talking about an oh-so-slight shift in power if these demons pull this one off."
"How do we stop it?" Dani asked slowly.
"We get to the third site before they do," Foreman announced. "And we do everything that we can in order to kill them; they've got the power of demons backing them up now, and death is the only kind of failure that they're going to fear, because it means that they'll have failed dramatically enough that they'll be amongst the damned themselves rather than elevated to power."
"How are we going to get there?" Coyle asked, gesturing to the solidly packed traffic and Dani's ruined car.
"That," Foreman said, raising a decisive finger before pausing to consider. "Is a good question actually," he said looking around, suddenly seeming a bit lost again. "I'm stumped," he admitted. Then abruptly he shot O'Haren a sharp look. "No," he said forcefully.
"I do not see an alternative," O'Haren replied. "And I would like to know whether you are merely guessing what I was about to suggest, or reading it from my mind directly."
"I was reading your mind," Foreman replied, unwilling to be distracted. "And it's a terrible idea. It's such a terrible idea that I'm surprised that you even considered it at all."
"We need transport, and assistance," O'Haren persisted. "You have the means to provide both of them in one go."
"That doesn't mean that it's a good idea," Foreman replied sharply. "Or even that I want to risk it."
"What are you suggesting?" Dani asked.
"He has the ability to pretend to be a Lensman," O'Haren answered. "It is why he cannot go directly to the IPO for help; they are hunting for him as a threat to their security. But he could use it to obtain transport to the third site."
"It's a terrible idea," Foreman declared, waving a declamatory finger at O'Haren. "It's going to draw the IPO down on us, we'll all be arrested, probably before we even get to the third site, which means that New Avalon will be dead, or more likely worse, before we even get a chance to explain the situation to them properly, and do you know the worst part of this idea of yours?"
"I can guess," O'Haren replied softly.
"You're right," Foreman agreed. "The worst part is, that it's the only way. We don't have a choice. Let's go and requisition a vehicle," he said grimly.
It proved ridiculously easy to get hold of a vehicle from the police when Foreman produced his fake Lens. He even, despite the emergency situation that the bluesuiters were involved in trying to contain, got an offer of an escort from another vehicle.
Reassurances that this wouldn't be necessary, and a warning that his targets would be monitoring the police bands and not to broadcast information about his actions, left the four of them with transport and a lot of ground to cover.
Dani drove again, clearly enjoying the fact that this vehicle had sirens on it and that she was able to go at whatever speed she chose along crowded roads.
"We'd like to get there in one piece," Foreman commented with a wince as they rushed between two cars that had dodged aside at the last second.
"We will," Dani assured him. Ahead of them the traffic cleared a bit and she accelerated into the fast lane, sirens howling and a grin on her face.
"What should we expect when we get there?" O'Haren asked from the back seat.
"Well now that we know that they've planned all of this rather than just doing it at random," Foreman said, "we can make some guesses. Firstly, they'll have people there in advance so that whatever rituals they're doing can begin as soon as they arrive. This means that we're probably going to be in for a fight no matter what happens, because these people will be trying to protect the site.
"This guy, the mage, will be powerful. Even sealed inside the box the demon will be enhancing his power, especially since he's doing so much to get it free. Whoever he has with him will be trouble as well; they'll have to be tough to have been there at all. We might see a few minor demons thrown in for the fun of it...
"On top of that it won't be long before the IPO comes down on us. They've normally responded quite quickly to me doing something, and I'd hate for them to appear in the middle of this at the wrong moment. That puts us on the clock."
"Essentially, we are going to be in trouble no matter what happens," O'Haren replied.
"True," Foreman admitted. "But while I've been saying 'us' I've been meaning 'me', because you three are going to have to keep out of this. Whatever was happening before this is getting too big."
"All the more reason for you to have assistance," O'Haren pointed out. "You cannot hope to fight this battle alone."
"And you three don't have any combat training that would get you through it," Foreman replied sharply. "I've got a limited protection against magic and demonic power, as well as some solid combat experience, but you've got nothing more than yourselves. I appreciate what you've done so far, and I can't let you go beyond the edge of this one."
"This turning?" Dani asked, indicating a side road up ahead.
"That's the one," Foreman replied, nodding. "And this isn't good," he said, suddenly distracted again. He reaching inside his shirt, pulling out a medallion in the shape of a starburst crucifix carved from wood and inlaid with several jewels and crystals. One of the jewels, a blue one on the lower spar, was glowing a faint green colour.
"Trouble?" O'Haren asked.
"Oh yeah... Demon power building up fast," Foreman answered. "I felt it waking this up earlier, but there wasn't anything serious. Now though..."
"Does this mean..?"
"I means that we need to go faster," Foreman answered. "They must have had transport of some kind out of the area to be getting round to opening the third seal already."
"Going faster," Dani said, pushing the police car even further.
"How long will we have?" O'Haren asked.
"Hard to say," Foreman admitted. "Without the kind of information that this guy obviously has access to-"
"Don't you know his name?" Dani asked, clearly irritated at this lack of information.
"Sure," Foreman admitted. "The fake one that he used when contacting me and the three that he used when doing business, all equally fake. He's dealing with demons, and has obviously planned this for years; demons don't let you know their name any more than dragons do, because that gives you power over them, and if he's going to become a demon then having people know who he is would be a bad move."
"What is this medallion?" O'Haren asked before Dani could come up with some kind of response to that.
"This? Expensive," Foreman replied ruefully. "Holy power incarnate. It took a lot of work to build, especially considering that I can't find much in the way of long-term faith which was something of a prerequisite for most kinds of work like this. I did the best I could though. It's an early warning system, protection, and, if all else fails, a final measure..."
"Final measure?"
Foreman nodded, contemplating the medallion in his hand. "It can detonate. Not exactly how I would have expected to go, but Father Octavian assured me that it would do the job. It's the nearest that it's possible to come to a real holy hand-grenade, though that doesn't do it justice. It's a reliquary and... Well, as a final resort it'll kill the demon, or seriously diminish it if used correctly. That's automatic though; they tried to work some kind of trigger into it, but given that it's powered by faith..."
"You lack faith?"
"I have the wrong kind," Foreman replied simply. "Faith in the sun rising, in people... But faith in something larger, when the next place I visit that faith might prove entirely hollow, eludes me. It's a curse of immortality that such things never last..."
"There it is!" Dani interrupted. Up ahead there was a large construction site, the skeletal framework of a new office block that was going up. There was little else around, though a number of vehicles were situated near the entrance to one part of the complex.
"That's it alright," Foreman agreed. "Pull up down there," he instructed, indicating a car park just around the corner from the other vehicles. "Stealth won't do much good here, so it'll have to be violence the whole way."
Father O'Haren opened his mouth to object to this, or at least to declare the need for more than one of them to go in, when the building ahead of them flared with green fire, the crystal on Foreman's medallion flaring along with it.
Foreman grabbed the car's steering wheel as Dani abruptly coughed up blood, dragging the car to a stop by brute force. O'Haren found a sickening taste in his mouth and coughed as well, though dryly instead of producing blood. Beside him Coyle shuddered suddenly, a trickle of blood appearing out of his nose as he vibrated in his seat.
"We're too late," Foreman declared, wiping away a trace of blood from his own lip. "That was the third seal..."
Leaving Dani to take care of Coyle, Foreman and O'Haren hurried on. The cars that they had observed were not as abandoned as they had expected; a number of people were in them or near them. All of them were dead, their deaths having clearly been brought on by some sudden diseases.
"He sacrificed his guards," Foreman said softly. "That must have been part of the deal; sacrificing someone important to him."
"How many of them will he have given up do you think?" O'Haren asked.
"These ones are comparatively minor," Foreman pointed out. "If he sacrificed them then he must have taken out all of him people in one go; we just caught the edge of it as we were approaching."
They hurried onwards, Foreman producing his gun again. Despite the hurry that they were in he moved carefully, checking approaches and ensuring that no one crept up on them as they moved through the building. There was an eerie sense to the whole affair as the demonic flaring had only diminishing rather than dying away altogether, and the flickering glow and dancing shadows were disconcerting at best, if not outright distracting. Of more significance were the shadows that could not have been shadows; shapes that flickered through the air, detached from any surface, just on the edge of vision.
They reached the central section of the complex, its function hard to define from its unfinished nature, to find a scene that neither was happy with.
The box, it couldn't be anything else, stood in the middle of a large circle that had been carved into the floor. It was wooden, and well made, but not that impressive to look at beyond that. Around the circle, both within and without, were a dozen people, some of them in military fatigues, some in robes of some kind, and all of them very dead.
From out of the box's open lid howled a stream of energies that spun and danced in the air above it. Faces, eyes, mouths and limbs were just about visible in the billowing clouds, seeming to come from every race and species, all of them diseased in some manner. The smell of death and rot churned in the air, the stench of pestilence and decay filling the space.
As the pair of them watched the cloud billowed once more, collapsing immediately into the form of a man, perhaps something that might have been Human were it not for the fact that it stood ten metres tall, composed of a roiling cloud of death, and for the wings on its back.
Its form was perfect in every detail, a figure of stunning beauty. It perhaps started from a masculine outline, but it changed this quickly, the splendour becoming androgynous in style rather than so crudely limited as a mortal would be. To look upon this form was to know adoration and desire. But at the same time there was a terrible, inhuman quality to that magnificence, as if as a reminder that such splendour could only belong to something so far beyond the petty existence of mortals that they could never hope to understand it, or be understood or even recognised in turn. Neither Foreman nor O'Haren dared to cast more than a passing glance at it, recognising quickly the dangers of looking upon such an awesome form.
It threw its head back, lifting a hand towards the sky and crying out words that a Human mouth could never form and a Human mind could never contain. Its form solidified as it called out, and its wings spread wide, slicing ferrocrete and steel girders apart as if they were paper.
With a crack that felled both Foreman and O'Haren a line of light, rippling softly, appeared in the air above the demon's form. Initially seeming to be white and pure, the light quickly changed, becoming tinged with flames and ice and cut through with the shades of pestilence. The light began to spin, swiftly resolving itself into a vortex above their heads.
"The hell-mouth," O'Haren said softly.
"That's the one," Foreman agreed. "I'm not an expert on this kind of thing but I'd say that we've got about two minutes at most; the damned thing's already big enough to swallow New Avalon."
O'Haren looked up at the swirling mass of light above them. "That?"
"We're only seeing the edge of it right now," Foreman replied. "The hole itself doesn't need to be visible."
"Where is the mage?" O'Haren asked abruptly, realising that there was one body that seemed to be missing.
"That is him!" Foreman replied, forced to shout over the howl of the wind and gesturing sharply to the demon. "The demon in the box wouldn't have had enough control to pull off something like this so quickly; it elevated him and now he's driving them back home."
"How do we stop this?" the priest asked pointedly.
"Closing the box would be a good start," Foreman admitted. "It'll leave that guy outside still, but the demon will be shut safely inside and we can use this," he held up the medallion, "to handle the mage."
"This is the best plan that we have?" O'Haren asked
"I didn't plan for taking on a hell-mouth when I set out this afternoon," Foreman replied sharply, making a cutting gesture towards the demonic form looming over them and the swirling morass above them. "This is the best I can do at the moment."
"You mentioned that this medallion was intended to self-destruct though," O'Haren reminded him. "And that your lack of faith would prevent you from controlling the timing of this."
"Yes, I know," Foreman replied. "I've met people more powerful than me who would have even less chance of controlling this than I would. I should be able to hold it long enough to get up to the box and shut that. After that someone will need to seal the box again."
"Can you not simply shut the box telekinetically?" O'Haren asked practically. "You demolished an alleyway less than an hour ago."
Foreman shook his head. "I can't," he replied. "It's already shielding itself from my talents; I can't do anything that a normal human couldn't."
"There is another option," O'Haren pointed out. "You cannot control the medallion, but I have faith where you do not. Show me how to control it."
"I... I can't," Foreman replied, shaking his head. "I can't let you risk yourself in my place; too many people have died because of me already."
"You cannot claim responsibility for the actions of this mage," O'Haren retorted sharply. "You have done what you could do. And now you must let me do the same; the Lord moves in strange ways Ben Foreman, and I do not believe it to have been chance that led you to my church this night."
Foreman looked at him sharply, and then they both ducked as the hell-mouth above them abruptly widened, lashing out hideous energies at the structure around them. The flaring light across the structures intensified at the same time, and it abruptly became apparent that the shadowy things that had been flitting around the edges of their vision were becoming more apparent.
Perhaps more disturbing was the baleful glow that came from two points of shimmering light just beyond the eye-aching edge of the vortex. Dark points within them roved back and forth, like the pupils of two great eyes looking down on them.
"What are those?" O'Haren asked, immediately wishing that he hadn't done so as a piece of half-forgotten mythology flitted across his mind.
"Leviathan," Foreman declared. "The hell-mouth made manifest. If we needed any other confirmation... I have to go now," he declared, starting to move out of cover and then ducking back as one of the shadowy things leapt at him, becoming manifest for a second as a wavering stick-figure wreathed in smoke.
Foreman raised a hand, the thing combusting in mid-leap so totally that even the ash had vanished before it touched Foreman.
"Clearly they do not wish for us to oppose this," O'Haren pointed out. "If you intend to kill yourself, would you at least leave me your gun to provide some kind of covering fire for your attack and my escape?"
"I can't," Foreman replied. "It's not a conventional gun, it's a focus for my talents. Even someone else with the same talents couldn't use it because it's tuned to my brain specifically."
"In that case," O'Haren pointed out, "I believe that our course is clear; I have the means to complete the task we have ahead of us, and you have the means to protect me as I do it." He held out a hand expectantly for the medallion.
Foreman looked like he was about to object, when the demon's chanting jumped up a gear, becoming more enthused, more determined, and more expectant. The hell-mouth vortex widened still further, now looking decidedly more mouth-like, the edges of a monstrous face vaguely visible around it; where the demon before them had an awesome and devastating beauty, the face above them was a grotesque parody, at one and the same time carrying the impression of every race in existence, and simultaneously distorting them to their most basal nature in an act of mockery that tore at the soul.
O'Haren, despite everything that he had already seen, blanched as he glanced up at the face. Without wishing to he found his gaze transfixed by the sight of that face, a mirror to the worst parts of his soul, to his doubts and fears and qualms. Without even needing to speak it told him of the things that awaited him, the darkness and the loneliness and the despair. In an instant he knew a depth of self-loathing as he saw the very worst he could become manifest before him.
Something knocked him hard, throwing him against the wall and forcing him to drag his gaze away from the apparition above him. He sobbed as he clutched randomly at himself, disgusted by what he had seen and what he knew at that instant that he would become. He could see no way to avoid it, to avoid the fate that had been laid out before him; he knew there and then that he had no choice but to fall to the darkness that had been laid before him and to be punished in the hereafter for failing to fall sooner.
"You don't mean all of that," intruded a voice. O'Haren looked up and found himself meeting Foreman's gaze at less than half a metre. Even this much contact terrified him, and he immediately shied away.
"No you don't," Foreman objected, taking O'Haren's head in both hands and forcing him to meet his gaze again. "I know what you saw, and I know how you feel right now," he said, his voice echoing oddly to O'Haren. "I know how bad things can look, and I know that they can get better. You don't need to fall like that. You know that you are better than that."
O'Haren felt part of himself wanting to object, to deny the chance even of hope. But something about the way that Foreman spoke demolished those thoughts, turning them to fuel for his hope and his sense of himself. He drew a shuddering breath in, and smiled faintly. "I think I do," he admitted. "But..."
"I told you; medical trained telepath. I've heard of demons doing things like that before, but it's not exclusively their trick, so I've had to treat it before. And we can't risk stopping again Father."
"I believe that you are right," O'Haren agreed, taking the medallion as it was offered. "Whatever you may have done to help me I fear cannot last."
"Demons speak to your soul, not your mind," Foreman admitted. "So I can only cure the symptoms in your case. But..."
"I will not die with fear in my heart," O'Haren declared. "How do I..?" he gestured to the medallion.
"You pray," Foreman replied. "You ask that it should hold itself back until it is time. And you have to take that leap of faith, knowing that it might not hold and trusting that your God will protect you for long enough for you to do what needs to be done, because you have no ability to affect the destruct mechanism other than asking for it not to go off." He looked at O'Haren seriously. "Do you have that much faith?"
O'Haren paused, considering, before he smiled faintly, overlarge hands cradling the medallion. "I do."
Foreman smiled at him. "Then let's do this," he declared, drawing his gun from a shoulder holster and a katana from his back beneath his jacket.
Knowing, and forewarned of, the folly of looking up, O'Haren kept his gaze low as he dived from cover, starting to run towards the box. Almost immediately shadowy figures leapt out at him, spindly limbs reaching for him, their forms blurred with shadows and fire and ice. The first of them didn't get within a metre of him before being burnt down by a fireball that crackled with lightning. Its form split asunder under the force of the attack, shattering like glass and dissipating in the wind.
More came though, and O'Haren was forced to dodge left and right to avoid them. Further shots, some of them little more than balls of force that bent the air around them and hit the demons like sledgehammers whilst others resembled more closely bolts of lightning, passed him closely. Foreman's aim was nearly perfect, only one or two shots out of dozens that he fired missing their targets, and O'Haren's run at the box was almost uninterrupted.
Almost. The medallion had begun glowing more brightly as he had approached the demon, but when he had closed the distance to a handful of metres it began to flare brilliantly, almost like a miniature star. O'Haren had been praying under his breath, but now began to pray more fervently, the words that he spoke no longer planned but coming out at random. Fragments of half-remembered prays from his childhood came out, their words now more fervent and more urgent than ever before.
As the medallion flared the demon must have noticed it; the legs on either side of the box shifted, as if they belonged to someone who had noticed something down by their feet and was turning to look at it. A flicker of shadow warned O'Haren to dive aside as the demon, still chanting in its obscene language, brought a fist down into the ground where he had been about to step.
The ground cracked and shattered, evil looking clouds bursting through the fissures. O'Haren coughed at the smell of them and scrambled to his feet as a flurry of shots from Foreman assaulted the demon's arm. It wasn't much; whatever power he had, Foreman was clearly no match for a demon's might and he didn't even visibly harm it.
But despite its stature and power, the demon had all too recently been Human, and that minor distraction was enough for O'Haren. Sickening light spilled from the box as he dived for it, still chanting his prays out loud now as the medallion whined and grew brighter, feeling like it was burning his hand away with its need to destroy the monster that stood over him.
"Please God, let me finish this task," he said, throwing himself onto the box's lid and slamming it shut-
Foreman surveyed the wreckage slowly. The explosion of the medallion had blinded him and perforated both of his eardrums in its intensity, bringing down a layer of rubble and dust over everything. His eyesight and hearing would return soon he knew; his retina were already rebuilding themselves, though he knew it would be a bit longer before his eardrums recovered and he could hear properly.
Through his other senses – of heat, electricity, and his telekinetic sense of objects around him – he guided himself to where one small spark of thought remained amidst the devastation. He could see almost immediately that O'Haren's body was broken; too many organic functions had been damaged beyond repair, and the mechanical ones were holding on only by the very limits of their capability.
"Foreman?" the priest asked at his approach. He heard the words telepathically rather than relying on the distorted sounds that he was getting through his ears.
"I'm here," Foreman replied doing so telepathically rather than trusting his voice. "It worked," he added. "You closed the box." He touched it telekinetically, feeling the shape of it in his mind and the way that the three seals had closed themselves once more. "The demon's trapped once more," he added, touching O'Haren's forehead and gently settling the image of the box into the priest's mind.
"It must never escape," O'Haren declared, his voice little more than a faint rattling sound, and his thoughts beginning to wander as death approached.
"I'll do what I can," Foreman assured him. "This won't be for nothing-" He cut off abruptly as he felt something approaching. It sounded like a motorbike, as best he could tell with his eardrums in this state. As it came within range of his other senses he was able to make out that that was exactly what it was; a motorbike.
The driver brought the motorbike to a stop a short distance from the pair of them, cutting the engine and dismounting. Foreman had his gun out, aiming at the driver as she approached slowly, respectfully, her hands kept away from her weapons and her stance relaxed. It didn't mean much Foreman knew; the Valkyrie were warriors enough that if it came to a fight he would be seriously pushed to take one on conventionally under normal circumstances.
"I am here for Father O'Haren," she declared, speaking aloud but also dropping her mental shields so that he could read her thoughts as she spoke. "A place has been prepared for him."
"Wouldn't it have been better to do something before this happened?" Foreman retorted.
"Perhaps," the Valkyrie replied. "I bear a message from the All-Father though; your service to Asgard will not be forgotten. The defeat of these demons will hinder future plans of this kind from being put into action, and we are making what checks we can to ensure that this cannot happen again. Father O'Haren has not died in vain."
Foreman scowled, then turned and, returning his gun to its holster, picked up the box. Even allowing for its wooden construction it was surprisingly light.
"I will also deal with the demon," the Valkyrie declared. "Within the walls of Asgard it will be far safer than anywhere that you would be able to conceal it."
For a moment Foreman paused, standing still as if trying to decide whether to leave or to argue further. After that moment though, he set the box down once more, cast one final blind gaze at the Valkyrie and turned, working his way slowly back the way that he had come.
Dani sighed as she closed the doors of the warehouse where the church's meeting had taken place. She was far from happy with having to lead the services, however she had been unable to avoid that fate thus far. Her sermons needed some more work, and she lacked the confidence to deliver even her crude creations properly.
It had been three months since the night when Father O'Haren had died. The IPO had made quite a fuss about it, asking a lot of pointed questions. She had nearly found herself being arrested for association with Foreman, who the IPO did indeed have something against. Ultimately though there had been nothing for them to hold her for aside from helping someone to save New Avalon and Zeta Cygni from destruction, or worse.
She began packing up the last of the paraphernalia that she had to bring to each service, and had nearly finished when the doors behind her burst open. She turned, shocked, as a trio of figures entered. She recognised them, or their allegiance immediately; the Church of Man. The other Church of Man.
"Damned Sally," one of them said, his cybernetic arm waving a pocket knife back and forth threateningly. "Think you're good enough to preach to the Humans do you? Think you can go around claiming that you're one of us?"
Dani backed into the crate that she had been using as an altar, wishing that she had some way out of this. The threesome had at least rudimental training, and spread themselves to block her possible exits. Not that she suspected that she would be able to get far if she did run; two of them sported cybernetic legs, one of them definitely of the more lithe design that suggested speed.
"It looks like we're gonna have to teach you a lesson or two ourselves," one of them commented, lining his gun up on her chest.
"Dear God, please help me," Dani stammered, trying to stop herself from shaking with fear.
"Not gonna happen," the knife-wielder informed her, raising his arm preparatory to throwing the blade-
Sparks flew from the elbow and shoulder joints of his arm, the entire thing locking in place in a nearly vertical position. At the same instant the gun-carrying cyborg's hand crumpled like paper being screwed into a ball, whilst the third's artificial eye buzzed sharply and died.
"Gentlemen," a voice called from the far end of the room. "The service is over. You should leave."
Dani looked past the Commers, seeing a figure standing in the shadows at the far end of the room. He was dressed in a black jacket that came down nearly to the floor, with a hat and scarf that hid his features. Despite this Dani could sense a palpable aura of menace about this figure.
The three cyborgs looked at the figure. "You gonna make us?" the one with the eye called out, apparently having not noticed the losses his companions had suffered and trying valiantly to cover his own loss.
"Perhaps," the figure said, stepping from the shadows and walking slowly towards them. He took the direct route, ignoring the crates and benches that still needed to be put away and which screeched and creaked as they were pushed aside by some invisible force ahead of him.
The cyborgs recognised this kind of threat at least, and after a couple of glances at each other and the approaching figure turned and ran, one of them slowly as the loss of his depth perception made itself felt and another having to stop and duck when his arm refused to lower as he tried to get through the door.
Dani found herself abruptly left alone with this figure, and that same tightness and fear gripped her for a second before the figure pulled off his hat and pulled the scarf down below his chin.
"Hello Dani," Foreman said, smiling faintly.
"Ben Foreman..." She took a deep breath, trying to recover from the sudden shock. "Where have you been?" she asked as a make-shift conversation starter while she got her breath back.
"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he said. "The IPO had you and the rest of the Church under surveillance until last week. I couldn't risk being picked up by them."
"They're still after you?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I had the option of asking the All-Father to put in a good word for me, and I didn't take it," he admitted. "I did get a message a few weeks ago telling me that I might be considered for the Test of Light if I wanted it; get a proper Lens and the whole situation is cleared up because I don't need a fake one. But... It didn't come from the IPO themselves, or anyone on their payroll, so I'm not quite sure how to take it. I'd rather that they asked me themselves than that someone forced them to take me on."
"What happened... What happened to Father O'Haren that night?"
"A Valkyrie turned up for him," Foreman admitted. "There is a heaven and he is up there. Ask the IPO nicely and they might be able to swing you a face-to-face with him. But he's not coming back," he added. "Another casualty that I'm trying to atone for."
"You're still trying to make up for what happened that night?"
He sighed wearily. "I didn't pay attention, and Zeta Cygni was nearly lost as a result. I've been paying more attention since then, trying to help people out more often. I've built myself a ship as well," added with some more enthusiasm. "It's quite nice. Solar powered, very fast. Lots of space as well, so I've helped with a couple of evacuations on planets that have been having trouble. I've been carrying cargo as well. It's all looking up. But it's got a way to go before it stops being too dark."
Dani nodded as understandingly as she could. "So tonight..."
"I owed you an apology for what you went through that night, and what you've been through since then," he replied. "Saying that might not seem like much," he said.
"It means a lot that you made the effort," Dani assured him.
"Well I wanted to give you something physical to show for it, so... I got you a new car," he announced, sounding somewhat embarrassed by the idea.
She looked at him suspiciously. "What have you done?"
"It's... Well, it's proof against anything that Commers like the ones that came in here would do to it," he admitted. "Here," he added, tossing her a key-ring with one key on it. With a smile he turned to leave.
"If you need someone to talk to," Dani began before pausing.
"Hm?"
She shook her head, trying not to laugh. "You risked your life saving New Avalon. Millions of people owe you their lives, and you think that you owe me an apology for ruining my car..." She straightened up. "If you need someone to talk to, whatever you might think, we still owe you. Any time you need to talk, just let me know."
Foreman hesitated for a moment, before smiling his thanks. Turning, he walked out of the door, fading from sight like a ghost before he was even through it.