Sing to Life

ByJadeRabbyt

Chapter 8: Empty the Hollow Man

The night watches with clear eyes as the kiss at last breaks, as the two pause quietly in the air before breaking out in laughter and whirling away into the sky, playing in its heights, flying among the stars and basking under the silver moonlight. They play like the children they are with the joy of the man and woman they are becoming, and the night blesses their youth, for the night and the stars, the earth and the air know a time will come when youth will be a fading memory, and hope a formless dream. Creation senses it, just as the motive shadows in every dark alley sense it, and the natural inanimates of the world show themselves all the more brilliantly because this time comes soon.

The two in the sky know nothing of this. They play in ignorance; the night sees it in their faces, two dreamers entertaining one another, taking pleasure in life without the transient accoutrements of fame or riches. As the night grows older the two dancers begin to tire, wearying happily with soft smiles and wide yawns. They drift from the heavens, passing through the cloudy nexus between heaven and earth, and the boy sets his girl delicately down on her own doorstep. He then flies to his own home, spinning a little in midair, rolling and laughing softly until he reaches his house and changes, puts on his human form and drifts off under his blanket, head laid quietly against soft pillows. The night tucks the two children away in their beds and perches over their headboards, a guardian not quite unbiased, and it waits until their eyes close, their breathing slows, and the little smiles remain still.

The night turns now to another.

Drive from the brick and stone facades of Amity Park, see the red taillights shining morbidly from private the cars bearing insomniatic travelers ever onward into the darkness. Join them and ride for hours, ride stolidly past the restless cities and glance carelessly at the sleeping farms. Take the Green Bay exit, ride it out and turn left here, a right there, leave the questing traffic and come to an old road that cuts through acres of dark, verdant fields. A mansion looms ahead, and one or two rooms are still lit. Peer through the windows and see what's in store for the whole of the world.

Skulker glanced out the windows, watching the lights winking from a few distant houses and a handful of cars. He walked past the rows of printers, monitors, and computer banks, lifting his hand against the window to cut down the glare. Creatures going healthily about their business, and healthy prey meant healthy hunters. It was a noble thing to compete against the worthier animals-take the ghost-child, for example-but watching was nice, too. Life, as it was, proceeding freely and naturally. A little more freely than before, since the creature in the basement was locked away.

Skulker bent to scan a status box on one of the computer monitors. One of the stasis fluids was too low again. Skulker didn't know why they kept fluctuating. Neither Alex himself nor his symbiote had done anything since last Wednesday, yet the tank's fluids were continually destabilizing. He moved to the printouts, perusing the latest readings for energy spikes in Alex, excessive ecto-neural activity, anything. But there was nothing, and the hunter smelled trouble. The alley he and Plasmius had recorded Wednesday might take another day or two to find, and he had no great faith in the effectiveness of an untested serum on an exotic animal, either. Skulker shook his head at the printouts and glanced over to Plasmius' empty station.

It controlled a number of minor things. Contaminant filtering, temperature control, plasma exchange rate. Skulker had tried to avoid putting any of the critical controls on it, but Plasmius had insisted on operating the serum dosage from his console alone, and thus began the predator's dance. Skulker had agreed to do it on the condition that any adjustments be mutually decided upon, and Plasmius had accepted those terms but requested that his station be locked with a password. Skulker had countered by secretly installing a key logger along with the password protection. Now, Skulker thought that it was about time he checked up on those serum levels.

A few key taps on his own machine, a minute or two of retrieval time, and a records of every key Plasmius had ever hit at his console popped up on Skulker's screen. Every logon session began with the same set of characters: m-a-d-d-y-0-4. The last time he had visited Fenton's wife.

Skulker grunted. "Could have guessed that one." He entered the password on Plasmius' console and stole a look at the dosage schedule, pointing a metal finger at one column after another as he scanned the data, a scowl darkening his face. As Skulker looked down the last rows, he printed them out and flew from the room.

Vlad yawned. "I told you never to wake me up."

"Sorry princess, but we have a problem."

"What are you talking about? I don't sleep often and when I do I want some privacy. Get out of here."

"Get up."

Vlad swatted the paper away and turned ghost, entertaining a pleasant vision of Skulker frying under rosy plasma beams. "You're pushing your luck." He followed Skulker into the hallway and shut his bedroom door. "What is this about?"

Skulker pointed to that irritating scrap of paper. "Explain this!"

"Like I haven't seen a million of those in the past week. Why don't you explain it."

"This is the dosage schedule. It's off. By a lot."

Vlad yawned. "So?"

"You can't leave it up this high. We don't know what it does-"

"Ha! You're the one who designed it. You should know." He reclined slightly in the air. Skulker was being paranoid. Their designs always worked right.

Skulker shook his head. "We know it controls him. We don't know how. We don't know the nature of Alex or his symbiote. That shady substance we recorded Wednesday could be running in every dark alley in the city, and for all we know it's taking orders from our ghost in the basement."

"Hardly likely." Vlad was annoyed and disappointed. He hadn't thought that Skulker was so anal.

"No?" Skulker fixed him with a look bordering on insubordination. "Take the dosage down or I'll quit, and I'll take all my technology with me."

Vlad's face twisted with disgust. "You're a coward."

"No! I'm-"

"You're a mechanical freak and it was a mistake to hire you. You're not quitting; you're fired, and the tech is rightfully mine by purchase."

Vlad lit his fists, and Skulker changed his tone fast. "Plasmius, listen for a moment more. I may be fired, but I am no coward. There's been some strange readings on my console as well."

"Go on."

"I have to keep adjusting the stabilizer fluids. I can't turn them up indefinitely. If you keep raising the dosage then I guarantee that Alex will break out." Skulker rested his hand on his belt. "How certain are you of your powers against the devil's handyman? It isn't worth the risk."

Vlad scowled. "Alright. I'll turn them down a bit."

Skulker breathed a sigh. "Thank you."

The two of them drifted through the house, not bothering with hallways, passing between the floors to the lower lab where a tank glowed black. They bickered again over the exact level, what was and was not safe, and Vlad insisted on changing his password, but eventually an agreement was reached and Vlad took the dosage down enough to satisfy Skulker.

The tank was the dumb and mute witness. As the controlling serum dissipated, the darkness shifted, and the creature inside jerked awake in the sewage of its own consciousness.

He spits out shit and battery acid, hacking and coughing. More of the same flows in, filling his nose and mouth with grainy muck. He flails for something solid to catch hold of, panics and tries to call for help, but his voice is drowned and his call drivels away in the darkness. The primitive convulsions subside as he grows used to the numbing sting and nauseous taste. Conscious thought returns, bringing with it the realization that the putrid ocean is only the twisted manifestation of his equally twisted mind. Currents of hate and anger and hopelessness and confusion sweep through him, but there is nothing in any of them that he can hold or comprehend.

There is a final part of himself that he has lost. Some vital heirloom from the past that has at last decayed, gone the way of every other original part of him. He doesn't care what it is and doesn't want to know. The lost relic belongs to a time that was not now, then, or soon. It was the last gem in an otherwise empty museum of personal history, the last poor stone in a crown of tarnished brass. Like a man who sends his son away to college, so he consigns this anonymous artifact to the distant past. Back then he may have had some virtue; at least he'd like to think that. He despises himself too much to ever want his past self to have anything to do with whatever he has become. He drifts in the depths as reason neutralizes the acidic sea. He isn't curious or desperate; now he only waits, for now there is nothing left to take, nothing more to dissolve.

And that's when the voice speaks. He feels its message more than hears it, the structured spires of language collapsing under the weight of its doom.

You are now ours. Everything you are or were belongs to us utterly and completely.

Now there is one more thing to be done. You and ourselves are part of a system, and of that system we have entered its final stages. There is one more step to take before we release you. You want to be released?

He struggles with his tongue. Speech requires an 'I,' a being with a concept of judgment and self, but he has none of those. He surprises himself when he actually gets the word out.

Yes.

"Plasmius, I'm reading activity in the tank. I'm hooking up the imager again."

"Go right on ahead. I want to see it too."

Speech becomes easier. Somewhere enough wheels are still turning that he can take advantage of whatever deal the devil is going to make with him.

More than anything I want to die. I should have died years ago, before I met you, in a horrible car crash or a convenient store shootout. I can do nothing now, I have no one now, and I AM no one now. I want oblivion. No heaven and no hell. I want to know nothing of myself as I am or was.

The monster around him grins.

We can give you that-if you'll do one last thing for us. Just rubber-stamp one more request, and we can let you go forever in exactly the way that you wish.

How? I'll do it.

Don't agree so quickly or it will mean nothing and, consequently, be rendered void. We propose the end of the world.

He had nothing to say to that, so his Other continues.

We know an entity, we ourselves are an agent of an entity, whose purpose is to obliterate universes. It is a program embedded in reality like gravity or electromagnetism. Unlike those forces, however, this program is dormant. It has to be activated by a nomadic counterpart, a mobile entity, which travels from world to world, universe to universe, destroying each one it visits. We ourselves exist to set up the gateway for this entity. Before the energy can be admitted into a universe, it must have the permission of one of its sentient residents. That is our function; to obtain that permission, and it is now your choice to give or withhold it.

So that is our proposition. Your open door in exchange for the oblivion that you seek, as well as vengeance against everyone who has hurt you, against the world that corrupted you. We offer this and something else: a last chance to matter. A final act, if you will, of your declaration of selfhood.

Vlad's mouth hung open. "Are you hearing this?"

Skulker wavered for a moment, then fisted his hands and strode forward. "We have to either kill it or knock it out." His mane flared and his fists opened and closed. "Preferably kill it."

"How do you propose to do that?" Vlad whirled to his console. "You're fired, Skulker. The dose is going as high as I can push it. Nothing is going to happen, you know," he muttered. "This whole thing is probably just a ploy to get us worked up." Vlad worked the controls with shaking fingers.

He's reasonably certain that his Other hasn't spoken so much in all the time they've been together. It's trying to convince him, he thinks, but he decides it doesn't matter who is trying to manipulate him now. His choice would be the same had it not explained at all. He opens his mouth, but the words stop in his throat. He chokes on some shard of curiosity that no amount of apathy can dislodge.

Before I do, he starts slowly, Can you tell me something? I don't want my past or my present, but can you tell me what I might have been had I never met you? Can you tell me if I ever had a chance at all?

He has some dim idea that this question is not quite as frivolous as it sounds, but his Other only laughs.

You gave that knowledge up. We gave you power over souls and spirits and you gave up your future and your Self. Now there is a new deal. Approve it if you can.

His curiosity withers and dies. There's nothing left.

I won't pretend value where I see none, and I won't pretend virtue when I have none. The world is meaningless to me. I am meaningless to me. Give me my oblivion and kill them all.

A trapdoor bangs open in his mind and spews forth all the talent he has lost through years of sadism and hate. Here is his intelligence, his organizing and scheduling and memorizing abilities. Here is his mathematical precision, his literary insight, his orational eloquence and his boundless ambition and ego. His future: all the potential that might have been used for something creative and good now flowing into the conniving hands of this thing in his head. Se la vie.

He discovers that his eyes are working again.

Through the green ectoplasm in his tank he sees two petty humanoids scurrying about their gadgets. He groans and shudders as the darkness begins to activate his resources, routing its own dark power into his mental circuits. The world would end. He would bring it to an end and tear to pieces every living thing in it, starting with the two morons who stand there gawking at him.

"The energy readings are jumping the scales! He's not even feeling the drugs. Can you contain him?" Skulker whirled to Vlad. "You're going to have to use your muscle. I can't hold him!"

Vlad didn't move. His eyes were fixed straight ahead at the clear green of the tank, where the wide brown eyes of hate incarnate stared right back. Alex was very much awake, and as they both watched, a tiny crack tinked into the glass and began to spider out, the green ectoplasm beginning to trickle in streams from the fracture.

Skulker had drawn every convenient weapon he had. His mane flamed wildly and he kept adjusting his stance, keeping everything aimed at the beast in the tank.

Vlad could only stare, captivated by the demon's eyes. A shard of glass flew from the tank as it exploded, skewering his ghostly body and lodging itself in the wall behind him.

The glass and fluids destroyed most of the lab equipment. The computers sparked and fried, and one of the ghosts disappeared while the other leaped at him with knives and nets.

How typical.

He brought his right hand up and froze both figures. They looked funny like that, not moving, yet still possessed of that curious motion contained in every living thing. The catty one had been caught in mid-pounce, teeth bared, knives and guns extended, and the vampiric thing, stripped of its invisibility, stood open-mouthed. He hadn't even needed to bring out the darkness to stop them. The darkness was busy elsewhere in any case, marshalling the resources for a task worthy of his ability. It couldn't be bothered with these two jokers, but he sure could.

"Do you know what Nothing looks like?" He quirked his head at the captive audience. He knew they could hear him. "I'm not talking about your standard nothing. No money, no groceries, no toys, that kind of thing. I'm talking about absolute Nothing. The Void, if you will." Neither one replied. He dropped his hand and released them. The vampire let out a strangled yell and tried to fly away, but it slammed into a hastily erected psychokinetic force-field.

"Do you?"

The cat answered, but it was distracted. It could see that there was a cage around it, and the stupid thing was probably looking for a way out. "No."

The vampire shook its head. "Not exactly."

He didn't like the vampire, but that didn't matter because he could feel that his mind was almost completely rewired. It wouldn't be long at all now.

"I couldn't explain it to you, because I can't remember enough of this world to draw a good analogy, and even if I did, it looks like the two of you would be too stupid to understand it anyway. I suppose I could give it a shot, though." It was an easy thing to melt the metal from the computers into barbed wire, but it was a little more difficult to modify it for ghost-effectiveness. Nevertheless, he managed it all in the space of several seconds and had it wrapped loosely around the two of them in another half-second. "Pay attention. It feels a little like this." He squeezed the wire as tightly as he could without slicing them both in half.

"Why are you doing this?" gasped the cat.

"I'm doing this because there is meaning in nothing. There is life in death, and there is satisfaction in pain." He winced as the final lock turned in his head, the final circuit complete.

"I am destroying your world."

He let himself sink away as a conflagration roared up in his eyes and swept across his mind, liquefying the scrap into dross and leaving the new machinery free to run, the necessary parts free to shift and turn. The entire assembly stretched from his mind to touch a space beyond the four dimensions of space and time, prying between and beneath them to a space beyond the fourth. It took a titanic effort of intelligence, thousands of adjustments every picosecond to orchestrate the effort. The doomsday machine, with his Other at the controls, drained every resource, every talent, every insignificant ability he had ever owned and slammed them all into service with its own power against the thick weave of space-time. The weave groaned like death, it cracked like a spine, and it split open upon the world with the force of a hydrogen bomb and the heat of a blazing sun. Dimly he heard the two little beings he'd been holding shriek and turn to ash, and the ash burned away into atoms. Everything simmered white-hot and the rift, still lodged in his mind, projected into the real world, settling a couple yards away from him as a whirling vortex of shattered space. That old familiar darkness began to uproot itself from his mind and drain into the rift where it met something else, and through the part of his Other that still remained he too felt the contact, a piece of supernatural communiqué. He gathered only that a task was being scheduled; nothing more.

The rift gaped and rounded itself neatly into an orb, and he felt his Other cleave completely from him and suck into the darkening portal, shredding the mind it had so long inhabited. He let it all go. He felt the shadow of all that equipment above him, those thousand tons of abandoned space-tearing machinery plummeting down upon his head. This last thing was finished now, and if there was a God in the world then he would never wake up.

END PART I

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A/N: Before everybody starts to shriek at me, let me say that this is not the end of the story. This is the end of the beginning of it. Thanks much to all my reviewers for cheering me on through Part I, and keep a lookout for Part II. Reviews are welcome!