Chapter 39:
The bunker loomed over the scene as Jake Junior stepped out of the back of the truck. The pack of eggheads was present, running around in a frenzy, taking readings and shouting at each other. Nearer to hand, Fionna was closeted with the curvy Grid-Face Princess, chatting as if the two had anything in common. Further away, Billy stood talking to the plump elemental girl. The shapechanger felt a momentary pang of loss, as memories came flooding back. Sitting in Billy's lap, discussing baby-names. Billy slipping the ring on her finger. She'd pawned that ring, years ago. Some other girl was wearing it now. Two months of Billy's salary had stretched just far enough to buy her passage across the sea.
Across the square, Billy watched with an unhappy expression on his face, as Olesia chugged the antidote for the drugs she took. It was an ugly reminder of the sacrifices she made to continue their mad little affair. "It'll take a while for me to get my strength back," Olesia murmured. Her eyes said it. He shouldn't worry about this. There was nothing to it. Swallowing his worry, the big man said, "we'll be heading in soon." He wanted to hug her, but that was out of the question right now. Turning away, the Ice Prince went striding across towards his sister. She was the other piece of the puzzle that would make this work without them getting fried.
As the big man crossed to his sister, Princess Nadia concluded her conversation with Fi and walked away. Jake Junior walked up to her former sister-in-law. "Funny watching you talking to that egghead," chuckled the shapechanger. "The dumbest person in the room talking to the smartest, like you have anything to say to her." Far from getting upset as she might have in the past, Fionna chuckled right alongside her former 'in-law', which was some kind of weird to Jake Junior.
With a conspiratorial wink, Fionna announced, "we were discussing methods for providing sufficient electrical capacity to her portable forcefield generator..." The shapechanger goggled at her as if she couldn't have heard that, but the tall blonde wasn't done by half. "It's a facade," Fionna explained. "You should be familiar with that, Jacob Rainicorn Junior. I project a facade of immaturity and cognitive deficiency like your facade of innocence and congeniality. It helps my family cope with the unpleasant reality of my current circumstances. "
The double-take she got from the shapechanger was laugh-out-loud funny to Fionna. Billy settled a hand on his sister's shoulder, as if to say, 'that's enough'. Fi gave him a sunny smile that came close to killing him. Current circumstances. There were days he wanted to beat Patrick to a pulp. In the now, Fi's current circumstances were a help. "Did you study Nadia's forcefield gadget, like I asked," Billy queried? "Yeah," she said. "I can support its energy needs with your girlfriend's help." Billy sighed heavily. He was going to turn his lady into a living battery. It made him want to wring JJ's scrawny neck. She'd caused this mess.
"We're going in," Billy said, nodding at the bunker entry. The shaman who was responsible for the bunker was standing by to recite the words that would cause the machines to open it. He was Oreva's uncle, and the latest in a long line of men to hold that title. Oreva might have inherited it himself if he'd been able to have male heirs to pass the job on to. "We won't have time to screw around," Billy said. "You'll take us straight to where you caused the problem or so help me..."
Folding her arms, Jake Junior glared at him. He was treating her like she was a monster! He was treating her like she was spit, and she wasn't having it! "You ought to be thankful," muttered JJ. Billy glared at her. Waving her hands flippantly, she said, "who do you think called our family to tell them what happened to you?" Billy's head snapped around. "Yeah," she said. "I was there on the square when that guy bashed you in the head. I watched that bitch dose you with whatever that stuff was. I called our peeps to let them know you were in trouble."
As the last words left her lips, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. She'd been there on the square. Watching and listening. That was how she'd gotten the code to open the bunker. He saw it now. Jake had a memory for little details like that–the mind and memory of a thief. The realization that she'd been there to steal the grand secret on a day that had been as momentous for the world as it had been for Billy's life made the big man angry. The fact that she wanted to crow about it enraged him.
The Ice Prince glared at her and growled, "I should be grateful that my daughter is shaking her ass for a bunch of losers in a bar to earn money? I should be glad another daughter is risking her life in a murderously dangerous jungle? I should be glad my third kid is dabbling in the same dumb shit her momma did?" Jake Junior's mouth snapped shut. Pointedly, Olesia said, "we have work to do. Let's be about it." She'd seen the looming confrontation and come rushing over to shut the whole thing down. She'd heard the stories about this woman. Now she could see just how true those stories were.
Billy hefted one of the two portable generators. Fionna hefted the second. "Lead on," growled Billy. With a sigh, Jake Junior turned and started walking. Her big score was turning out to be her worst move ever. Shaking her head and muttering curses, the shapechanger crossed the space to the bunker's front door. She'd opened that door with the secret code the idiots who ran this place had so carelessly revealed to her. Of course, honestly, they sort of had a point. Who'd be dumb enough to go inside? Who but a half-alien monster?
The shaman stepped forward to meet them at the door. "Your Highness," he rumbled. "No man has gone inside in six-hundred years..." Nodding at his ex-wife, Billy said, "she has. There might be others who'll try. Guard the secret chant, Uncle." The withered older man stared at him a moment. And then his eyes fell on the stranger. His eyes said it. He'd seen this creature before. "Aye, my son," said the shaman. "I will at that." The two men clasped hands.
Striding over to what Billy imagined was a long-hidden interface terminal, the shaman began to speak in his strange, sing-song voice–pitched lower this time. Billy didn't imagine there were too many more who could go into the bunker, but it didn't hurt to be more careful. As the shaman's chant reached its crescendo, the door slowly slid open, revealing a terrifying electric-blue glow. The Geiger counter on Billy's belt immediately began to crackle. That noise would come to haunt his sleep in the weeks and months to come.
"Fi," he murmured, "O?" His sister and his girlfriend stepped forward. Horns of pinkish crystal sprouted from the gadget on Fi's back. Olesia grasped the horns. And then a bubble of mushy energy formed around them. Billy began walking, pushing a reluctant Jake Junior before him. Almost before they were completely inside, the door began to seal behind them.
Out on the sea, north and east of the Jungle Kingdom, Bronwyn lay awake listening to her grand-uncle–at least the man she used to think of that way–screwing his latest plaything. It was a strange sort of thing to her. Men of wealth who were Finn's age typically chased much younger women–women Bronwyn's age. Finn could most frequently be found in bed with women who were charitably described as 'mature'. At the same time, the weird dichotomy was emblematic of Bronwyn's current circumstances.
Her father–the man she'd loved with all her heart from the time she could walk–was a dirty liar and traitor. She'd forgiven the cheating, brushing it under the rug and blaming it on the women. She'd forgiven some of the shadier business deals. She'd played a part in some of them, sometimes acting as a go-between to hide her father's involvement. She'd never in her life have imagined her father would throw his lot in with people who wanted to hold the whole world hostage. She'd heard bits and pieces of it–the truth of what was going on. The spy talked of... things... with Finn. At least she talked when she wasn't screaming. Her father's ships had moved key materials from a shadowport–the very shadowport they were sailing towards–and taken them over the sea to Coca Kingdom. There were rumblings that the Bandit Princess had attempted to build a terrible weapon there. She'd failed, but that didn't excuse TRR's involvement in the mess.
As the woman in the next room soared towards another shrieking climax, Bronwyn found herself sinking towards the depths of despair with guilt threatening to overwhelm her. She felt responsible for some of this. She'd helped her father build the vast fortune that he was using to put the world at risk. She'd help to hide the dirty deals that might have seen him punished. She'd played her part in the tax-cheating and shell-games. All so her father, who talked of his high-minded morality, could cheat on his wife, cheat on his responsibilities to his neighbors, and put the world at risk.
In the next room, Orzsebet collapsed atop the King, in a sweaty, exhausted heap. She was out like a light without so much as a word. For Bronwyn, sleep was a long time in coming. She had to fix this. People's lives were at stake. She'd let hundreds, maybe thousands of possible bandits into the civilized kingdoms. Her father's will. Maybe he didn't know, but he should have. There were plenty of cheap employees he could have found in other places. It made no sense to bring them from outside the Wall, when you could find loose men all over the Bandit Kingdoms and Broken Lands. They could have had their pick of Elbownians, and those people would have been glad for the work.
She saw it now, as she hadn't seen it then. Her father's orders made no sense at all, when there were plenty of displaced people in need of work. He could have gotten a commendation from the Royals for solving their problem–maybe even earned his way into their pockets. Truth? Her father had been in somebody else's pocket already. You were blind, she thought. Why were you so blind? No answer came, and the plush puppy continued to toss and turn as the ship churned through the sea, bound for the latest example of her father's failings.
Back in the Jungle Kingdom, the team in the bunker hit their first snag in the stairwell down to the lower reaches of the bunker. Standing in the hideous blue glare of the radioactive material, the quartet stood staring down at a massive obstacle. The stairs had collapsed. It was apparent that the failure had likely happened centuries ago, and Billy found himself thinking of the earthquakes that infrequently struck Abieuwa's domain. The bunker wasn't safe. They were going to have to take steps to empty it. He was certain of that. He feared the possibility of worse damage. In the right now, he had a bit of a problem.
"It's blocked," Billy rumbled. "Yup," Junior retorted, "I had to stretch myself down." The big man glared at her. "Why didn't you tell us that," Billy growled? "You weren't going to listen anyway," she replied. Billy cussed her. Clearing her throat, Olesia said, "we need to figure out how to get down, darling." She was right. Standing here blessing-out his ex wasn't going to get them through this. They were wasting time.
Back on the surface, Simone Petrikov-Mertens looked up from dishing out tea and snacks for the soldiers on duty at the bunker entrance to find a ghost standing there. "Cherry," murmured the Ice Queen. The gangster glanced up. Moments later, she was alone at the table. Simone was walking towards the pretty half-human that stood there on the square, staring at all the activity with the eyes of a lost soul.
"Hello," Simone greeted her namesake. The dog-woman stared at her. Simone immediately took the young girl's arm and steered her towards the benches behind the refreshment stand. Bonnie and Blargetha were both fast asleep there–worn down to nothing by the stress of the crisis. Nadia and Sarah were grinding away with the efficiency of living machines while an exhausted Bon did his best to keep up. Their plan, in spite of Billy's wishes, was for a set of machines to push through the bunker to the source of the trouble and forcibly pull the nuclear materials out of contact. Striding past them, Simone took her grand-daughter by the arm and steered her to a seat before fetching her a cup of tea.
She could see how Billy had so quickly recognized what–and who–he was looking at. It was all there. She even dressed like Simone. She didn't know it, but she was dressed like the woman she'd been named for–in a place that clearly wasn't suited for clothing like this. "Never thought I'd meet you in this life," the Ice Queen murmured, as she sat down beside Billy's oldest child.
"I thought she made you up," rumbled the hybrid. "Everything she ever said to us was a lie. She lied all the time, and I thought she just made everything up about who our father was." Her expression was bleak, and Simone could see the pain there as her grand-daughter turned to look at her. Just like that, the tears were falling like rain, venting the pain of abandonment. Like the mother and grandmother she was, Simone slipped her arms around the strange young woman and hugged her, whispering, "we're a big family with lots of love to give. Welcome home."
Back in the bunker, Billy and Fi had gone off with the second forcefield generator to see if they could find a second stairwell, leaving Olesia alone with the problem. Sitting on the floor, her hands grasping the crystalline power-generation devices Fionna created, the elemental's focus was on the job at hand, even though she seethed with worry. There was a great deal worrying her now. It was everything from the danger to the people of Jungle Kingdom, to the risk of devastating the breadbasket of Ooo, to more esoteric worries about Billy's fertility in this hellscape. But she made all of those worries a certainty if she failed in her twin duties of the moment. She had to keep her eyes on the unhappy murderess and keep the portable forcefield machine running all at the same time, while the prickly shapechanger did all she could to pick at the younger woman.
"So you're his new girlfriend," the shapechanger announced.
It was out of the blue and came out as a statement more than a question, and it practically dripped contempt. Coming on the heels of all the other ugly things she'd said, it immediately set Olesia on edge. In measured tones, the young princess responded, "if you like..." "You don't look like his type," she replied. She had her hands up, measuring out a silhouette. It was the usual. Olesia had just been called a fatty. Billy called her curvy, and he'd repeatedly stated that he loved her shape. Blowing a strand of her burning hair out of her eyes, the plush pretty rolled her eyes and said, "I've been called fat by people far more clever than you. I am, in fact, a princess of the Okonski bloodline, with more to offer a prince than a sneak-thief."
"You're a fucking whore who's fucking my husband," growled Junior. Olesia tutted, "mistress. The proper term is mistress. A prince may have mistresses, just as he may have mistakes." It took only a moment for the shapechanger to realize just what it was that the elemental had just called her. It was just a moment after that Junior tried to claw her rival in the face, ending up drawing back a burned and injured hand. Coldly, the elemental asked, "learned your lesson, bitch? You'd be first-wife if you'd learned to curb your... impulses. Instead, the world moved on without you."
Footsteps–and the racket of Geiger counters–announced the return of the siblings. Olesia climbed to her feet, carefully hefting the forcefield machine as Billy carefully merged the two fields once more. When Fionna was ready, the plump woman helped her wrestle the machine back onto her back. They were safer now. "What're we doing," Olesia asked, distracting Billy from looking at his ex? "Something dangerous," the Ice Prince muttered. "I'll build us stairs," Fionna said. Which comment made Junior howl laughter.
In chill tones, Fionna said, "I will cause silica crystals to leach from the floor and walls of the shaft, forming crystalline stairs, but it will weaken the structure of the cement, doing irreparable damage to the structure of the bunker. I'll do my best to contain the damage, but it will shorten the remaining lifespan of the structure. There's no way to prevent it." While Junior stared, Olesia asked, "how will we avoid having to do this again?" "I intend to empty the bunker, O," Billy rumbled. "There's no choice now. It has to be done. This can't be allowed to remain. C'mon. Let's get at it. We're running out of time."
Entering the stairwell once more, Fionna stepped forward, with Olesia coming up alongside her. "Gimme your hand, cowhips," the Bad Bunny rumbled. The nasty comment deflected the elemental from arguing. So startled was she by the change in tone that she simply complied. She could feel the strange crystal there in Fionna's hand.
And then she felt the drain.
It was immediate, strong, and almost painful. Olesia had barely been holding her own against the drain of the forcefield machine. She'd dissembled a little with Billy, swearing that she was going to be fine. She wasn't. She was weak. She'd been on the sleepers for weeks, enjoying the pleasures of having a boyfriend. It wasn't something you could just walk away from. "Just a little longer," Fionna promised. It was as if she knew...
Before Jake Junior's shocked face, stairs of pale yellow and grey crystal thrust outward from the walls of the stairwell. At the same time, a massive pillar of crystal thrust upwards from below, emerging from the diabolic blue glow to finally stop just a few feet away. As the quartet watched, the crystalline stairs joined in with the pillar, forming a structure that, while slick and treacherous, was safer than the crumbling stairs. Billy would have stepped off, but Junior stopped him. "I can catch myself," she reminded him. It was the second biggest shock of the night.
It was slow going getting down the stairs, and a worried Billy found himself staring back at Olesia now and again. The forcefield was weaker. He could tell it was getting weaker. Olesia was getting weaker. It was the drugs. She'd lied to him about the drugs. But what was he going to say to that? She was sacrificing herself for others once more. Thinking about Marysia's antics, it was hard to reconcile the pair as sisters because they were nothing like each other. Hold on, baby, he thought. It became almost like a litany in his mind. "Ten floors down," the shapechanger announced. "I had to go ten floors down..." Because the material higher up in the bunker wasn't potent enough. Ten floors was a long, long way when each floor was a hundred feet high. Olesia was struggling, and they still had a long way to go.
Taking that journey was like taking a trip back into the mists of time. Other than JJ, no living creature had been this far into the bunker since its construction. Signs on the walls in a forgotten tongue spoke of past, reminding Billy of the ancient nations his grandfather talked about. Graffiti told of the men and women who'd built this place–men feuding with each other. Men dissing women that they disliked and women doing the same. It would have been a fantastic place to study if they weren't in terror of their lives and of the greater destruction this place might cause.
The quartet emerged on the tenth floor below ground level–a thousand feet under the earth. Olesia was sweating, and their protective bubble was already noticeably smaller than when they'd started. This was the end of the line. "Third room on the left," Junior declared. "Ok," Billy said. "Tell me again... How did you do it?" "The rooms, as you saw, have pools of water in them," Junior replied. "The ones upstairs are full of big lead jars... The ones down here... dunno why, but they're full of long rods of the stuff. They're twelve feet long." She'd been exhausted from getting beat up by the radiation, and it had been all she could manage to grab a tube and get out. She'd knocked over one of the racks in the pool in the process. There had been a bright flash of light and a lot of pain from the blast.
Criticality excursion, Bill, thought the Ice Prince. She could have blown the whole fucking place up. There was added urgency in his mind now to empty this place. It all had to get moved out. "Ok," he said. "I'm'a take one of the forcefields and see if I can get up close and take a look in that room. Sit tight." The big man left them there at the stairs, edging down the vast hall until he was almost even with the door. The heat from the machine on his back told him just how dangerous things were. Reaching deep inside himself, the big man touched the deeper powers of the Ice Tiara, risking madness to conjure ice where no ice could possibly form. Conjuring a small mirror, the big man took a gander at what he was dealing with.
It was just as JJ had said. The pool was filled from end to end with rack upon rack upon rack of fuel rods. Whoever had built this place in the dim, distant past had likely not intended to make so much fuel. Abieuwa's people had continued to uranium fuel long after there was no need to refine it. The automated machinery had probably shuffled and shifted the fuel around to deal with the never-ending supply. I hope Nadia and Bonnie can come up with some way to store this stuff until we can get rid of it, thought Billy. It couldn't stay here. The current problem was how did he get the rack of fuel rods back upright without help and without knocking over more rods. Some of them even appeared to be melted.
Footsteps announced that the others had decided to follow him. "We're running out of time," Fionna announced. Billy glanced to Olesia. His lady gave him a wan smile. She was barely hanging on. He could see it. "How bad is it," Junior asked? "Bad," Billy replied. "I think some of the rods are melted together. "Wish Bronwyn was here," Jake Junior sighed, "or Charlie. They could teleport this mess somewhere else..." Taking a breath, Billy said, "last stand of the Mertens Clan..." Junior's face whipped up. "Gotta' fix it, JJ," he said. "Even if it kills us."
Turning to his sister and girlfriend, the big man said, "we're gonna' get one shot at this. O? How good are you with controlling your powers?" "Middling," she replied. "What's your idea?" "I'm going to suck heat out of the melted rods and bring them to a temperature where they're solid again. Fi's going to go in with one of the generators and stabilize the structure of the metal. Then you're going to heat them up enough to separate. JJ's gonna' force them apart with her stretchy-powers." It was a good plan. It was also going to take their remaining strength to accomplish. They weren't going to get out of here. Olesia moved in and kissed him on the cheek. It said something about how weak she'd become that it was no worse than a too-hot shower.
With the matter decided, the quartet moved into the room to get busy. With Olesia no longer maintaining them, the two forcefield generators began squawking immediately. Their batteries were running down. Fast. Minutes, Nadia had said. They had just minutes. Billy focused his will best he was able with the terror of the moment on him. Strangely enough, the Tiara helped. Maybe the evil entity wanted its host to live. Who knew. It didn't matter. The Tiara helped him focus, almost guiding his hands as he chilled the temperature of the fuel rods to nominal. Billy cast the energy gained to Olesia, even as Fionna grabbed for Jake Junior's shoulder.
"Need your emotions," Fi said. "I don't have the emotional energy to make this work..." It was an artifact of the change. She no longer felt as deeply as she once had. Siphoning off some of the shapechanger's boundless evil energy, the glass witch focused her will into the metal of the control rods, forcing crystals apart that had become married to each other over the weeks since the theft. "Now, cowhips," said Fionna. Olesia channeled her last reserves of energy into remelting a tiny section of the conjoined rods. Reaching out with her hands, Jake Junior wrestled the heavy rods apart.
The pain... was tremendous. It was like having an ocean of fine glass rubbed across every inch of her flesh. She'd felt it before when she'd come here, and she'd vowed never to go through this again. The agony seemed to go on forever. But then Billy and Fionna were dragging her back through the doorway of the doomsday room. It took a full minute for her to get control of her limbs back. The forcefield machines were giving up their last. Billy drew Olesia into his lap and held her. This wasn't how he wanted to go. He wanted to see his kids again. He wanted to see his three newest kids get born. He wanted to connect with Simone, Liz, and Lady.
"How much do you trust me," Junior announced? Billy glanced up at his ex with a frown of puzzlement. "You have to live," Junior insisted. "Our kids will be alone." That made Fionna chuckle for some reason. "You were right," Junior admitted. "I... was a bad mom. I guess I got it honest, because I did all the shit my dad did."
She'd run short of patience with raising her kids fast. Liz had driven her up the wall by sneaking out of the house. She'd gotten in deep, hanging out with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble with gangs. Lady's problem had been her endless attempts to run off and see the world. She'd been rescued from the terrors of the jungle on a dozen occasions, bringing a massive hit to Junior's pocket with each rescue by the Jungle Guard. The only one of the girls who wasn't raising hell was Simone. Naturally. Just like her grandmother, Simone II was almost saintly by comparison to the other two. Her only real fault was her hunger to bang whatever handsome dude she saw. Billy flushed at that exposition. His daughter was like her namesake in more than looks. "I failed," Junior sighed. "I wish... I wish I'd found a way to get them home to you because I couldn't take care of them. That's why you have to live. You have to fix it..."
Billy glanced at the space around them, his eyes telling the tale. There was no way to climb a thousand feet to the surface through an ocean of deadly radiation with no forcefield machines to protect them. They were going to die down here. "I can teleport us out," Junior insisted. "It's not my strongest power, but I did it before. I pulled an entire fuel rod out of here. That's... that's more weight than the four of us." She'd also landed hard, breaking her arm and four ribs. "Better than nothing," said Fi. "I'm in."
Billy, Fionna, and Olesia took hold of the shapechanger's hands. Jake Junior took a deep breath and let it go. The machines were beeping... counting down the moments until death. Another breath, as she found her center and searched out the right window in time. One more breath, as the machines finally gave up the ghost.
Four bodies came tumbling out of the sky above the square to screams of shock and terror. The four figures landed with dull, heavy thuds and lay still.
How was that for action?