King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) (16 page)

It is hot and acid through my white clothes, and the vapors sting my eyes and burn in my nose.

He squats down beside me. I want to at least slap him, flick some of the stink onto his perfect dark face, but I can't even move for the tremors running through me. I know it is too much blood lost, too much shock, but still I try to fight.

Fara, I think, my daughters Sal, Keryn, Brienne, my friend Levi, my home in Tenbridge Wulls, back to Fara…

"Did you truly think you were the first?" he asks. "Truly, Mr. Goligh."

"Call me Ritry," I slur.

He takes my head and lightly bounces it off the slick floor.

"You were the first to stumble upon it in such a way, I'll warrant you," he goes on. "All of the others have focused themselves on it for years, operating with such secrecy. They all were usurpers, bent on wresting the crown off my head, and not many gave me the run that you did. For that, it may please me to give you special attention."

"Wonderful," I manage to say, through a mouthful of sick and pain.

"It is. Your mind is intriguing. Upon you I will exercise the full gamut of suffering, to better explore it. I think Mr. Ruins made a rare choice when he selected you. Ah, you are surprised to hear his name?"

"I'm not surprised," I say, between sucking gulps at the air. "He was a sick fuck too."

King Ruin laughs, then bounces my head again, almost fondly. "He was interesting, for a time, I grant you. I am diving the remnants of his mind now, as we speak. What you left of him. There will be secrets inside his core still, I think."

"What secrets?"

"Perhaps the name of your partner, and your children? None of this Fara, Keryn, Brienne business."

This thought chills me. "I Lagged them all."

"That may be so. In either regard, there is much for us to look forward to. Now, stand up."

He helps me up. He holds me in position with his mind, studying me.

"No," he says, "I think one more."

He pulls out the bat again, raises it, and brings it hammering down on my right foot.

This time he lets me scream, as the bones crunch and dislocate between the wood and the floor. He lets me hop madly around the room screaming, until I crash into the wall and fall onto my back.

He's standing over me. "I could make you eat the vomit," he muses. "Is that too soon?"

Fara, I think, Keryn, Brienne-

"Truly, now," he says. "Stop that."

I stop it, because they are gone.

My eyes widen on King Ruin's handsome face looming over me, as I slowly understand what just happened. The weight and frame are gone. There is only a deeper hollow inside, without name or feeling, a well where something once was but I do not know what.

Tears spring into my eyes for the loss. I cannot help it. It was something real even if the names were not, and now it is gone and I am so much reduced. Every second that passes takes me further from what I was before, into this new thing that is immeasurably less, in ways I can now scarcely grasp.

What was it? I call out inside. How much have I lost?

I gasp, and a sob croaks out of me.

King Ruin smiles. "I like you better this way, Mr. Goligh. Come now. Have sweet dreams, of riding a pole while the masses laugh. Such wonders."

More sobs follow. The sense of it is already fading, leaving me here alone with this evil, evil man.

"No clever retort?" he asks.

I have nothing. I cannot even breathe.

King Ruin sighs contentedly. "Such wonders," he repeats.

Then he leaves me alone.

Over the rampart and running with the howitzer roaring on full blast, Doe takes in the blood-spattered stone, the dead Napoleonic bodies, the muskets.

She runs through them.

To the left the helicopters are nearing, the tsunami flood eclipses half the sky, and Ti and Ray are black smudges far below. To the right lies a mud-buried courtyard, dug through with wet trenches running from the various rampart walls to the keep at the center.

It alone is pure-white still, a circular structure built out of fulgent oblong blocks as big as those used in the pyramid, rising up as high as the ramparts. There are windows carved within at narrow intervals, and within one Doe catches a sliver of movement.

Then she comes to the second rampart pill-box, and sees the man slumped on the dirty stone beside a large vat-fed flamethrower mount.

The sight of him stops Doe in her tracks, and the whirr of the howitzer cycles down.

It is Mr. Ruins, dressed as Napoleon. He is wedged into the crook of the wall, his pot-belly filthy with old blood, his jacket slung back off his shoulders and torn at the cuffs. His face is mired with black bruises and a crust of dark-red blood crusted around his mouth.

He is gnawing at the bloody stump of his right wrist. He looks up as Doe draws near. "I'm so hungry," he says, his voice a Gaullic rasp. "I can't eat any of this."

It is disgusting but fascinating at once.

"You're not going to believe who I'm looking at," Doe calls through blood-mic.

"Cover us," comes the reply from Ti.

Doe leaps forward, kicks the bloody Napoleon in the face, then slotting into his position at the flamethrower. With the howitzer in one hand and the gas-tank muzzle dripping down the other, she takes sight on the nearest helicopter as it drops missiles from its belly.

The howitzer tears them apart. The flamethrower belches out sizzling purple flame with a rush and a rumble, engulfing the insectile machine and fusing it at once. It drops into the mud, just as a faint clicking sound from her leg. She ignores it long enough to drive the second helicopter into the tsunami flow with purple fire, then hazards a glance down

Napoleon is champing at her calf. Again it is repellent but fascinating, and she finds herself wondering that his jaws must be strong to make that much sound. She heaves the barrel of the howitzer back over the rampart and hammers it into his forehead, even as another helicopter bursts somewhere behind her.

He flops unconscious to the side. She spins back to see Ti and Ray launching upward on a grapnel, with the tsunami surging scant inches behind, then there is a thunderclap smack as the mud-front strikes the outer Tower wall, and Doe is rocked off her feet.

Frothing mud splashes over the rampart edge and drenches her, obscuring her HUD. She clicks it off and struggles to stand, snatching up the howitzer and training it again on the skies, but nothing comes. There are no more helicopters, only the burning glow of the twin suns through the clouds.

A second later Ti comes running toward her along the rampart, while the flow of the tsunami is still convulsing the stones underfoot.

"Are you alright?" Ti shouts over the churn.

"Alright," Doe answers, "but I found someone." She looks down to point at the squirrely body, but he is gone.

She looks back up at Ti.

"Mr. Ruins is here. Somewhere."

They congregate by Ray's side, where Doe dips into his HUD and sees fresh breaks in his left shoulder and leg, though the majority of his earlier injuries have remained sealed. The new cracks are hairline, and ought heal themselves in the existing bath of microbials within the suit.

"It's Mr. Ruins' mind," Ray says, pushing himself up to a seated position.

"We know," says Doe. "I saw him."

Ray raises an eyebrow. "Then where is he?"

"He ran, must have gone inside," Doe says, pointing to the keep. "Which leaves the wall to us."

Ray cranes his neck to look back, out over the rampart. Doe follows his gaze. The new flood is settling outside at a height barely below the rampart.

"The next attack will be hard to stop," Ray says. "They can come up at a crawl, if they want. And what have we got?"

"The fire cannon," Doe says. "The howtizer's almost out."

"Then we need to find more. I don't want to be here when this place gets taken. Whatever those chords want, it's not friendly."

"Agreed."

Doe turns to survey the keep. She'd like to simply grapnel to the top, blow her way in through one of the arrow slits with the knob of candlewax Ti took from the wrecked helicopter, and burn the rest to the ground. But that seems foolhardy. They may need it for something else. They may need the keep itself, as a final fallback defense.

"There might be weapons inside," says Ray. "There could be anything."

"Whatever Ritry Goligh sent us here for," Ti says.

Doe turns back to look at her, this tall blond ex-twin. In other circumstances she might reprimand her for speaking out of turn, but not now. Ti has proven herself beyond any doubt, and there are only three of them left.

"Ritry Goligh or Me," she says. "You're right. There's something inside there that we need."

"Maybe another aetheric bridge," says Ray. "It's the only way out I can imagine."

Doe considers, chewing her lip. "Without Far, I don't know if we can cross it."

"Then maybe we're not supposed to escape," Ray says. "This could be our last stand."

This drops a silence over them all. Doe wonders what it might mean, to truly die. No more magmic floes, no more of Ray's touch in the dark, no more Bathyscaphe or missions.

What would it mean for Ritry Goligh?

She lays a hand on Ray's good shoulder. "If it's our last stand, we'll make it a good one. I want the mud outside this wall littered with helicopters and bodies."

Ray winks. "I'll pile them up to the sky."

Almost with that, the decision is made. They help Ray to stand, letting his new bones flex beneath half of his full weight. Walking back along the rampart together, they talk about strategy.

"They obviously didn't expect us," Ti says. "They approached in wide-formation, three abreast, which would only make sense when anticipating fire from only one direction. It's part of how you were able to take them out, the element of surprise."

"Then we need a new element," Doe says.

"I'll have surprises for them aplenty," Ray says. "Don't worry on that."

"How?"

"Well, first I'll crack open some of these musket magazines, and with the powder I'll rig this whole wall to fall. Once the helicopters land and they're inside the courtyard, they won't expect that. I think I can get the worms involved too. Next I can drain off some of the flamethrower's gas and make IED incendiaries. That's just what comes to mind immediately." He pauses for a moment. "It'll be a big party."

"Good," says Doe. "Ti, I want you to stay with Ray and help set up a warm welcome. Whatever you can do to hold them off, I need you to do."

"And you'll inveigle the Solid Core," Ray says.

"White Tower," Ti corrects.

"I will. I'll hunt down that rat, and I'll find out what we're here for."

Ray nods. They reach the flamethrower, and she leans him against it, then carefully steps away.

His hands shiveringly grip the triggers, and his legs tremble. Reading his HUD, Doe watches his pulse throb faster.

"You look terrible," Doe says. "Like you're having an aneurysm."

Though he's sweating with the effort, Ray manages a grin. "Don't worry about me, little lady. I'll be skipping around this shit in no time."

"Then clean up a little, will you," says Doe, kicking at a soldier's corpse. "It's a mess."

"Aye aye, captain."

She wants to touch him again, even through the suit, but that would be too much. This is a chord, and propriety is key to discipline.

Still she steps forward, pulls off his HUD, and kisses him hard on his tooth-pierced, dark-purple lips.

He kisses back. It sends a thrill all through her body.

"Stay alive," she whispers, holding his strong black face.

"And you."

She turns to Ti. "Stay alive, that's an order."

"Yes ma'am."

It's already embarrassing enough. They've wasted enough time. She turns and walks away. Five steps on she grapnels to the keep wall, and swings down to the mud-courtyard below, into the squalid dark of a tunnel-trench.

At once, she's cut off from the world behind. 

The mud underfoot is boggy, with oil-skinned puddles glinting in the shallow troughs left by past footsteps. The trench walls rise either side taller than she is, leaving an avenue barely two bodies wide. In that narrow space the air is hot and close, rank with fresh peat and acrid powder smoke.

There is no sound, but the soft bubbling of mud as her feet sink in, and a faint scratchy wail of old music, muted by the damp-sighing walls.

She starts forward, each step tentative, sucking out of the mud then slipping in again.

"Ruins," she calls softly ahead. "I don't want to hurt you."

Ahead the trench branches at a T, which she doesn't remember from above, but of course this is a Core and anything can change.

At the T she looks both ways. To the right there is a dead-end scattered with shreds of torn paper ammunition cartridges. To the left is a grotesque tableaux. In the middle of a clearing in the trench lies a heap of bloody, ruptured naked bodies. They are soldiers that have been blown into pieces. Here a pale leg juts from the wall, there a torso lies forlorn like a belly-up turtle.

Doe counts ten dead in the carnage.

Either side of the oval clearing, in stark contrast, the uniforms of these dead men hang neatly from bayonet 'hooks' driven into the walls. Their muskets are arrayed in a smart lean-to A-frame, with all their magazines of shot and powder looped together and hanging from the crux, like a pot suspended above a fire.

Beside that are the soldiers' boots, laid out in a neat line. At one side of the oval there is an old gramophone placed in a dug-out culvert in the trench wall, like a hearth. The record deck slowly turns, producing an ethereal, corrupted classical ballad from its tarnished brass trumpet. Beside that is a table laid out with notes, each written with a single pen. A thin tendril of bluish smoke rises from a solitary cigar.

"They all jumped on a grenade," comes a voice from behind.

Doe turns, and sees Napoleon standing in the right turn of the T. He is holding a musket trained on her chest, balancing the stock across his bloody fore-arm.

"What hole did you crawl out of?" Doe asks.

"A deep one," he answers, and fires.

POP

The musket ball flies slow and cracks off Doe's chest armor, spiraling away to slot into the trench wall with a sizzle.

Doe glances down at the crack in her suit. No serious damage.

"Your muskets aren't as strong as they used to be," she says.

"They were never that strong," Ruins as Napoleon answers. "You were just weaker."

Doe stares at him. He stares back. His eyes are rimmed with yellow and dartingly feral, like a wild animal caught in a snare.

"I was caught in a snare," he says. Then he grins widely, to show blood-clotted molars, and holds up his amputated hand. "I dug my way out."

"You're dying," says Doe calmly. "Let me help you."

He laughs high and loud. "Help me? You did this to me! I ate my own hand because of you, bitch. You fucking little bitch, Goligh, I hope the Suns gobble you down forever."

POP POP POP

The musket balls crack off Doe's armor until she closes the distance between her and Ruins and yanks the musket out of his one good hand. He reeks of piss, shit, and stale gunpowder.

"What do you mean, the Suns?" Doe asks.

"Get off me, albino!" he shouts, twisting and tugging at his one good arm. Doe holds it locked. He laughs then squeals as she tightens her grip.

"Ha ha, you bitch! Fuck you, Ritry, arrgh! Aargh, stop it please! Ritry, please!"

Disgust ripples through Doe. Guilt comes quickly with it, and she eases up the pressure on his arm.

"Stop what, the flood? It's too late. Besides, you were going to do this to me," she says.

"No, no I wasn't, that's different," whines Ruins. "You don't know. You don't know what I wanted, and you ruined everything."

He starts to sob. He wraps his arms around Doe, presses his head against her chest, and weeps.

"Are the Suns the ones here?" Doe asks. She'd point but Ruins isn't looking. "In the sky here?"

"Uuurgh!" he groans into her chest-plate. "You don't even know that. You don't know anything at all. How was I beaten by you? How?"

Doe feels a sharp rap in the small of her back, and spins Ruins away, twisting his damaged arm until he starts to hop, and he drops the dagger.