Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (5 page)

Steffor fought the impulse to flinch, ignoring the wailing child buried deep within the recess of his mind. Teeth clenched, unable to shut eyes despite the urgent yearni
ng, he barreled into the point of impact as both Guardians unleashed the Source. The concussion ripped through Steffor's body and pain was all that registered for the briefest moment. Certain he could not withstand another agonizing second; pain abruptly gave way to bliss. United with the Provider, an experience immeasurable by time or space, he loved everything more than he perceived possible in that instant.

He returned to the material plane, bestowed with the power to absorb the Source of both Vejax and
Grimlock. He let go of all defensive thought and in doing so found endless strength. Before anyone could understand what had happened, Steffor slipped effortlessly between the pair, flying on a perfect trajectory toward his dive chute.

To everyone's amazem
ent, Vejax and Grimlock managed to dodge the other and stay on their original course, hitting their reentry several seconds behind Steffor. Joy consumed Steffor as he sensed his competitors were too far behind to catch-up. "I've done it!" He shouted despite being in the midst of the most challenging stretch of dive chute he had ever faced.
It’s over, the rest does not matter
, he thought with unwavering faith, effortlessly choosing one correct path after the other. With tears of triumph streaking down his face, basking in the higher power now guiding him, Steffor’s heart swelled with gratitude as he reached the final strait away to peer the expansive Deagron Fields far below.

The sudden appearance of the thirty-foot wide branch directly blocking his exit was
not the result of crafty camouflage. One second it was simply not there, the next it was. The "how" it appeared was irrelevant at the time of discovery given Steffor's speed and distance from it. There was no time to do anything but react. Reverting back to his physical surroundings—the euphoric events experienced only moments before stinging like the echo of a cruel joke—Steffor punched the branch with all the Source he could muster. Right before entering the dark abyss of his mind, he knew it would not be enough.

Chapter 4

Stalling tried to meditate to the rhythmic beat of his leather loafers pounding the marble floor. He knew the best way to collect his thoughts was to remove them first but he was struggling to apply the practice. And time was something he no longer had at his disposal.

Like a blindsided bladeball block, his contentious meeting with Clortison knocked loose the answer to the question plaguing his thoughts. As was the case with all the big questions in life, the answers always
seemed so obvious once revealed. Knowing it provided nothing positive to the process of figuring out a solution, Stalling still chastised himself for not seeing the answer prior to this moment.

He was grateful for the long passage between his private offi
ce and the main campus. The trip provided much needed time to sort out his next steps. He took a few moments to soak in the lush, evergreen rain forest surrounding the transparent hallway and refocused his attention on his footsteps echoing off the glass walls.

Relax. You still have time. You are only presented challenges you are equipped to handle. Trust your process.

One by one, Stalling released the positive thoughts, each floating away as if a bubble caught in a slow breeze, deliberately clearing his slate of consciousness, the echo of his comfortable shoes down the long hallway the only thought entering his mind. When he arrived at the entrance fifteen minutes later, his apprehension about upcoming events, while still present, had diminished. Stalling paused in front of the door, worked his neck and shoulders loose and took a deep breath. Driven by the fear of failure, Stalling walked through the door.

He connected his link visor back online and immediately
synced with Antone. "Stop what you are doing, meet me in the lab."

"I'm here now. Where are you? I've been trying to reach you for the past twenty minutes."

"I'm ten minutes away, what's going on?"

"Jennifer asked me to review some unusual readings; I sen
t them to you a few minutes ago." Stalling quickly downloaded the file located in the upper right hand quadrant of his view screen. "I have only been studying them for a few minutes now but so far I cannot not find any previous data to explain things," Antone said with a note of anxiety.

The readings corroborated Stalling's newfound conclusions. He was downloading the data so fast he forgot about Antone waiting for his reply. "I know what this all means. I need you, Jennifer and Janison in the lab to discus
s."

"Understood, I'll locate Janison." Antone severed his link. Stalling did not think Janison would show, nor was he prepared to handle him if he did, but was sure whatever involvement he played going forward was important. Sadly, the most important issue
at hand was not the double-crossing of his closest friend. The final and most important piece of his covert enterprise was in real jeopardy of never materializing. All the progress made over the past decade would amount to nothing without the completion of this final step.

Stalling ignored the people hustling from one place to the other as he crossed the small park. He greatly desired to avoid speaking to anyone prior to reaching the lab, so he chose to walk along the well-manicured lawn interspersed with
small tree groves, versus one of the many intersecting sidewalks. Stalling always made himself approachable but conditioned those who chose to do so to be direct and honest in their intentions. This communication skill was the first qualification, no matter what the position or field of expertise may be, required by anyone considering employment with Alterian Enterprises. Typically, his presence on campus was an open invitation for anyone to approach him. Today, he needed to avoid that type of interaction.

He quickened his pace and managed to reach the lab entrance without incident. He stepped into the security booth, waited patiently for the scan to identify him, and then hurried through the six inch thick steel doors before they finished parting.

Stalling saw Antone's stocky build halfway down the descending corridor, the sheen of sweat coating his stubbled, balding head glinting off the soft lighting as he paced from one side of the hall to the other. He could tell by the animated hand gestures and neurotic movements that Antone was barking orders to someone over his visor. Antone, seeing Stalling approach, promptly ended the conversation and turned to meet him.

"Did you find Janison?" Stalling inquired.

"No. He is off-line and does not show up on the grid. I just sent people to search."

"Where is Jennifer?"

"She's in the lab," he said, gesturing with his head toward the entrance at the bottom of the corridor. "Describing her as anxious to speak with you would be an understatement."

"That does not surprise m
e," Stalling said, already moving toward the entrance.

"Before we go, there is something you need to be made aware of." Antone
’s tone indicated it was important. His Chief Operating and Security Officer did not mix words and had an impeccable talent for getting to the point, bringing only the most vital events to Stalling’s attention.

"OK. Lay it on me," Stalling said.

"After observing Janison, both in person and online, display several odd behaviors as of late, I chose to investigate further. After three months of surveillance, none of his actions alone merited suspicion but as the frequency increased my gut told me something was not right."

Stalling empathized with Antone's difficulty in communicating this news. Investigating the second in command at Alter
ian Enterprises was not a choice Antone would have made lightly. Stalling was overwhelmed with gratitude in that moment, comforted on many levels by the man’s presence in his life.
What if I ignored the impulse to take a chance on Antone so many years ago?"

"So what did you discover?" Stalling asked, level and under self-control.

"More than I imagined possible. Sir, we have been compromised."

Chapter 5

Repulsed by his dormancy, Steffor longed for the sleek forearm breaking the mercurial surface. But he hesitated, reluctant to leave his nurturing oasis, fighting the impulse to grab hold of the outstretched hand groping blindly for his being. Immersed in an ocean of spiritual unity, barren of individual thought or emotion, the swirling depths below beckoned him to stay.

I have been here before, many lifetimes ago. This I am certain. But I willingly chose to depart from this plane of existence. So why have I returned?

Not only had Steffor chosen to return but he did so with reckless abandon, as if a child jumping into a knot pond on a hot summer's day. Erased from memory was the means in which he arrived but the unanswered question as to
why
he came back at all prevented his second departure. Why, without hesitation, did he trade his identity to merge with this formless nirvana?

The gaseous plane, inhabited by beings of amber light, diffused into a blissful whole, had revived his soul with its simple but abundant energy. But the ability to dist
inguish his being from the ignorant yet blissful mass had waned. It was time to leave, to return from where he had been, and instinct screamed the flailing arm before him was his one shot at escape.

Taking one last pull of the sweet energy, Steffor stretch
ed the limits of his willpower and grasped the slender forearm. With one assertive motion, his rescuer pulled him free.

Steffor emerged from his healing slumber to appear back atop his dive platform, surrounded by suffocating smog. Disoriented, he gasped a
nd coughed as the acrid fumes burned the senses. A second later, his garments reacted, encasing head to toe in protective body armor. Desperate to find escape—his garments ability to stave off the poisonous atmosphere limited to a few minutes—through tear blurred vision and narrow visor tinged by a transparent shield of Source, his powerful sight cut through the black cloud and searched Toliver's peak for his Dive chute.

Steffor rejoiced at the site of a tower rising above the canopy and prepared to dive mo
ments before a burst of white flame erupted from its dark opening. Stunned and confused, the wave of heat and soot that followed knocked him back, causing him to lose his balance and topple from his platform. Honed instincts enabled him at the last second to avoid disaster, just snagging the edge of his platform with fingertips.

He dangled for several seconds, the wave of heat still scalding skin beneath garments, before he regained control long enough to scan the area around the treacherous tower for some
type of route in which to dive.

As he did so, he noticed with dismay how sparse the canopy had become. Once a dense blanket of green pine needles and brown cones, the top of the world was a skeleton of tar covered twigs and branches. His heightened vision
penetrated the plentiful gaps between with ease to depict Instenkul's branches miles beyond.

This cannot be! What has happened in my absence?

His panic rose as he looked out across the decimated canopy to find dozens of similar towers breaking the surface:  gargantuan pipes built from a sordid mix of wood and metal, belching black clouds into the gray sky. With halfhearted effort, he released his grip, turned headfirst and fled from the dismal setting.

Depression mounted as the full extent of his home's tra
nsformation was revealed while threading his way down the network of wilted branch, stem and foliage. The farther down he traveled, smog slowly diminished into a greasy haze, pitting surrounding vegetation into a perpetual fight for survival against blight of no known defense.

Gone were the quaint estuary towns and villages set amongst the aesthetic crooks known to the upper most region's zigzagged stems and branches. In their place, Steffor flew past one grungy settlement after another, gutted into bark an
d branch nearest the Trunk with little thought or care to beauty or the Provider.

Steffor witnessed a flurry of human and mechanical butchery alike within each communal atrocity. Fires burned everywhere. Not like the wild fires that would randomly occur wi
th the passing of a storm, but huge bonfires contained by mammoth hearths made from brick that produced mounds of glowing coke. Via conveyer belt and shovel, fuel fed giant furnaces that powered machines of gear, piston and violent churning. Chimneys sprouted from each complex like wicked plants, connecting to the massive exhaust pipes extending down from Toliver's Peak. A vision plagued his intuitive mind, revealing the vast network of chimneys that must exist to justify the dozens of goliaths atop the world and their relentless purge of poison into the atmosphere.

Steffor embraced the numbness, a thin buffer coursing through his veins keeping insanity at bay; a temporary fix to the inevitable, knowing the horrific scenes were but moments away from consumin
g his soul. He finally broke through the tight knit network of upper branches into open sky, free falling miles above the Constunkeen prairie bough: the Provider's longest bough and place of Steffor's birth.

His worst fears affirmed sooner th
an he could imagine, tears streaked freely down his face at the sight of his home region, for he could find no trace of the once wide-open wilderness he knew and loved so well. Gone was the sprawling terrain with subtle hills and turns, pocked by knot ponds and lakes, all covered by an array of grasses, herbs, flowers and bushes and populated with the Provider's most diverse collection of creatures. Now, for miles upon miles, as far as he could see in every direction, a black material sparkling with a dull glimmer in the overcast sun encased the mighty limb.

He stared at the appalling monstrosity in disbelief, revolted by the terrifying and efficient destruction. Like termite mounds, industrial plants were bored along the bough in systematic patterns: large complexes full
of man and machine mining Source rich bark and sapwood, refining the flesh ripped from the Provider's body in smoking furnaces then pouring their molten bi-product into large cauldrons.

Steffor watched payloads glide away from factory along rails molded u
pon the paved surface, pulled by locomotives resembling more beast than vehicle. Spoke to hub, rails connected the satellite mine complexes to a fortified city located at the center of the bough. Ringed by three curtain walls—each replete with armed bastions and tower battlements—Steffor estimated the city to be over sixty square miles. In the center of it all loomed a tower that shot skyward like a jagged spearhead in flight.

Constructed from the strange material that was neither wood nor metal, the tower'
s chaotic design and raw power boggled Steffor; the steep angles, sharp edges and pointed spires a stark difference compared to the soft and natural architecture of familiar. Steffor aimed his descent toward the foreboding fortress, a sudden but welcome outlet for his mounting anger.

I will put an end to those responsible, or die trying!

Container and vehicle merged into one of four primary rails that led into the city from the north, south, east or west, then disappeared about a half mile from the outer wall into dark tunnels submerged beneath the surface. Nowhere within the shantytown packed between the first and second wall did Steffor see the trains reappear, nor did they emerge amongst the more refined structures located between the second and third.

Mo
ving his search inward, an organized commotion drew his attention trunk-side of the main tower, to an open, semi-circle area where a line of trains emerged from an opening in the ground located just past the inner most walls. The procession lurched forward, snaking from one side of the lot to the other, to a depot manned by a team of workers operating an intricate system of cranes. Chains and hooks lifted cauldrons, carefully pouring the molten contents into a crescent shaped reservoir, sending train and empty container down another tunnel to emerge outside the city and start the process all over again.

The reservoir framed a large space before the tower, two channels at the tips forming a moat of the liquid energy. Small streams broke away from the reservoi
r that turned into tiny capillaries the closer they came to the tower, fracturing the black surface between with iridescent cracks that melded into a broad, tri-tiered staircase. Steffor adjusted his trajectory to land on the top tier: a rectangular forecourt before the tower's arched entrance, currently filled with a crowd of people who appeared to be intently listening to an individual standing on a dais in the center.

Consumed by the desire to inflict pain onto those who would commit such atrocities to h
is world, to his God, Steffor focused all of his attention on the forecourt. Consequently, he failed to detect the gun turrets strategically stationed along the tower's spiked top or their movement as they turned in his direction and locked onto his position, now a half a mile above. If not for his helmed visor, alerting him to the incoming projectiles with blinking circles across his field of vision, Steffor would have never made it past the first spire.

Steffor barely dodged the first set of missiles that
closed in on his location with a disturbing speed and instinct and was forced to draw the Source and place a dense shield around himself seconds later as two trailing the first locked onto him with impeccable accuracy. The shield held and prevented the shrapnel from penetrating but the concussion of the blast sent a momentary shock to his system, causing him to lose command of his shield and flail wildly in the air.

Within seconds, Steffor righted his trajectory and continued his direct descent toward the
forecourt, of which all its occupants now stared upward with rapt interest. Made from the same type of material grotesquely covering the bough, he sensed an altered form of the Source powering the strange missiles. Not the clean energy flowing effortlessly in all life, beckoning Citizens to shift according to their race, but a refined concentrated Source controlled by few.

An undeniable change, felt deep within, told him
he pulled from the same strange and pliable Source to create his shield only moments ago. He intuitively sensed the tainted power originated from the glowing pool below, not the wellspring pumping through the Provider's hollow Trunk. The corrupted energy left a film of residue, clinging to his insides, making him helpless to resist experiencing its daunting power again. The sudden swarm of hateful emotions easily shoved intuition aside, no longer caring enough to contemplate how such a change could destroy the very foundation of his principle driven life.

The opportunity to wield the addictive power again came quickly as he flew parallel to within a few yards the tower and the long line of cannon turrets strategically stationed within a multitude of once hid
den alcoves. Steffor shot forth a thick wall of green Source from his extended right arm to shatter the volley of fist-sized projectiles fired from below, while obliterating each passing gun with targeted blasts from the left.

A satisfied smile formed in t
he corner of his mouth as he saw the realization of his unstoppable advance hit the faces of those assembled on the forecourt. Moments later, a mad scramble to escape his pending assault ensued. Few had cleared to the steps below or escaped to the recesses of the dark hallway before Steffor arrived, slamming the ground with a massive wedge of Source to break his fall. The impact created a deep crater and sent people flying in every direction. Steffor held his landing for a moment, kneeling on one knee with fist in the ground, then leaped from the rubble toward the still intact dais, prepared and itching to fight.

"Master! You have returned to us!" Steffor recognized the owner of the voice as the man standing upon the dais moments before, now fifteen yards in
to arched entrance, slightly hidden within the first cut of shadows. Confusion and curiosity by the others words put a momentary check on Steffor's vengeful intentions.

How is it this man looks at me with such familiar
ity?

Getting to his feet, the man shou
ted to those around him. "See! Did I not tell you he would return to us?" Striding toward Steffor, looking him up and down as he did, he continued, "And he returns to us in the prime of his youth..." he hesitated, looking at the pulsing energy concentrated around Steffor's arms and torso, before gesturing with open arms directed at Steffor "...and with power beyond reckoning!"

Steffor commanded his garments to completely remove his helm and stepped within inches of the man. Garbed in a scaled armor, the man
did not shy from Steffor's advance, instead he stood boldly with chest forward and hands clasped behind his back. He met Steffor's glare with respectful attention and an air of authority earned from decisive action.

Steffor circled the large man several t
imes and probed the other's bearded face for signs of doubt or fear, finding neither.

"Why do you call me master?" The evil snarl of his own voice startled him, providing for the first time since shifting the tainted Source clear evidence of how much he ha
d already changed.

"Lord and master of the Six, I beg your forgiveness. If it should advance your deity, I embrace your fury." With believable purpose, the other put his chin to his chest, waiting for Steffor's command.

Steffor tuned away in disarray, noticing for first time the others. Displaced by the impact of his landing, all now kneeled toward him with heads bowed low.