New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (5 page)

There was something else she had, though. Her Words. Power. Crush/Rend (two separate words that somehow fit each other like the halves of a Yin and Yang symbol). Heal. See. And Dim, although she still was having problems with it. Those little hacks in reality’s programming could come in handy. On the other hand, using them might alert Dark Christine about her presence. If she was found out, things would get very ugly, very fast.

She was alone in a strange, dangerous world.

Been there, done that
, she told herself. It didn’t make her feel any better.

Brooklyn, New York, July 6, 2014

The recently deceased Neo was eventually identified as one Maxwell Henderssen of Queens. The press had quickly anointed him as Molten Max. There was a flurry of human interest stories about Molten Max’s life before the five minutes during which he’d become something more than a chronically unemployed loser with a long rap sheet. His celebrity status lasted for a whole week, after which he was gone and mostly forgotten, immortalized only as one more entry in the Encyclopedia Neotica.

The battle site would remain an open sore in the neighborhood for longer than that. The bodies of all twenty-nine victims had been recovered, evidence collected, the living evacuated. The ruins were unstable and dangerous, and it would take a few days for work crews to begin repairing the damage. Police barriers blocked the streets, and a couple of patrol cars were on watch to keep people from wandering among the ruins and breaking their fool necks.

There weren’t enough cops on watch to form a secure cordon around the area, however, especially at night, and a group of enterprising young men took advantage of that. Lou Perez had worked in one of the chop shops in the neighborhood, before he’d screwed up once too many times and gotten his ass fired. He knew the shop had contained a wall safe full of cash, and also knew the combination to said safe. Now that the chop shop’s owner had been sent to Jesus by Molten Max, it’d be child’s play to get to it and make bank.

Lou had recruited his cousins Felipe and Mario to help him. The trio had snuck past the police cordon and skulked toward his former place of employment. That turned out to be tougher than Lou had thought. The power was off, so it was dark as hell in there. Even worse, the streets had been so thoroughly rearranged by the Neo battle that it took him a while to figure out where to go. As it turned out, about half of the chop shop was gone, swallowed by a massive crater that filled most of a city block. Luckily the safe was in the half that was still standing.

“Here it is,” Lou said, using a small flashlight to find his way. The wall safe seemed to be in pristine condition. Lou couldn’t believe his luck. Normally, all his plans turned to shit in short order.

He tried the combination he’d memorized from a strip of paper the owner kept at his desk, the fucking idiot. The safe clicked open.

“Fucking-A.”

It all seemed too good to be true, but the safe door swung open and Lou found himself looking at a dream come true: there were fat stacks of fifties and hundreds, bound neatly with elastic bands; some rare Dominion rayguns, easily worth ten grand each; and a small stash of coke and Ultra-Drops. That was a hundred, maybe two hundred grand score, and even split three ways it was the most money he’d ever had.

It was the happiest day of his life.

“All right, let’s pack up this bitch and get going,” he said. He was the luckiest sumbitch that ever lived, he thought.

Lou and his cousins were so busy filling their backpacks with loot that they completely missed the light show at the bottom of the crater.

A small sphere, glowing red and purple, took form out of thin air, sparkled merrily for a few seconds, and dissipated as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving behind a human form.

“That’s it,” Lou said, zipping up his backpack after taking one last loving look at the money inside. He wanted to laugh like a loon. “Let’s get…”

“Your clothes. Give them to me, now.”

“What the fuck?” Lou and his cousins turned around and found themselves facing a short red-haired girl. A short, totally naked red-haired girl.

“Nice night for a walk,” the naked girl said; her voice had a harsh accent and tone, like she was trying to sound like a man, and some sort of foreigner at that.

“Yeah, sure, lady,” Lou said with a placating grin while he tried to reach the Dominion blaster he’d stuck into his waistband. Someone crazy enough to wander around naked had a to be a Neo; his only hope was to put a plasma bolt in her head and scram before the cops could come check on the noise.

“No, no,” the crazy bitch went on. “You’re supposed to say ‘Fuck you asshole’ and pull out a switchblade. Fucking shitty alternate reality without
Terminator
movies.”

“Fuck you, asshole!” Lou shouted, leveling the energy pistol at her. He pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“A little bit of telekinesis,” the girl said. “Trigger don’t work so good no more. Bummer. But thanks for playing.”

“Oh, shit.”

“That’s Dark Justice!” cousin Felipe said, recognizing her face. “We’re fucked!”

“Close, but no cigar,” the crazy naked girl said. “But you’re half right. You are fucked.”

It turned out to be the worst night in Lou’s life, as well as his last.

* * *

One of the Three Dead Amigos had been wearing a leather jacket, barely long enough to serve as a mini-dress once she zipped it up and tied a belt around her waist. The rest of their clothes had been ruined by all the blood and other less appetizing bodily fluids they’d spewed while she rearranged their insides. She probably should have killed them a bit more cleanly, but she’d been in a killing mood.

She giggled. She was always in a killing mood.

“Okay, Pissy Chrissy,” she muttered. “This may be your world, but as it turns out, you’re only living in it.”

She took to the air and was gone before the first cops arrived to the scene.

Dreamland/Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, July 6-July 14, 2014

“We should take a break,” I told her.

The relived memories dissolved away, leaving us back in the fake Hell she’d built.

“It’s hurting you, isn’t it?” Christine said. “The whole living my memories thingy.”

“Pain won’t kill me. I want to know everything that happened.”

“I doubt it.”

“The important thing is, you managed to escape Earth FUBAR. And saved my ass when the evil version of you tried to mind-fuck me. Everything else is just details.”

“Yes, but…”

“Whatever it is, we can deal with it. But let’s get out of Dreamland and let everyone know you’re okay. All the sensors in our apartment must have twigged to my going under. They’ll send someone to check on us, and if they find us both unconscious they’ll get worried. And if they get worried enough…”

“They wouldn’t hit the kill switch just because I’m taking a nap,” Christine said.

Before the Genocide War she’d had a set of miniaturized bombs built into her skull. They were still there, just in case she turned evil. I’d argued against that, but they wouldn’t listen, even after the arguments degenerated into death threats. Christine approved of the bombs. Doc Slaughter-Trent assured me the devices couldn’t go off by accident, or even if someone cut open her skull with a laser beam. I still wasn’t convinced.

“Yeah, they probably won’t push the button just because we’re both sleeping, but why take chances? Let’s comfort everyone, maybe grab some pancakes, and you can finish your story. And when you’re done we can decide what to tell our super-pals.”

I was worried about what Christine had done while trapped in Earth FUBAR. She clearly thought it was something that might appall even me. Very few things appalled me, so it must have been pretty bad. If it was bad enough, I’d make sure the Legion didn’t find out. Those sanctimonious assholes wouldn’t understand that sometimes you did what you had to and worked on living with yourself afterwards.

For all I cared, she could have blown up the entire planet. I would stand by her.

She picked up my feelings, and looked down, not meeting my eyes.

And that really worried me.

* * *

“Everything seems to be in order,” Doc Slaughter-Trent said.

Christine sat up on the examination table, looking past a dozen scanning and probing robo-tools to look at me. I made a face and gave her a reassuring grin. Neither of us liked hospitals.

“On the other hand, you were in perfect health for several hours before you regained consciousness,” Doc continued.

We exchanged glances, and I gave her a shrug.

I said. If she didn’t want to trust her pseudo-uncle, that was fine with me. The new Doc Slaughter might love Christine like a daughter, but his Damon Trent half had been willing to risk her life when the stakes were high enough. He would definitely want to hear the details of Christine’s dimensional travels, details she still was reluctant to share with anyone, including me.

She spoke out loud: “I’m beginning to remember what happened to me during my coma vacation.”

“I see,” Doc said.

“I was sent to an alternate universe by the First.”

Adam frowned slightly, which make him look a lot more like Damon Trent, but didn’t say anything else.

“It was the world where I went evil and killed most everyone. I was there for a while. I… I was captured. I managed to get away.”

My heart skipped a beat. I’d suspected that was what happened, but I’d hoped I was wrong. My new life had softened my head enough to actually hope for something good. Reality would take care of curing me from that sort of bullshit, though. It never disappointed when it came to destroying hope.

There was an awkward silence after that. Christine clearly didn’t want to elaborate.

“I suppose the rest of the story is really none of my business,” Adam finally said. “Unless you think there is any information that might impact our local space-time continuum.”

“I… I don’t think so. I mean, my evil twin followed me, in astral form, and tried to attack Mark in Dreamland, but I clobbered her pretty badly. Like dead badly. And even if she survived that… well, she didn’t really have much of a home base to go back to.”

Adam raised an eyebrow at that.

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Spock, there’s more to the story,” Christine said. “Short version: Earth FUBAR is gone. Destroyed. Kaput. Along with like ten million mostly innocent people. All dead.”

“That world was already dead,” Adam said. He could see the same thing I did: Christine blamed herself for the destruction of Planet Fucked Up. That was why she wasn’t ready to give up all the details.

The look she gave me, and the feelings beneath, told me there was more to the story, though.

* * *

We walked home in silence.

As soon as I closed the door to our apartment, she hugged me tightly. I could feel a toxic emotional stew boiling inside her: terror, guilt, sheer trauma and under all of it a deep, abiding sadness. She was mourning the dead from that other world; those deaths had affected her more than all the losses we’d experienced here, even the ones of the Genocide War. Even the time when she’d thought I was dead hadn’t hurt her as badly as what happened in that other world.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “Not yet. It’s too fresh. It’s too raw. It hurts too much to think about it.”

“That’s okay. Whenever you’re ready. Fuck the past. You’re here, I’m here. That’s all that matters. Fuck the past.”

She looked at me and tried to smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

I was terrified that she might not have made it back after all. That she was no longer Christine.

But I didn’t let go of her. Fuck the past. And fuck the assholes who had done this to her. My only regret was that I couldn’t kill them myself.

* * *

A week went by, and she still wouldn’t talk about it.

On the surface, things went back to normal. We didn’t mention the elephant in the room. She caught up with all the paperwork from the fight with Maxwell Henderssen, a.k.a. Molten Max. We got some disturbing news about the murders of three looters at the site of the battle – an unknown Neo was suspected – but whoever it had been had covered his tracks pretty well, and his identity remained unknown. I asked my buddy Condor to keep me posted and quickly forgot about it.

Whenever we had some free time, we went out, caught a movie at the Liberty City Multiplex, came home, made love. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, but we both did that. Nightmares are part of the life; mine had started the day after I killed my stepfather, seconds after going Neo. The dreams had only gotten more varied and intense over time. But hers had taken a turn for the worse, and there wasn’t much I could do about it, not without bringing up stuff we’d agreed not to bring up.

It’s amazing how far you can get on sheer denial. Having work helped, of course. We both spent a good fifty hours doing Legion stuff that week, everything from PR shit to putting satellites in orbit. There were no new crises, no natural disasters, mad geniuses trying to take over the world, nor any international conflicts. That was true of most weeks, of course – on average there were maybe four or five Legion-worthy incidents a year – but a part of me felt like this was the proverbial calm before the storm, and the storm was going to be a royal bitch.

I had no idea.