The Desolate Guardians (4 page)

I couldn't process it, but I couldn't deny
it, either: our system spanned dozens of realities. We were the
sole connection between dozens of alternate Earths with varying
situations… many grim. That poor man trapped eleven thousand feet
underground… that lone freezing soul on the mountain, keeping watch
over the dead… they weren't on
my
Earth at all!

Data transmission, I could understand. In
some way, I didn't doubt information could pass between universes.
But who was this brunette woman in her early thirties, and how was
she appearing to these forlorn men?

And who the hell was I working for?

Rethinking my entire search strategy, I
quickly deleted all evidence of my activities, and then set a
passive trigger for any real-time mention of a brunette woman in
her early thirties.

There's nothing to do but wait, now…

It took several days, but it finally
happened. I was startled out of idleness by a sudden successful
return from my search trigger. I'd had a few false alarms until I'd
adjusted my algorithm, but I quickly knew that this was it. The
network I'd been alerted to was haphazard, and traffic was sparse.
There was still some activity, though - someone was still alive out
there.

To my amazement, I found that I'd been
alerted to a streaming video from someone's mounted camera. Other
data came with the stream, monitoring the person's vitals. There
was a field for location data, too, but it simply read
error.
Wondering what had triggered my search parameters, I
watched and listened.

Whoever it was remained low, crouching behind
a crest of dirt along a ditch or trench of some sort. Above a vast
jumble of broken buildings and pock-marked wasteland, the sky
seemed a patchwork blaze of colors. Irregular yellow cut across
flaring red, both backset by an eerily bright blue, itself trailing
into a maze of other hues. Each color seemed to have its own angle
of light, too, evinced in cloud banks and errant beams that simply
made no geometric sense. The sight was hauntingly beautiful and
immediately terrifying. Trying to make sense of the low-resolution
image, beset by momentary flickers, I couldn't help but stare.

What was I seeing? Where
was
this?

Was this another reality? I'd known, from the
network structure and files I'd seen, that it had to have been a
real concept… but seeing it for myself still made for a surreal
moment.

It was then that I noticed that my unknown
scout was watching something. A figure crept along a vast stretch
of blasted gravel and grey dirt, heading for the trench some
hundred feet further down. As my subject turned, I got a better
look at the trench… and nearly closed out of the stream.

Corpses.

I reeled emotionally, but clung to logic:
they had uniforms. The nearest body was charred to a crisp, his
blackened flesh and skeletal remains gaping widely into the lower
half of my view… but he had a uniform. Surely that meant this was
some sort of conflict - some sort of organized endeavor? Deaths
were expected in war, right?

Beyond that wretched soul ran a very long
trench filled with unidentifiable equipment, bolt holes, vast
puddles, and bodies. Some were blackened by fire, but others had
fallen unburned… without better resolution, I couldn't make out
their causes of death.

"Brunette woman, unknown origin, no
uniform…"

The voice was male, and he sounded like he
was in his twenties. Was he talking to headquarters? Or
me?
No… he was talking to himself. His low words were being muttered
without concern for audibility. He was thinking out loud.

"How'd she get here? Hostile…? Hmm… four
minutes…"

He moved forward with some stealth, creeping
over bodies without even a cursory glance. As he passed, I could
see more detail: some looked waterlogged, as if they'd drowned;
some had nail scratches all over their faces as if they'd attacked
themselves; some… had holes bored in their skulls.

What the hell had happened here?

Or,
was
happening, to be more
accurate… I'd finally found someone in real-time, someone who might
know something.

He peered around a corner of dirt and watched
her for a moment.

So this was her… the woman that had visited
two hapless souls in two different realities in the last two weeks…
and possibly more. I only had data for what I'd managed to find,
but I'd had plenty of time to guess at her agenda, intentions, and
capabilities.

The very first thing I noticed was her
expression. She gazed around at the littered bodies in conflict,
her high cheeks cold, her eyes warm. I had the distinct impression
she was evaluating their manners of death while struggling not to
think about the living men and women they'd been. One of the fallen
seemed to be a younger woman hardly old enough to participate in
combat. As both my camera-wearing ally and I watched, the older
brunette found a muddy blanket and covered her in particular.

Apparently, my unknowing partner had reached
the same conclusion about her nature as I had. He remained behind
his corner and called out. "Human?"

The woman immediately leapt behind a sturdy
metal box of supplies, her gaze jumping toward his direction.

He stepped out slowly, his hands up. As he
moved, I saw the edge of a large rifle bouncing on a strap around
his chest. "I'm human."

Unexpectedly, she laughed, and then… I heard
her voice for the first time. "Does that mean we're on the same
side?"

"Out here it does, ma'am."

"Ma'am?" she replied, warily watching him
approach across wide puddles and charred gravel. "How old do you
think I
am?
"

He stopped in place, his feet planted on a
flat metal plank that had been cast across the gulch. "No
disrespect intended."

She stood slowly, revealing herself from her
hiding spot. "Military?"

"With respect," he countered. "There's very
little time. You should take a gun - there are plenty around here -
and we should go."

She shook her head and took a few steps
forward. "I've never come across a situation out here where a gun
would have done a damn thing. Have you?"

My unknowing ally said nothing, instead
instinctively looking around at the bodies of his fellows.

"Alright then," she continued. "What's the
situation here?"

He began moving away, his vital signs
increasing. The camera glanced straight up, sighting a large
irregular square of dark red overhead. A peal of thunder rang out,
once, twice, and a third time. Between cracking booms, he managed
to shout: "Don't fall underneath!"

He looked back, and I saw her running after
him. A rumbling roar sounded, making speech impossible, but I could
tell she wasn't sure what he'd meant.

He looked up again, and I saw… what
was
that? A curtain of tangible darkness, spilling down from
the edges of the dark red sky, as if the square's edges were the
lips of a basin into which an ocean was pouring. As I continued
watching, the word
ocean
became more appropriate… all
around, the darkness began crashing down to blasted earth and
spilling out across the terrain.

It was water.

In those moments, with frothing walls
approaching from multiple directions, I couldn't fathom what those
two must have been feeling. His heart rate was dangerously high,
and I could hear her shouting something just behind him as they
ran. Wherever he was leading them, they didn't seem to make it in
time.

A massive fist of emerald water blasted down
the trench, and he leapt up the side and clambered onto grey dirt.
Looking to his right, he confirmed she'd done the same, but a look
to his left found the deluge swelling out onto their level just a
moment later. Standing quickly, and pulling her up, he braced
against the tide.

It hit with visible force, quickly rising up
nearly to the camera's height - where
was
the camera,
anyway? She didn't seem to notice it, and it wasn't bouncy enough
to be on his helmet…

He shouted again, but the roar drowned out
his words. The entire wasteland had a torrent of water rushing
across it in a vast flat and frothy plain, maybe three or four feet
deep judging by the level moving against him, and the force was
clearly pushing them both to their limits.

What had he said?
Don't fall
underneath…
what would happen if they did? There were
waterlogged bodies in the trench, but had they died from this, or
had they just been soaked by repeated floods? He'd known the exact
moment it was coming…

The camera rattled and then fell backwards
abruptly, and I froze as his ragged shout filled my senses. Had
he…? No, the woman had caught him, and now struggled with grit
teeth to lift him back up without falling herself. Desperate, he
shouted something akin to thanks, and then pointed at a distant
hill.

At first, she seemed to think they were
supposed to head for it, but his meaning quickly became clear. As
all three of us watched, the surging green water coasted
up and
over the hill
and covered it four feet thick. Beyond the hill,
the craggy ruins in the distance glimmered darkly as water surged
up any surface it could, defying all logic. The only structures
that remained above the flood were those most intact and straight;
only pillars, towers, and the largest building sat clear under the
insane technicolor sky.

Don't fall underneath,
he'd said. It
seemed likely that, if one fell underneath, there was no coming
back up… what a horrible fate that must have been, drowning in
four-foot-deep water inches from your comrades? Had they tried to
pull their colleagues up, only to bring the emerald deluge up with
them, still covering the drowning men even as they ran around
clutching at the air and trying to breathe?

I could tell by his vitals that he was about
to collapse. His heart rate was too high, and the strain was too
much. Was I about to watch this man die?

Like a reverse blast, the emerald tide was
suddenly gone, rushing away across the wasteland. He collapsed onto
soaked grey earth.

Above him, the woman stood and tried to shake
off water while also catching her breath. "That happen often around
here?"

"Every day," he croaked, panting. "Get back…
down in…" Stumbling up with her help, he pulled them both back
towards the trench and fell roughly to hard dirt between two
corpses. "Over there… don't move… they're alive." He looked up
once, noting the sickly yellow patches of sky overhead.

She followed his lead, lying in the trench
among the dead.

What new horror was coming for them? I
watched with terrible fascination as strange glows began appearing
all around them… radiance which soon burst into flames directly.
The fires began dancing along the floor of the trench between them,
coalescing into balls of white-hot energy that seemed to move along
without source or pattern. Dozens of flames began floating along
and above the trench, hovering around certain objects and seeking
out fuel…

After only a few minutes, I had the oddest
sense that they were alive. Each ball or pillar of flame moved from
object to object, touching and investigating with little tendrils
of orange and white. If they were alive, could they be reasoned
with? Perhaps they'd -

One ball of flame suddenly struck out,
lancing a dead body through the heart with a blindingly fast spear
of fire. It receded slowly, only withdrawing when it was satisfied
of something. Perhaps the corpse had been too wet to burn, or maybe
it'd thought the body a threat somehow… images of those charred
bodies came to mind, immediately revealing what happened to those
the flames considered a threat.

The stream went black, but I could still hear
noise.

My subject's vitals were low, rather than
high, and I could guess why: he was lying still, eyes closed,
trying not to move, breathe, or attract any attention to
himself.

Thinking about it, I had only one conclusion
- the camera was in his eyes! That was an odd choice of location,
but it certainly explained why his stream was still on through all
this. He probably had no way to turn it off.

Forty-three minutes passed before he decided
to open his eyes again. By then, the flames were gone. He breathed
a sigh of relief and looked up, noting an oncoming purple blade of
sky. "We have some time before the next one."

Across the trench, the woman sat up abruptly.
"Those flames. They were alive?"

The camera moved up and down as he
nodded.

"I need to talk to them. How long until they
come back?"

He laughed, confused. "Um, talk to them?" He
threw a hand up at one of his charred comrades. "I came here with
fifty thousand other guys. This is what happened when they tried to
talk to them."

She came over and sat down next to him.
"Fifty thousand men? How many are left?"

He said nothing at first, but I could see a
slight misting at the bottom of the camera. "There's a Russian guy
maybe two klicks northeast of here. He came here with a hundred
thousand, so he's pretty well stocked. I can't speak Russian,
though." He tilted his view down toward grey mud. "There's a Yngtak
lady a bit west. I don't know anything about her, though, and she
doesn't speak either of our languages. I see her in the distance
sometimes."

Yngtak? What the hell was Yngtak? The thought
struck me: why was I just sitting here watching and wondering? I
had the entire network at my fingertips. I could
look things
up
… if I was careful. Yngtak… Yngtak… no results on this
network. Was she from another reality?

"So it's just you?" the woman asked. "You're
the only one left out of fifty thousand men?"