XLII.

129 Years Later…

“Vagari?” whispered BP under the cover of blindness. “Are you there? I can’t see a thing… Where are we?”

“I’m here – I’m here…” Vagari replied with a groan, slapping the ground to announce his location. “And, the blindness… It’ll pass soon enough. As for where we are, I… I honestly can’t say. I don’t really know how these things work. I didn’t even know it would work.”

“What the heck happened?” BP asked, palming her way to his side before clutching his arm. “I remember the whole place shaking as I dragged Xu out. Then his friend brained me… Ugh – my head…”

What happened? Vagari thought. It was a trap, just not one of Xu’s design. “I don’t rightly know,” Vagari began honestly. “There was a demon, we fought, and I freed the Godhead. But, I think I made a terrible mistake… She wasn’t what she led me to believe.” Vagari clenched his fist and pressed them against his unseeing eyes. His head still swam with the memory of that warmth, of how sure it made him, that everything would be just right if he did as she asked. It had all been a lie however. They weren’t the beacon of hope, of redemption, but an entity of destruction. She controlled the angels, she was the one who set the world ablaze, and he let her out. Vagari cursed. Esh, Xu, Tehom, they had been right. They had warned him, but he was so fueled by vengeance and the desire for redemption that he didn’t want to believe them, he couldn’t, not when he had been so close to achieving his goal, his dream. But now that dream lied shattered. The Godhead was free, free to rain destruction down on them, to finish what she started years ago. In trying to undo one apocalypse, Vagari had unwittingly brought about another.

Within minutes, their vision began to clear. Rubbing the darkness from her eyes, BP pressed the question. “So, if she’s a bad guy,” she asked, “how do we fix it?”

“Fix it?” Vagari repeated, more to himself than to her. “BP, I don’t think there is fixing this. I thought the book had the answers, but… There’s nothing!” he exclaimed before calming himself with a sigh. “It’s useless. We’ve lost. I don’t know what to do now.”

“What do you mean?” BP asked. “There’s gotta be something we can do!”

“Unless you can pull a three mile long ship out of the sky, I just don’t know,” Vagari uttered resignedly. “She controls the Tevat, the largest battleship built, and an army of angels. An army, BP. We’re just two people.”

“There has to be something!” BP insisted, tightening her grip before loosening it was a muttered apology. “Let’s… Let’s just think, okay? We’ve gotten through everything else so far – New Houston, the bog, the lake – everything else! We’ll get through this too, dang it! Dang-dang-shit-dang!”

“Okay-okay-okay, calm down!” Vagari cautioned with the makings of a laugh. “Let’s just… Let’s just figure out where we’re at first. Baby steps, before we go and take on GOD.”

“Do you think that’s what she is?” BP asked, letting go of his arm to shuffle to her feet.

Vagari looked around the room. Eyes clear of the haze, the pair found themselves in a large stone chamber. It was nothing like the ruins on Peter, but instead quite the opposite. Instead of ancient stone and ice, they stood upon clean floors of polished white marble, all bordered by stripes of gold. It was a small comfort knowing that they wouldn’t freeze to death. “I don’t know,” Vagari answered honestly. “She claimed to be all the souls of mankind as one, whatever that means. That’s as close to GOD as anything I’ve heard of.”

“Do you think it’s true?” BP pressed before adding, “I don’t. That would mean the majority of people are evil if she’s evil, right? And I don’t believe that. I won’t believe that. There’s good in this world and we’ve seen it!”

“Maybe,” Vagari offered halfheartedly. “I just don’t know and it’s eating me up inside.”

The surrounding marble stretched halfway up the wall before giving way to crimson bricks that seemed to have a faint glow to them. The same mixture of white marble and red stone supported each corner of the room in the form of massive pillars, with four more based around them and the gate device itself. The pair stood cautiously before stepping away into the larger room. Instantly the device behind them melted away into the ground. Turning back, Vagari’s eyes widened, recognizing the technology thanks to his resurfaced memories. “Neti?” He called out softly. He gained no response in return. “Hello?”

“I don’t feel anyone…” BP announced, eying him sidelong. “Just us and the book. Though the book is… quiet here.”

“There’s a lot I got to catch you up on,” Vagari admitted, turning about on his heels. “Hello! Is anyone there?” No reply. Vagari knit his brows and sighed. “I’ve seen this tech before. Last time it was more chatty however.”

“Like an AI?” BP asked, feeling for her tablet. “Maybe I can interface with it…”

“Doubtful,” Vagari denied with a wave of his hand. “This is… ancient stuff, from before you or me – before humans.”

“Precursor technology?” she responded in awe. “Wow… Guess that narrows our location down a bit.”

“Yeah,” Vagari said darkly, “it does…”

The chamber had but one exit, an archway at the far end that they resolved to pass through. As they entered the room beyond, BP let out a surprised yelp and hopped back. “Vagari, watch out!” She warned. “The floor… it’s… squishy.”

Vagari cautiously tested the floor with his toes. It was carpet, red carpet. “It’s safe, don’t worry,” he insisted, stepping forward. “It won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t like it,” BP uttered with a cringe, still weary but following all the same. “Feels weird.”

“More reason to wear shoes,” Vagari returned with a laugh, before pressing forward.

Hallway after hallway they found nothing and no one. The place, whatever and wherever it was, was either abandoned or they were somehow going in circles. Something didn’t feel wholly right about the place, and it wasn’t just the carpet – it was a feeling that sunk further into his gut with every step – the hallway just seemed to never end. Vagari stopped abruptly, looking forward to back, corner to corner, hallway to hallway. “What are you doing?” BP asked inquisitively, watching him walk to the very edge of the corner.

“Testing a theory…” Vagari announced as he stuck his hand around the corner. He didn’t know how, but by some means beyond his understanding, he was sure they were going in circles, trapped in a never-ending corridor. “Now, look back.”

BP yelped doggishly, quickly spotting a hand waving far off behind them. “Vagari, someone’s back there!” She exclaimed, to which he shook his head denyingly.

“Just me,” he explained, pulling his hand back. “We’re trapped in some kind of loop. Someone doesn’t want us getting somewhere fast.” Vagari groaned in dismay, once more looking back to front. He looked all around for signs of surveillance, hidden or otherwise, like it had been in Site B. There was nothing, just the softly glowing red brick. Vagari’s gaze lingered on it, giving it a moment’s more thought before he leaned in and said, “And you’re behind it, aren’t you? So, English or Adamic?” he asked the wall. “Which do you prefer?”

The light pulsed in response, before promptly fizzling out entirely, leaving them alone in a slightly darkened hallway. BP looked up at him and shook her toothy maw, saying, “How do you manage to offend more people than I do?”

“What?! I don’t offend people!” Vagari sputtered, standing up straight. “I don’t!”

“You offended a WALL!” BP exclaimed, pointing to the now dull red bricks. “Now it’s probably going to go tell it’s wall friends to get the wall guard or something, and they’re going to come back and kick the crap out of us just like everyone else! Ugh – my head…” She groaned pinching the bridge of her snout. “Shield me with your body. I’m soft and squishy. I don’t think I can take another blow.”

Vagari gave her a sour look and stuck out his tongue at her. As outlandish as the idea was, it was probably at least as likely as getting stuck in a never-ending hallway. Vagari stared at her for a moment before pressing his forehead to the wall while throwing his hands up in defeat. “Look, I don’t know,” he groaned. “I don’t know why I keep managing to screw everything up while doing my damnedest to help! I just wanted to ask the damned thing for directions.” No sooner than the words left his mouth, the glow returned, but this time it pulsed softly, trailing down the hallway repeatedly. The pair shared a questioning look. “I guess…” BP began in a whisper before clearing her throat. “I guess we follow it?”

“Unless you have any other ideas,” Vagari commented dryly with a pinched face as he looked back over his shoulder. “Not like we can go back to the Tevat, or… at all really.”

The path back was gone, and where it had been was a new wall built up of the white marble and red brick, as if it had always been there. BP ran back to it, slamming her fists on the stone. “Hey, what’s the big idea?!” she exclaimed. “Vagari, where’d the hallway go?”

“No way but forward,” he said with a click of his tongue. He side-eyed the pulsing red light, wondering just how much of the facility was an extension of its will. They were trapped within its bowels, and the only option was to do what it wanted of them and hope for a way out. “Come on, let’s keep going.” BP nodded and huffed as she waddled back to his side.

The pair pressed forward into the next room. Much to their surprise it proved different, and instead of more hallway, they found themselves on what appeared to be an open air balcony. “Woah!” BP exclaimed, rushing over to the brick railing. “Where ARE we? This place is huge!” Vagari walked over to her side and peeked over the edge at the world below. An immense cityscape stretched out before them, a labyrinth of cement and brick that spanned miles in every direction. It was a familiar sight from an unfamiliar angle, but Vagari was sure of it – they were in the Megacity. From where they stood, they could see everything, from the fires of the industrial district, the dilapidated ruins of the Lower-Outer City slums, to the parks and gardens of the Upper City. They were high, above the fetid clouds of smog and dust – and that meant power in the Megacity. Whoever their patron was, they were somebody very important to have such a view. Unlike BP in her astonishment and wonder, all Vagari felt was a growing sense of dread.

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The people of the Upper City cared little for anything beyond their own comfort, seeing all those forced to live below them as just that – below them. They were villains in the truest sense of the word, working the masses to death to fulfill their selfish desires. Those of the high caste saw the rest of them as nothing by ants to squash at their whim. Vagari held no great love for them or their games – with them reminding him all too much of the man he used to be.

“It’s amazing!” BP squealed in childish wonder. “It looks like a circuit board – like one great big machine!”

“If it’s a machine, surely it’s a meatgrinder,” Vagari said, pushing away from the edge. “This place will eat you up if you let it, as it has countless others. This city is ruthless and unkind.”

“Is that why you live in Eastend?” BP asked, turning back to face him. Vagari shrugged and then said, “I watched too many friends get destroyed by this city, trying to game the system, trying to get rich, escape the fog of the LOC. There is no winning the game – except to just not play it. So, I left.”

Alto had been the last of many, and in the end, the city got him as well. There was no escape from that wretched hive, not really, Vagari thought, not even for him. In the end, all roads led back to the Megacity it seemed, and depending on how things progressed, it might devour him too. Vagari grit his teeth and stared back the way they came, now blocked by another wall. Not only were they higher than he’d ever hoped to be in the Megacity, but their benefactor also housed tech far beyond human means. Where exactly had the gate taken them? Vagari wondered, biting a knuckle. Part of him already suspected a name to the question – Tehom, Xu’s benefactor. He hadn’t any one place in mind when he had activated the device, so perhaps it sent them to the last place it connected to. When Xu and his parasite made their escape it left an imprint on the device and they followed suit on the memory. At least, that was his theory.

Vagari felt a sudden tugging at his side. BP was looking up with concerned eyes. “Vagari, look,” she uttered, pointing at the wall. It had grown bright and angry without him noticing. “Right,” Vagari said a toothy exhale, “follow…” Vagari glanced back to the balcony. With the state he was in, he doubted he could just grab BP and jump over the edge, glide down to safely – if anywhere was safe now. His ruined body aside, something told him that even if he did, they wouldn’t get very far. Tehom or whoever, they probably had eyes across the city in all districts. Now that they knew him, they could turn the city against him if they so chose – that was the power of the Upper City. He would become a pariah, an outlaw, with every guard, bounty hunter, and lowlife looking to make a quick buck or rise in the ranks out to get him.

That really only left one option – to meet their host face to face, which he assumed was what the light was leading them to. The simple fact was, it was their hosts whim alone that they were even still alive, and not shot on arrival. If this Tehom wanted them dead, they had ample opportunity to kill them when they sat blinded on the floor. So, that meant one thing, they had been left alive for some reason. What that reason was, Vagari couldn’t yet imagine.

The pair continued down the hall, where they were led to a grand door made of solid black metal. It stood out like a bruise against the white marble and red brick. The light merged into it, and when it did it split down the center, cut in two by the eerie red glow. Unexpectedly, the door didn’t part, but instead it crumbled, turning to grains of black sand that faded into nothingness, never quite reaching the red carpet beneath it. As the door disappeared, suddenly a voice called out from the room beyond, hollow and deep. “Finally. You do like to keep people in suspense,” announced an unfamiliar voice from a frighteningly familiar face. “Don’t you, Abaddon? Or is it Vagari now?”

“Barbra…?” Vagari asked as he cautiously stepped into the room, pushing BP behind him as he did. “You’re… Tehom?”

Dr. Cain sat there before them in a throne fit for a god, her grotesque form partially hidden behind a desk littered with artifacts. She looked exactly like the day he found her reborn: infantile limbs, disproportionate to her enlarged torso, and even more so to the massive brain that draped over her shoulders, fusing with her back. Her eyes hadn’t changed either, dark caves of untold knowing that sunk into you like daggers, glimmering faintly with what light could reach them.

Vagari remembered the day she left, waking up in a panic, searching for days after. They had traveled together, wandering the wastes for nearly ten years with each other being the other’s only constant in an everchanging world. They were the other’s only remaining link to who they used to be, to the world they had destroyed. Mostly it had been him taking care of the broken thing she had become – a maddened creature that could only ramble about what was and what would be – but he had grown accustom to her, if not fond of. And then, one day, she disappeared, never to be seen again until now. She hadn’t just vanished, not entirely. Cain appeared again over the years going forward, in word and rumor, but never sight or company. Vagari had followed those rumors to a city growing up out of the sand not far from the ruins of New Houston. Apparently she had found her mind in their years apart and had taken up charge there.

It quickly proved to be a dismal place, a wretched nest of slavery and machine that would later grow up into the lower workings of the Industrial District. However, he had never managed to find her, and in all his time searching for her there she had never once sought him out. It became apparent that she didn’t want to be found, and more so that Vagari should stop looking. Whoever she had chosen or was forced to become in their years apart was no longer the kind of person he wanted to find.

All the people huddled around the campfire that was the budding Megacity, they were just peons to her, expendables, pawns upon a board of her design. It struck an awfully familiar note for Vagari. They, like he had been, were just things to be used up and left dead on the wayside. So many of his friends, people he dared to get close to in the early days, were left rotting in the bowels of her new world construction, only to be replaced hours later by a new poor soul high off of the promise of a better life inside those walls.

A particularly potent memory came to mind, one of the day the Central Communications Network had been turned on for the first time. It crashed almost immediately, though not do to any mechanical misfunction. But, instead it was the strain of missing persons inquiries, of lost souls trying to reach out and find other lost souls, of families who had been broken up and were trying to reconnect. Most calls were never answered, or answered with devastation. Vagari could still remember Mainio Aalto, his first true friend in the city, crying over a wife he would never see again, and the look on his son’s face seeing a man, who had at all times seemed invincible, break.

Vagari balled his fists, claws digging into the beds of his hands. Dr. Cain, or rather the vicious thing she had become, the monster he should have left for dead for what she had done and would do, raised up it’s boney arm in a curt greeting. “Barbra,” she echoed through ever-clenched teeth, “that’s what I used to be called, isn’t it? When the bells of mortality rang true.” Her voice was a dull neutral, a cavernous drone that sounded almost as if it had been spoken backwards and then reversed. “I remember Barbra. Always on the hunt for knowledge. Always biting off more than she could chew when it was already so hard to swallow. Fearful Barbra, afraid of what she didn’t know whilst being terrified of what she might come to find out in the end. She wanted to know everything, but was afraid to take the plunge herself – as you well know.” The voice echoed throughout the room, always followed by a psychic whisper that tickled the back of their minds like warm breath upon the neck. “I am not Barbra Cain, not any more. Like you, Vagari, I have become so much more. I am Tehom – the Great Deep. Our Mother’s uninhibited connection to the Abzu.”

Vagari set his jaw, struggling to find the words to say. This was the person he had been hunting for for far longer than he had ever realized - the first person to abandon him in the new world of fear and horrors. They had become a vile puppet master who once again turned his life upside down and tore the heart from him. Twice now he had lost everything and everyone thanks to her machinations, and he stood there, staring, a loss for words. Did he curse? Scream his rage and fury? Or ask the simple question of why? Why any of this? Would she have the same vicious answer as her pet? “Tell me, Vagari,” Tehom called out again, breaking the silence Vagari put between them, “was the tome everything you wished it to be? You were looking for it for so long, and yet… you never thought to ask.”

“The book?” Vagari uttered, reaching to the bag he had carried it in. Somehow, despite everything, it remained. “You’re the one who found it?”

“Found? No,” the creature said coldly. “I had it in my possession all along, of course. A few others of the set as well, here in my library, kept far from the prying eyes of those unable to comprehend or appreciate them wholly. As you already know, it isn’t something that should be left to wanton discovery. Though, your expression suggests that perhaps you couldn’t appreciate it either,” Tehom added with a musing laugh. “I take it it was an unwelcomed gift?”

“Gift?! Your gift got my friends killed!” Vagari growled, pulling the tome from his pack. He tossed it onto the ground. “Take it. You can have it back. It’s useless anyways. There’s nothing in it worth a damn! There’s no way to reverse what we did…”

“It was not my gift,” Tehom corrected. With a wave of her hand, the book lifted up before them before drifting over to her. BP gasped at the display of telekinetic power and almost followed it, but Vagari quickly caught her. “Such timidness is unbecoming of one such as you, I’d think,” Tehom uttered with a skeletal grin. “I won’t bite. But, to elaborate… If I had had my way, these tomes would never again see the light of day. Too much of the technology and magics can be… twisted by the uninitiated. But, alas, even one as powerful as myself can fall victim to… thievery, it seems.”

“Alto was a great many things, but he was not a thief!” Vagari snapped.

“I don’t doubt that in the least,” Tehom offered. “Picture that though: a dwarfish aberrant from the lowest rung of civilization breaks into the highest security facility in the known world – my home.” Tehom chuckled again, the reverberations of which made Vagari’s skin crawl. “But, no, I suspect it’s a tale not quite so fantastic as that. Your friend simply bought it from the real thief… The identity of whom died with him, regrettably. Though, I assume it was Tzalmavet or one of his agents. It’s always Tzalmavet. So, you can blame him for the ruins of your life, for putting you in my crosshairs.”

“Why? Why any of this?” Vagari asked the nagging question at last. “Just… why?”

“Why?” Tehom echoed with a hissing exhale. “To keep the beast in check, of course. The thing here you seem to be struggling with the most is that you still think you’re the hero, don’t you? But you’re not. You’re nothing but a bumbling fool, who staggered in here guided by guilt and a privileged sense of morals. After all you’ve been through, seen and done, you haven’t changed at all, have you?” Vagari scowled, but before he could attempt a retort Tehom cut him off with a wave and another seethe. “Little Eddy Valentino, always skipping steps, always wanting to take the easy route right to the finish. First with the Gate, and now with this. Are you truly so naïve?”

“Just tell me why?!” Vagari shouted, daring to step forward. The red light of the A.I. flashed around him and some sort of construct began actualizing. But, before it could take shape, Tehom waved it off with a laugh. “Impatience seems to be well and truly ingrained in you. I’ll tell you why,” Tehom began, her deep set eyes glimmering predatorily in the flashing light. “To save the world in a true and meaningful way. Unlike you, I don’t deal in fantasies, stumbling around in the dark. Unlike you, I know. There is no going back to the world as it was, so I am building a new one, but nothing can be gained without sacrifice. A peaceful world is build on the blood and bones of those that fought for and against it. Why? To save the world from people like Barbra Cain and little Eddy Valentino – people like you. People so impatient for change that they’re willing to doom the world twice over to see it done. And that’s what you’ve done, Vagari,” she uttered tonally with a skeletal sneer. “What you’ve released today is eager for peace as well, a different kind of peace. The kind of peace that comes with scorched earth and blackened bones. Now you tell me, hero… Was it worth it? Do you feel like a changed man, Eddy’s voice of guilt silent in your mind?”

Vagari stared, eyes wide with shock. “You’re blaming me?” he uttered softly at first but then again in a seethe. “You’re saying this is MY fault?! My fault you murdered my family? My fault your dog left a bloody path from here to that damned ship?! Are you fucking insane?! You didn’t have to kill anyone! And that’s what set this off! I’ll stop whatever’s to come… I’ll make things right! But firstly… Firstly, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”