Killing immortals was no easy task. Most experts, such as the dictionary, would go so far as to call it impossible. But Julian Blake had always been more of a science guy than a words guy, so his god was Albert Einstein not Merriam Webster. When he first learned that Immortals existed, Julian’s instinct was to ask how they could be killed, even before he found out they were malevolent. It’s not that he was obsessed with death, nor particularly violent. But when they said ‘Immortal’, he heard a challenge.
Which is why he joined them, with ‘them’ being AngelThana; Upsilon Group. The Upsilon Group was so named because the first nineteen letters were already taken, either by existing groups or by groups that had been destroyed.
There were eight groups left. The fighting had not gone well.
The primary issue the groups found with destroying immortals was that they couldn’t be destroyed. So, instead they killed them and stored their remnants in environments so inhospitable that their bodies could never reconstruct. The theory was that if they could keep an immortal in limbo long enough, their soul would starve. This theory was tested one sunny April afternoon, when followers of the immortal Lài Ming attacked the Gamma Group and recovered his remains. If there were an immortal whose soul should have starved out, it would have been Lài Ming, who’d been stored for over sixteen years.
Surveillance and Espionage confirmed sightings of him in Hangzhou a month later.
This catastrophe confirmed what many had speculated: The Starve Them Out method had failed. AngelThana needed a new tactic. Research and Development posted listings for thirty new openings on May 28th. Julian’s cohort had been hired on the 30th.
—
Two years had passed since then, two years to the day, and the team was ostensibly no closer to finding a way to defeat the immortals. However, as traditionally happened on anniversaries and in spite of very little accomplishment, their manager scheduled a congratulatory lunch for the whole base.
Julian had heard the complaints raised about the increased funding to Research and Development over the past year. In the eyes of Security, Infiltration, and Extraction, R&D had just eaten money while giving them no new tactics to use. As far as Security and Espionage were concerned, they’d discovered far more about the immortals than R&D. Logistics was ready to wring the team’s neck over the loopholes they forced Upsilon to cater to. HR just wanted them all dead.
In Julian’s eyes, though, they’d had a very successful year. So it was with chin held high and confident eyes that he strolled into the cafeteria at Upsilon Group headquarters for lunch.
Annie made space for him as he joined his three teammates at their standard table. “Two years,” she said.
“Two years,” he agreed.
“And what a two years it’s been,” added Rahul.
“To two years of nothing.” Clark raised his water bottle and the other three clinked in solidarity.
“Alright, no one said ‘two years of nothing’.” The admonish came from one of the more belligerent members of Security, Infiltration, and Extraction. Corks wasn’t a bad guy, or so Julian had been told by a lot of people, often followed up with a long ‘buuuuut’. Much like many SIE agents, Corks lacked a soft spot for the engineers and researchers. He demanded results, not understanding that the process was the result.
Annie shoved her glasses up her nose, an endearing gesture that had started ironic but had quickly turned into an automatic reflex. “People have absolutely been saying it. We didn’t pull the whole ‘two years of nothing’ out of our asses.”
“At this point, I’d be surprised if you four pulled anything out of your asses.” He grinned, one of those ‘haha get it? A joke because we’re all coworkers and couldn’t possibly want to kill each other?’ grins. Then he held up his hand, the universal sign for ‘I’ve said my bit and I’m backing out before you retaliate’. “I’m just saying, we’re not exactly closer to snuffing out the bitch in iso.”
The bitch in question was Lady Helga von Marwitz, the Upsilon Group’s imprisoned immortal. Her ashes sat in an eternally running furnace, awaiting a more permanent solution to her existence.
“You have no idea what we’ve discovered,” Julian said. “We’d tell you about the Waterfall Hypothesis, but you’d be bored.” This was a fact, but it still baffled Julian. How could anyone not be absolutely fascinated by actually quantifiably studying what came after life? As an infiltration soldier who routinely put his life in danger, Corks should, more than any engineer, want to know what would happen should a mission go south.
“You’re right. All that religious mumbo jumbo is best left to books.” Corks’ head snapped back to the large table in the center of the cafeteria, no doubt alerted by the sound of food trays being placed. The cafeteria filled with the tantalizing aroma of mediocre catering and Julian’s stomach grumbled impatiently.
Corks looked back over his shoulder, a good-natured grin now on his face. “Well, can’t complain too much right now, seeing as you all bought me lunch. ‘Grats on the two years. Maybe two years from now, you’ll have gotten us closer to killing the bastards.”
He stood up, chortling at his little joke, and headed to the line.
“He’ll see the waterfall soon enough,” Annie said, getting up too. “All infiltration soldiers do.”
“Morbid, eh?” Rahul rubbed the back of his neck as he pushed his chair back. “Jeez Annie, don’t bring the mood down.”
“Line’s out the door. What’re you getting up for?” Julian watched the steadily growing line as everyone jumped on top of the free lunch like lickity split. “Food’ll still be there. They always order too much.”
“Bet you the best stuff is gone soon.” Annie rolled her eyes and pushed her glasses up her nose. “I’m not going to miss out on my own celebration lunch. Worked too hard to get here. Anything you want? It’s chinese.”
“Spring roll?” Julian asked.
She snorted. “You’re crazy if you think there’d be any left if you waited. Alright, spring roll. Clark? Anything?”
“A beer? Five o’clock somewhere!” Clark hacked up a wheezing laugh and Annie joined in halfheartedly. “How about some of those cold noodles?”
Annie sighed, more directed at Julian, but she nodded nonetheless. “If you say so Clark. Come on, Rahul, let’s get these nerds some lunch.” The cold noodles from the local chinese place were notoriously spicy, which never sat well in Clark’s stomach. He was the old man of the group, a seventy year old theoretical physicist who ‘was around when the mere subject of physics was theoretical’. Annie was his opposite, twenty eight, hired just out of grad school where she got her PhD on neurological astrophysics, a field that had no right existing.
Julian had gone the more traditional route of quantum physics PhD with a Masters in theology. Death just fascinated him. For his Masters thesis, he’d interviewed over a hundred people on their near death experiences. Heart stops, drowning resuscitations, people thawed from ice after hours in the cold… they were all fascinating and all had similar stories. A rushing noise, like a river. A bobbing, rocking sensation. The smell of moisture. All of them had, in some capacity, described water.
Thus the Waterfall Hypothesis was born. The one that framed the bridge to the beyond as a river that took departed souls to a great waterfall. It was on this voyage that the immortals corrupted their paths by rowing against the current and somehow leaving the stream, fighting their way back to Earth, and forever sacrificing their chance at a true afterlife.
The others had all accepted this and moved on to the nature of the afterlife itself, but Julian was obsessed with this bridge. The final breath. The first glimpse at eternity. The beginning of the end.
A notification chirped at Julian from his phone and he checked the screen.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
“Hmm? What’s—” Clark cut off as he pulled his own phone out, seeing the same alert that Julian saw.
‘Furnace temperature compromised! Report to furnace room F3.’
“Really?” Clark rose to his feet, joints and bones all popping and snapping. “On our anniversary to boot.”
Julian looked across the room to where Annie and Rahul stood in line. He could practically count it down in his head. 3. 2. 1.
Annie reached for her phone first, like the youngest member of the team typically should. Her lips moved, eyes wide, and Rahul checked his phone. Then they both looked up at Julian and Clark. Rahul sighed but Annie held up a hand. She left the line to join Julian.
“Told him to grab our lunches. Fixing up the furnace shouldn’t be a tall order.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
This depended entirely on the problem. Usually, it was just a redundant system reporting an error. The furnace ran on four different energy sources and had six different heating vents. Three were, at all times, active, with only one necessary to keep Lady Helga’s body a pile of ash. Redundancies upon redundancies. So over the top that Julian sometimes thought HR and not Engineering had designed it.
They found the control room for the faulty furnace, F3, open. There was only one tech working, a harried-looking young woman, technician jacket haphazardly donned. Her face melted with relief when she saw the three enter.
“Thank god. Damien said he’d get help but he’d been gone forever and I’m super stressed that this thing is gonna go nuclear.” She pulled at the cuffs on her jacket, dismayed. “I’m new, this thing is screaming at me, and I’m terrified that I’m going to—”
Clark waved her down. “All good. These things are built tough. It’ll take more than one bellying up to resurrect the prisoner.” He sat down behind one of the computers and began tapping.
“What is it?” Julian leaned over his shoulder. “Looks like something got locked out.”
“Yeah, one of the exhaust ports overheated.” Clark tapped a few more commands in, puzzling over the command screen while Annie chatted with the agitated tech.
“What were you doing when this happened?”
“The temp had fluctuated a bit and I got a warning saying it was getting off. Damien always said to raise the temperature when I got a warning so I cranked it up.” She sniffed. “I should’ve asked him first but I thought I could handle it.”
“It’s alright. I can see how that would make sense. The problem is, the heaters can get too hot.” Annie’s voice was just light enough to convey a ‘this isn’t your fault’ and Julian turned back to the screens. “If they do, they risk blowing out. A burner turning off to cool down is safer than one overheating and dying.”
“Right. Ok. Will Damien be back soon?” the tech asked.
Julian’s eyes glazed over the screen a bit. “No,” he said, mind chasing down a few threads, possibilities for the initial warning. “We got the alert on our phones.”
“And we’re gonna need him, unless this little lady has an override code. The whole burner’s been locked out.” Clark guffawed. “You must’ve really cranked it up.”
“Monica. My code is TM6670.” Clark nodded and punched this in before entering his own. “And it was all within range. We’re supposed to keep them at 810 so I cranked the dial to 97—”
“Percent,” Annie cut in. “Oh it’s alright!” she added, probably in response to the tech’s face, though Julian couldn’t be sure as he wasn’t looking. “We were all new once. Let’s go find Damien. Do you know where he said he’d be?”
“Said he was running up to the cafeteria, where the free lunch was happening.” She was sniffing more now. Crying, maybe. Poor woman was going to see her fill of minor furnace errors. She’d best get used to it.
“Stay here,” Julian said. “Annie can find Damien but we need a tech in here.” He motioned her over to the computer. “We’re gonna reboot the burner once it’s sufficiently cooled. These things usually have to sit at room temperature for half an hour before they’re ‘cool’ enough to restart, but we can override it to boot up now. The time lockout is in case there’s actually something wrong with the furnace.”
“Which there might be.” Clark gestured at the screen. “The furnace is back up but there’s still something hinky.” As Julian peered to look, his phone went off.
‘Furnace temperature compromised! Report to furnace room F2.’
Again? He looked up at Clark but his phone buzzed again.
‘Furnace integrity compromised. 3/6 heating vents disabled. Report to furnace room F1.’
“Ok that’s really bad.” Julian shot a quick text to Annie to get back to the furnace rooms. On the desk about three feet away, her phone vibrated. Dammit, Annie. As he grabbed her phone, it vibrated again.
‘Furnace temperature compromised! Report to furnace room F4.’
“Julian, I’ll get this one.” Clark’s voice was more serious than Julian had ever heard it. “Get to F1 now. Get that thing up and running.”
‘Furnace temperature critical!’ shouted his phone again. ‘Warning, only 1/6 furnace vents at optimal temperature. Report to furnace room F5 immediately.’
“That’s impossible,” Julian whispered. The furnace vents were deadlocked to prevent fewer than two from shutting down. There should always be two active.
Then he realized, there were two active. F6, which hadn’t yet been compromised and F3, which they’d just overrode. A manually overridden furnace still read as active, even if it wasn’t at optimal temperature yet. The loophole had been a deadly failure of imagination.
“Ok, screw that. Initiate Protocol Lockdown,” Clark said. Julian almost asked ‘are you sure?’ but swallowed the question. Yes, Clark was sure. This wasn’t routine failure. This was dangerous.
“Are you sure?” asked Monica. “Holy shit, did I do this?”
“No, you can’t have. Not all of them. Julian, go!”
Julian jumped to his feet and started for the door, tapping commands on his phone.
“Wait!” Monica shouted.
Julian wheeled on her. “Something else?”
Monica shifted, face all puckered with concern. “There’s something else that happened—” Her eyes darted from the computer to the door.
A wailing siren shattered the tense air in the room, blaring over anything else Monica said. This alarm’s chilling pitch sounded only in two cases: An invasion or a critical furnace failure. After three wails, the siren announced its emergency.
“All armed personnel to the southern upper entrance. Security has been compromised. All nonmilitary personnel report to your predetermined shelter location. This is not a drill.” The synthetic voice froze Julian’s blood.
“What the fuck?” Clark’s hoarse question echoed Julian’s mind. Security? An invasion?
No sooner had the alert for the invasion completed than a new one rang through the halls. Same warning wail. Different words.
“All furnace technicians report to furnace rooms F1, F2, F3, F5, F6. Catastrophic furnace failure. Containment personnel report to the furnace. This is not a drill.”
Julian unlocked his phone again, jamming in the lockdown procedure that would seal every room in the base until an external unit could sweep it. This could spell death for anyone locked in a room with a combatant but it had to be done.
“Passcode:______”
Julian tapped in his code, fingers trembling. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was his second year anniversary. There was mediocre Chinese food getting cold upstairs. This couldn’t be happening.
Then he heard distant gunfire and any doubt he’d had vanished. This was happening.
“Secondary passcode:______”
“Monica, I need your code.” Given the drastic nature of Lockdown, he needed secondary input from a technician, to ensure that all preliminary attempts to restart the furnaces had been made.
“My code? I don’t know—”
“Just on your badge!” He pressed “Scan code” on his phone, opening the camera. “Just give me your badge.”
He swiped for it but she clutched it away, face terrified. “I don’t understand. What are you doing?”
“Damnit, give me that.” He pried her fingers off it and snatched it away with so much force that it broke her lanyard. Turning away from Monica and Clark, he tried to keep his hands steady long enough for the phone to register the card’s code.
In the fraction of a second it took the code to scan, Julian’s eyes fell on the name printed on the dingy card.
Damien Roth. Senior technician.
Julian frowned and swiped away at the red stains on the card, as if somehow Monica’s name would appear under them. The red stains however, were not dry. They were still very wet and several things slowly clicked in his head.
‘Scan complete. Initial Protocol Lockdown?’
Above him, the sirens wailed again.
“All armed personnel to the southern upper entrance. Security has been compromised. All nonmilitary personnel report to your prede—”
A gun fired from behind him.
A bobbing, dipping feeling. A bright, shimmering light. The smell of moisture. A rushing noise…
...like water.
The air hung heavy and humid and all he could see above him were glistening rays shining through water like prisms, casting refracted light on the very air.
He hadn’t expected it to happen like this. Not so soon. Still, there was no heavy sadness in his heart. This was simply how it had happened. The immediacy, the untimely nature, the others who had likely gone with him, none of it mattered because it had all been an inevitability. So he smiled and closed his eyes, letting his body relax with a sigh.
Then he opened them again and sat up because there was no way he wasn’t at least going to look around.
He was floating in a boat, gently drifting down a massive, slow river. Other boats bobbed all around him, more than he could count. Near him, he could see more entering from streams that deposited into the large river. The bridge.
If he searched, he’d find them. Clark likely had followed right after him. Damien was probably downstream a bit, thought it was unlikely that he’d been dead for long before Monica had stolen his uniform. How many more would join them? Would the base fall? Would Lady Helga return?
Julian pondered these in the same lazy way he used to watch clouds. The time to worry had long passed. Now it was time to move on. Travel to the waterfall. To what was beyond.
His boat rocked gently as another passed by him, but he didn’t look. No, instead his eyes drifted to the edges of the river. The walls, made of glass, reached up, taller than the eye could see. Beyond them lay only sparkles, glitter, stars perhaps.
He looked downstream to see the precipice of the waterfall growing closer. This was his only chance to see the river than had tantalized his dreams since he was a child. He couldn’t move on without exploring a little.
So he rowed to his left, to the side of the stream, to the glass walls. No, not glass. Water. Water pouring so perfectly, it achieved perfect stillness. Laminar flow and within it, a void of light and space. Emptiness but somehow the composite nature of everything.
Gently, he reached out a hand to disrupt the perfect flow. Instead of pouring down his hand on either side, however, it rippled across the entire wall of water. Deep in the recess of his ears, a low ring sounded, loud and angry, and he pulled his hand back. His boat rocked again and he turned to see the edge of the waterfall fast approaching. Already boats of people he was sure he’d known were disappearing over the edge. He was almost out of time.
He reached out a hand again, this time sticking his hand deep into the water. Much to his surprise, his fingers grew wet for only a moment before emerging into cool, dry air.
What was beyond?
The bell chimed again, vibrating through his bones. Soon it would be his turn to face eternity. One final time he reached into the water, further this time. He had to see beyond it, see one perfect moment of the universe as it had always been. One final chance.
Closing his eyes, he plunged his face into the cool waters and out the other side. The air couldn’t be described as he was in no place physical. Somehow less real, even, than the bridge to the end. For a moment, for that one perfect moment he’d craved, his eyes opened and he saw eternity. He tried to gasp, to shout, to cry, but he now lacked the facilities to do so. Everything surrounded him and he leaned out, just a little further, to experience it as fully as he could.
And that’s when he fell.
“We were right. Hey guys, we were right.” A weak laugh accompanied the words as the crept from Julian’s lips. A weak laugh summed up the situation pretty well. He lay on the floor, in pain but alive, after taking a bullet to the head. He didn’t need his PhD or Masters to explain what had happened. Perhaps both of those had been necessary for him to understand the river well enough to navigate it, but they were not needed to explain that he was alive now. Irreparably so.
“Survivor! Lieutenant, we have a survivor!” The man’s rough voice was sandpaper to Julian’s ears and he already wished he was dead again.
“The engineer? Impossible. We checked.” The woman’s voice grew closer, accompanied by heavy bootfalls. “He took a bullet to the head, he took a—shit. Call containment now!”
Julian pried his eyelids apart in time to see a looming figure standing over him. He blinked again, trying to gain clearer focus but when his eyes opened again, there was now the muzzle of a gun in his face.
“Wait, no. Don’t—”