35 - A Bridge too Far

Maya imagined that Shen’s face was contorted in rage, but the mask saved her from seeing any of it. That made it slightly better, slightly. The towering figure stretched out his metallic hands and growled, hovering inches from her throat.

For all her gains in Physical traits, Maya knew that he could crush her easily. The same way she had been overpowered by his goons. Shen was too strong, yet he didn’t stab her mind with agony again nor did he lay his hands upon her. Improvements?

“You know nothing,” Shen finally said. He pulled back his hands and stared at her. “You know nothing.” Shen shook for a moment and then waved his hands. The room around them shifted. Maya felt a lurch as the components began swirling and reshaping, then the room they stood in began rising.

Maya saw the rainbow sky once more as the walls disintegrated and soon they rose high above the dimensional scar. She could feel it gnawing at her mind, but it wasn’t so terrible now. They kept rising higher, over the rim of the hole and then higher still.

Maya realized she wasn’t entirely exposed to the elements on their rising platform. She could see a slight shimmer to the air, a distortion she remembered from when she pounded upon the invisible wall.

The gloomy atmosphere she had been so used to all these weeks was held at bay by massive floating orbs of light. They flooded the areas between the hole and the trash piles; casting a too orange light upon everything.

In the area where she had parked her truck, Maya saw Shen’s ship. It was massive and it wasn’t any prettier than the Hanganathorie. The ship was a dull blue in the light and seemed crudely carved from metal. Where the Hangy had machined parts, Shen’s vessel looked like someone had welded scrap metal together and then taken a grinder to it to shape it.

Yet even with its crude construction, it looked dangerous. The attack craft she had seen before was parked beside the large ship, around it she could see the moving figures of more black armored stormtroopers.

Now that she knew they were all seared and somehow under Shen’s command, Maya felt sorrow for them. They were captives, but they had also been changed to serve this half mad rogue AI. What was the point? She saw no other machines moving around, only the troopers.

Maya looked to Shen who had his mask tilted to the sky.

“We’re not on the ship,” Maya said.

“The ship is only a transportation device,” Shen said. He waved his hand and the material around them shifted and changed. “These are the real treasures. Harvested and found from a thousand wrecks and a million piles.”

“You’ve been around this world?” Maya asked.

“World? Child, this is no world. This is an infinite dimensional plane that exists outside of anything and everything we know.”

Maya digested his words. “Infinite?”

“I have been traveling around this dimensional plane for a hundred years. I have seen things you can barely imagine, but I have not seen an end to this place. Travel too high and the sky rips apart everything it touches.”

Maya gulped and looked at the rainbow sky. “What is with the sky anyway?”

“It is a barrier of some kind. All the probes I have launched into it are destroyed after a few seconds. It rips them apart. I do not know if it is natural or if it is created, but it might account for the low ambient mana of this plane.”

Maya continued to look out upon the world in silence. They were nearing the height of the looming trash pile and Maya saw that the visuals before them began to shift. Instead of the gloomy darkness, it became brighter and the view clearer. It was as if the sun had risen.

“I sense you cannot see very well,” Shen said.

“Thanks,” Maya replied blandly.

Maya saw flashes in the distance. The light erupting from discharging weapons. There was a battle going on. She peered at figures who were surrounding a large walking behemoth, a monstrosity that appeared all legs and parabolic dishes that fired energy.

“Crap, what is that?” Maya muttered.

A box formed around the creature and the image zoomed in.

Rogue AI CRW584SS - Level 50

“And there,” Shen pointed.

Maya saw what he was pointing at. Another rogue AI, massive and terrifying. This one traveled on tank treads and had a long tower rising from its back from which it spewed lightning.

Shen’s stormtroopers were battling the creatures and as Maya looked around, she spotted the dead corpses of half a dozen other rogue AIs.

“What’s going on?” Maya asked.

“This is the ‘world’,” Shen stated. “Everywhere I have been, it has been nothing but rogue AIs. These mindless creatures, always hungry, always seeking easy access to mana.” He sounded disgusted. “You call me a rogue AI, but I am not. I am not.”

He turned to Maya and then reached for his mask. Maya felt like running at the move; she did not want to see what lay behind the leering mask. There was a soft hiss and Shen pulled away the covering.

The smell hit her first; it was strong and unpleasant. She gagged and coughed. A face looked at her; it smiled, a stretching of pallid skin along sunken cheekbones. The face was humanoid, four eyes, a wide mouth, and a short bone beak with flesh barely clinging to it. It was the facial features of the mask, but… completely wrong.

“You’re dead.” Maya gasped.

“No, I’m not dead,” Shen replied. The mouth didn’t move and the voice seem to emanate from his throat. The red eyes looked at her, they were cloudy and black tears oozed from the edges. He tossed aside his mask and looked out upon the battles raging around him. Maya saw glass like bulges extending out of the back of his head. It reminded her of the original rogue AI she had killed, the large tubes, like old style vacuum tubes. “I only survived the crossing by the barest of margins.”

“What happened to you?”

Shen turned to her and touched the back of his head. “Soul Catcher; high grade, Tier 2,” he stated. “Every Tier 2 scientist was to have one embedded into their brain, it allowed the transfer of data and knowledge in the case of sudden death.

“I barely survived the instability, my body was wrecked and it was only due to my Soul Catcher that I remain aware. It took days to regenerate my body enough to begin even surviving here. A hundred years, it has been a constant battle to keep my regeneration going, to keep the decay from consuming me. Year after year, decade after decade.”

“You died?” Maya asked.

“No. I did not die. I was badly damaged. I cannot keep pace with the necrotic advance. This place,” Shen waved his arms, “dislikes dead biological matter. It degrades it faster than normal, it reduces it to fine elements or bone.”

“Bell mentioned something like that,” Maya said.

“All that gray material out there, the earth you have been walking on, is the remains of anything biological that has arrived here.” The view of the battles on the transparent walls changed to one of an endless expanse of gray dirt. Maya was confused until she saw twin furrows in it, the tire trail of her truck. “Do not confuse this gray earth with actual earth,” Shen continued. “It is not alive, it has little in the way of nutrients for plants, it is still a mystery even to me.”

“So that’s why you want to go back to the multiverse?” Maya asked.

“Yes. I have spent the last hundred years trying to cure myself, but my abilities are too limited. I need a Tier 3 [Doctor], then I shall finally be free of this curse.”

“How is it even possible?” Maya asked.

“I am a Tier 2 SIL. I had the machinery and the knowledge to stabilize myself before my Soul Catcher burned out, enough living cells to grow and replenish what I had lost.”

Maya gulped. How could someone survive that? How could they keep going after that, their body dying on them every second of every day. Maya smashed down the pity that was rising in her. He didn’t deserved her pity or empathy.

She straightened her shoulders and glared. “Doesn’t explain all the shit you’ve done. To those people,” Maya gestured toward the battling troopers, “and to Bell and I.”

“They were all weak, starving, half dead already,” Shen said. “I saved them and gave them a choice. Try and channel for me or go their own way.”

“Where was our choice, then?” Maya demanded.

Shen’s twitched, but continued watching the video of the battles. “I had need of your core.”

“That’s it? You wanted what we had and then took it, not before kicking the shit out of us? Real fucking neighborly of you.”

“You and your partner were irrelevant at the time. The core was the priority, but after capturing you two an discovering what lay within you. Plans changed. I have use of you, Maya Sullivan.”

“Right. Because now I can ‘magically’ channel essence mana.”

“Yes.” Shen stepped forward and Maya stepped back. “You are the key to us all returning back to the multiverse. You and your friend can return home, I can be healed. What is there to lose?”

“You ask that after you’ve shown us nothing but contempt!” Maya snapped. “You think that makes me want to help your ass out? Hell no. Fuck no. You are an evil piece of shit and it would be better for the Multiverse if you just died out in this rainbow sky hellscape. You are an evil that needs to die. If I die in the process, then that’s fine!”

Maya glared at Shen.

“You spout your morality as if it means anything to me. Try being here a year, a hundred years, morality is meaningless in this place.”

“Bullshit. Assholes are always willing to abandon everything that doesn’t suit them. Torture? You didn’t have to do that to get information. Trying to kill us? You didn’t have to. Taking without even contacting us… none of it. You wanted to do it and you wanted to lord your power over us. You were basking in our fear like some sick fuck.”

Shen snorted, but did not refute her words.

“Threaten me. Say that you’re going to kill me. Hell, torture me all you want. But I’d rather die than see you get anything you want. Spiteful? Yeah, fuck yeah. But one thing Pops always said was never submit to evil. You, buddy, are fucking evil. So get fucked.”

Silence reigned in the confines of the platform. Maya looked away from Shen and stared at the distant view of the battling stormtroopers. The tank AI was down, its tower broken and slagged, one set of treads burning.

“This dimensional plane is not for the weak,” Shen said. “Only the strong survive. Only those who are willing to do what is necessary will make it out. I’ve seen a hundred years of terror and horror in this place, I have seen monsters that you will never comprehend; I even, for a time, had companions who I thought I could trust and rely upon. But this place is not for the weak of will.”

Maya continued watching the stormtroopers; they were limping away from the tank fight, heading to reinforce the fight against the parabolic monster. She saw they had left behind their dead; two black clad figures, unmoving and half melted.

“I am not weak,” Shen stated.

“Doesn’t mean you’re strong either,” Maya replied. Her heart nearly stuttered to a stop as a figure rose up from out of the floor.

Bell had seen better days. The big man was a mass of bruises and sickening wounds. The beautiful golden copper metallic hair was shorn away and metallic spikes protruded from his skull. His blue blood left dried tracks across his body and Maya saw more metallic spikes poking through the skin.

Rage boiled in Maya’s veins. “What did you do?” she demanded.

“Your interruption yesterday was his saving grace,” Shen said as he walked to Bell. “Normally attempting to open a gateway would have seared him of his ability to channel, but it was stopped before it could happen. I could regrow his channels and try again in a few days, but…” Shen ran a hand over Bell’s head, pulling it back and revealing Bell’s slack expression. “Their minds aren’t what they used to be.”

“Asshole,” Maya hissed.

“You were right, why should I torture you. Why should I harm you in any way. Instead what I will do is tell you something. His mind can be fixed, his body can be fixed, everything done to him right now can be fixed. But time is short. Time is very short.” Shen dropped Bell’s slack head. “Another two days and he’ll be nothing but a brain dead sack of flesh. Still usable as cannon fodder, but useless in anything else.”

“Your stormtroopers?” Maya demanded. “You did this to all of them?”

“Strange thing about the System. It ties your soul to your living biological body, if your brain is damaged beyond repair, you still linger, feeling everything and anything that happens to your body,” Shen said.

“Souls? What the fuck are you talking about?” Maya demanded. “What does half baked spirituality have to do with this?”

“You are an ignorant child. Souls are real. Why do you think you have a soul stat? The System has given you access to the power of your soul. It is all tied together. Your soul does not leave until your physical functions cease to exist.”

Maya stared at Bell. She shuddered.

“I can easily override all his controls,” Shen said. “The body, especially low Tiered, are still simple bags of flesh and mana pulses. Each muscle and nerve still reacting to energy of the body, each thought still being created by chemical reactions.” He snapped his finger.

Bell’s head lifted up and he smiled a gleeful rounded toothed grin. “Maya! Please do as he says!” Bell said, his eyes were dead. Devoid of any kind of life or emotion. “Guess what? He can regrow flesh and body parts faster than Nanaseto ever could. Fast enough that by the time I cut off one limb, it’ll start regrowing so that when I finish on your other, it’ll be ready to be cut off again. I’ll do it all day, everyday, until both of our minds break and then we will serve him for as long as our biological functions manage.” Bell continued smiling for a second more before his head slumped back down and his expression went slack.

Maya vomited.

“I’m not entirely sure how close you and this Belmoro were, but from what I’ve seen. It’s always most painful when friends are doing the torturing to one another. There’s no coming back from that, for either of you.” Shen waved a hand and Bell tumbled to the floor.

Bell let out a sharp gasp of pain and looked at Maya. She didn’t know if it was the real him or the puppet that Shen had created. No, those eyes reflected pain and anguish. It was Bell.

“I rescind my promise, Maya Sullivan. I rescind it. We are no longer bound.” Then his head slumped and his shoulders began heaving.

Maya screamed. She threw herself at Bell, hands outstretched, but Shen was faster. He grabbed her by the neck and threw her across the room. She bounded off the transparent wall and fell to the floor sobbing.

After a while, rough hands grabbed her and she was hauled into the air. Maya saw Bell looking down at her with his dead eyes.

“You have a choice, Maya Sullivan. Will you let your own morality stand in the way?” Bell asked. No, it was Shen. “You have everything to lose or everything to gain. Just say yes.”

Maya stared into Bell’s dead eyes.

“Yes.”

***

There was no need for glowing ropes to shackle her or guards to coerce her. Maya walked up to the black altar and stared at the reflective material. It looked like rock or some kind of ancient arcane device used in fantasy movies about evil warlords on Planet Doom.

She almost laughed at how close that scenario was to her situation. Yet she was no fair maiden and there would be no Buck Solo type to bust in and save her at the last minute.

If she managed this, then they would have a way home. If she failed, she’d burn herself out from the draw of essence mana. Being able to draw upon essence mana did not mean she was safe from searing herself, they were channels just like any other. If she failed, the best option was dying afterward; the worse option was being turned into one of Shen’s murder zombies.

She took a deep breath.

“Just like I taught you,” Shen said. For a day Shen had given her instructions on how to control the cage. It wasn’t terribly complicated; the joy of high tiered System Tech was that it was far easier to use than low tier tech.

It sickened Maya to be taught by him, for every second he educated her, time to repair Bell was slowly slipping away. He dangled his life before her every step of the way, every mistake was a threat upon his life.

The computer screens appeared before her. She could read them, Shen having disabled the locks, but they still didn’t make much sense to her. She wasn’t flying the cage, just channeling her mana and letting the gateway form and then entering the ‘void space’ as Shen called it. The place beyond the rainbow sky hellscape, the space between realities.

It was just a test, he had said. It was a test to see if she could connect to somewhere outside of the dimensional plane. Perhaps to the multiverse at large. The mana cores would provide the power, all she had to do was channel the essence mana into it. To stabilize it, to ensure that the gateway formed.

Maya took another deep breath and press her hands upon the black material.

Ice plunged through her veins; everything burned cold and intense. She could feel the electricity in her veins begin to form. She could feel it trickling though, as if held behind a great barrier. It was like a soft current of cold air in a hot and humid room. She reached for it; she longed for that momentary feeling once more.

She felt the breeze once more and grabbed at it. She clung to it and pulled it toward herself. The black altar before her made an audible click and suddenly the slight breeze became a raging gale.

No control; she had no control over what she was doing. The black altar was a sponge; greedily drawing out her essence mana as it began to activate. She tried stopping the flow, but it pulled with more power than she could muster. She cried out and tried to turn to Shen to stop the machine, but she was frozen in place.

It was pain, it was delight and it was for a second and forever. Maya alternated between one emotion and another and the essence mana coursed through her. Her head tilted back and she saw the walls and ceiling fall away once more, turning into a spire that didn’t touch her, but hung over her head. It sizzled and crackled, spewing out mana and flaring with barely contained power.

She felt the dimensional scar again, hot and painful like an infected wound. She probed at it, using her Dimensional Awareness. It warped and bubbled, like an abscess ready to pop. Maya shuddered at the feeling.

The cage began forming, but not above her, around her. She was lifted off the ground and the ball of material surrounded her, continuously shaping and reshaping. This hadn’t been apart of the plan.

Maya tried to tell Shen to stop, but he stood watching her, with a terrible glee on his rotting face. His cloudy eyes were aflame and he looked triumphant.

The scar was pulsing and throbbing, Maya could feel it grating against her teeth and bones. She needed to get out of the cage, she needed to leave. She needed to stop this madness…

Then the dimensional scar ruptured. It was ripped open and Maya was swallowed by a vortex of ungodly darkness and unfathomable immensity.

Dimensional Awareness IV Dimensional Awareness V

Maya and the cage were dragged forward. She cried out, but nothing came out of her mouth. She tried to abandon the cage, but she could not move. The air around her swirled, no, it wasn’t air. It was like an ocean current, moving in one direction, pulling her.

It was pressure, it was vacuum, it was light, and it was dark. All her senses were bombarded, every nerve fired and screamed, but she could cling to nothing. There was nothing to orientate her, there was nothing that she could grasp onto. She was twirling, twisting, and tumbling; everything constantly changing and revolving and she felt herself being torn apart.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Shen said nothing about this. None of this was what he had instructed her on. Did he know? Or was he ignorant about it all? Maya gasped for air and clawed at the darkness.

Maya wanted escape. She wanted to leave. She wanted her home. She pictured her neighborhood in her mind. The days she had spent hot summer mornings cleaning Bonita or making breakfast with her Mother. Pops would be talking about the weather, a topic he loved discussing even if it boiled down to just “it’s gonna be hot.”

Dimensional Threshold I

You have opened a doorway through dimensions. Congrats.

+ 2 Foundation

[Dimensional Walker] Level 1

It’s not everyday that SIL manage to cross dimensions.

+ 2 Mental Dexterity

Pain tore through her body and she stumbled forward, a great pressure released its hold on her body and mind. Time came to a standstill and Maya blinked as light filled the room.

“Hello,” a voice said.