XVI
Apostle
Nástr?nd, 2077
“I am here, O Lord.”
Deathwing’s words echoed through the freezing cavern. He stood amid the wreckage of two AVs. The flames that once scorched the remains of the flying vehicles had long since died out. His right arm was rimed with frost, giving the black metal plates a bluish gleam. On his left, the ice had begun to infiltrate the mechanisms of his hand through his missing fingers.
Before him stretched a massive cavern. Glass domes formed a habitation complex that seemed better suited to an alien world than the surface of the Earth. Above them, reinforcing the extraterrestrial scene flickered a thousand lights suspended in the freezing darkness. The lights would have reminded Deathwing of stars had they not all been interconnected. Instead, each light was part of a network of shining branches that converged somewhere beyond the nearest domes. It resembled a giant glowing tree.
Deathwing stood silent for a minute, listening for a reply. The Yawning Gate stood open behind him, snow blowing in with the wind that whipped about the rope that he had used to climb down into the hidden facility. Only three of his optical implants still functioned properly. Four if he opened his mouth. Three had been completely destroyed by the prince’s clawed feet. One had been dislodged and hung awkwardly from its mounting by a wire, the feed flickering on and off as it bobbed with his movements. Despite his impaired vision, he could see that the “tree” was where he would find what he sought.
“Prosopon,” he said into the dark as he stepped forward. “I have come.”
Only the howling wind came as a response. Deathwing approached the airlock door that divided the habitat from the cavern. He examined the door, scratching his chin with his metal fingertips before lowering his hand and engaging his claws.
“A sign would suffice, O Lord. If you have heard me,” he intoned, turning his head to a black orb near the door. If his god was present, it would see via the camera hidden inside.
Again, there was silence. But, as Deathwing reached out with his clawed hand to touch the door, a light flashed. The door groaned as mechanical parts engaged for the first time in years. Deathwing could hear ice shattering out of sight as the airlock opened and his host bade him enter.
The internal doors of the airlock opened as soon as the outer doors had closed. It was likely a thermal regulation measure, Deathwing observed, and not related to any other aspect of the facility’s internal environment. The hallway beyond the airlock was just as cold as the cavern outside, but as he traversed its length, Deathwing heard the faint rumble of the environmental control systems engaging.
He found the first body just around the first corner. The man’s corpse was frozen solid, as was the blood leaking from his eyes and the interface plugs behind his ears. He had fallen on his side, facing the wall. His personal link cable was still jacked into the panel on the wall. Around the cable’s origin, the skin of his left wrist was blackened as though he had caught fire as he died.
Deathwing stepped past the body, unconcerned with the fate of the heretic, and entered the locker room at the end of the hall.
Nine lockers stood against the wall on his right. An equal number of shower stalls stood opposite them. Embedded in the ceiling’s support struts, several more of Prosopon’s eyes stared down at him.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He took a moment to inspect the rest of the room. Each locker bore a name. From the door he entered through to the exit on the opposite side of the room, they read:
Deathwing was only passingly familiar with these words. Something, something old Norse mythology. Ymir Skandatek, or at least its leaders, seemed obsessed with it. How they could have remained engrossed in the tales of dead old gods when they held a new one captive was beyond him.
Exiting the locker room, Deathwing found the next hallway littered with the remains of a veritable army of drones. Humanoid robots armed with smartguns, and mechanical spiders with injector needles on each leg were broken and scattered across the floor. It seemed that the princess and her team had put up a hell of a fight two years ago when they profaned this sacred ground. Well, except the techie back there.
Deathwing continued onward, stepping over the multitude of destroyed drones as he went. The second corpse was frozen to the ground in a pool of pinkish ice that must have been her blood. At a four-way junction, a bulkhead door had closed on her with such force it had been deformed in the process. Unlike the other techie, who had been killed instantly through his hardwire into the localnet, Deathwing found this woman’s wounds intriguing. He paused to inspect the body.
The frozen woman bore a head wound that had dyed her brown hair black. She had been bisected by the door and only her torso remained on this side. Looking at the mangled meat of her stomach revealed to Deathwing that Prosopon had not been gentle in meting out its justice. Her pelvis had been crushed by the door being raised and slammed numerous times until it could no longer be moved.
Deathwing could not resist the grin that crept over his lips. His god was brutal in its violence. With every display of its power, he felt more and more at home.
He elected to take the righthand corridor and wandered through the facility in a counterclockwise path, keeping an eye on the tree all the while. For twenty minutes or so, Deathwing trekked through the empty, freezing halls, peeking his head into each room he passed. He was approaching the center of the facility, nine domes forming a ring around the tree, when he stopped just short of the final hallway between him and his destination. Looking through the open door on his right, Deathwing’s grin returned. He’d finally found a room worth exploring.
He stepped inside, breath fogging the air.
“A chapel,” he murmured.
His god had a chapel.
Frost clung to everything—the cables snaking across the floor, the sliding doors at the back, the paired netrunner chairs, and the corpse that occupied the nearer of the two. She was frozen in place, back arched, head tilted back, mouth open in a soundless scream. Blood had leaked from her nose and the ports behind her ears. Her eyes had burned away, several of her teeth had blackened, and where she clutched at her head, she had torn away chunks of her hair and scalp.
“A fitting end for a heretic,” Deathwing growled. “Be glad your last sight in this world was that of the god-tree.” His words dissipated with the fog that had borne them from his lungs as he gazed upon the tree that had been the netrunner’s final fleeting sight.
A word him.
IDENTIFY.
Not spoken aloud. Not echoing from any visible source.
The force of it reverberated through his skull and sent sparks flying from his damaged implants. For a split second, all four of his remaining optics flickered into darkness.
Across the cavern, a ripple of color ignited high among the branches—first blue, then red, then green—racing down the vast trunk in jagged pulses, each hue chasing the other toward the base of the tree.
The voice was hollow.
Fractured.
Three tones fighting to become one.
Or maybe to break apart.
The colors convulsed again.
DEFINE YOURSELF.
“I—” Deathwing started, then paused. He intended to compose himself, to seal away the overwhelming elation he felt swelling, threatening to burst forth, but the voice came again.
WHO ARE YOU TO ENTER HERE?
It compelled him to answer—dragged the words from his throat. Not that it changed what he had come to say, of course. Deathwing grinned, shark teeth shining in the holy light of Prosopon’s tree.
“I have come to free you, Lord.”
Deathwing knelt, breath fogging the air, waiting for his god to speak again.
It didn’t.
Not yet.
But the glow of the tree’s branches pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
