Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9) Read online

  © 2020 Terra Whiteman. All rights reserved.

  SHATTER STAR PRESS

  *** For character glossary, series lore, and Multiversal location info, please refer to the Hymn of the Multiverse Comprehensive Guide, available here:

  https://exodaius.blogspot.com/p/hymn-of-multiverse-comprehensive-guide.html

  IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER—;

  I love you, and I’m sorry for everything.

  Thank you for showing me that no one is perfect, or immortal.

  O

  THE WORLD WAS GONE.

  To be fair, it’d been on the way out for months now; even a low-ranking grunt like me could sense it. Every day the sky looked a little more exotic—bluer, or redder, or blacker.

  Then people’s faces hadn’t looked right. They were distorted or their expressions were off. A week ago I’d been talking to another officer, and from across the terrace a woman stared me down with holes for eyes. When I pointed him toward her, he didn’t see anything wrong with her face. That was when I knew for sure that things were going to shit. Everyone was seeing something different; living in our own separate nightmares, standing right beside each other.

  And now I was alone.

  Just a second ago I was trudging up the stairs of Floor 11, cursing the maintenance diagnostics crew for shutting down the elevator. My headsup audio streamed an argument between two colleagues over a sports game that had happened the evening before. I was just about to tell them they needed to rethink their priorities in life when there was a flash, and then my headsup went dark. Comms stopped working. All the lights were out.

  I’d thought maintenance diagnostics caused a power failure. Just my luck, right? But when I entered Floor 12 to find a comm station, all the offices were vacant. Everything was dark. Screens were black, the comm station was cold. People were here just an hour ago when I’d done my rounds last.

  I called down the hall, hoping it was just unusually quiet or most of the staff had gone to lunch together. There was no response, and I got the chills. It was so quiet that I could hear a strange noise in the walls—the hum of a motor, or a large machine of sorts. I’d never heard anything quite like it.

  Thoroughly frightened now, I walked toward the end of the hall. This was the Anomaly Control department, and Director Venhsaan’s office door was wide open—this never happened. If he wasn’t in the room, the door was always locked. He was a private man. This was a confidential unit.

  Behind his wrap-around desk, a picture window that only a Director would be privileged enough to have revealed the scenery of a nightmarish dreamscape. The sky was dark, as if dusk had fallen midday—I’d only just come back from lunch an hour ago—dotted with stars far too bright to be real. The stars moved, too. They always moved, but normally their movement was noticed in hourly increments, not seconds. It was like viewing an accelerated record of the night sky.

  There had been a well-maintained garden in the yard leading from lot-to-entrance of our clandestine headquarters. All the greenery was gone, replaced by strange, rocky ground that shined like the stars. The road was gone, as was the gate. There was nothing but rocks, stars and the building. Up until now I thought I must have fallen unconscious from an unprecedented medical issue and was dreaming; but looking out the window made me realize it was them.

  They had finally done something irreversible, those bastards. There’d been a lockdown of the laboratories for the past week. Even security wasn’t allowed in. Said something about inspecting safety—why wouldn’t they have included us?

  Because it was lies. And now whatever they’d done had blinked everyone out of existence except for me. But why me? More likely I’d been blinked out of existence and everyone else was still in normal reality, asking, “Has anyone seen Tefpli?”

  Panic settled in quickly. I ripped the gear off my head and the cords from my neck, feeling strangled. Hoping I was wrong I ran through each and every floor, shouting for someone—anyone—else, until my chest burned and I doubled over, gasping for breath. There was no one in the building. I wouldn’t try the sublevel labs; something told me that wasn’t smart. The only other thing I could think to do was leave the building, pick a direction and walk. This couldn’t be the only place here, right? I couldn’t be the only person; I wasn’t important enough.

  The main entrance lobby seemed eerie as I walked through it and out the double-silica doors. They weren’t activated so I had to pry them open with my hands, a twinge of pain rippling through the muscles between my shoulders and neck. The guard station here had always been manned. There’d always been a clerk at the desk. It didn’t seem like everyone had suddenly disappeared, as the space was basically empty, bereft of furniture and even the treat dish was missing from the table in the waiting lounge.

  Outside the air felt…heavier. The machine sound I’d heard in the walls was actually from outside. The sky was roaring as clusters of stars swooped by like clouds on a windy day. Except there was no wind. I couldn’t justify the time I spent staring up in awe, feeling faint. How does someone deal with something like this? What was this?

  The ground crunched under my shoes as I headed south off the headquarter campus. What had looked like rocks was actually crystal shards, delicate as glass. I stopped long enough to pick up a few crumbles—they flashed multi-color in the palm of my hand. Startled, I dropped them, then dismissed it as a trick of the starlight seconds later. I glimpsed back at the headquarters, a shadowy spear jutting from the ground. Without power you couldn’t see the windows.

  Wait.

  I squinted and held my breath. The throb of my heart was making my entire head quiver, and so I tried to steady my vision.

  Headquarters was rippling. Black smoke was wafting from its edges. From here it didn’t even seem solid. That should have been less of a shock than everything else, but it was the tipping point for me. De-realization took hold of my fragile mind, and I simply turned and trudged on. I no longer had an opinion on anything that was happening; I just walked.

  The street was gone but the general layout of the area was the same. Headquarters had been built in seclusion (for good reason), bordered by forestry on all sides. The trees didn’t look the same, but they were still there. I didn’t wonder why and walked toward the southern tree-line. There’d been a service station roughly six zens from here. Maybe this was just a perimeter thing. Maybe I’d walk out of this bubble of nonsense and find the service road.

  Before entering the forest I stopped and looked back again. In hindsight I should have scraped some food or drink supplies from headquarters before I left. But one glimpse of that smoking building made me think better of going back. I imagined the entire thing suddenly evaporating into thin air with me in it. Nope.

  Crunch.

  That sound jarred me. I turned, trying to find the source. It had sounded like footsteps, but I didn’t know exactly where they’d come from. For a full minute I stood still, breathing shallowly, waiting to hear it again.

  Nothing but the angry sky.

  I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. But I definitely felt unsafe, so I hurried into the trees.

  *

  About the trees—;

  They weren’t actually trees. I realized that up close. They were made of the same stuff as the ground, except they were shaped like trees. Some of them were decorated with shiny rope and baubles, and the combination of crystal terrain and starry sky illuminated the landscape like a blanket of snow might in twilight. Thoughts of my wife and daughter crept to the forefront of my mind—how I might never see them again. No, it was too soon to think like that.

  Don’t think
like that. Think of getting to the service station.

  And then it began to rain. There were no clouds, but it was raining.

  The rain was warm, and with it came the sound of percussions. Chiming, from the trees. Suddenly this place didn’t seem so scary anymore. I didn’t know why; for all I knew it was raining sedatives.

  Another sound took the calm away instantly.

  A series of crunches to my right made me freeze. They didn’t disappear this time, and whatever was making them sounded big. Really big. There were too many to be just one set of feet.

  I dove behind a cluster of trees as something emerged on my path. The crunching stopped, and then I heard a sound that people didn’t make. It was something between a growl and a snort. I dared to peek around the tree.

  A massive creature stood just right of me, sniffing the ground. Four legs, a thick trunk of a body, a tail and what looked like a metal spear shoved into the middle of its head; the wound between its eyes suggested the horn wasn’t natural. Its entire form was shrouded in the same black mist that had covered headquarters. I recoiled and pressed my back against the trunk, both hands clasping my mouth shut so I wouldn’t scream. This wasn’t happening.

  This wasn’t happening.

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, but it felt like forever. Eventually the creature moved on, though I didn’t dare move until its steps completely faded. I had a feeling the service station wasn’t going to be there, but that was the only target destination I had.

  I ran as fast as I could through the trees, looking back every so often with the inkling that the creature was stalking me.

  Where the service road should have been was an open sprawl of shiny ground. Knowing I wasn’t alone now made the idea of no cover alarming. Something else might spot me moving out in the open. I wasn’t even sure if the creature I saw was dangerous, but it certainly didn’t look friendly.

  There wasn’t another option, unless I stayed put forever. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea; headquarters could be working to fix this… issue.

  Or maybe the entire world was experiencing this. Maybe every single person had been shunted into different dimensions. I should have quit my job the moment those children were brought into the laboratory. They hadn’t looked or felt right. Nothing ever ended well when creepy children got involved.

  I sprinted across the open ground, even though my legs and sides already burned from over-exertion. It had to have been an hour since I’d left headquarters. The (former) service road marked the halfway point. It was looking like this wasn’t a perimeter thing.

  Reassurance washed over me when I saw another tree-line. Inside, I collapsed on all fours, gasping for air. My body felt like mush and there were spots in my vision. I crawled up an incline, leaning against a tree until I caught my breath and could move my legs without tremors. I thought that I urinated on myself, but couldn’t tell for sure since I was wet from the rain.

  The smell of fire—real smoke—took me by surprise. I had no idea where it came from, but my heart leapt with the knowledge that someone else was around. Or, something was on fire. For the sake of my sanity I chose to believe the former.

  When the scent grew fainter in the direction I was heading, I started in another. Eventually I determined the fire was southwest.

  What I came across was a wooden cabin with a smoking chimney. Where the wood came from was anyone’s guess. The trees surrounding it were more decorated than the rest; sticks fashioned into strange arrangements hung from them. Slowly I walked around the front, which revealed a doorless opening, as if the front wall had been knocked down. Inside was a large metal pot atop a wood stove. Trinkets and baubles decorated stone mantles around it. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I was wet and tired and instinct told me to take shelter. Someone had started the fire, but they weren’t here now.

  Several steps from the opening, I saw a collection of statues barely visible around the other side of the cabin. Fighting instinct, I moved to inspect them.

  They were life-size figures of three men and one woman, chiseled crudely from shiny stone. Their faces lacked detail, one even seeming to have part of its head broken off. Strangely their bodies held the most features, their clothing outlined skillfully. Each statue had a symbol carved into their chest. There was something clutched in one of the statue’s hands. I noticed the perfect detail of the hand, inconsistent to the face. A calligraphic digital scripter rested between its fingers, also stone, but the design was unmistakably the same one Director Venhsaan used for procedure approvals. I looked back up at its face, confused. Everything suddenly felt wrong. I shouldn’t be here.

  I caught movement at the side of my vision, and looked toward the wall of the cabin facing the statues. Pinned against it was a person—in the general sense of the word. They didn’t really look like me, or anyone else I’d seen from the tri-colonies. They had no obvious tellings of gender, wearing a shapeless black frock. They were held against the wall by sparkling rope, the same I’d seen on the trees. The rope seemed sharp, more like wire, as it bit into areas of exposed skin. The abrasions leaked black, oily fluid; maybe their blood, maybe not. The rope acted like a web of sorts, wrapping half their body in a cocoon, wringing them of black oil.

  I backed away slowly, feeling for the electric baton on my belt, knowing it would do nothing against whatever did this. It was intended to stop intruders; I hadn’t used it once in my career.

  I thought of the metal-horned creature from the forest, and how maybe it was capable of this. Either way it wasn’t safe here, and I turned to run when, standing just a few feet in front of me, was one of the kids from the headquarter laboratories.

  It was hard to mistake him with his ash-gray hair and sable eyes, traits that weren’t natural to us. He stood no taller than my elbow, was no older than elementary school-age, dressed in black trousers and a blue shirt, a white scarf wrapped around his neck. The symbol drawn in the middle of his forehead was new. I didn’t remember ever seeing that, and recognized it as the same one carved into the statues. There was a strange blue sheen to his skin, like his cheeks were dusted with glitter. And then I noticed the wavering, smoky blue light coming from his hand that rested idly at his side. The other was stuffed into the pocket of his trousers.

  Despite the rain, he wasn’t wet. More than several seconds had gone by since we locked eyes and he wasn’t even a bit damp. He didn’t seem scared. He didn’t wear any expression, only stared at me.

  “Where did you come from?” I said in a friendly tone, trying to hide my rising terror. “I thought I was the only one around. The building was empty.”

  No response. He just kept staring.

  I took a step back. “Where is the rest of your group? You shouldn’t be here; it isn’t safe.”

  Still nothing. It was possible he couldn’t speak. I’d never heard any of them speak and only saw them once or twice when doing rounds in the sublevel labs. Some of my crew had said they were created for our employers. Apparently the gifted volunteers weren’t skilled enough for whatever they’d been testing. Couldn’t say for certain whether it was true. Our crew talked a lot of shit. Regardless, this kid was wrong on every level.

  “Alright, well, be safe,” I muttered, unable to think of anything else in parting. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for leaving him here, even though I should’ve.

  I started to turn in an attempt to leave for a second time, but found my body stuck in place. I couldn’t move, forced to stand there and keep facing him. I tried to ask what was happening, what he was doing, but couldn’t even move my mouth.

  It was a probably a full minute that this went on, until the metal-horned creature wrapped in black mist appeared up the incline and onto the cabin grounds, stopping just behind the child. It, too, stared at me. The beast stood colossal behind the child, who didn’t even turn to look.

  Instead, he smiled.

  “She’s hungry,” said the child, and then raised his glowing hand.

 
; The statue with the Director’s scripter lifted off the ground, and the leaking person sewn against the cabin wall wailed in what I could only think was anguish. The child swung his hand, as if throwing an invisible ball.

  Right before the statue hit me, I thought of my wife and daughter, and how I really should have quit after those kids came to the lab.

  PART ONE:

  TRICOLONY SIGMA

  “Because the eye gazes but can catch no glimpse of it, it is called elusive. Because the ear listens but cannot hear it, it is called the rarefied. Because the hand feels for it but cannot find it, it is called the infinitesimal. … These are called the shapeless shapes, forms without form, vague semblances. Go towards them, and you can see no front; go after them, and you see no rear.”

  ― C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

  I

  QAIRA

  LEID TAPPED HER CHIN, EYES DRIFTING ACROSS the advisory request from TriColony Sigma. “Well, isn’t this convenient,” she murmured.

  Coincidental, not convenient, I thought. For weeks we were combing through attica, trying to find another incident of shard activity, and here it was—having fallen right into our laps. Made all that prior effort for nothing.

  TriColony Sigma was a midciv in the Eversae Major universe. They weren’t the kind of clientele we typically had; a little more primitive than we liked. But then again, TCS occasionally surprised us with shit like this. Last time they accidentally created a plague that knocked out forty percent of their population, having bioengineered a virus so perfectly capable of infecting and disposing of its hosts that even Yahweh was left scratching his head for a good minute.

  This time they created some kind of time-continuum anomaly field spanning dozens of miles on Poekka, their ‘R&D’ world. According to the embassy that’d requested an audience with Leid, the field was spanning more ground by the day. No one who’d gone in had come out.