Chapter 47.1: The Gang Back Together
Minkus panted as he dashed down the final corridor. He could feel his rejuvenation returning, but he’d pushed himself to active exhaustion after putting so much effort into healing Yissa. His thighs burned, and his lungs couldn’t get air fast enough to keep up. It had been some time since he’d channeled this much focused magic continuously.
He hadn’t passed Penny and Yult in the halls, which meant they must still be fighting Kikka and her golem—they had to be—and maybe he could aid them in that, getting them all out of there safely, but he had to recover the anti-agony field projector. If they didn’t have that, there was no telling what Ventyr, Jindel, Yissa, and his sister might encounter simply in trying to escape the complex. He had known this rescue effort wouldn’t be easy, but he hadn’t had any idea just how convoluted it would get with the addition of every member of their group. They were all just so angry, about so many different things. He just wanted them all safe.
He rounded the doorway, reciting to himself exactly where Yissa said the projector pack would be: far end of the lab, somewhere behind the last holding cylinder. The room was darker now, more lights having gone out, and his eyes took a second to adjust. All he had to do was—
A flare of fluorescent purple split the room. It struck a reflective surface and burst into white light that filled the space and pushed him back a step.
“Holy shit!” Penny barked, somewhere at the other end of the room. “What was that?”
“Raven’s wit if I know,” Yult returned from a similar direction.
“Did it get you?”
“No. I still stand,” the norn replied. “It hit the glass.” Heavy footfalls moved westward.
Minkus tried to blink his vision back to life, asking himself the same question Penny had: what was that blast? It was a blinding violet, just like the jade had been, but— well, that couldn’t be what it was, could it? Whatever device the Inquest had developed with that power, it should only project a dome of agonizing magic, not fire a projectile. At least that was what Jinkke and Wepp had said, based on the Zinn schematics.
Minkus’ eyes went wide. Wepp! He was still out there somewhere. Minkus couldn’t resolve that matter now, but he would. He would.
Most of the room came back into focus, and Minkus gasped. Whatever constraints had previously kept the golem on the other side of the doorway, they’d definitely been lifted. Huge slabs of stonework rubble lay scattered among the natural slag of Ventyr’s destroyed barrier, directly before the smashed-out doorway that led to the neighboring lab Ventyr and Yult had searched for the jade. Now that doorway looked more like ripped paper than professionally hewn granite. The towering golem had smashed through it and shattered a path through the first cylinder and on to certain destruction that only Penny and Yult could accurately describe.
Yult had now backed himself up to the western row of green-glass cylinders in the darker corner of the room. Minkus couldn’t see where Penny was, and neither, it seemed, could the golem.
The asura smacked the heel of his hand to his temple. “You can do this, Minkus,” he said. “Focus.” He scanned the room, repeating Yissa’s words again, and spotted the location she’d described: the farthest cylinder in the left row, the eastern row. The golem kicked through debris and bloody scraps, sending large bits of steel flying through another cylinder. Between the golem and their previous conflict, many of the test chambers were partially, if not wholly, destroyed. Somehow, though, the containment cylinder Minkus was after had remained in one piece. That was good, except that it also meant he couldn’t see anything behind it.
Minkus bounded down the stairs and onto the main floor of the decimated room. Taking his weapons out once more, he hopped around the gored remains of two troublingly nondescript creatures. He tasted bile but kept on, raising eyes once more to the back of the room as he hurdled the fallen cap of a cylinder, careful to avoid the two-inch shattered-glass daggers strewn around it. He weaved into the center of the room before crossing back behind the left row of cylinders and jumping over the rended krait corpse. That was where he slowed his pace; he didn’t have time to fear the golem, but neither could he draw its attention just yet. Crusader Yult still seemed to be safe, though the construct stalked him on seismic strides. Minkus didn’t like it, but that distraction was all that kept the construct from turning on him before he could get to the field projector.
“Biggie?” The sudden sound of Penny’s voice cut into his thoughts.
Minkus looked around in the direction of her voice, suddenly recognizing Penny crouched alongside the lower part of a cylinder still adhered to the floor. That cylinder had been whole the last time he’d seen it, but even in pieces, it was enough to hide her from the golem’s visual sensors.
“Hello, Penny,” he said, trying to infuse the greeting with cheer despite his urgency.
“‘Hello, Penny?’” she parodied, her face contorting in scrutiny. “Why in Torment are you back here?”
“It— well, it’s a little complicated,” he said as he moved past her. “I really can’t stop.”
“What?” she demanded. Even over the loud, mechanical movements of the golem smashing its way to Fjornsson, she was audible. “A little complicated? Did you miss the purple lightning storm a second ago? That is complicated. Getting killed is complicated. Whatever you’re doing is can’t be more than stupid!”
Minkus heard the concern in her scorn, and he smiled, already past her and dancing over the remnants of Ventyr’s stonework defense.
He jumped clear of the sandstone rubble and beamed as his quarry came into view. There, on the far side of the next holding tube, the pack was laid out in one of the few patches of clear, unbroken floor. He spanned the remaining yards and lunged for it, grabbing it by a strap before pulling it close and falling back against the intact testing cylinder behind him. It had once been Penny’s favorite creation, it now held a one-of-a-kind device capable of nullifying Mursaat agony magic, and Minkus had it back in hand.
Loudly, he sighed his relief, only just noticing the footsteps that had tracked him.
“What in Grenth’s green ass are you doing?” Penny huffed, catching up and glaring down at him. There may have been genuine offense in her voice that time, at least until she saw what he held and put the pieces together. “What are you— What is that—” She dropped to the floor and pressed herself into hiding beside him, eyes livid. “How long has that been sitting here?!”
“I don’t know— exactly,” Minkus said, blushing at the accusation in her voice. “I left it with Yissa before I went to get the rest of you. But, well— I didn’t explain what it was.”
Penny put her face in her hands for a long second. Whatever she was going to say, though, was interrupted by a terrified cry somewhere behind them: a cry that most certainly wasn’t Fjornsson. The two swapped uneasy looks, but Minkus thought— no, he knew who that cry belonged to.
Leaving the pack and grasping his focus, Minkus pushed past Penny and spun around the glass cylinder, nearly slamming headlong into his sister.
“Jinkke!” he yipped, gripping her shoulder and scanning her for injuries. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
Rifle in one outstretched hand, Jinkke pointed frantically behind her with the other, coughing slightly as she fought to catch her breath. “Crazed cat— monster— stalker— whatever!”
Minkus’ instincts kicked in. He swept up his weapons again, and ducked past her, stepping between his sister and whatever threatened her.
He heard Penny groan. “Oh, good. The gang’s back together.”
Minkus let everything behind him fade from thought, though, as he caught the dark movements of a jungle cat lunging through the wreckage of a test chamber two units up. The stalker bounded with a sort of ugly, drunken grace between shattered stone and burning machinery, merging in and out of each passing shadow. In only a few strides, it was close enough for Minkus to see the dull breaks in its coat’s sheen where it must have taken injuries. He let a rush of protectiveness flow into him, and the thing leapt for him.
He heard another screech from his sister, and he channeled the deep magic of protection into the focus in his hand, that electromagnet that reminded him so much of his best days with her. It sparked blue, releasing an opalescent barrier that encircled him. The cat slammed into the faint, magical shield with a juicy crunch and rolled off, scrabbling to its feet and mewling in pain and rage. The force of the strike rippled through the shield, and it fell, dissipating into nothing.
“Back!” Minkus yelled at the beast. He waved his sword, hoping against reason that it would have an effect. It may have been just an animal, but like everything and everyone else here, it had suffered enough; as long as Jinkke was safe, he had no stomach for causing it more pain.
The stalker’s eye twitched wildly. It snapped at nothing, and half-stepped backward, whining again in pain. In addition to its other injuries, the stalker’s jaw now hung at an odd angle, but it leapt again.
One paw slipped, and the cat slammed into Minkus with a rotation that knocked him aside. Courage surged, and a shimmering blue layer wrapped Minkus just before he hit the fallen steel cap of the neighboring cylinder, the magic absorbing his impact.
Minkus rose to an elbow, whispering thanks to wherever the deep magics came from, but the tormented jungle cat was already upon him again. It loomed this time, shoulders hunched as it stalked more intentionally, saliva and blood draining from its broken maw as it eyed him with that twitching glare. It threw back its head and howled, something utterly unnatural for a feline. Despite himself, Minkus shivered.
Heavy, crunching steps rumbled the ground toward them, and both Minkus and the cat looked aside. Towering over them, maybe ten yards away, the golem had taken interest.
“Additional entity,” it said in a deep and lifelessly mechanical voice. Its domed head swiveled between Minkus and the huge feline. “Potential chaos element.”
Some kind of energy generator whirred to life inside the darksteel construct, and before Minkus fully understood what was happening, the recess in the golem’s chest began to glow. It burst into another blinding beam of purple energy that burned a line in the air toward them.
Minkus gripped his sword and let magic flow, blinking him briefly out of existence and then back again, several feet away. That wicked beam hit the stalker, and despite himself, Minkus couldn’t look away. The cat seized, arching its back in anguish as it absorbed the energy funneling into it.
Looking up and down the beam with wide, horrified eyes, Minkus realized just how accurate the term funneled really was. Though the angle was slight at this range, the upper and lower bounds of the blast were indeed angled inward, focusing as much of the wide emission as possible into a smaller target zone on the jungle cat.
The stalker slumped into convulsions on the ground, and the beam continued for another moment, cutting the air above the tortured creature and hitting the wall impotently before the weapon powered down. The energy twinkled out into a trail of light motes that drifted apart into the air, and the golem stopped, its arms briefly going limp as systems appeared to reset.
Minkus, however, was unable to take his eyes off the big cat. It writhed in terrified fury, all four paws slashing extended claws at air, ground, and rubble. It attacked everything and nothing, ears pressed back to its head like cornered prey. It swiped at the air with such force that it rolled itself, catching claws in its own shanks and ripping violently. When it contorted itself back toward the stone floor, it snapped its jaws repeatedly, breaking its teeth on stone and debris and howling with the pain. It was horrible. Minkus wanted desperately to help the poor animal.
“Big Brother,” Jinkke called, breaking his stupor. She waved him back toward her position with Penny, who still knelt behind the farthest cylinder with two outstretched pistols in hand and a frightened snarl on her face. He’d forgotten they were there.
“This way,” Jinkke instructed.
“Yes,” he heard himself say. “Yes, of course.” It was only a handful of yards that separated them, but Minkus felt sluggish crossing it, his mind still trying to piece together what he’d just seen as he fumbled back to their position.
“Break’s over, kids,” Penny said, leaning around the other side of the cylinder. “It’s powering back up.”
She was right. Angular traces of light along the golem’s armored shell had begun coming to life again, until finally the once glowing eyes re-lit, and its shoulders shifted back into a posture of activation. The domed head swiveled their way.
“And it knows where we are.” Penny shoved the field projector into Jinkke’s hands and spun the asura into motion toward Minkus before rolling back around the other side of the glass cylinder and fidgeting with the loader on one of her pistols. “If you want to keep your brains, I think it might be coming time to field-test that thing.”
Minkus tugged at his ear, feeling that customary discomfort as his sister pulled open a side-flap in the projector pack’s leather case to begin activating systems inside. A thin stream of exhaust began to rise from its port on the opposite side. It hiccupped with each switch Jinkke flipped.
There was a rubble-rattling stomp as the golem began once more to move.
“Get ready,” Penny said.
Jinkke spared a single glance but never stopped her processes. “For what?”
“To move,” she replied, sliding a round into her pistol’s loader and rotating it into position. She leaned out, aimed, and cracked off a shot, then digging in another pouch, she drew an explosive, lit it, and slid the little object toward the golem’s feet.
A tendril of smoke followed it all the way, and Minkus peeked around the opposite side of the cylinder to watch it come to a stop on the other side of the huge construct, which, he realized, was busy raking glue from its visual receptors with broad, clumsy hands. Penny had hit it with some kind of adhesive round.
Then the fuse fizzled out, and Penny’s bomb exploded.
Despite watching it happen, Minkus yipped in surprise and dropped to the floor, magic shielding him as a matter of instinct. Chips of stone floor, steel containment components, and glass shot past them, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust in their wake.
“Would you stop doing that?!” Jinkke barked indignantly. Minkus rose again to find her hugging the field projector and staring daggers at Penny.
“Um, no,” Penny replied, not even glancing back. “Because it works.” She pointed out at the golem, which had toppled to the ground, and was now rolling about while still trying to claw away the glue that blinded it. Without another word, Penny leapt out and raced toward the opposite row of cylinders, waving the two asura toward the side of the room farthest from the doorway to lab Delta.
Jinkke eyed Minkus questioningly, which would ordinarily have made him uncomfortable—having to make decisions and all—but something in him knew what Penny was doing. He nodded, stowing his weapons and silently grabbing Jinkke’s gun up off the floor. On light feet, he helped her up and after the human, who led them around the first cylinder in that row, past the second, and on toward the third, the first one still standing.
The two asura only stopped when Penny did. “The glue shot should give us at least a minute to breathe,” she said, panting.
Jinkke blinked, looking back across the course they’d taken and the struggling golem. “That was— well, it was a sound and effectively executed plan,” she said to Penny as she lowered the projector pack to the ground. “Now what?”
“What did it do to that stalker?” Minkus asked, kneeling behind the base of this new cylinder as best he could. He couldn’t shake the image of the scrabbling cat from his mind. If he focused, he could still hear it beyond the golem. “Was— was it the mursaat magic?”
“Oh gods.” Still gripping a pistol in one hand, Penny ran the other through her tousled hair.
Trembling, Jinkke shook her head. “No. No, it’s not possible. The design— the Zinn design, it was for a domed projection, not a targeted beam. It—”
“Come on. It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” Penny interrupted sharply. “A bright, purple beam that instantly made the cat even crazier than it was before?”
Jinkke just stared uncomfortably.
Minkus took the momentary silence to lean around the cylinder and check on the golem. It had gotten to its knee, one foot already firmly on the ground, but it appeared to still be clawing at its domed faceplate, facing the other way. Minkus could just make out the stalker beyond it, under the dim illumination of a single, blinking light emitter on the wall. The other emitters near it had been blown out by shrapnel from the most recent explosion, throwing another swath of the room into dim shadows. Sparks popped from cut circuits in the walls and debris, and another small fire had sparked to life, casting dancing shadows back along the wall.
One of those shadows moved. Not with the sway of the flames, but against it. It was big, moving with intentionality, and suddenly Minkus recognized it. Fjornsson moved right toward the golem.
Minkus snapped back to point it out to the others, suddenly hearing their ongoing conversation again.
“So, onboard mind-scrambler ray,” Penny all but growled. “Are we all ready to accept that?”
Jinkke whimpered a kind of submission. “I suppose it is the only reasonable conclusion. I simply wasn’t prepared for this.”
Before Minkus could interject, there was a battlecry and a string of deep, steel clangs that tolled like a bell throughout the room. It rattled Penny and Jinkke out of their discussion.
Penny spun around to look out beyond the cylinder at their backs. “Oh, gods.”
Minkus reached for the pack in Jinkke’s arms, but she recoiled, spinning to face him. “What are you doing?”
Minkus sighed. “I do not think Crusader Yult knows what the golem can do.”
“I don’t think we know what it can do,” Penny inserted.
Jinkke pointed at the woman. “Yes, I concur with Penny, Big Brother. We don’t know what it can do.”
Minkus glanced from one to the other and back again. The clangs of sword on steel halted abruptly, and glass shattered. “Perhaps not,” he said, grimacing uncomfortably. “But we have something he does not, and I think he needs it now.”
Neither took their eyes off the other, an effort of will on Minkus’ part, but after a moment, Jinkke released the pack into his grip. Minkus smiled faintly and slipped into the straps.
“Remember,” Jinkke started, “the voice command is—”
“I know, Jinkke,” he said with a deeper grin. “Sometimes I do listen and remember.”
She scowled at him. “Big Brother, I never said—”
“I’m joking,” Minkus said, gripping her hand. He kissed it.
“Alright, Big Brother. Just get the norn, Penny and I will reach the doorway, and we can all vacate the premises to rejoin the Sergeant.”
“Hell no,” Penny barked, her attention slamming back to Jinkke. Minkus reeled a step from her fervency. “Not now. You talked me into coming this far, and that tiny bitch is still back there, not feet from—”
Minkus drew closer again. It calmed the other two, if only a little. “Penny, stop,” he said. “I agree— sort of.”
Minkus swallowed and shifted focus to his sister, putting a hand to her shoulder. “Um, Jinkke, I think there’s more to do now.”
Her lilac eyes shifted to him, hardening, and he drew a deep breath.
He’d already put the pieces of his argument together, but images of the golem-devastated doorway flashed through his imagination. It solidified his resolve. “If we leave— well, I don’t think the golem will stay in this room. It will still have that mursaat weapon, and it will be out there.” He pointed westward, in the general direction of the courtyard, of their friends, and of the greater outside world.
She got his meaning, eyes dropping to the floor. “So, what,” she asked flatly, “as the only one of us who can heal himself, you operate as a decoy so we can attack it?”
He blinked in surprise but shrugged just as quickly. He shouldn’t have been shocked that she’d reached his conclusion so quickly.
Penny waved a hand, inspecting them both incredulously. “Hold your dolyaks.” Her eyes fell intently, fearfully on Minkus. “That thing just took a bomb to the shin, and now it’s up on its feet again. And you two think we can stop it? Distracting it is one thing—and I’m all in for quieting that squishy, little asura behind it—but stopping this golem? You two might have finally gone out of your gods-damned minds.”
Before anyone could respond, though, the artificial voice of the golem broke in. “Twister protocol initiated,” it said. The three of them spun.
Clasps between the construct’s torso and waist popped open, and it rocketed its upper body into a violent spin. It suddenly looked like a giant, hellish top, with arms twisted into fists facing against the counterclockwise rotation of everything above its legs. One of those fists slammed into the norn’s shoulder, turning him mid-swing so that the next one swung around and blasted him in the back. Once in the head, twice more in the chest, and finally Yult was launched backwards off his feet from the barrage of strikes, his sword thrown from his hands. In one moment, Yult had been raining down two-handed blows that smashed dents into whatever the golem presented to him, and the next he was on the ground, several yards away, bleeding and visibly disoriented.
The golem slowed its spin.
“My ears,” Minkus whispered. He slipped his focus off the hook at his belt, already sliding around the cylinder, and glanced back at his friend and sister. “I understand your concern, Penny. You have already helped so much, and I’m grateful. I can help Crusader Yult.”
“Jinkke,” he continued, flexing a hand around his sword hilt, “you should leave while you can. Crusader Yult and I— well, we can do this.”
Minkus didn’t feel the confidence he tried to project, and his sister’s mouth was already opening for rebuttal. For once, though, he knew she was better off if she didn’t get her argument in. He turned back toward the golem at the center of the room and darted into the open.
