“Sorry to hear that.”
“Condolences acknowledged. Now to our program.”
“Wait!” I grumbled. “I still don’t get why these bugs are in their own tanks. Didn’t you say they fed on humans?”
“I did.” Mong sighed. “These specimens were likely criminals, punished to serve as a type of cannibalistic nourishment for their fellow locusts. Sacrifices—given as sluts to the state, so to speak—not peculiar, if one studies history. The irony is, these prisoners have outlived their overlords, cruel jailors they were.”
My skin prickled. Not unlike others I knew.
Mong motioned. “Blest, as you can see, is cooling his heels in one of the feeding vessels.”
I nodded. “I imagine the waters are quite chill there. So, Blest is dead. Does it give you a particular thrill?”
“On the contrary, Blest will return to the land of the living soon, as shall you, to continue the rigors of my discipline. Blest’s penance is not yet up.”
A cold ball of fear knotted my gut. “Death is death, Mong. Why mince words?”
Mong flashed me an enigmatic glance. “You don’t believe in the other worlds, do you, Jet? The life after death?”
I snorted. “Do you?”
“It is not for me to preach. I know the truth. Whereas you do not.”
I gave a grunt of exasperation. “This ancient religion you market to your stooges and that you model your ‘learned’ teachings on does little to convince me of anything. Nor is your unreal world of drugged up cultists and yes-men you’ve recruited to fly your warships and carry out your dirty work, credible.”
“Is that what you conclude?” Mong inquired with amusement in his eyes. “How’s this then?” He clenched his fist. The walls started to shake. He closed his eyes. A rumbling as fierce as any earthquake grew. The tanks rocked, their glass panels jiggled, waters sloshed and Zan started to whimper and whisper prayers in all the languages he knew. My eyes darted about in instinctive panic. Did the man have control over the elements?
“Does that interlude not convince you of its reality?”
“I do not understand any of these voodoo tricks of yours.”
“Not voodoo, Jet Rusco. Science and physics. Intelligence and power mixed as one. I am the first of the true augmented humans.” He saw my skeptical, grimacing look and smiled. “These circuits I’ve implanted amplify my telekinetic powers. I’ve had many engineers working on the ins and outs of the problem for some time.”
“An augmented arm then.”
“Yes, Jet Rusco.”
He pulled back the brown leather on his right arm and exposed bare skin. He peeled back a flap. I saw dense circuitry there that went up and probably past his elbow.
“As well as being left-handed, I have ESP and psi power. I am considered demonic and a warlock by my own people. My mentors recognized my potential from an early age on my home planet, Vasgon. Some of them worshiped me, others persecuted me. I had to slay most of those who became too ambitious and tried to use me for their own ends. Their mistake. I had the augmentations custom-built to my needs.” He raised his augmented hand, flexed it, and I heard a clicking from within. “You marvel?” asked Mong.
I gave a curt shrug.
Mong closed his eyes. Flicking out his finger, he sizzled a small hole in the far wall. Black smoke billowed out from the indentation.
“A nice parlor trick.”
“It’s more than a trick, Jet Rusco. I see you have a machine hand too. But much cheaper than mine.”
“We all don’t have access to unlimited funds.” I stared at his flexing hand, feeling a wave of nausea as he made to demonstrate more.
“I think it’s time to see how you fare in the lower realms, Rusco. Prepare for an awakening.”
Quicker than a snake, he smacked the palm of his hand into my solar plexus in sync with the next boom of the drum. I felt a tingling queasiness in that flat fleshy part of my gut below sternum and centered between my rib cages. It sent an avalanche of pain through my nerve ends—taking every breath out of me. Something else with it—my tenuous link with reality. My waking state world disintegrated as I was thrust into an altered consciousness.
Chapter 22
I could only vaguely discern the past privilege of having a body, gasping, sweating, feeling the pain of what it was like once to be human. It made Myscol seem like a kindergarten field trip.
Visions swam before my eyes. Souls of the dead. My dead mother in her shroud. The guy I killed with an ice pick back in that bar out in Brefus on a chop job. The dozens of others who had perished by my hand. All crawling around my bug-infested skull, floating out of mists of nightmare. All the close scrapes in every hole and seedy dive. My hand exploding into bloody bits. The hundred climaxes with nameless flings on the road. The infinite light years travelled through the star highways—the restless spirit that followed the body of Jet Rusco. All peaking in one final climax. Then nothing.
Blackness. No body. Jet Rusco, effectively dead.
But a vestige of the old Jet Rusco still remained, drifting soundlessly in some freakish ether on the gulfs of time.
Somewhere I was still alive, like being in an obscene tank perhaps, but not connected to anything, or any reality. I was everywhere at once, but nowhere at once, and it scared the living bejesus out of me. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t flee anywhere. Only the basic truth of existence was laid bare before my mind’s eye.
Cold…empty…space.
For how long I floated in that caustic vapor, a dead, spiritless zombie, I do not know. I could have floated there for a million years. What
