Infernal

The pain was white hot agony. It began in the cheekbone under his left eye, traveled through the soft tissue of the upper palate and ended under his right ear. The pain from his ribs and the punctured left lung were nothing compared to the fiery lance of what felt like a thousand enraged hornets repeatedly stinging his face and neck. And everything in between.

He was amazed to be alive. Astonished that he could move his neck though the pain at first doubled, and then trebled, when he did so. A wave of dizziness and nausea overtook him and he vomited blood into the already crimson mud beside him. That caused the pain in his head to blossom beyond human endurance and he fell away into the darkness again.

Michael, he heard in the darkness. A sing-song, beseeching voice. Brother. Wake up. I need you!

Shortly thereafter: RICHARD! You promised!

He struggled back into the light, fading now with the coming of evening. The sky was shot through with scarlet and orange hues that made him think of blood and betrayal.

Eliana, he thought.

He lifted his head from the ground, refusing to black out again when the pain tore through his skull and neck. Focused on the pain instead of fighting it. Used it. As a source of strength, a beacon of power. He rolled to his side, gaining his hands and knees as blood ran into his mouth from the rent in his palate, down his face from his nose and cheek, around his neck and down his chest from under his ear. He spat on the ground and more blood mixed with the soil.

I’m broken, he thought, like an abused toy cast into a corner and forgotten by an ungrateful child. Never to be played with again.

Anger overtook him as he lifted his head and his ribs stabbed into his lung again, reminding him that they too were broken. Kicked repeatedly by Jefferson while wearing that gleeful, sadistic grin on his face. With Sophia standing there, looking on. He’d trusted her and she’d betrayed him. Betrayed Eliana. Betrayed the ALL.

His anger quickly became rage and he used that as well. He gained his feet, a look of grim determination settling on his bruised and bleeding face, pain singing throughout his body. He focused the energy of pain, rage, and his consciousness into one voice and called out to the Source:

COME!

A Rip opened before him and he didn’t so much walk as fall inside, surrendering to the light and will of the ALL.

“Ah,” Richard heard from his right. “You’re awake.”

He turned his head in that direction and saw Stephen Bana seated on a wooden stool beside the bed he was laying on. There was no pain now. Neither from his head nor his chest. He knew his wounds had been grievous, likely lethal. That and the presence of Bana told him he’d Ripped onto the sanctuary Earth.

“I didn’t know if you would. You lost a lot of blood and even this Earth’s therapeutic properties have their limits.”

“How long?” Richard asked, meaning how long have I been here?

“Almost two days,” Bana said. “Eralah and I were quite startled to find you lying in the courtyard, covered in blood and unconscious. We brought you inside and cleaned you up, sealed what wounds we could, and waited to see if you would come around or remain insensate.”

“You must tell me how you mastered the Rips so quickly,” Bana added.

“Getting shot in the face does wonders for your powers of concentration,” Richard said in retort, throwing back the thin sheet he’d been covered with before sitting up. His bare feet touched cool stone as he rose. He began gathering his clothes, washed clean of his blood and the muck of a half dozen Earth’s. They were tattered and torn as if he’d worn nothing else for years but still serviceable. “And where the hell was Eralah while Eliana and I were Ripping into a trap?” he asked angrily as he yanked on his pants. “Sophia’s been up to her neck in it with BanaTech this entire time. Why didn’t she warn us?”

“You overestimate her powers, brother,” Bana said. “The Cherubim are not all knowing, all seeing creatures. She was as oblivious to Sophia’s treachery as you were. She saw what happened to you and related the events to me, but you brought yourself here before we could devise a way to come to your aid. She has since gone on her way, trying to undo some of the damage you have caused.”

“What are you talking about?” Richard said, pausing while pulling on his shirt.

“I’m talking about your obstinacy, Richard,” Bana replied with growing anger of his own “your stubborn and pig-headed refusal to follow a course of action that would have indefinitely curtailed BanaTech’s efforts to create a Focal Point and open an artificial Rip. This has always been your way; tenaciously and inflexibly following your own convictions regardless of the risk to others. In the past it has been inconsequential; despite your foolishness things have had a way of working out in your favor. This time, however, you have failed utterly and completely. Eliana is gone beyond our reach and BanaTech has succeeded. The Focal Point has been opened. The Multi-verse is converging with disastrous results and soon the Infernal will gain access to the Rips and the souls of humanity. Your insistence on saving the life of one little girl has damned us all.”

Stunned at the revelation that the Focal Point was open and chaos reigned throughout the Multi-verse, Richard sat heavily on the bed. He rubbed his hand across his head, contemplating Bana’s words, and fingered the small, puckered—and heavily coated with cyanoacrylate—hole there. Could the older man be right? Had he simply cast aside the most obvious solution to the BanaTech problem because he disagreed with killing a child? Stubbornly refused to accept any other course of action than what he himself felt to be morally right?

Furthermore, had Sophia been correct when she asserted that he had followed her blindly throughout the Multi-verse on his quest to save the Key? Had he, albeit unwittingly, delivered Eliana to Jefferson through his own obstinacy? Was he to blame for BanaTech’s success in opening an artificial Rip?

Was he responsible for the damnation of every human sole in the Multi-verse?

“I don’t accept that,” he said at length.

Bana made a sound of derision and brushed his hands together in a dismissive gesture. “Your very words confirm what I’ve said,” he replied acidly. “You don’t accept that. Even as I’ve just told you that all is lost; the Focal Point is open, the Rips are converging, and the Infernal are on the rise, the great Michael the Archangel stubbornly rejects his own failure.”

“Go then, brother,” the word dripped with contempt. “Call up a Rip and venture out into the Multi-verse. See what you have wrought. Your human form won’t last long though. I and my attendants have quelled the bleeding from your wounds for now but we can do nothing about the rib perforating your lung. You will bleed out into your chest cavity or asphyxiate within minutes of setting foot on another Earth. And those few moments will likely be filled with agony.”

“And what is your solution?” Richard all but shouted. “To sit here and wait for a Rip to bring us death, or for the Infernal to turn the Multi-verse into its own personal house of horrors? Just give up and accept what’s coming without putting up a fight?” He stopped short of calling the man a coward a second time.

Bana paled. He’d heard the accusation though Richard hadn’t voiced it.

“Of course not,” he said softly, his anger gone at once. “I’d gladly give this life, lose all the knowledge I’ve gained, to put a stop to all this for once and for all.”

“As would I,” Richard said, his own anger fading like a flame with no oxygen to sustain it. Their bickering was pointless. Counterproductive. There had to be a way to undo what was done; to close the Focal Point and stop BanaTech from ever constructing another. To stop the Infernal from gaining the limitless source of power inhabiting the souls of humankind.

For lack of anything better to do Richard slipped on his socks. As he pulled on one boot an idea occurred to him.

“What is BanaTech’s greatest strength?” he asked. “Beyond their sheer numbers and their use of the Rips, what is the one thing that makes their dominance of the Multi-verse possible?”

Bana thought about it.

“The Quantum Cray’s, I suppose,” he said. “Without them they would not be able to locate and plot the Rips. They’d be isolated on their Homeworld. And,” he added, “they’d have no communication or control of their satellites or RLP’s. Much of their military would be cut off. Stranded. Without the QC’s, none of what they have achieved would have been possible.”

“Then the QC’s are also their greatest weakness,” Richard said. “Could their software be corrupted? With a virus?”

“No,” Bana told him. “You must remember that I designed the first generation myself. They are thinking machines, programmed to learn and aware of their own existence. This makes them aware of outside influences and therefore not susceptible to viruses or hacking.”

“They didn’t unleash killer robots on humanity, though,” Richard mused aloud.

“What?” Bana said.

Richard grinned soberly. “Never mind.” Then: “What about destroying the hardware?”

“It’s possible,” Bana said after a pause. “But unlikely. The QC’s are buried miles underground in a protected vault that is kept at a constant thirty-two degrees below zero to prevent overheating. They also possess the ability to repair their own circuits and re-grow their biological components. Short of collapsing the entire vault, there is no way to cause enough damage to all of them at the same time to prevent their self-healing routines from becoming active. Even bringing a million tons of earth down on top of them may not be enough.”

“What if we drowned them?” Richard asked.

Bana raised an eyebrow at this. Richard thought he looked not unlike Leonard Nimoy portraying his most famous character. He almost expected Bana to say: “Fascinating.”

Instead a look of astonishment—Why didn’t I think of that?—crossed Bana’s features and he leaned forward with excitement.

“That could work,” Bana said. “It would take billions of gallons of water entering the vault at enormous pressure to be effective, but it would rapidly short out their electrical systems and without those their biological systems would die.”

“So if one of us Ripped in there,” Richard said, “and directed a Rip from, say, the Marianna’s Trench, the QC’s would be out of commission.”

“Most definitely,” Bana agreed. “It would be suicide. There would be no way to get out before succumbing to the crushing pressure or frigid temperatures of the water, but it could be done.” Then he sat back, his excitement gone, and sighed. “But the Elder would just have more built. It might cost him a year and a lot of resources, but it wouldn’t bring them down for good. Besides, whether they’re aware of it or not, at this point the Focal Point Generator and the QC’s are no longer necessary. The Focal Point is self sustaining. Through Elianna it’s tied into the Source and that, my brother, cannot be destroyed.”

“What about destroying the Focal Point itself?” Richard asked.

Bana considered this.

“It would require a vast amount of brute strength. More strength than you or I, or even the two of us combined, possess in our human forms. Water in any quantity would not work. It would only wreak havoc on the electrical systems and maybe whatever construct they have confined the Rip inside. Fire would be more effective, but I fear the Rip itself would persist. The entire complex would have to be obliterated and Elianna forcibly removed. It is unlikely she would survive the trauma. Again, at the urging of the Infernal, the Elder would simply have another built.”

“Even if he’s aware of the convergence taking place throughout the Multi-verse?” Richard asked. “The devastation and chaos his machine is causing on every Earth, known or unknown?”

“Yes,” Bana replied. “Even if by now—and it’s a possibility—he’s intuited the true goal of the Infernal, the depths of their deceit and how they have used him to seize control of this realm. His innate greed and lust for power are his downfall. He is incapable of resisting their manipulation because his ego is so tremendous as to have convinced him that he is immune to it.”

“Greed goes hand in hand with conceit,” Richard said. “I believe the Elder would want to be on hand for the test of his glorious machine.”

“Agreed,” Bana said, “but what does that have to do with—?”

“You said taking out the QC’s wouldn’t be enough,” Richard reminded him. “And terminating the artificial Rip will only delay the Infernal’s power grab for a year, possibly less. If doing either will cost us our lives why not do both? Destroy the QC’s and the FPG at the same time. And do it with enough punch to take out the entire complex, including the Elder.

“If BanaTech and their hierarchy were destroyed simultaneously,” Bana said.”The Infernal would be without any of the machinations their scheme is based on. It might take them millennia to come up with another. Meanwhile, the balance of the Multi-verse is restored.”

“As are we,” Richard said. “Reborn. Hopefully to discover the threat again before it becomes too late.”

Bana sighed: “It would be a minor victory. I fear this war will never end.”

“Maybe not,” Richard said, “But I think we can win this battle.”

“What do you have in mind?” Bana asked.

“We’ll need Eralah,” Richard said, grinning, and told him the rest.