Minister Faust by From (html) (best ereader for pdf txt) 📗

Anyone been asking you about your visions, like if they relate to Hawk King? Anyone asking questions, asking you about Hawk King’s defenses, or his weaknesses, or the defenses of the Blue Pyramid?”

“Asking questions, X-Man-man? Years and years and years and years of questions-questions-questions—”

“POOR GIL’S COLD…”

“—and filling Gil and me with druggies, can’t-thinkies, P-I-shitties…Done something to old Gil, so he can hardly talky-thinky. But never forget truth, X-Man-man. Never.”

“Which is what?”

“Bad moons rising—”

“TROUBLE ON THE WAY—”

“—serpent’s egg a-hatching, dragon’s unfurling, talons scraping, knives sharpening, bloody tide rising, leviathan rising from the deep-deeps, slithering and slouching forth, hungry-hungry-hungry—”

“Who, N-Kid? Who is it?”

“Secret! Mystery! Twilight of the century! Midnight of the millennium! Sky rains, stars darken! Butchering of the prophets! Burning of the scriptures—”

“KILL THE KING—”

“—and disappear, watchers with slaughtering knives and fingers cruel, into night, to butcher children with parents’ own blades—”

“AND THE KING FALLS, NEVER AGAIN TO GLIMPSE THE MOON, AND DOES NOT FLY LIKE A BIRD, NOR ALIGHT LIKE A BEETLE—”

“Gil, N-Kid, help me out here! Who did or who’s gonna do what you’re saying? Who killed Hawk King?”

“Mystery! Mystery wrapped inside enigma, wrapped inside tortilla, wrapped inside light, fluffy nan bread, wrapped inside flaky phyllo pastry!”

“Was it Menton?”

Instantly, Gil and the N-Kid ceased their ranting. Kareem had asked the ultimate question, played his highest face card. Whether or not Hawk King’s death was from natural causes, this question revealed Kareem’s yearning for a pat and simple answer. As an interrogator, he was now at his moment of greatest vulnerability to a mad prisoner’s manipulation.

“Hard to say,” leered the N-Kid, cocking his head. Then, slowly, he said, “Who’s…Menton?”

Kareem’s lips parted, then nearly closed.

“Kot-tam,” he mumbled. “We’re done here.”

“No! No-no-no! Listen, X-Man-man!” said the N-Kid, kicking the letho-glass with his hooves, ignoring the arc shocks. “Who’s Menton? Who’s Menton? Understand?”

“FOOLED, X-MAN? FOOLED TO DEATH? DEATH TO FOOLS? WHOSE? A PLAN, A PROSPECT, A PROJECT—FOR A NEW HEROIC CENTURY OF DEATH DESCENDS, LIKE THE BULL OF HEAVEN UPON THE WORLD, TRAMPLING TOWERS LIKE GRASS, CRUSHING SKULLS BENEATH ITS HOOVES LIKE GRAPES—”

“Listen, X-Manny-man! Listen!” Kick, arc shock, kick, arc shock. “ ‘Whose?’ Understand? ‘Whose?’ ”

Kareem shook his head and pushed himself out of his chair while the electric shocks strobed the room into blinding whiteness. “C’mon, Doc!”

“WHOSE, X-MAN!” Gil Gamoid plastered his massive palms against the glass, arc-shocking his body into a giant humanoid fireworks display, his rail-spike teeth turned into a panpipe of awful electrical music. “WHOSE MENTON? WHOSE X-MAN? WHOSE MENTON? WHOSE X-MAN? WHOSE—”

To Face the Devil Himself

Exiting, we found Iron Lass waiting by herself down the corridor, agitatedly stroking her cheek, ear, and neck with an index finger. An insignificant gesture for anyone else, the fidgeting was practically a panic attack for her.

I caught her eyes, but only for a moment before they flickered away. There was dread in the black of her pupils but far more guilt in the whites of her scleras. She’d always been close to the two heroes of Ur-Prime; by some accounts, she’d never forgiven herself for her role in their incarceration.

When I asked Hnossi where all the other F*O*O*Jsters had gone, she said that the Flying Squirrel had ventured into the biocontainment Unit X to interrogate the Devolver, who’d once attempted to devolve Hawk King into a tuna. André and Syndi, on the other hand, had retired to the staff commissary.

With Dr. Wells’s guidance, Kareem, Hnossi, and I proceeded with growing trepidation to Unit Z, what was sometimes called the M-Wing. Past numerous security checkpoints, EEG/EPG monitoring stations and ever more obvious and numerous psidampeners, we descended to the cell-within-a-cell-within-a-cell wherein dwelt the Destroyer.

Passing through multiple metallic bank vault portals and rumbling scanners, beyond anxious armed guards, we arrived at the penultimate chamber. Dr. Wells reviewed with the three of us the psychic safety protocols he’d outlined when I contacted him the previous day, techniques to use in an emergency to stop Menton from terror-shackling our minds. Wells made us sign our final waivers, indicating next of kin and checking off the DNR boxes.

I reminded Kareem that if he wanted to turn back, there was nothing stopping him.

His glare, a costume of bravado and contempt, couldn’t disguise his fear.

“We’re ready,” said Dr. Wells into the wall comm. “Release Unit Z Door 1, code delta-epsilon-alpha-theta.”

Instantly, brutal blue light screamed into our vestibule through the retracting iris door until blue enveloped us, until blue was thick on our tongues like the taste of blood, until blue clogged our nostrils like the stink of gasoline.

We stepped through the circular doorway.

The prisoner was shackled into a massive P-I chair, wires and cathodes and tentacles sucking every psion of phagopsychotic energy from his body. His head was crowned with a specially designed P-I Helmet, its diodes drilled directly into his brain. Despite the chair’s imprisoning purpose, I couldn’t help but notice how much its technological grandeur had turned it into a throne, how much the modified helmet resembled a crown of silvery spikes, the tip of each twinkling like an electric ruby. And so as I looked at him burning in the center of the chamber, an ultraviolet star at the center of an ultrablue nebula, I was forced to remember Milton’s description of the Fallen One who disdained service in heaven for rule in hell.

I’d studied the manifold clinical and mental techniques of this “man” once known as Dr. Napoleon Orator, corresponded with him, even published articles and books about him. But this was the first time I’d ever stood in the presence of the villain who’d murdered ten thousand people in a single, awful day in Las Vegas in 1983: Menton the Destroyer.

My bones felt like eggshells. And I was cold.

“Welcome, Iron Lass,” stage-whispered the Destroyer.

The Valkyrie said nothing in reply.

“It’s been a long, long time,” he continued. “Especially for me. But of course, I have you to thank for my stay here. And I’ve been…longing…to express my gratitude.”

Beside me, Hnossi stiffened, swallowed.

“And at last we meet, Doctor Brain,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed our epistolary conversation