Lucifer Unchained, page 4
part #4 of Lucas Johnson Series
I leapt back and fired from the Glock in my hand. One, two, three. Head, head, heart, and the three men fell to the ground. I hit Saiyyad in the chest since he could later be used for facial recognition.
I kicked Saiyyad’s body aside, ducked above the case, found the weakest EMP stick, flipped off the cover, and pressed the red button. A flash of white light blinded me for a split second. Sure, this place was a fortress, but I doubted they had their circuitry built to withstand an EMP.
I grabbed the rocket launcher, verified a penetrating rocket was loaded inside, and put the belt with four more rockets over my shoulder. I also packed a set of flashbangs and smoke grenades into my pockets, took four extra ammo magazines for the Glock, and closed the case. Yes, I had my colts on my thighs, but I was already leaving behind the NATO rounds, so I better keep the tracks consistent.
A door burst open and two men ran inside, rifles in hand.
Okay, these guys didn’t have any military training. Four, five. I shot them in the head before they realized what was happening. With a smirk, I headed into the hallway.
The tank in the entry hall could be a problem if they decided to start firing into the building. And so, I took a round-about path to arrive from an angle they wouldn’t expect. On the way, I ran into three men. They died within a second, each with a bullet flying through his head.
We reached the main lobby through the back door. As expected, the tank aimed at the door where Saiyyad took me. I put the Glock into my pocket and straightened the rocket launcher. For the first time since I bought it, I had a good opportunity to use the weapon. I braced the launcher on my shoulder, leaned forward slightly to prepare for the recoil, aimed at the tank and pressed the trigger.
Hissing echoed through the air and a rocket flew out, hitting the tank at the base of its turret. Explosion thundered through the air, making adrenaline spike through my veins. Fuck yeah.
The rocket almost tore off the tank’s turret, revealing a gaping hole. A burning man jumped out through the gap, screaming. I dropped the rocket launcher and shot him with the Glock. I ran to the tank.
Inside the tank, two more men lay lead. I shot them both to make sure and returned to the rocket launcher. After pocketing the Glock, I put a new rocket into the barrel, and then headed toward the outpost’s eastern corner.
Thanks to the EMP, electricity would need a few hours to come back online, so I had the time to clear the place out. But I saw no reason to wait since I gave Lillith a promise I would be back in half an hour. She had no way to measure time, but still.
Fifteen minutes later, I killed everyone in the gun nests and everyone I ran into in the hallways. Now, I stood before the control room’s door.
I walked two-dozen-feet through the hallway and put down the Glock. I aimed the rocket launcher so it would hit the wall next to the door and fired. The rocket hissed out of the barrel and then shook the world with its explosion. Awesome.
I dropped the rocket launcher, drew a flashbang from my pocket, removed the pin, and tossed it into the gaping hope. I turned, light flashed, I grabbed the Glock, and I bolted in. Three men crawled inside the dark control room, dazed. Three bullets ended their suffering.
With this, the building was clear. I returned to where I left the weapon case. Not taking Lillith was the correct call. Sure, this wasn’t the first time she would have seen death but watching me was different than watching others. From my experience, other people mostly killed out of emotion. Anger, hatred, retribution, wrath, all of these emotions had killing as their culmination. That was what Lillith might have known.
I had no emotion when taking lives and she wouldn’t be the first person to freak out over that. I was not the savior she called me, but I was also not going to set this version of me as her role model.
On the way, I glimpsed a kitchen and turned into it. The windowless room was dark as the window was small, peeking into a small courtyard. My stomach grumbled, remembering how hungry I was. With a smile, I opened the fridge. I cared little for what I ate. Since I didn’t feel like cooking, I took out leftovers of something that looked like curry with lamb and cold rice. I piled that onto a plate and put it onto the table. With a smile, I took another plate and put food onto that one as well.
Lillith was also bound to be hungry. Which brought the problem of how I would proceed from here since there would be more security ahead.
I combed the rooms until I found a medical box. While the boxes of pills had mostly Arabic text, they had English names since they weren’t made in the Middle East. After a bit of rummaging, I found lorazepam. Perfect. I returned to the kitchen and took out one pill. I crushed the pill into powder and mixed that into the rice on Lillith’s plate. Afterward, I put her plate into the microwave and set it to run for three minutes.
Yes, I would rather drug her than to let her see me kill.
Once done, I walked out of the kitchen and cleared all the corpses on the way. I didn’t bury them, just stacked them into side rooms so she wouldn’t see them. The last were the men in the tank, who I shoved into a far corner, and then I walked out of the complex.
With a leisurely step, I reached the sand heap where I left Lillith. She was crouching behind that, pale with wide eyes.
I smiled. “It’s all right. I’m back.”
“I heard explosions!”
“Things didn’t go well. But the path is clear now.”
She was looking at me as if I turned crazy. But the angelic sense for truth told her I wasn’t lying.
“Come.” I motioned her to follow me. Mostly hiding behind me, she did. We entered the building, where she stared at the destroyed tank, and I led her through the prepared set of hallways all the way to the kitchen.
She asked no questions, though she must had noticed the stains of blood. In the kitchen, I motioned toward a chair, took the food out of the microwave and put it in front of her.
Wordlessly, I took my plate, put it into the microwave, and set it to run. Right, silverware. I reached into a cupboard and gave her a fork and a knife.
She stared at the food, and then at me “How… how can you eat now?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“The destroyed tank, the blood… the guards didn’t leave willingly. And these are their chairs and their food.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, what about it?”
“What about it?” You said you were an investigator!” she shouted. “This wasn’t investigating!”
I took the food from the microwave and sat across the table. She shook with anger, hands clutched into tiny fists.
“Investigations often get messy,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean you can just kill people!”
Great, now the angel was brave. “Do you think that they would just let us enter? That they would let us free even one person from the city?”
“That doesn’t mean you should make things worse! And murder is a sin! What would Evelyn tell you if she saw this?”
She would giggle and take a selfie with the destroyed tank. But the thought of Evelyn made my chest tighten. I missed her. “I told you, Lillith. I am no one’s salvation.”
“And what about freeing the slaves? Not even an hour ago, you promised you would save them!”
“I promised I will do my best to help them find freedom,” I said, still calm. “And I will do that. Also, angels are usually made for a purpose. Perhaps the reason for you becoming what you are now was done so you would see me live up to that promise.” That was a horrible lie since I made her by accident, but I needed her functional.
She paused, frowning. “I suppose.”
Yes, the angelic truth-sense had problems with sentences laced with maybes, perhaps, and other expressions of uncertainty. “Now, eat.”
“Yes!” she took a seat and started munching down the minced meat with rice.
As we ate, Lillith got progressively more tired. Before she finished the meal, she collapsed on the table. I caught her head so she wouldn’t stain her hair.
I didn’t feel good about myself when I put her back on the chair. After I finished my meal, I took a cleaver, a long coffee spoon and two satchels, from which I emptied the rice it contained. I left the larger satchel behind and returned to the room with the weapon case where Saiyyad lay. His corpse already stank and that wasn’t going to help. Using the cleaver, I chopped off his right hand, right at the wrist. And with the spoon, I poked out his right eye. Both of these, I bagged in the satchel. There could be a biometric scanner somewhere ahead and for that, I would need his body parts.
I searched for a bedroom, which I soon found, and from there, I took the traditional local thobe and the headwear, ghutrah. I sealed my hat into the weapon case, where I returned all weapons other than my colts, and dressed myself to look like a local. For Lillith, I found nothing of appropriate size, so she would look a bit worse in these clothes, but a bit of fabric tearing solved that, at least partially.
I returned to the kitchen and put the clothes for Lillith on top of the rags she now wore. Afterward, I poked a few holes in the large rice satchel, and then I put Lillith inside. Yes, carrying her around in a satchel wasn’t a great solution, but I saw no alternative.
As I moved through the complex, I pondered absorbing aether of some of the dead men. I wouldn’t be able to get much from them, but something was more than nothing. That would rejuvenate me. But the problem with that was that doing so would turn their corpses into dried husks, which would be very recognizable.
I entered the courtyard, where I laid eyes on a massive door, leading down into the ground on a low sloping ramp.
In the desert, Lillith told me of a legend that the spirits of the dead warriors of Ubar never leave for the afterlife. Instead, they were supposedly guarding the city, eternally watching over all entrances. They were to devour the souls of any intruders foolish enough to attempt to enter Ubar uninvited.
Cute, but I knew no other access point. And I was good with spirits.
I reached the control panel by the door and was pleased to recognize an eye scanner. The small, black display with a red diode was placed slightly below the standard eye level. I put down the weapon case, reached into the satchel of body parts, pulled out Saiyyad’s eye, and placed it in front of the display. The diode flashed, the screen lit up green and the door started opening with a rumbling sound.
And, holy shit, this door was over six-feet thick, fully steel. I once broke into a Yakuza vault, but even that couldn’t compare to this place. I entered the tunnel made of steel, careful so the satchel with Lillith did not bump into my weapon case. The tunnel was large enough for a truck to pass through unhampered. As the door closed behind me, sealing the desert wind on the other side, the tunnel became unpleasantly quiet. The fans spinning under the ceiling were deathly silent.
Suddenly, I could hear my steps and my breath. That was uncomfortable, at best. I sped up my walk.
An eerie feeling of cold ran up my arm. I withdrew aether from my heart and funneled the power into my eyes. The world around me shifted its colors, revealing what mundane sight couldn’t see, including the ghost floating next to me. And the ones around it. Ghosts filled the entire tunnel, ethereal, grayish forms that resembled men wearing thobes.
Excellent. I reached out with my aether toward the ghost grabbing my arm. Like a tendril of darkness, my power wrapped his hand and then his chest. I blended my aether into his and drew both in. With a shriek, the ghost got absorbed into me, his aether devoured by mine. Pleasant warmth jolted into my chest.
Angels were the absolute pinnacle of the spiritual food chain. Sure, I was a fallen angel, but that wasn’t much different from the spiritual point of view. I stood a tiny step beneath the spiritual world’s food pyramid’s apex and the ghosts weren’t even close.
The other ghosts stopped. I spread out my aether, filling the spiritual realm with a thousand tentacles of darkness. The spirits shrieked and tried to float away. Like I would let them. With each ghost I devoured, my power grew, allowing me to spread my aether further, to absorb more of these ghosts. The furthest one I caught was over eighteen miles away. When my tendrils couldn’t find any ghost I could devour, I withdrew all the power into me. My veins seared with strength and tiredness vanished from my mind.
I breathed in, born anew. Spirits weren’t a good protection against fallen angels.
I crossed four miles before seeing the gate at the other end. I arranged the ghutrah on my head, uncomfortable without my cowboy hat, and walked toward the panel at the side.
As I approached, I fuelled my eyes with aether and tweaked the power. Lines of light appeared in the walls, electricity wires. The main camera, which I recognized by the otherwise blind ending of the lights, was straight above the gate, gazing into the tunnel. The second camera was above the panel.
Undisturbed, I walked to the empty wall at the other side from the panel where the cameras had a blind spot. I put down Lillith’s satchel, and then my weapon case, which I opened. I fished out the rocket launcher. While I had no idea what defenses they would have behind this gate, I had nothing stronger than the rocket launcher.
Okay, sure, I had my spells, with which I could evaporate a smaller city now that I had eaten a thousand souls, but I didn’t want to reveal my power this soon. And using so much strength would be wasteful and alert the Sultan, whoever that may have been.
I loaded the rocket launched and put the belt with the last penetrating rocket over my shoulder. While I still had four incendiary rockets, those weren’t useful right now.
I went to the panel, lowering the rocket launcher so it wouldn’t be apparent from the camera. Sure, if whoever watched the feed paid attention, he would notice the weapon. I counted on him slacking, and I swiftly presented Saiyyad’s eye to the scanner.
The machine beeped and gate started opening. This one was also six-feet thick. I braced the rocket launcher on my shoulder and jumped into the gap.
In front of me was a large hall with a tank in the middle, aiming at the opening with the cannon. I fired. The rocket hissed and then exploded, hitting the turret’s base. The shockwave accompanied with a burst of heat made me smile. Two exits led from the room, a large gate behind the tank and a small door by the side.
The gate looked like it was made for the tank, so men would come from the small door. I loaded the last penetrating rocket. Only now, I noticed two men who stood guard by the door, both confused by the explosion to the point of not being a threat, scrambling for cover. I jumped up and fired. The explosion blew apart the big gate.
I whirled, dropped the rocket launcher back into the weapon case and slammed the case shut. The two men at the sides finally regrouped and reached for their weapons. I picked up the weapon case, the satchel with Lillith, and bolted into the hall.
The guards picked up their rifles and started shooting, though they were too rattled by the explosions to hit us. The smaller door opened, and more men flooded inside.
We ran past the tank and through the hole in the former gate. Beyond lay a tunnel. I drew, unpinned, and dropped a smoke grenade. That wasn’t going to stop our pursuers, but they would assume I would be waiting for them on the other side, so they would take things slow. And since I kept running, we were going to be gone by then.
I passed through the tunnel and reached a ramp that led down into the city, laying eyes on the Atlantis of the Sands, Ubar.
Chapter 4
UBAR was larger than I expected, much larger. The city lay in a vast cavern with natural sandstone walls and a glass ceiling that gave the feeling of a dome. In the sun’s intense light, the city spread from one horizon to the other. The architecture followed late medieval Middle Eastern style with minarets, domes, and gold. Lots and lots of gold that glistened in the sun.
Since my pursuers were bound to catch up soon, I descended the stairs and blended into the crowd.
The people moving around me were an unpleasant mixture. Three major parties were apparent. First, the men wearing the white thobe and white/red ghutrah, then women fully covered with a black niqab and then the slaves, who were a mixture of all ages, but wore exclusively brown clothes.
A single look at a fourteen-year-old girl carrying a large loaf of bread while limping due to her hobbled ankle made me hate this place. I tore my eyes away from her and headed into a secluded alley.
Gently, I put down the satchel with Lillith and took her out. She was soundly sleeping and didn’t have a bruise, so I most likely succeeded in not bumping her into anything. I touched her shoulder and gave her a jolt of my aether.
She jerked awake eyes wide. “I’m up! I’m up!” she shouted.
What the hell happened to her that she did that? I frowned. “Calm down. I’m here.”
Lillith blinked a few times and her breathing slowed down. She opened her mouth to speak but her gaze froze on the tall block of flats that rimmed the alley.
“Yes, we are in Ubar,” I said calmly.
She paled so much I started fearing she would disappear. “How did we get here?”
“I sneaked us in.”
She stopped for a second, and then glowered at me. “Did you knock me out?”
“Yes.” I smiled. “Does this city have a standard day-night cycle?”
“Why did you do that?” she asked, ignoring my question.
“There are things you should not see.”
“I’m young, not stupid.” She raised her chin. “Do you think I don’t realize that you had to kill some people for us to get here?”
“There’s a big difference between realizing something and seeing it first-hand.” I stretched my neck, straightening. “And now, we need to find a place to stay.” I gazed at the overcrowded streets and loaded buildings. “But there’re no hotels in here, right?”
With a sigh, Lillith stood up. “No one comes here uninvited.” She pointed at the sky, which looked normal through the glass dome that covered the entire city. “And there is a day-night cycle.”
