Behind the Bitmask Read online

  Two more of them rolled out of the portal as I frantically scrolled through everything Terminal had put on his Blackberry, but I ignored the goons for the moment. There were files with names that sounded like weapons, armor, enchantments, curses, songs by the Beatles – I doubled back through the menus, since apparently in my haste, I’d broken into Terminal’s music directory, and in his haste he’d forgotten to remove a memory card full of MP3s from the phone. I heard thunks that sounded like blunt metal slamming into soft flesh, and realized that the DJ had forgotten to pause his set before fleeing. We were currently being treated to some sort of harsh, lightning speed drill and bass track that would kill radio executives at fifty paces. Fitting theme, perhaps?

  My hopes that Sigmar had been harmed were dashed as he flew out of the portal, flapping his arms as if they were actually wings. He was always a comedian, even in the middle of combat. As I kept inspecting my spells on hand, I noticed a script labeled “Killer Instinct.” I clearly needed to kill, so I thumbed at the phone until it appeared to execute. Nothing appeared to happen for a moment, and I watched as Sigmar grabbed an electrical cord off the ground, ripped it in half, and after making a few gestures I didn’t quite catch, aimed both halves of the wire at one of the goons and blasted him with a cone of electrical current. The goon fell to the ground twitching, and I figured the other one was about to meet the same fate. Then, the Blackberry started vibrating uncontrollably in my hand, and I felt a monster inside me.

  “FUCKING HELLSPAWN YOU’VE MADE US SUFFER ENOUGH I WILL TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB AND THEN I WILL TEAR YOUR LIMBS TO SHREDS AND I WILL EAT THEM,” it shouted.

  Who was this beast that was also Charlotte? It told her to kill, and to maim, and how to speak in vitriol and ichor, and how to be more than her normal limits, and that she must destroy all, starting with the platypus. I do not exist except that I am an instrument of murder. I am death incarnate. I have to kill something. I need a weapon, but how do I wish my enemies should fall? Terminal’s phone tells me I need a throwing axe. I must load the axe! A blade can cut flesh from flesh until the soul falls away from the flesh!

  As the axe forms in my hand, I vault into the air with unimaginable speed. The faster I get there, the sooner I’ll hear him scream out and the sooner I’ll end his wailing by slitting his throat and then slicing up every inch of his body into an unrecognizable mush and mutilating that stupid hat and there’s nothing left of him and I let loose my axe and it embeds itself in his head and it actually draws blood, then the beast was gone, and only I remained.

  My throat was sore. I hoped I hadn’t irreversibly turned myself into a mindless killing machine. Was this why Terminal was Terminal? Who willingly gives themselves over to battle rage? In fact, not even Terminal does that! He’s always managed to keep his (un)cool. Was there always a sadistic maniac inside me waiting for something to put it in control of my very self? This was literally the worst time to pontificate on soul magic, freely embraced. There was a tomahawk poking out of Sigmar’s stupid skull. Had I actually hurt him?

  It soon became obvious that I hadn’t. Sigmar casually pried the axe out of his head and licked the side of the blade. The wound I’d opened remained for about a second before it closed up.

  “Nice try, Ada, but you have to work on your...delivery!” Sigmar threw the axe back at me, and it is a miracle that I was able to dodge it at all. I lost some of my hair in the process – the blade whizzed past my right ear and left me with an asymmetrical hairstyle that might go over well in gothy circles, but would draw awkward questions if I brought it to work. That bastard! I used the last of my magic bloodlust to pick up the fallen goon’s mace (implying that the soundtrack wasn’t the only thing in the warehouse that could pound) and throw it at Sigmar. I missed by a mile.

  Sigmar turned to face the third and final goon. I hadn’t noticed him in my bloodlust, but he’d seized up and was cowering in the corner. Apparently, Sigmar could be brutally strong when he felt like it. He effortlessly picked up the goon and threw him straight through the ceiling. The Minneapolis police would be very confused whenever they found his body.

  Sigmar then turned to face me again. Luckily, he’d given me enough time to load up another spell script and surround myself with a sphere of raw magical energy. This was exactly the sort of area denial tactic I thought would’ve given Aux a fighting chance. The shield felt weaker than I was expecting, though. What was up with that?

  It turns out that in my haste, I’d forgotten one of the prime rules of spellscripting, and of magic in general: in order to cast a spell with any effectiveness, you have to understand how it works. That’s one of the reasons computers have been so good for the occult world. Magical power is a chaotic thing, given to acting in complex and non-obvious ways that, while not truly random, might as well be if you haven’t spent years studying. On the other hand, you can write a basic “Hello World” type program long before you know what you’re doing as a programmer, and there are many more places teaching computer science than those teaching magic. They’ll get you to the point where you can read a stranger’s code, learn what they’re doing, and unlock some new magical potential.

  An emergency spellbook from an ally of convenience was better than nothing for someone of my stature, but I was wishing I could’ve had the extra two days to familiarize myself with Terminal’s preferred scripts. Sigmar was probably getting the wrong idea about my abilities from this, though I wouldn’t expect a titan literally infused with magic to really care about the challenges aspiring human sorceresses face. If he’d been taking this at all seriously, I’d be dead. Instead, Sigmar was mocking me.

  “What did I ever do to you to make you so angry that you’d actually try to kill a titan?” he asked in a voice that he probably thought made him sound especially stupid. Then he let his beak drop as if he’d just figured it out.

  “Oh, right! Well, I’d better get rid of you before you inspire the others.” Sigmar lunged at me with blinding speed, baring teeth he wasn’t supposed to have. I was certain that I would be devoured in one bite just like what had happened to...crap, I forgot his name.

  Then, I realized that Terminal’s shield was still strong enough to take a few hits before it collapsed entirely. Sigmar also realized this; instead of opening his mouth further, he flipped over and kicked at it with both of his feet. If he’d actually hit me, it would’ve hurt like hell. As it was, he scattered a chunk of the shield’s energy, and it was visibly dimmer now. Forget area denial! I needed a new weapon, because without occult fury coursing through my veins, I didn’t have the martial arts training to take on a human barehanded, much less Sigmar.

  The bar and its supply of breakable bottles was too far away, none of the guests seemed to have dropped anything – but the goons! One had brought a spiked mace into the fray, but never had the chance to use it before Sigmar had knocked it out of his hand. It was a bit large, but it would do. I dashed over (taking another big hit from Sigmar and endangering my shielding further) and grabbed it. Turns out it wasn’t just a bit large – it was also heavy. More importantly, though, it was sharp. If Sigmar tried to dive kick this, he’d hurt his feet. As it was, I still had a shield to soak up attacks for a few moments, but Sigmar’s third kick drained the remaining energy from my shield, allowing Sigmar to predictably impale himself. I managed to draw platypus blood yet again, but for a second time, Sigmar extracted the offending matter from his feet and stopped bleeding.

  “You know, Charlotte, you should just give up and die. I need to decide who your successor is going to be-” he began before a huge explosion knocked him off his feet. That had to be Terminal because without my own scripting environment, there was no way I was going to make an explosion that big and violent.

  “Terminal! You’re crazy! You’ll kill us all!” Sigmar shouted. He quickly got back to his feet, faced me, and summoned an unfamiliar bright red trident. Usually, Sigmar preferred solid black – had he been
playing with me all this time? I didn’t want to find out what happened if he stabbed me, but he had other plans. He launched himself at me yet again. I raised my mace to parry the trident, but I miscalculated his trajectory and almost certainly would’ve been impaled in the face, but for the fact Terminal dashed in front of me and blocked the blow with his own summoned weapon. Was that a quarterstaff? Terminal not only protected me from the blow, but also managed to bend one of the trident’s prongs! I choked down the urge to cheer for him.

  Sigmar wasn’t making jokes anymore. I wanted to actually help Terminal, but the duel had sped up beyond my comprehension. The sheer amount of spells they were firing off was going to get me killed if I just stood there gaping, so I retreated to a safer distance – uncomfortably close to the portal, but still enough of a vantage point to observe the fighting and hopefully make some sense of it. In that, I failed. I was thumbing through Terminal’s Blackberry, looking for some sort of perception enhancing jinx, when he suddenly rushed over and yoinked it from my hand.

  “Sorry, but I need it,” he apologized, before using it to conjure some spiked balls to throw at Sigmar. After Aux’s similar attack so many moons ago, I wasn’t feeling so optimistic. For a second, it looked like Terminal was gaining the upper hand; he managed to stick several of the spikeballs in Sigmar’s flesh, and they were accumulating faster than Sigmar could remove them. His counter was to jump haphazardly at Terminal in what seemed like an ill-advised attempt to shred him with the spiked balls. Terminal, however, rolled out of the way; before Sigmar could so much as overshoot, an even louder and more violent explosion knocked me over and left my ears ringing for a few seconds. When I got up, I saw Terminal dusting his hands off.

  “Guess we’re going to have to host another party now that Sigmar’s dead, am I right?” he said. At that moment, I was too dazed from the explosion to think coherently, and I hoped it hadn’t given me a concussion. I came to, though, when something bit into Terminal’s neck. He flailed around and managed to throw it off, but it left him with a gash that, unlike Sigmar, he probably couldn’t just dismiss and replace with intact flesh.

  “Oh, shazbot! I would’ve thought the explosion would vaporize him!” Terminal shouted. “You’re pretty much fucked now. Sorry I couldn’t take Sigmar out, Charlotte.” He dashed into the portal, which unceremoniously swallowed him up and then quivered as if it was about to collapse.

  A little pile of charred ashes waddled up to me. Sigmar was completely covered in soot and burnt fur, and he needed to take a bath right away before someone accused him of racist blackface.

  “Do you have any idea how much you’ve inconvenienced me? You probably think Windows XP is a good operating system, you fucking retard,” he snarled at me. Things were bad. Sigmar was actually angry. What was he going to do to me?

  “I will not rest until I have inflicted a million times the pain and suffering you and your little attack dog have attempted to cause me-”

  No point in listening to him babble. In a fit of desperation, I clumsily back flipped into the portal just before it collapsed. I tumbled a few times more than I expected and then landed hard on my shoulder. It stung, but I tried to move it after a few seconds and found no lasting damage. I slowly brought myself to my feet to find myself in a jungle. It was hot, fetid, and full of terrestrial-looking vegetation. The runes in the sky, however, made it clear that I’d entered hell.

  My body realized I was no longer in combat and decided it was time to remind me of all the bruises and scrapes I’d acquired that night. This was bad. How was I going to get home? How was I going to survive if I managed to get home? I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. I had rugged clothes, a cell phone, and a wallet. I needed to survive long enough to find some sort of settlement. Only then could I make any sort of meaningful plans.

  My eyes were watering suddenly. At first, I thought I was going to break down in tears, but then I saw a flash of flickering light – a fire! A controlled one, too. I rushed towards it only to find a spiky chthon roasting marshmallows from a plastic bag on her own quills. Something wasn’t right here.

  “Kane woh seka Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows onnopawa?” she said, in a voice that was both high pitched and gravelly.

  “I’m sorry, what now?” I responded, before mentally chiding myself. No way she was going to understand that!

  “Oh, you’re another one of those Americans. The last one took some marshmallows and left.” What was it with chthons and titans understanding English?

  “Look, where am I? You know, besides not Earth,” I asked.

  “This is my home. It doesn’t really have a name. That’s all I can tell you,” said the chthon. She stopped to pick the now charred marshmallows off her quills, and swore, this time in what I suspected was her native language.

  “Sorry about that. I really shouldn’t do this; I get sticky burnt sugar on my spikes.” But she ate the marshmallows regardless.

  “Was the last person tall, dark haired, and incredibly rude? He opened this portal.”

  “You’ve met Terminal, I see. He barged in here a few days ago with some thugs saying that if I didn’t let him open a portal to Minnesota with his batteries, he’d kill me. I let him. What else was I going to do?” Terminal acting as usual.

  “Where’d he go?”

  The chthon shrugged. “There’s a small village about a mile north of here. I go there to get candy when I get my quills washed. They started taking debit cards recently. Lots of signs in all sorts of weird languages in the stores advertising that.”

  Even after the expedition to Hyperion’s factory, hell continued to surprise me. The presence of such high technology as debit card readers could only mean Terminal was far from the first human to come to these parts.

  “I need to get back to Earth... I think. Should I go there?”

  “Better there than here. Terminal told me about Sigmar. I really don’t want to have to deal with something like that. No hard feelings, okay?” she said with a shrug.

  “None taken.” She led me to a dirt path that would hopefully take me to the village. I needed to supply myself with anything I could get, and I needed to stay on the move so Sigmar didn’t find me and get his revenge. Food security would likely trouble me for some time; outside the marshmallows, I didn’t even know if I could eat the local cuisine yet! Still, as long as I was alive, I hoped that I could turn the tables on Sigmar.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?” - Octavia Butler, Adulthood Rites (1988)

  Hatred is a terrible thing. It gnaws at your insides and pushes you to do awful things that serve only to perpetuate its legacy. It also makes your magic exceedingly powerful.

  After so many months of servitude, I had come to absolutely loathe Sigmar. Perhaps this seething hatred would allow me to have my revenge someday, but all it was good for at the moment was writing bad poetry and carving eldritch runes into my skin. And before you ask, I wasn’t going to do either. One of my occultist partners from back in the Aux days thought rune tattoos would be a good way to unlock his innate magical powers, but it backfired on him. First, his newfound runes drove him into an explosive rage; then, he literally exploded. It was absolutely disgusting.

  Either way, I’d been in the magic racket for a few years, so I wasn’t going to try runing or other thaumaturgic body augmentations just yet. Someone like Edgar might be able to pull it off, but I’d have to stick with the occult for decades to get to that point. In the meantime, I spent my first few days in hell in a shocked stupor. Troubled nightmare landscapes uneasily coexisted with small towns indistinguishable from the American hinterland but for their deformed and slobbering inhabitants. Occasionally, I came across a human or a chthon living what they claimed was a simpler, more traditional way of life, but even they had a lot to say about the local urbanization.

  “Did you s
ee the gas station they built in Pimplesburg?” a stranger asked me as I was walking down a dirt path one day.

  “What about it?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out where he was talking about.

  “I don’t know why they built it. Nobody around here has a car. They can’t be getting a lot of business. Do they think we can just will cars into existence? We’re not titans.” The stranger threw up his hands and continued down the path.

  Unfortunately, after about five minutes, I came to a sign that told me I was entering the town of Pimplesburg. Five hundred and twenty eight forsaken souls lived here, and yet there wasn’t much to show for it except a Shell station with a convenience store on the premises. I went in and purchased some processed junk food and then kept walking on the same path. This was the closest thing I’d seen to a grocery store in the last few days, so I figured that Shell was going to do just fine. Besides, if people got used to the infrastructure for a car society, the local mana nodes might stop barfing lava and start extruding cars. It was hell. Anything could happen.

  I’d always heard hell was somehow sensitive to the thoughts of its inhabitants, but I didn’t believe it until I made camp in a small warren that someone had dug in the side of a low hill. It seemed comfortable enough – the previous denizen had put solar panels on the top of the hill and used them to power some electric lights and gadgets. But as I drifted off to sleep, I began to worry that Sigmar was going to hunt me down personally, capture me, and use me as some sort of torture doll. I was so thoroughly unable to banish the idea from my head that it drifted into my dreams. I saw myself strapped to an austere wooden chair, and there was Sigmar holding a pair of frayed jumper cables hooked up to a battery that was dribbling acid on a concrete floor.