The California Voodoo Game

38

Friday, July 22, 2059 8:23 P.M.

The upper door was being battered in, one shuddering crunch at a time. Cipher lit Oya's chillum pipe and puffed smoke to form a magical window. It showed them the Mallbeasts slamming their bodies mindlessly against the portal. Horribly, they seemed to ignore the tact that their own flesh was tearing, their own bones breaking with the effort.

But at the bottom of the stairs, a delicate miracle was taking place.

Tammi stood with her back to the Adventurers, scanning the landing above them. The Mayombreros would have to get through her first. Bishop and Acacia stood guard at the bottom. Top Nun focused all of her energies on the task of bringing Mary-em's child into the world.

"Push!" she coaxed. Mary-em gave a convincing imitation of a woman attempting to pass a watermelon. She bucked and writhed, she held her breath until she purpled, and she screamed and clawed the ground, gasping.

Then her abdomen glowed. Within that glow, curled sleepily, was the child of Chango, an ethereal infant who looked at them with huge star-child eyes and said, quite clearly, "I've changed my mind. I'm not coming out."

Mary-em blanked with shock. "What?"

"I'm perfectly comfortable right here, Mom."

She sputtered, searching for words that didn't come. "Well-what am I supposed to do?"

"Sit back," the babe suggested, "and watch the show."

Above them there was a rending shriek, the unmistakable cry of a door being wrenched from its hinges.

"Whatever you're gonna do, better make it fast!" Tammi yelled.

And something did happen. The light in Mary-em's stomach expanded, and expanded-became a seething cascade thrusting against the bottom door. Griffin watched disbelievingly as it bowed outward as if pushed by a giant's hand. Its hinges screeched, and it was ripped entirely away in a shower of plastic and metal, flying a dozen feet before clattering to the floor.

And then they were in the reactor room. The warning klaxon grew loud and insistent. "Warning," a synthesised voice said coldly. "The reactor has entered a terminal overload state. You have five minutes to initiate shutdown…"

The light contracted again and formed into Chango junior. Tucked safely in Mommy's tummy, he sucked his thumb. "Did I do good, Mom?"

"Ah… what can I say?"

"By the way I'm not fragile anymore. Neither are you."

Mary-em's nut-brown face creased in a smile. "You mean I can fight?"

"Does the term 'Mommy Tiger' mean anything to you?"

With a vast sigh of relief, Mary-em pulled her staff from her back, balanced it in her hand, and touched a hidden button. It expanded to a four-foot length.

"What'll I call you?" she asked.

"Junior will do. Kick butt, Mom."

She grinned a feral grin. "You gotta love 'im."

The reactor room was a living sea of swarming demonic forms, clotted like weeds in the Sargasso Sea. Only Junior's radiance kept them at bay.

A swarm of Mayombreros boiled down from the top of the stairs, howling. As Junior's light expanded and touched the other talismans, they burst into new light. The Staff of Oranyan talisman blazed at Acacia's neck. The Nommo crown, the Oggun Necklace, and the crutch of Babalu-Aye shone like captive stars.

The Adventurers pushed their way into the control room through a raging, foaming swarm of demons.

Top Nun raised her voice. "That reactor has such a mad on. Gonna get a lot worse, real quick."

"Can you protect us?" Griffin asked.

"Maybe yes, maybe no."

"Dammit, try!"

"Warning. You now have four minutes to initiate shutdown…"

Completely covered by a series of interlocking shields, Griffin and the surviving Adventurers fought their way slowly across the room. It was paved and walled in white tile. Stinking water covered the floor in puddles and trickled down the walls into the electrical connections, which sizzled and popped and reeked of burnt insulation.

The Mayombreros had backed away from the energy barrier. Tammi could slash at them through it, but they couldn't reach her. They watched with hungry eyes as the party edged across the floor.

On the far side of the room, there was a panel almost entirely shrouded with the wispy demonic forms. They seemed to feed at it, to leech upon it. As the Adventurers watched, the shadows suckled, expanded, divided and grew teeth, flew at them and were beaten back by the shields.

But with every attack, the shields buckled just a little bit more before regaining strength.

"Can we get close to it?" Bishop held his sword in both hands, blade slanting at a seventy-degree angle.

"I'm not sure," Top Nun said. She gasped and stumbled before she caught herself. She was buckling with the effort.

The reactor's main panel pulsed and glowed, and the air around it shimmered with demons. One managed to squeeze its way through the shields and attach itself to Top Nun's chest. She turned grey and then white, the life-force leaving her in a visible current. Then Mary-em's hand touched her arm. Color flowed back into Top Nun's face, and the vampiric demon crumbled to dust, fading to the ground.

"Warning, you now have three minutes to initiate shutdown sequence…"

A few more steps, and they had made it to the main panel. Light streamed from the Nommo crown atop Tammi's head, and the Plexiglas shield over the controls slid to the side.

Captain Cipher examined the motherboard. He touched a dial here, a switch there and the wall opened up.

Beyond it lay a steel-lined corridor. It hummed with energy. Water lay in puddles. At the hallway's end, lights glared bright enough to blind. Pulsing, deadly, irresistible. Hourglass Nekro symbols lined the walls.

''The motherboard has shorted!" Cipher said. "Damned Mayombreros have cut their own throats." The computer screen cleared, and a mathematical equation appeared, with a blinking cursor at its end. Cipher screamed. "I can't handle this now!"

"Isn't there an emergency cutoff or something?" Griffin yelled above the growing din.

"Down the corridor. Can't get to it when everything shorted, the gamma shields went up. It's radioactive as hell. I've got to try to route around this blowout. Double-donged Demosthenes-the cube root of what?"

"Damn!" Panthesilea screamed. "The entire hall's another Nekro trap! Cipher, we've got to go through the motherboard!"

Their protective shields began to bend. The godling within Mary-em grew steadily paler. "Mother, " it whispered. "I can't hold up much longer…"

"Cipher?" Mary-em said, alarmed. "Can you or can't you?"

Still examining the screen, Cipher shook his head. "This is straight math. I… I don't know."

"Warning, you now have two minutes to initiate emergency shutdown…"

Cipher looked up at the wall speaker. "Will you shut the fuck up?"

In Gaming Central, all Game Masters were off duty. Every Gaming routine was automatic now; all of their jobs were done, and they hovered around the main screen, watching avidly as time ran out.

Sis was suddenly jolted from his state of passive interest by an alert light.

"We've got a special request from Alphonse Nakagawa," Richard Lopez said.

"What the hell?"

"Alphonse Nakagawa. He… hmmm. I'll be damned. He seems to have constructed a voodoo doll."

"That's interesting."

"More than you know." Lopez conjured up a holo window. On it appeared a succession of freeze-frames: Nakagawa's hands holding a comb; holding half a dozen black hairs; holding a fist-sized doll of twisted cloth, crude but unmistakable. "He registered it with the computer about an hour ago, during their last break. It's Bishop."

Nigel Bishop scotched at his ear. "Attention, Bishop," Richard Lopez said with unmistakable relish. "You have exhausted most of your protection points and are now vulnerable. You have been possessed. According to the dictates of your new master, you will now attack and kill Panthesilea."

Bishop's eyes widened. He spun around, scanning the group, and saw Alphonse seated cross-legged, expressionless, staring at something in his fists.

But there was no time to waste-the penalty for resisting the will of the Dream Park Gods was fearsome. Bishop drew his sword and struck at Acacia.

Her response was almost instantaneous. She dodged, as if she had been expecting the blow-expecting sudden death from the Bishop. Fencing, blocking, she retreated in the only direction she could-into the radiation-flooded Nekro-blazoned corridor.

She tried to stop herself, and couldn't. "No, Nigel!" she screamed, once only. She took a lurching step and found herself in the middle of a lethal radiation field.

"Damn!" she screamed, real fear in her voice. "Damn, damn damn damn damn!"

Bishop stood frozen, unable to move or speak.

Panthesilea collapsed into herself in slow motion. Her body began to steam.

"You bastard!" Tammi said, wheeling on Alphonse.

"Stop!" He called, "I can pull this out. Cipher, you can't break it in time, can you?"

Captain Cipher, sweating, shook his head. "I don't know. I really don't."

"Warning, you now have one minute to initiate emergency shutdown…"

"My way, we win for sure."

Tammi and Mary-em looked at each other. What did they have to lose? Their shields were cracking.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Give Bishop the Oggun talisman," he said. "Enhanced physical strength. Stand still, Bishop!"

Bishop's eyes flamed hatred as the beads were slipped around his neck. "Now," Al the B said with naked malice. "Walk into the corridor, Bishop, and pull the fucking emergency switches."

If looks could cut, Al would have pulled First Soprano in the Vienna Boys Choir. Bishop ground his teeth, almost vibrating with hatred.

"Now," Al said gently.

Then Bishop relaxed, a reluctant grin of admiration halfhidden as he turned. Showtime!

Bishop the Possessed lurched convincingly down the corridor, blistered by killing waves of radiation. On monitors the Adventurers watched his cheeks begin to bubble and run, the skin to blister and peel. He staggered, but the strength in the Oggun Necklace kept him erect.

In seconds he stood before the open shields, bathed in unholy light. He fell against the wall, hands with no flesh remaining digging into them, tearing away metal restraints, grasping for control rods, yanking And then he collapsed to the ground, disintegrating as they watched.

The shields slid shut. The control-panel lights dimmed. The lights m the room dimmed.

"Attention. Emergency shutdown has been activated. Have a nice day.''

The demons circled them in a howling mass. They slowed, and faded, then vanished altogether.

The shrieking alarm siren slowed, and then lowered its pitch and died.

Griffin spared a brief, pitying glance at Acacia. A double black border surrounded her. She looked melted, but her skeletal shoulders heaved almost imperceptibly.

Mary-em, Top Nun, Tammi, Al Nakagawa, and Captain Cipher were all that remained of the party.

Their magical shields failed. The magic was worn out. What next? They had nothing, and A glowing form appeared in the air before them. It was the image of a Nommo, the majestically hideous flat-catfish form balanced on its tail.

"It is over," it said. "And you have won.''