The Paladin Prophecy

TESTED

“Are you’re actually here?” asked Will. “Or am I talking to an ‘astral projection’?”

“What was that, Will?” asked Dr. Kujawa in his headphones.

“Nothing,” said Will in the mic, and then whispered, “What do you want?”

“I left you with a snoot full to cogitate last time,” said Dave. “Now that you’ve had a chance to cleanse the mental palate, you’re ready for the rest of it.”

Back in the control room, Kujawa, Geist, and Robbins were watching images of Will’s brain on a monitor. Dr. Geist pointed to multiple flares of orange and bright red. “He’s neurally hyperactive all through the frontal lobe … and here in the corpus callosum, both sides are firing in unison. The hemispheres are almost in perfect sync.”

“And look at this,” said Kujawa, tapping the screen. “His posterior hippocampus is enlarged to nearly twice normal size, and not at the expense of the anterior.”

“What would that mean?” asked Robbins.

“His spatial comprehension must be almost beyond belief,” said Geist.

Lillian Robbins cocked an ear to the speakers and listened. “Is he talking?”

“When we’re finished here,” said Geist, “I need to run a full genetic profile.”

The MRI machine switched to the next frequency burst, this one long and high-pitched. Will tried to keep his voice as low as possible.

“Go on,” said Will.

“Our executive council’s been called into emergency session,” said Dave. “All hands on deck, round-the-clock discussions—”

“I’m tired of hearing about this, okay?” Will hissed. “Those thugs set some kind of freaky roach motel that burned down my house and tried to kill my friend. My parents, or what’s left of them, are on their way here right now, in a stolen jet with the feds on their tail. The Black Caps are hooked in with a secret society at the school that’s bringing creatures over from the Never-Was, and they killed or kidnapped the kid who was living in my room—”

“Wow,” said Dave. “You have been busy.”

The frequency changed again, clobbering the chamber with sound. With his eyes closed, Will realized he could now see Dave walking around the MRI machine. He even noticed writing in the helicopter patch on the back of his jacket: ATD39Z.

Am I seeing him right through this machine?

But when Will opened his eyes, the only thing in front of him was the white plastic ceiling an inch from his face. Will’s heart hammered. He closed his eyes again and tried to ride it out. Dave moved into sight, leaning on the MRI machine.

“That’s it, mate, keep breathing,” said Dave. “Here’s the word: You’ve been given our highest security clearance, Level Twelve. Cards on the table. You need to know the background on the Other Team.”

Will struggled to stay focused. “Okay.”

“The Other Team is what we refer to as the Older Root Race,” said Dave. “Have a squiz at this.”

Dave walked through the MRI machine until he was standing right in front of Will. He took out the glass cube with the floating dice. The dice slowed to a halt. A beam of light shot from the die on the left and refracted through the other like a prism. The split beams shot directly into Will’s eyes. His mind filled with tumbled, disturbing flashes of the narrative Dave proceeded to tell him.

“They were here eons before humans,” said Dave. “They’re our distant predecessors. Not ancestors. Ancestor implies lineage. They’re not human, but a different breed altogether. Hence predecessors. As in, prior inhabitants of Earth.”

An older race. Someone else told me something like this recently. Coach Jericho.

“Back in their day,” said Dave, “these Old Ones made a thorough bollocks of the premises and ran afoul of the Hierarchy.”

“How?”

“They were smart. Wicked smart. They built empires and wonders that make humans’ great achievements look like squiggles in a sandbox. And the bigger they dreamed, the further they sailed off course. They lost their moral compass a million miles at sea, which led them into wrong thinking and the development of what we call aphotic technology.”

“What’s aphotic mean?”

“Without light,” said Dave.

In the flickering light of the dice, Will saw strobing images of vast laboratories filled with towering slabs of unfathomable machinery, manned by huge, shadowy inhuman figures.

“That’s when they stuck their skizzers in where they shouldn’t have mucked about. With their infernal tinkering, they abused the primal tool kit and brought all manner of unnatural creatures into this world that were never meant to be.”

Will saw row after row of transparent canisters filled with rank, roiling substances. Suspended in them grew shockingly deformed creatures of all shapes, species, and sizes.

“They twisted the earth’s flora and fauna into a catalogue of nightmares: bugs, beasts, bacteria, whatever they could lay their hands on. They tainted codes, perverted blueprints, and made the world a butcher’s picnic beyond the end of madness. Unable to stand idly by any longer, and in spite of our eternal hands-off policy to let locals sort things out for themselves, the Hierarchy intervened.”

“What happened?” whispered Will

“Suffice it to say, these bad boys did not go quietly.”

The visions bombarding Will shifted. Now he looked down on a grim, befouled earth where explosions erupted from a surface rent by titanic storms, earthquakes, and massive tidal waves. A global cataclysm.

“After a period of time referred to as the Great Unpleasantness, we banished the whole rotten horde of them to the confines of an interdimensional holding area. Or, if you will, a prison.”

Above a barren arctic landscape, a gigantic shimmering scythe slashed open a hole in the sky, revealing the hellish wasteland Will had glimpsed once before.

“Otherwise known as the Never-Was,” said Will.

“Yes,” said Dave.

Dark demonic legions driven by a gleaming host of warriors passed through the glowing, fiery portal. When the last of their shadowy masses had gone through, the portal slammed shut and vanished with a finality that made Will’s blood run cold.

The Gates of Hell.

“So this lot isn’t from a different dimension; they’re from here. They’re now in a different dimension, very much against their will. Most of their misbegotten handiwork went with them, but we missed a few lurking in dark corners. When a new apex species emerged from the primordial kettle, the human race, those last, fugitive remnants became the monsters of all our early myths and legends.”

More images appeared, mythical creatures of land, sea, and air terrorizing primitive man: flying serpents, werewolves, deepwater leviathans, a complete zoology of horror.

“Over the last millennium,” said Dave, “the Old Ones have been trying to restake their claim on the planet. And they’ve recruited some of our own—human collaborators—to help them.”

“The Black Caps,” whispered Will. “The Knights.”

“The latest in a long line of strong men and women with weak minds,” said Dave. “For hundreds of years, the Old Ones have corrupted them with gifts of aphotic technology, ideas and inventions that make them worldly fortunes. That’s how they turn them against their own kind. And with every betrayal, the Other Team moves closer to breaking through and regaining control of Earth.”

The bright light and visions ended abruptly, withdrawing into the black dice. Dave stuck the cube back in his pocket and walked through the other side of the MRI machine.

“Okay, fine,” said Will. “But what do they want with me? I’m nobody. I’m just a kid. I have nothing to do with this—”

“That’s where you’re wrong, mate,” said Dave, leaning in. “Turns out they’ve got a bloody good reason that was in front of us this whole time.”

“Which is …?”

“You’re one of us,” said Dave. “What we call an Initiate. A member of the Hierarchy.”

Will’s mind froze. He couldn’t even respond.

“Think about it, Will. All those nasty bits sent across to take you out, all this relentless pursuit. There’s big doings in store for you before you’re home and hosed, my friend.”

“That’s why you’re here? To protect me because I’m an … an …”

“Initiate,” said Dave. “And the baddies know that once you’re in training, as your case officer I can only intervene a limited number of times—”

“Training? What training? I haven’t started any training—”

“Don’t be thick, mate. The Hierarchy doesn’t hand out Level Twelve security clearances like raffle tickets. You’ve started whether you know it or not—”

“Don’t I have any say in this?”

“Not anymore,” said Dave. “And as an Initiate, there’s two rules you need to mind. One, you’re now bound by a strict confidentiality agreement. Don’t even tell your pals about the Hierarchy, and beyond them, I wouldn’t trust another living soul at this point.”

Will glimpsed a flash of the avenging angel in Dave’s eye. “What’s the second rule?”

“Stay alive,” said Dave. “During your probationary period, I’m allowed to save your bacon nine times. And since we’re nearly halfway through your allocation, you’d best learn how to look after yourself, and fast.”

“But we’re not ‘nearly halfway,’ ” Will protested. “We’re only at three; that’s a third of the way—”

“Not anymore.” Dave held up four fingers and drew his long hybrid sidearm from its shoulder holster.

The lights went out.

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