Chapter 68 - Babel

  The transition through the otherworld portals was getting more and more bearable with each new crossing. When he stepped out the other side, into a featureless, gray stone room with a fog-filled doorway, he barely felt queasy at all. His gun was up and level, and he swept for threats as the others stepped out behind them and cleared their own sectors.

  “Clear right,” said Cole.

  “Clear left,” said Roxy.

  “Last man,” called Besson, coming through behind Nona and Howie. The portal winked out behind them, leaving them fully alone.

  Howie took one look at the foggy doorway and swore. “Aww fuck no, this better not be a Dark Souls.”

  “What the fuck is a Dark Souls?” asked Cole.

  “It’s a video game where you die a bunch.”

  Besson chuckled. “That’s all video games for me. I hate videogames.”

  Roxy bumped Cole, wearing a shit-eating grin. “Cole at least likes Mario.”

  “Focus,” said Cole. Time to be a squad leader again. “This is the safe room, right? Clearly Beth ain’t here.”

  “Right,” said Howie, looking around at the stone walls. The room wasn’t much more than a cylinder fifty feet across with mosaics of warriors fighting monsters between fluted pillars. “Not much in the way of amenities. Hell, it’s completely empty. You could only spend about three days in here, maybe four if you brought water.”

  “Less,” said Nona. She pointed up above the arch. For the first time, Cole noticed a disc above the keystone, illuminated with a soft blue glow that slowly transitioned to red. “Countdown. He Who Watches doesn’t want his contenders sitting still in an empty room.”

  Cole watched the timer drain. “That wasn’t in the brief,” he said. “So much for Beth holing up here.” He didn’t feel like waiting around to see what would happen if it hit zero. “On me. Let’s go, be ready for anything.” He stepped up to the gate.

  “Wait!” said Howie. Everyone turned to look at him. “Where’s Moriarty’s team?”

  Cole stopped, looking back at where the portal had stood only moments before.

  “Fuck!” shouted Roxy. “Did they fucking leave us to do this on our own?”

  “We don’t know that,” said Cole. He looked around, eyes falling on Nona. “There’s multiple ways up from the floors below, right? Does that mean there’s multiple safe rooms like this? I made it pretty clear to him that we weren’t part of his team this time. Stuff like that matters to these worlds.” He already knew there were. It had been in the Termlink info. But it needed to be vocalized to ground the rest of the team and keep them from panicking. Teams entering the portal together getting shunted to different entry points hadn’t been in the info, either, though.

  She considered. “I don’t know. But it makes sense.”

  “Then we wait. We give them until time counts down, then assume they got sent to a different one. We were going to split up anyway. This will let us cover more ground.”

  The rate the timer was depleting, it looked as though they had about a half-hour. So they waited. And waited. Still, twenty-five minutes later, no Moriarty.

  “Guess it’s just us,” said Howie, echoing Cole’s thoughts.

  Returning to the door, Cole tucked his rifle into his shoulder. Overhead, the timer reached just a sliver of the blue light remaining, and then it started pulsing. Cole felt his heart rate climb. He flicked his safety off. “On me, let’s go.” He took a deep breath and pushed through the fog. It resisted him for a moment, but allowed him to pass. He was immediately accosted by a bright light, a cavalcade of noise, and a man shouting and waving something in his face. His rifle was up before his brain parsed the words.

  “Larrox meat! Fresh! Two stone weight for twelve blue pennies.”

  Another man pressed in from the other side, holding a length of fabric. “Replace your worn and damaged garments, friend. I’ll give you a good bargain!”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Charms of protection! Charms of wealth!” called one. “Keep safe that which you covet!”

  Cole held his hand against the glare and looked. The first man was holding two cuts of meat hanging by strings and wrapped in parchment. He put his weapon back on safe and lowered it to its sling as the others followed him out, weapons also concealed under cloaks.

  “Easy,” he warned, coughing. There was an acrid tang in the air that reminded him of the Demons from Vael. “It’s a bazaar. Hold your fire.”

  The group relaxed, at least as much as one could relax while being jostled by strange otherworlders with trinkets and mystery meat. He fished in his admin pouch and drew out his photo of Beth Black.

  “You seen this girl?”

  The man with the mystery meat squinted at the picture, then shook his head. “Beg pardon, Sir, no.”

  He pushed past the meat man, but they had emerged into a narrow alley of stalls and carts, and there were more to take his place The entire road was a funnel of hawkers marketing to anyone coming out of the safe room. He showed the photo to several more, but each denied seeing her until he reached the mouth of the alley, where a greasy, heavy-set, not-quite-human man filling out his tunic near to bursting, interposed himself in Cole’s path.

  “Ah, sirs you must be exhausted by your trials on the third floor. I have beds, stuffed with Harrow-ram wool. Rest a few nights before journeying on, only twenty blue pennies a night. The finest establishment on the fourth floor.”

  Cole pushed past, or tried, but the man was persistent.

  “Clearly the Hall of Dallemonte has blessed you. Kadel has pleasurable company for those with coin. Climbers not so blessed as yourselves. Pliant. Young. Good for a night. Or perhaps more.”

  Trying to repress a shiver of revulsion, Cole stopped. He looked at the greasy otherworld fleshmonger. “How young?”

  “Cole!” hissed Roxy, behind him.

  The fleshmonger grinned, resting his hands in opposite sleeves of his long tunic. “However young Sir prefers. If Kadel does not have them on hand, they can be brought to his house. Many girls come through the passage, weary of climbing.”

  Disgusting. Cole had seen abuse and trafficking in Syria. Desperate people, taken advantage of or coerced. Encountering them was the closest he’d ever come to killing a noncombatant. Even now, he could feel his hand drifting towards his sidearm. But he mastered it. Instead, he moved the arm under his cloak and to his admin pouch. He pulled out the picture of Beth Black.

  “How about her? You seen her?”

  The man’s eyes widened just a moment, and his mouth twitched. If Cole hadn’t had his increased Acuity picking up on subtle muscle movements, he might have missed it.

  “Alas, no” he said, a little too quickly. “Your companion? Perhaps she came up through another passage. Twenty miles south of here, there is another staircase fortress. But Sir should rest and resupply a few cycles before venturing. Partake of what Tallorax has to offer."

  Bullshit.

  Cole replaced the photo and dug around, pulling out a handful of the Babel-bucks. But the man shook his head. “Sir, with that many blue marks, Kadel can get you all the girls you could ever want. Forget about that one.”

  Nutmeg growled beside Cole, and when the man tried to back up, he bumped into Besson, who towered head and shoulders above the man. The fleshmonger looked back, and then up.

  “Tell him what he wants,” said Besson.

  “Kadel cannot tell you what he does not know,” he protested.

  Around them, the hawkers in the bazaar alley had stopped trying to sell them shit as something was clearly going down. Roxy and Howie shifted to cover. Nona had vanished, probably melted into the crowd rather than burning a charge. She was likely watching from close by.

  “Well, we tried the carrot. Now it’s time for the stick,” said Cole. Fast as a viper, he reached out and snatched the front of the man’s tunic. With his other hand, he dropped the coins, which clattered to the dust and gravel. Cole’s shortened vorpal spear came out, no longer than a dagger, for now. In less than a second, he had it pressed to the side of the fleshmonger’s neck. Around them, several of the hawkers were scrounging on the ground for the dropped marks, jostling them in their frenzy. And he had a bag full of the stupid things. Just how much money had Morganstern given his team? The rest of his team immediately had weapons out, securing the area immediately around him.

  The cold tip of the spearpoint pressing against his throat made the fleshmonger recoil. He grabbed at Cole’s wrists, but his strength was lacking. “Oh gods,” he whimpered, looking around at the firearms. “Chaser weapons! But if you kill Kadel, you’ll be banished from the safety of Tallorax!”

  Tallorax. Cole had read about it. One of several holdfasts on the fifth floor. Settled by climbers who had given up on even reaching the next few floors at their current power levels, or even leaving Babel at all, instead looking to make fortunes by separating climbers from their Babel-bucks until they’d bought enough power to simply carve a piece for themselves. Clearly, this fat fucking pimp hadn’t bought enough yet. And neither had the two bodyguards now staring down the barrel of Besson’s machine gun and at a Nutmeg rapidly increasing in size.

  “Yeah. We’ll be banned. What’s our banishment worth to a dead man?”

  Cole heard mutters of alarm circulate amongst the merchants. The word chaser uttered several times in tones ranging from fear, to wonder, to disgust. Several made themselves scarce, despite the money still on the ground. Apparently, DOR’s reputation proceeded them here.

  “Now. We got off to a bad start,” said Cole. He clenched his teeth. “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Not here!” the man said. He waved his hands. “Please! Kadel will tell you. But if He Who Watches sees Kadel aiding a Chaser…” he rubbed his face and growled. “We must go where He cannot see. Please!”

  Cole looked between the other members of his team. The sentiment was clear: fuck this guy. But his reaction had said it all. He’d seen Beth Black.

  Cole replaced his spear and let go of the front of the fleshmonger’s tunic.

  “Well then, let’s retire to someplace we can speak more freely” he said, gesturing to the open end of the alley with an open palm. “Lead the way.”