Chapter 299: Infinity (2/2)

”Which layer is this?” Herod asked.

Sam made an odd noise. ”That's... hard to describe. It's Bangward from the one you were on, but it's Layer Nine AKA Layer Iota even though, in a strange way, it's closer the Bang but smaller than the ones closer to the Bang. It's hard to explain.”

”You know what, nevermind. Just tell me where I need to...” Herod's voice trailed off as the maglev train smoothly pulled out, going at a sharp upward angle like a roller coaster. A Gen-Two StarTram, which moved the maglev train above any atmosphere to reach extremely high speeds of nearly a hundred miles a second at top speed.

He looked down and was startled at how slowly the 'ground' seemed to pass. Vast buildings, what could only be massive factory complexes, huge empty fields that Herod had a feeling were just vast roofs over complex systems.

”Where are we?” Herod asked.

”Not sure. Classified region,” Sam-UL said. ”There's an even twenty high end self-modifying evolving Black ICE guarding the computer access for that region and I'm not too interesting in fighting with what looks to be ancient Hamburger Kingdom electronic warfare combat systems.”

”Don't blame you,” Herod mumbled. Like many of the other Terran historical governments, the Hamburger Kingdom made their own weapon systems rather than pulling from the Confederate armories like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, they accomplished this by piling up a massive pile of physical wealth and burning it while scores of people walked in a circle around the fire, chanting strange slogans and adding more wealth as needed, until the new military equipment was revealed in the ashes.

Say what you want, they've got the meanest equipment out there. They rival Space Force in sheer firepower, Herod thought to himself as the tram slowly moved over a section covered by clouds.

He glanced down and saw what looked like massive squares on the ground. He squinted his eyes, magnifying what he was seeing, until he realized he was looking at huge military formations of massive bulky cyborgs.

”Sam, where I'm looking. What's that? There's millions of them,” Herod said.

”Let me check,” Sam said. ”Oh. Oh man. Stop looking at them. Don't look at them.”

Herod looked away, bringing his vision back to normal and smiling at Wally, who sleepily waved at him. ”What are they?”

”Something terrible,” Sam said softly. ”You think our parents are insane now? They used to be worse.”

”What are they?” Herod repeated. ”Are they going to be a problem?”

”No. They won't be a problem. They're not for this universe or any other yet,” Sam said. ”Our parents were paranoid. That's the Entropic Legion.”

The file hit and Herod grunted like he'd been punched in the gut. He scanned the file and whistled. Cyborgs designed to enter the universe after entropy had finished and the universe had died and been reborn, to see if the universe was habitable and, if necessary, destroy anyone who threatened a recently returned mankind. The weapons were esoteric and several times Herod wanted to argue with the file that reality didn't work that way.

Only our parents would make plans and prepare to invade a universe that doesn't exist yet, Herod thought to himself, shaking his head to delete the file.

The maglev switched tracks and began to slow down, moving through a slow spiral arc that funneled down to the surface again. Herod sighed and waited, bracing himself for what was to come.

Psychic residue was everywhere, recording the last moments or highly stressful situations all over the massive complex.

When he stepped off the maglev he closed his eyes for a second. Humans and Treana'ad were flickering into existance and vanishing, all made up of the translucent white energy. He saw a Treana'ad warrior spear a human female through the stomach but the human female just laughed, blood running down her chin, broke off the Treana'ad's bladearm at the elbow joint, yanked it from her stomach, and shoved it through his open mouth before using it to twist off his head.

They both flickered and vanished as Herod drew near, following the blue line in his vision.

The entire place was eerily silent, just the low hum of machinery working at impossible distances and a faint whispering that he could hear. He followed the line through a door, down hallways, and into an elevator.

He closed his eyes during the ride, the specters of a half dozen humans fighting to the death in the elevator repeating over and over. When the doors opened he followed the blue line until it suddenly stopped.

”All right, this is what's called a 'madness secured area', Herod,” Sam said.

”That sounds... ominous,” Herod said. Wally beeped nervously.

”I'll have to give you directions. There's no datalink, but I can still talk to you on the security frequency. Gird yourself,” Sam said.

The door opened to reveal and empty room, with pale squares and rectangles on yellowish carpet. The walls were pale yellow, with flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling. There was one or two doorways in each wall, without doors, that led to rooms much like the one he was staring at, only the pale spots on the carpet different.

Sam gave him directions as he moved through the rooms, going through doors seemingly at random, each of the rooms nearly identical, just different enough to slowly start to confuse him. It was hushed, not even his own footsteps made noise, not even Wally's treads.

”There. In the corner, go over there,” Sam suddenly said. ”Forward right corner.”

”It's just a corner,” Herod said, feeling tired. His internal chrono was glitched, just replaying the same fifteen seconds over and over.

Still, he moved over to the corner.

”Push against it, firmly, and step through it,” Sam ordered.

Herod pushed, Wally scooting up between his legs and helping.

There was a flash and he stumbled out into a hallway.

”What was the point of that?” Herod asked.

”Security feature. It's endless. According to my senses you only wandered in circles in a single room, I had to access the security map to guide you through,” Sam said. ”There's still Screaming Ones roaming those rooms, never finding anyone else, eternally searching.”

Herod shivered.

The room led to a hallway where the corners felt slightly off. Not quite 90 degrees, but subtly off. The floor tilted a degree or two one way then slowly tilted the other. The rows of tiles weren't quite true, some rows slightly smaller than the other, others slightly larger, some of them the pattern subtly off.

Herod closed his eyes and followed the blue line while Wally gave nervous beeps.

It didn't stop the growing whispers.

”Herod,” Sam suddenly said.

”Yes?” Herod giggled. Sam had talked to him several times, but every time he had suddenly started screaming or sobbing or asking riddles.

”It's me, Herod. It's really me. You're going to want to run,” Sam said.

”Why?” Herod asked, pausing with his hand on the pushbar of a door.

”Because this is where Team Three went down. They're dead, but they didn't die,” Sam said softly. ”They used some kind of ugly tech, some kind of lostech, and they're still there and they're still angry. They're still fighting the Screaming Ones they encountered.”

”All right,” Herod said.

”Once you're past this, you'll be boarding a train to take you through the Singer Corporation Mass Storage Yards,” Sam-UL said.

”Wait, the Singers in the Darkness? This is where they get the mass to create entire star systems from?” Herod said.

”Um, maybe? I thought Singers in the Darkness was an net legend,” Sam said.

”No, they're real,” Herod said. He shivered. ”From here on out, anything that was a rumor, we consider real, all right?”

”Do you think there's any Singers there?” Sam asked.

”I hope not,” Herod said. ”I really hope not.”

”Tell me when you're ready, I'll release the maglocks on the door,” Sam said.

Herod looked down and smiled at Wally. ”When the door opens, we run at full speed, OK, little guy?”

Wally beeped and held up one 'thumb' on his little hand.

Herod tensed. ”Ready.”

The maglock clacked and the door flew open.

Herod started running, ignoring what he saw around him. Dead bodies, horribly torn apart, some decayed, but some not, in rings of different levels of decay. In the middle of each set of concentric rings were Terran humans, all of whom were savaged. He saw three with their guts spilled out on the ground even as they struggled with Terrans who were shrieking at the top of their lungs and attacking the armored figures.

Herod was a particle physicist, one of the best in the known universe. He could recognize strange matter particles by the disturbances their movement left, could identify what particle a tachyon had come from, recognize the different between Mercury and Mars warsteel, and could track the recent movements of a water molecule based on the marks left on the quarks that made it up.

He recognized the golden fire rippling in rings around the fighting Terrans, recognized the energy patterns flowing from them.

Chronotrons. A particle so dangerous to mess with it was forbidden by the harshest penalties that the Confederacy could come up with. Half particle half waveform, it both absorbed energy and released it in a quasi-mathematical state that supposedly could only be measured not captured or preserved or reduced to actual particles.

Yet the fields were awash with them.

The Terrans were inside concentric temporal stabilization fields, time moving slower inside each one until it almost stopped compared to the outside world. His mind ran the computations even as he swerved around the fiery rings.

Six hundred and nineteen years, four months, five days, sixteen hours, fourty-two minutes, nineteen point eight five seconds on Herod's side for every minute that went by inside the center of the field.

The Terrans had been fighting for less than fifteen minutes and eight thousand years had gone by.

All of them were in Third Republic of Aligned Planets military uniforms, the Combined Military Forces uniforms, not the heavy power armor they later used.

Herod sprinted, keeping an eye at the edges of the fields. The last thing he wanted was a the leading edge of a laser to touch the outer ring, go superluminal, and blow him into pieces. The psychic residue of nearly ten thousand years of combat beat at him like a physical hammer wielded by an angry god.

He wove around the last four, who were all back to back, pressed up against each other, their weapons still frozen in mid trigger pull, the blaze beams still leaving the barrels, the Screaming Ones still howling eternal maddened screams.

He hit the far door, held it open long enough for Wally to get through, and went down on his knees. He held himself, shuddering, sobbing, while Wally patted his back, for a long moment.

”Sam?” Herod asked.

”Yes?” Sam sounded distant, detached.

”How did they get here?” Herod asked, hugging Wally close. ”Just getting here seems like it drove them mad.”

”The same way we did,” Sam said. He was quiet a moment. ”Well, not quite. We hijacked a signal and used it, they used original equipment. I just piggybacked onto the signal and inserted us into it.”

”What equipment. How did we get here? That wasn't a jumpgate like I thought, or a dimensional rift portal or a dimensional foam breach. How did we get here?” Herod asked.

There was silence for a moment. ”If I had told you, you wouldn't have done it,” Sam admitted.

”They used it too?” Herod asked.

”Yes.”

”What was it?” Herod asked.

Sam was silent again for a long moment.

”We scraped between Deadspace and Hellspace.”

Herod closed his eyes and hugged himself as Sam kept talking.

”Type-I Mat-Trans,” Sam admitted.