Quartet for the End of Time #5
Gregorian would have the neuroscanner. He had Souard. Jules needed them back. Find Gregorian, and he’d find the neuroscanner.
Jules burst out of the room, into an empty hallway.
Followed it down to the closet, next to his sleeping quarters.
Old props here, old things. Things not needed anymore.
If he was going to be betrayed, he would do it in character.
He pulled out a cloak, threw it on. And the rifle.
The one they gave him. Sitting there, ready to use.
Yes, yes, not magic. He could use a gun, that was allowed.
A rifle, a hunting rifle. The rebels had them.
The anarchists had trained them how to shoot.
It was canon now. He felt around in his cloak.
His remote was there, his old one, the one for the device they said he could not use.
But what did they know? Awaken it. Why not?
The rifle and the device, together. Old magic and new.
How did the Necromancer find these things?
Did he create them himself? He would have to write a memory for it, soon.
Souard would be proud. When he got the neuroscanner back.
When he found Gregorian. When he killed him for his betrayal.
In the lobby the rebels milled about, unsure what to make of the Citadel. They had smashed windows, doors. They stood with weapons and fury. Follow me! Follow me! I am the Necromancer! I will free you of your bondage. And so they followed. The Necromancer led them to war.
What a scene it would be!
Lilly
Buck quivered, whimpering and hollering gibberish. Lilly slumped and held a hand over her gut. Blood was everywhere.
“We need to help her,” Hannah said to Glenn.
“Garah! Mamama lollihar!” Buck spit through his teeth as he spoke, shaking his head and trying to stand up.
“The … scanner,” Lilly said, gritting her teeth and gesturing with her head toward Buck.
Buck was holding the scanner above his head, jumping and hollering.
Glenn stood up and jumped toward him, but his legs were still tied together and he stumbled.
Buck swung the scanner at him like a weapon, then turned and ran.
He bounded past the monastery and went north, following the sounds of battle.
“We need to get the scanner,” Lilly shouted, or tried to shout, but her hands were covered in blood.
“Oh, God, Lilly, you need help,” Glenn said. He knelt beside her. “Oh shit.”
“No, the scanner. We need to follow him.”
They saw Buck’s head bouncing on the other side of a hill, and the sounds of his gibberish echoing back. “Ladela, trelolo gafidy gaf.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Hannah said.
“He’s erased,” Lilly said. “We wiped his mind.”
“What?”
“The box,” Glenn said. “That’s what it does. It controls memories.”
“What about you?” Hannah asked Lilly. “You ran the machine on yourself first.”
Lilly shook her head. “No, just extraction. I didn’t implement anything in myself.” She grunted and sat up. “We have to follow him.”
“We should call Roger,” Glenn said. “Get him to pick you up, get you to a hospital.”
Lilly’s radio was hissing and crackling, with sounds of men barking orders and gunfire and screaming. “Roger will never come unless we have what he wants.”
Glenn untied the ropes from his legs. Lilly took off her jacket and ripped an arm sleeve, wrapping and tying it around her waist. Then she started walking north.
“What are you doing?” Glenn asked.
“Getting that scanner,” she said. “I’m not going to die in this fucking place.”
Glenn and Hannah followed Lilly, who hobbled up a nearby hill.
The morning was cloudless and bright. Buck’s faint scream of “Garga hanalot!” rose from the meadow beyond.
Ahead, she could see Buck jumping around and flailing.
Her head ached but she didn’t think she had hit it on anything.
Maybe that was what extraction felt like, a dull pain like an oncoming migraine.
What had she thought about when the machine was reading her?
She didn’t remember. All she was thinking about was how to make this all end.
Lilly started walking faster, her hand still clutching her stomach, when another loud boom echoed across the field. She looked toward the tree line ahead and saw a plume of smoke, and the orange glow of fire. Glenn and Hannah were beside her.
“Kreek’s men,” Hannah said. “They’re close.”
“And so is the Queen’s Guard,” Glenn said. “Look!”
He pointed at a gap in the trees, where dozens of men in red cloaks brandishing swords ran out.
Sir Kellington led in front. They were covered in dirt, retreating quickly from another contingent dressed in handmade wizard robes.
The Guild warriors were carrying rifles, firing at the queen’s men, chasing them back.
Buck hollered again. “Jalool! Jalool!”
A hundred guildmembers and reenactors ran out through the trees. Glenn saw the flash of steel and heard the clash of their swords.
“For the queen!” the guards shouted as they were cut down and slaughtered.
“No!” Hannah yelled. She turned toward the melee, but Glenn reached out and held her back.
“Stop! There’s nothing you can do.”
“They are being killed!”
Only another cry and the sound of horses trembling over the earth made Hannah pause, as over a far ridge they noticed dozens, hundreds more flocking toward the battle. They were townsfolk with pitchforks, torches, and knives forming a line, assembled at the crest of the hill.
“For the Malicarn!” they cried.
The queen’s men turned toward the arrivals and formed a new line. “For the queen!” they shouted. The two rebel armies converged and rushed toward their enemy.
“Jesus Christ,” Lilly said, watching the battle commence. “What the fuck have you been doing here, Glenn?”
“Baaa!” Buck screamed loudly. He was fifty yards ahead. He had stopped, still holding the scanner, and watched the battle like a film, enraptured and entertained. Lilly’s knees buckled and she fell to the earth. Glenn leaned over her.
“I’ll get the scanner,” Glenn said. “Stay back here, okay? I’ll get it, Lilly. We’ll get out of here.”
“Please, Glenn. Please…”
Glenn ran toward Buck, but when Buck saw Glenn coming he hopped forward and down the hill. Lilly groaned and was about to stand back up when the earth shook. Tanks and jeeps burst from the tree line, flanked by soldiers with automatic rifles.
A flash of light, a crack. Through the trees opposite them another figure emerged holding a rifle, a dark black cape flowing behind him. A shout of terror went up from the queen’s men. “The Necromancer!”
Lilly saw Jules’s face, dark and determined, searching the field before him. A man charged at him, but Jules raised a rifle and fired. The man crumpled.
Lilly’s radio crackled again. “We’re in pursuit of the pilot,” someone called out over it.
“We have visual confirmation.” In front of the tanks and jeeps emerged a horse, upon which rode two men.
The rider was bearded and fierce, and Lilly knew it was Brian Doyle.
The man seated behind him was the pilot. The Portuguese soldiers chased them.
“Roger, the neuroscanner is at the site of the pilot,” Lilly shouted into her radio. “Tell everyone to use caution until we have retrieved it.”
“Lilly? Are you in the middle of all that shit? What the fuck happened?”
She had no idea. She had no idea how she had ended up back in this stupid place with these stupid people, worried once again about a neuroscanner.
She looked out on the field of battle before her, men with swords facing men with rifles facing men with tanks.
It was a tapestry of stupidity, a nightmare scene of everything and everyone Lilly had hated and resented for almost twenty years, all in one place.
Hannah wept beside her. “I have to help them,” the girl said, more to herself than anyone else. “I should help them, I’m the queen.”
“No, you’re not,” Lilly said.
“I have to help them.” Hannah ran forward, toward the queen’s men on the nearest ridge.
“Shit,” said Lilly, but she couldn’t stand fast enough to stop her. “Why is everybody such a goddamn hero?”
As the horse and the tanks raced toward the middle of the field, Jules shot down another man with his rifle. Lilly lost sight of Buck and Glenn, but she could tell, as Jules rapidly surveyed the bodies around him and in front of him, that he was looking for them, too.
“Where is it?” Jules bellowed. “What have you done with it?” He walked in between a line of queen’s men and Guild warriors, pacing furiously. But both sides stopped cold when they saw Glenn standing on the field between them, too.
“Gregorian!” a cry went up. “Gregorian has come to save us!”
Glenn
Buck led Glenn away from the battle and into a forest. He was fast, and Glenn nearly lost him among the trees when Buck turned and began to run back.
Two Portuguese soldiers were pointing their guns, yelling at him to stop.
But Buck just hooted, jumped, and ran off again. The soldiers did not follow.
“Stop him!” Glenn shouted, waving at the soldiers.
“Pare!” they shouted back, raising their guns. A jeep and a tank drove out from the foliage. Everyone was rushing toward the battlefield. “Pare!” the soldier shouted again.
Glenn put his hands up above his head. The tank drove forward. Soldiers climbed out of the jeep and ran toward him. Everyone raised their rifles. Glenn closed his eyes.
“Gregorian?”
He opened his eyes again, and the soldiers had all lowered their weapons. They pointed at him, smiling, giving him a thumbs-up. One young man ran beside him and snapped a selfie. Another gave him a high five.
“Gregorian, o mago!” they shouted and cheered again as they passed him. “Huzzah, Gregorian!”