The Jagged Teeth Page 4

  Talia stopped eating. Reimar looked up, spoon halfway to his mouth as he watched her carefully. Her head leaned back slightly then snapped forwards. “ACHOO!”

  Reimar got sheepishly back to his feet. He’d shot up in fright, tripped backwards over the log and spilled stew all over his face. Talia clearly found this hilarious. Tears of laughter pooled in her eyes as he helped him up. “Haha! It’s just a sneeze, little wraith! Have you never had a cold? Oh no it’s, ha, oh it’s all in your hair, hahaha!” She attempted to stifle a high-pitched giggle with a hand as she bent double in mirth.

  Reimar turned the colour of a smouldering sunset. He wiped his face on a rag from his bag. “I know what a sneeze is,” he said defensively.

  “I’m sorry, it’s this weather, ha! It’s sooooo cold!” Talia had regained most of her self-control by this point, excluding the occasional regression as she handed him another bowl. Reimar took it gratefully, if a tad frostily, as they sat back down. A shift in the light made him notice something he hadn’t registered when he’d first seen her. Gold writing picked out ‘Andraste’ on the left of her breastplate.

  “Where did you get the armour?” Reimar asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.

  “A gift,” Talia replied shortly. She finished her stew and moved to sit cross-legged on the snow in front of him, holding a steaming tin mug of something in one hand. “I earn a dangerous living, so I dress to impress,” she continued, as she flashed a grin at him.

  Reimar’s heart did a clumsy backflip. “Doing what?” He asked, steadfastly ignoring it.

  Talia regarded him with quizzical eyes. “You sure do ask a lot of questions… Fine, I’ll answer. But then I have some for you.” She wriggled to get more comfortable. She switched to hold the mug with both hands as she continued. “I’m a cartographer. Now, my turn. How is it you come to be stuck under a glacier?”

  “Long story,” Reimar said and half smiled.

  “We have time,” Talia said and smiled back encouragingly.

  *

  Reimar woke at dawn. Talia was up already. She sat on the log cleaning the rifle in her hands while reciting some sort of flowing mantra in a tongue Reimar didn’t speak. The rifle was long, battered but clearly well cared for. A far newer looking attachment hung below the barrel. White and black, it contrasted heavily with the dark grey weapon. A sling dangled from the neck to the stock. Ribbons and tattered, coloured strips of fabric hung from the sling bearing ornate pictograms.

  The mantra ended as Talia slammed the clip home with a resounding clack. She picked up the helmet beside her, twisted it back onto its mount and stood, pulling her backpack onto her shoulders as she did so.

  She turned to look at Reimar. “Let’s go,” she said simply. He hurriedly packed away his equipment and the two set off, out, into the valley.

  6: KING

  “It is clearly, obviously, a plant, my dear Isambard.” These drawled words trickled down slowly into Bayan’s mind. She stirred slightly.

  “Fool! Look at it! It’s a human. Admittedly a very poor example of one… but a human none the less.” This second voice was gravelly and dry, the words paced without haste and with precision, absolute in their importance. Unsurprisingly, Bayan’s mind registered the insult, and this more than anything dragged her reluctantly to waking.

  She opened her eyes as a third, nasal voice joined the conversation. “It does have the relevant anatomy. Admittedly some of it is not where it should be… but what most concerns me gentlemen is… I say, it’s moving!” The voice bleated in alarm.

  “Stop it!” A voice called down. Bayan looked blearily up for a moment. She turned away quickly from the glare that emanated from high on a stack of books on a broad pine shelf to her right. It was a pale blue that didn’t shine down directly, but instead reflected from the off-white ceiling, down, onto the polished wooden floor where she sat. The floor beneath her stretched out around the room before sets of iron railings. She realised that she was sitting on a mezzanine. Bookshelves lined the walls.

  “Desist!” Another voice called from a bookshelf to her right. This one glowed red and shone directly, its light spilled across the shelf and across the dark floor. It seemed so bright to Bayan that she couldn’t stand to look at it. Her eyes watered to try.

  “Halt at once!” came a third voice, from the central bookshelf. Its amber glow pulsed with its tone.

  “Man!” A final light joined the others. It was purple. “No wonder you guys never got no tail. First girl you see in a hundred years and you call her subhuman. Mm-mm what happened, huh? Cho’ hung like a squirrel?” It sat below the amber and slightly to its right.

  “I will have you know before my enlightenment I had many a successful copulation. And with my comfortably average genitalia! Thank you very much, sah!” The blue light clearly took personal offence.

  “I think that’s a ye-es!” the fourth sang. “You know want they say. Big brain, small…”

  “Thank you for the input Grantham. As always, astute and helpful,” The gravely, deeply sarcastic, tones of the second light interrupted the laid back musing of the fourth.

  “You’re brains,” Bayan said croakily, her voice dry for lack of use.

  There was a pause as the room digested her first words. “Well it can speak. I suppose that’s something.” The yellow light, which was indeed a brain, said despondently from inside its jar.

  “Do be quiet, I can’t hear what it’s trying to say.” The first light glowed reedily.

  “I…I’m…” Bayan stuttered, understandably in some shock.

  “It’s broken!” The yellow light burned angrily.

  “Nonsense, Kingdom! We must merely ply its feeble brain with care.” The blue brain enthused.

  “Wh-ere, diiiiiiid, yooooooou, cooooome frooooom?” It asked, drawing out each syllable.

  “South of here, um, the Free States Federation mean anything to you?” Bayan responded hesitantly.

  “It understood! Jolly well done, Isambard! Ask it something else!” The yellow brain was clearly beside itself.

  “You know I do understand English,” Bayan snapped. The shock was clearly wearing off.

  “How disappointing,” Isambard commented flatly “I thought I’d made a breakthrough.”

  “Look, whatever this is… and whatever you are - if you wouldn’t mind showing me the way out, I’ll be on my way,” Bayan said through gritted teeth.

  The four brains signed collectively. “She wants to go,” Isambard observed.

  “She can’t leave. Nobody leaves!” The red brain yelled.

  “Hush Nelson! Hush! We need the information in its brain. It won’t give it to us if we yell at it,” Kingdom said placatingly.

  “We could use the extractormatron …” Nelson muttered rebelliously.

  “No, no! Think about last time! Mess everywhere! Mortality rate was over 400%!” Isambard interjected.

  The remaining brains all flashed in surprise. “400%? How is that possible?” Kingdom asked, stunned.

  “Some people standing next to the machine died,” Isambard replied matter-of-factly.

  “Ha! Sounds like the Remnant project all over again…” Grantham laughed. “Man, that was a screw up.”

  “Wait, you know about the Remnants?” Bayan’s curiosity bested her smouldering temper.

  All the brains paused in shock. “Yes. Yes, we know about them…” Kingdom replied heavily. “A black day for science.”

  “Stop talking to it! It has yet to answer our questions and it dares to question us!?” Nelson flipped in his jar. “The nerve!”

  “Quite. Knowledge for knowledge!” Isambard agreed.

  “My colleagues are correct. First you must answer our questions. Then we will answer yours,” Kingdom said firmly.

  “Fine, ask away.”

  “What species are you?”

  “Human.”

  “Arguable, you appear to have a plant growing from your neck.”

  “It’s a fashion access
ory.”

  “Our scans reveal otherwise. You must explain.”

  Bayan sighed. “It seems I can’t hide anything. But how could a feeble brain like mine ever outsmart such gloriously large brains such as yourselves?”

  The brains glowed with smugness.

  “I like this one. She has manners that belie her hideous anatomy,” Isambard remarked, before continuing the questioning. “If you do not know the answer, would you be open to exploratory surgery to find it?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Unreasonable!” Nelson yelled. “We must know! We must find the solution!”

  “The solution?” Bayan’s head tilted to one side.

  “The solution! Without it our world is doomed! The fungi adapts too fast, survives too long and taunts us with its tenacity. Humans are too weak to survive without rapid genetic alteration. Our previous attempts only slow the progression! We must…” The remaining three brains all interrupted at once.

  “Be silent!” Kingdom snapped while the others babbled. “You reveal too much! She possesses the key and she does not know it! It must be extracted quickly if we are to make our move! She…” He turned in his jar. “Oh, bollocks” he sighed.

  Bayan was running down a dark corridor away from the lights and the brains, she had no idea how they planned to extract whatever the key was but she was damn sure she wasn’t going to wait around and… She hit something hard and cold with her face. “Agh! Shiiiit!” She yelped holding her nose.

  “Apologies. I was not expecting you to run into me. In future I will try and avoid your attempts to cause serious selfharm,” Meinal turned a light on and peered down at Bayan.

  “You know you’re getting pretty sarky for a droid,” Bayan muttered angrily, holding her nose as she glared up at him.

  “Consciousness has its perks.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I carried you,” Meinal told her bluntly. “You succumbed to circulatory shock from that leg wound.” He pointed at a tear in her jeans where now healed scar tissue showed blandly in the light.” I carried you to this place, and it healed you.”

  “Why? And what happened to the angry old woman?”

  “You wanted to meet the King?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You are currently running from it.”

  Bayan frowned. “I thought the King was…”

  “A person? No, it is an amalgamation of their initials, Kingdom, Isambard, Nelson, and Grantham: K.I.N.G. Rather egotistical if you ask me,” the droid said snottily. “The wrinkled one sleeps. She lies in another part of this facility,” he continued.

  “Well, now I’ve met them. It was an absolute delight,” Bayan drawled sarcastically, wriggling her nose experimentally. “Now, get the old windbag, and let’s go.”

  “Go? Negative.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “My instructions were to take you here and keep you alive. I have done one and the other I am trying my best at,” Meinal stated flatly.

  “Great. Well thanks a bunch,” Bayan made to move past him.

  Meinal moved to block her. “You cannot leave.”

  “And why not?” she growled.

  “Orders.”

  “From Reimar?”

  “From a higher power,” Meinal said mysteriously.

  “Well that’s dandy sugar plum. But you’re not keeping me here!” Bayan ducked under his legs and made for the door. Meinal grabbed her. Deaf to her protests and various insults, he calmly carried her back down the corridor to the library.

  The brains were still arguing amongst themselves. “Be silent! You fascistic, malodorous imbeciles! Be silent, I say!” Kingdom regained order with difficulty as the droid and the woman dangling from its arm entered the room.

  The droid stopped and released Bayan. “Now,” he rumbled, “now we will talk.”

  7: Artistic fury

  Mountains are big. Some are very big. Ragnarök was a very big mountain, and very angry one. His incessant bellows roared in the gorge, and the sky trembled and wept before his rage.

  The rain lashed down hard on Reimar’s face. The exposed skin around the goggles covering his eyes had long ago lost feeling and numbed to the chill. The fact that the goggles had fogged-up didn’t stop him throwing occasional jealous glances at Talia in her helmet. She walked always with the same steady tread. Through rain, over hills, through valleys and streams, woods and plains, her pace remained the same. She carried the weight of her armour and equipment easily and without complaint, while Reimar kept up with her with difficulty.

  The two had walked for days through this valley unhindered and they now stood at its end, at the foot of Ragnarök. Talia hadn’t elaborated much on why she was helping him, and Reimar felt it wise not to ask too many questions. When he had pressed her one evening she had just looked at him piercingly until he got the message and shut up.

  Talia had become far quieter since Reimar had mentioned the mountain. Which was nothing compared to how she had reacted to the mention of Bastion.

  “Your robot must be inside. The Mutant too,” Talia rumbled in a rare moment of verboseness, bringing Reimar back to the present.

  Reimar nodded. “The entrance is down there,” he said pointing to an ominously dark crevasse a hundred metres or so to their left. A forbidding air oozed from its interior, rather like from a creaking cupboard in a poor horror film. Talia looked and went, Reimar worried and followed.

  They scrabbled down the crevasse as the storm worsened outside. It was so dark Reimar could only just about see the looming outline in his vision that was Talia. She, as always, remained untroubled, placing each foot slowly and deliberately as she scanned the rocky hollow. She walked forwards a few steps. The scrabble of tumbling rocks cut the air. Reimar spun around breathing heavily, and fired. The muzzle flash lit up the crevasse, revealing nothing but a lightly injured rock.

  Talia walked over and gently pushed his rifle barrel down. “Scans show nothing living for 200 meters. Apologies, should have said.”

  Reimar nodded, “Well, you know, would have been nice,” he stammered as his hands shook. Being chased through a spooky wood by hideous, diseased monsters had understandably left its mark on him.

  “I forget. I’m not used to people without the armour. Take my hand,” she held out a beefy metal palm. Reimar raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth. “I can see, you can’t,” she explained. Reimar’s glib retort scurried back into his head unspoken and he shut his mouth. He took her hand and let her lead him deeper away from the grey light behind him.

  After a short walk she stopped. “What’s up?” Reimar whispered as his heart beat faster.

  “Blocked,” came the reply. “Blast door, old, keypad to the left.”

  “Can you guide me to it?” Talia pulled gently to the left and showed him where his fingers brushed cold rock, then colder steel. He put his hand to the plate and yellow floodlights flared with a click. They lined the top of a huge yellow and black rectangle set in a silver steel frame. The rectangle split from the top left corner to the bottom right into two triangles. The top was painted with a number 2 and the bottom with a number 7. Reimar whistled slowly. “Big door,” he said blandly.

  Talia evidently didn’t think this merited a reply. She let go of his hand and walked over to the door. Reimar poked the number pad he’d touched earlier experimentally a few times, but it just beeped in a self-satisfied manner until he got fed up with it and pulled the panel off. A tangle of wires and flashing lights greeted him. “I think I can short-circuit it… one second…” he said as he stuck his tongue out to one side and concentrated.

  “Stand back. I brought the key.”

  Reimar looked up in surprise and pulled back. Talia plunged the glowing knife she’d produced from somewhere into the tangled mess. It hissed and sparked angrily in the heat that poured from the blade. “Hey, what am I supposed to do with it now?” Reimar asked crossly. Talia responded only by pushing the knife deeper. The do
or relented its struggle and opened.

  Reimar’s mouth dropped open. He wasn’t sure what shocked him more… the bluntness of her solution, or the fact it had worked. Talia pulled the knife free, shook it to get rid of the molten metal and put it back in the sheath on her forearm. She looked at Reimar. “Let’s go,’ she said simply.