Chapter 88 – Just Deserts

  There’s a certain sense of humility that comes with not being able to solve a problem by applying more firepower. In the Army, a lack of fire superiority was something that happened to other countries and support by indirect was just a radio away. A psychic monster trapping them in the jaws of their own insecurity was not something he’d been trained for.

  Not since emptying his M4 into the heart-eater demon during the Kevlesh crossover had Cole felt so helpless. What if Nona hadn’t been around to snap them out of it? Soul sight and deific magic was far outside his expertise as an infantryman. Monsters not made of flesh and blood? Immunity to even otherworld armaments and ammunition? Hell, an entity that required a multi-square-kilometer seal to contain?

  It made him wonder, what other threats were coming that his team wasn’t prepared for? It would only take one to be the end of them. While their levels were climbing, they were still one of the less experienced teams in the Department of Otherworld Rescue. It didn’t help that most of the intel reporting for this place wasn’t any better than the Army’s, in that half of it was conflicting, flat-out wrong, or came to mutually exclusive conclusions.

  Cole thought about it for a minute while he watched the genie batter powerlessly against the bounds of its prison.

  “What’s going to happen to it now that it’s loose?” asked Beth. “Is it going to find some way out?”

  Cole shook his head. “I think if it could, it would have. I’d bet that sealing device is self-correcting. This city is practically dust, but those statues look like they were carved last week. But what was it even doing here?”

  Beth pointed her sword upwards. “The big guy is a collector. That’s what Artian told me. Maybe he was even telling the truth, for once. King Cuck Chair takes things he likes and adds them to this tower so he can watch. People, places, creatures.”

  Babel was a construct of crossover events, it sounded like. Not just from Earth, but across many realms. And all for one God’s sick amusement. Cole looked at the kaleidoscopic far walls, shimmering through the heat haze. Was he watching, even now? Only vaguely aware of whatever didn’t hold his immediate focus? Or was he keenly aware that Cole and his entire team had almost died to a twisted, city-sized trap?

  The genie stopped pounding on the barrier and twisted its head backwards to look further back into the ruined city. With an almost contemptuous disregard for Cole and Beth, it collapsed back into a viscous, black fluid and flowed away from the barrier.

  “What’s going on?” asked Beth. “Is it coming back?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Cole. He thought about his initial anxiety upon seeing the rings of stone statues outside the window. Not all of the fear had been the genie piping garbage into his brain. The fact that the formation of statues put their team at the center of a bullseye was a real danger because it would draw hostile groups directly to them.

  “Come on,” said Cole. A few hundred meters down the way sat a three-story building with a collapsed face that made it easy to scramble up. On what remained of the rooftop, Cole took a prone position and rested his rifle barrel over the lip of the roof. Almost twenty minutes later, he saw a hint of movement.

  Please be Beast Cult getting eaten, he thought to himself.

  No such luck. A figure cut across the main street, swift, but not so much so that Cole’s enhanced Acuity couldn’t pick up the dull, grey armor and faded, blue cloak. No lacquered armor, no red and white robes, and no animalistic designs. Not Beast Cult, but the survivors of the party who had been following them. Within a minute, Cole picked out the other members one by one. A woman on a rooftop with a crossbow, a reptilian humanoid vaulting a short wall, and six more with weapons, armor, and intent to kill. All positioning themselves to surround and assault the building where Cole and Beth had been bivouacked less than an hour before. Only this time, dozens of the stone seals were already broken, and the monster was loose in the city. A black wave rose up behind the woman on the rooftop, sweeping across and carrying her off its heights.

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  Even from several kilometers away, Cole could hear the screams as the pursuing party met their end at the hands of an ageless creature. Beth chewed her nails and flinched when the screaming started, sitting with her back to the crenelation and wrapping an arm around her knees. She was a tough kid, but there’s tough, and then there’s… well, whatever this was.

  “Cole, can we go?” asked Beth. “The others are gonna be waiting.”

  “Not quite yet,” he said. “Have to make sure.”

  “Sure of what?” asked Beth.

  Cole burned half of his last charge to mark the members of the pursuing party. “That none of them are able to keep following us.”

  A few minutes later, a pair of figures stumbled through the streets toward their position—the lizard-man with a primitive firearm clutched in his claws, and a person the size of Norn and Bjorn next to them. So their world’s equivalent of a dwarf, most likely. The squat figure looked backward, frantically, unaware that Cole was drawing them into his crosshairs. About three-hundred yards out, how much did the accretion wraps on his hands throw off the muzzle velocity calculations of a rifle zeroed for thirty-six yards? Probably not much. Cole put his center marking directly on the lizard-man’s center of mass.

  The survivors made their way outside the stone ring, the lizard doubling over and leaning on his long musket to catch his breath while the dwarf just looked back toward the trapped djinn. They'd probably drawn the same conclusion as Cole, believing that outside the ring of statues meant safety.

  Cole waited for the ambush bonus of his patient hunter rifle to kick in and squeezed the trigger. Three hundred yards away, the bullet struck the lizard-man and then changed angle almost ninety degrees and redirected itself through the chest of the dwarf. With two small puffs of aerosolized blood, the figures collapsed. The arquebus remained stiff a moment longer before it, too, clattered to the street, and the marks winked out.

  That was all it took. This capable, confident, aggressive party that had survived every floor of Babel so far, facing who knew what challenges, monsters, and other groups of challengers. And within the span of a few minutes, they’d been snuffed out to a man. It could have just as easily been Cole and his team.

  He scanned the middle of the genie’s prison a moment longer, not seeing any more red silhouettes—not even a vague red haze over the city where the creature itself lurked. Cole pulled his rifle back and slung it. Beth stared at him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You killed them,” she said.

  Cole nodded.

  “Have you done that before?”

  Cole considered before answering. “Yes. I was in the Army before I joined DOR. Airborne in Syria. It was war, Beth.”

  “I get that,” she said. “I’m not judging you, dude. It’s just…” she swallowed. “I’ve never… like, you know… monsters, sure. And I saw other people get killed. But I don’t think I could have used my sword on other challengers.”

  Cole walked over and offered his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet along with the bone sword. “Hopefully you won’t have to,” he said. “But I’m betting the later floors only get more cut-throat. And the only people who can hack it will be the ones who won’t hesitate.”

  “M-maybe,” said Beth. The quiver in her voice suggested that maybe her confidence in her ability to continue climbing alone had just been dealt a serious blow. Between the same shock of a problem that couldn’t be solved with her sword any more than Cole could solve it with his gun, and the reality that she might have to turn that sword on other people… well, it probably wouldn’t stop her. But the girl was facing a harsh reality check.

  Hopping down from the roof, Cole slowed his fall speed and landed as though he’d just jumped down from the running board of an Oshkosh. Rather than heading to the rendezvous, he started walking back toward the ring of statues.

  “Wait, where are you going?” asked Beth.

  “They were following us for our supplies because they’re tight on this floor,” said Cole. “We can’t afford to let theirs go to waste.”