Ursum

32

The asteroid approached the small village with a burning intensity. Abel could only stand in horror as his legs had frozen him stiff to the ground—anchoring him to his thoughts. His mind was paralyzed as the asteroid grew closer. He might as well have been frozen in time, only to be moved by the grapple of Sophie's grip yanking him out of his trance. In his stupor he hadn't noticed she came back for him. She was screaming something that he couldn't hear The ringing sound in his ears overpowered it all. He thought she said "I won't go there. Evil is-" but it turned out to actually be "I don't know where Levi is-"

He shook his head as his legs began running on their own to keep up with her pace. "Y-You…" he said.

"Stop talking, keep running. We're heading back to the door!"

My mom died in a car crash when I was three. I won't forgive the people who did that to her—to us. My priorities haven't shifted. I can't die here.

Her words solidified in his mind and swirled like a twister of chaos and disorder. Their legs carried them all the way to the door. The asteroid was overbearing, it seemed to drain the air right out of the atmosphere. Sophie threw the door open and yanked Abel inside, he tripped as she slammed the door shut behind them. He fell on his face and she sat down, holding her arms over her head.

"If this is the end I'm sorry!" She called out. "I'm sorry it didn't work, I'm sorry about Cain, I'm-"

She was cut off by a deafening boom—it must have broken the sound barrier outside. It slammed Abel against the ground one more and overtook everything he could hear. Everything was completely silent until the shaking stopped. Abel picked himself up, putting a hand to his chest. It ached as it slammed against the ground. He'd be okay. Something like that wouldn't keep him down. As he looked up he saw Sophie standing herself.

"Do you know if Levi made it out of there?" Abel asked.

She shook her head, "I don't. He was gone when I went to go look."

"Wait…how long was I out?"

"You were standing there since I left you…" she walked closer to him, her balance hadn't fully returned, so she stumbled but managed to catch herself. She put a finger to her chin,

"...about maybe ten minutes or so. What the hell were you doing?"

Abel looked up toward the ceiling of the tube they'd hidden out in, "I was...remembering something."

The irritation on her face left immediately. "What'd you see?" The question was loaded, he was sure.

"It was strange," he began, and for the first time he heard a bit of...he didn't know how to describe it, potency to his voice. He sounded like he had something to say, something only he could say. "I wasn't in this memory, like, at all."

"What?"

"All of the other times it happened I saw Abel—Er, I saw myself. They were memories that I could realistically have. This one was different. I was seeing them through Cain's eyes. It was...about that book, The Eye. He first met you at the library...that was the same book he showed me two years later. Are you sure I'm not him? I mean he's been in all of the memories that I've seen…"

She shook her head, "No, of course not. You're Abel. Cain is…"

His eyes perked up, looking right to her, something terrible clicked in his mind. "Just before...you said you were sorry that it didn't work out—that you were sorry about Cain. Is he...dead?"

The question had been too much for her, she walked past him and through the corridor. That in of itself was an answer, but it wasn't good enough. "Stop!" He called out after her, she didn't stop to answer. Cain was… "STOP!" He ran after her and grabbed her shoulder, stopping her himself. His face was soaked with tears that ran down his cheeks. "What...happened?" He mustered out.

She was crying, shaking hard. She looked away from him and then ran, shoving him off. "I'm sorry. I don't know what went wrong...it…" She screamed as she doubled over.

"What?!" He yelled, hearing his voice echo through the corridor made it hurt a little less, but then it came back through as he understood. There was a mind-numbing smell that forced its way through his body, and from underneath the door to the roulette room was a fresh puddle of blood.

The two of them stopped immediately, the sounds from either's tears were silenced as Abel stepped one foot in and grabbed the handle, opening the door. Out in the main lobby a horrifying cacophony of blood and chunks of flesh lie. They splattered across the ground and even against the door they'd just opened. Abel stumbled back as the image—odors and all stole his breath. He fell against Sophie and the two landed on the ground behind the door. She didn't call out or yell at him, only moved his body off of hers as she backed away, using her elbows to dig into the ground to lift herself up. Abel's head was spinning as his consciousness threatened to leave. He brought his hand down to the ground and it landed straight into the puddle of blood. It sent the shock to his brain that brought him back to his senses. He jumped up and took a step out of the door once more.

He took three steps out into the pool of blood before he noticed a glimmering wing the length of his body resting in the pool.

"Answer was here...was…" he said as he looked around the room for anything different. Sophie slowly made her way out of the room and the door shut for good behind her.

"There's going to be another. Just like last time."

Abel turned fully around to look at her, "I don't think they will until we sit in the chairs." He looked down to his feet. "God...I knew we shouldn't have left Simon behind."

"T-This could all just be from Answer," Sophie suggested.

Abel knew that it had shaken her, she wasn't thinking logically. "This is too much for just...well, even if Answer was like Lucky and had something stuck inside...it's still too much blood."

"It's also too much blood for just Simon," Abel said, wondering. "So it seems the both of them...but that would mean Levi…" he turned back to the door. "...is still out there."

Sophie crossed over the pool of blood to the center of the room, she placed both her hands on the back of one of the chairs and rested her head down on it, taking in a deep breath. Her fingers tapped incessantly as her leg twitched. "None of this was supposed to happen. Cain wasn't supposed to...I wasn't supposed to…" she slammed her fist down onto the chair, "Now Levi's gone."

"And Sim-"

"Fuck Simon!" She roared back to him, slamming her fist into the back of the chair. "He's an egotistical douche-bag that didn't care about anyone else. He's a coward...a coward…a…" she fell to her knees behind the chair and started to cry. "...and I'm no different from him. I'm a fucking coward."

"Hey, no, we don't get to break down here," Abel said, crossing the puddle to the center podium. "We have to live. Okay?" He bent down to put his arm around her. "We live because we choose to live, okay? We're here for a purpose, and that purpose isn't to die because someone else said so."

"We don't even know if it's because anyone said so," She said in-between the small whimpers.

"Even if it's not, we have to believe we can get out of this. If we lose hope then all we have left is despair. I...I don't know how to feel about everything I'm learning, I'm not even sure how I'm walking to be quite honest with you, but right now none of that matters. What matters when you take away everything else is that you keep on breathing. Keep on standing. Keep on fighting."

She took in a short breath and wiped away a tear. She sucked in and let it empty out of her system. They sat in silence for a minute and for that minute it was like everything else had melted away. For that minute they were just a boy and a girl. It, of course, ended.

"You are able to walk because our experiment was a success," she said, almost under her breath. "Although to be fair, calling it an experiment makes it seem like we knew what we were doing."

Abel looked over, "You okay to talk? I think we have some time before the game pushes us to vote, anyway."

Sophie nodded her head. "I'll tell you everything."

33

Abel told her in detail what he had seen in his latest memory. He was lying with his back against the chair beside the one Sophie had been lying next to. She nodded and listened intently as guilt crossed her face. When he was finished she placed both hands on her legs, scratching an itch that wasn't beside her knee, but still feeling the impulse.

"That's pretty much exactly how it happened. The first meeting was as awkward as you remember it."

"But how do I remember it?" Abel asked. "I wasn't there."

"The Eye of Timaeus was a very special book. I don't know everything, or hell, most anything about it, but I do know it gave both Cain and Me those vivid hallucinations. It was almost an act of foresight. You described him seeing that creature, Sakonna, before reading about it in the book. I think you might be experiencing something like that."

"Seeing things you shouldn't see by reading a book, I can't say I've heard anything like that before." But it was at that exact moment a passage flashed back into his mind.

The original text I've disposed of—burned. We've had some...incidents surrounding the original that I can't bear to write down. I shall keep them to my own mind. They are my secrets to lie with...but the reason isn't for a pride in secrecy or anything similar. I'm afraid I cannot mention it here, for if I do then all of this will have been for nothing. For those that wish to know, keep reading and you shall know, but you shall also know why I am unable to talk about it here. And now finally, to everyone in my life that I've done wrong, that I've gone against, I am sorry. I had thought that knowledge about the world was the ultimate goal—that nothing else had mattered. I'm afraid to say that I'm at the end here—after this book I shall be no longer. There is a beauty to the curse that is infinite knowledge and it is for that reason that I have looked upon its pages and smiled at its face. The Eye of Timaeus shall never be a widespread book—that is not the purpose of this translation. Consider it a warning. I have done my part and with this the text may be started proper, but be warned that there is powerful knowledge in those that follow. Do not read for spite. Do not read for pity. Read only to learn and only to pass on. Nobody knows what sorts of demons reside in knowledge of the infinite worlds.

"Actually," he began, "...I might. The translator's note mentioned that there were some accidents because of the book. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I never understood fully what he meant."

"Maybe it's like, cursed? Like whoever reads it gets this crazy hallucination shtick."

"I don't know how they'd pull that off, especially since The Eye is only a copy, it isn't even the original text."

"No, I guess it would be difficult," he slumped back, looking upward.

"It was that hallucination that Cain had that pushed him on board. I knew he was conflicted on it the moment he stopped himself from leaving." She looked to him, "He loved you very much...but he hated himself. Hated himself. That I could see too.

Abel wished he could remember more of Cain, but all he had to work with was the fragments that he had since he woke up. "He had nightmares, a lot of nightmares," Abel said.

Sophie nodded. "He was obsessed with the accident. It was a dormant obsession before that day in the library. His mind was convinced that there was nothing he could have done, and so it would have tormented him until the day he did do something about it."

"That changed the day he met you," Abel said.

"I can't say if it was for better or for worse," she said. As he looked at her he noticed a mixture of sorrow and doubt in her eyes. "When he came on board to the idea of The Eye being something we could use as revenge...he really came on board. He was there every other day it seemed combing through the book with a feverish eye. I was just as excited, mind you. I wanted nothing more than to find out who killed my mother. If not the person who drove the car then who gave the order. It was the only thing that I wanted. I was obsessed."

Abel was silent, nodding along.

"Most of The Eye was about the different kinds of creatures that existed in their other world. Ones like Sakonna that took up the most space in the entire book, but Godsong appeared throughout, and in much greater detail. There were drawings of what it looked like, instructions on how each nook and cranny worked to the greater function. It seemed absolutely limitless in what it said it could do. The book certainly didn't mislabel it, it was a probability matrix." She looks wistfully off past Abel, remembering with the slightest of smiles. "Godsong infatuated him. It was literally what he had been asking for in corporeal form. An infinity engine with the power to do anything. If it existed then it would be the greatest solution to his greatest problem." The smile disappeared, "He grew infatuated with me, too. I think it was because I introduced him to the possibility, but I cannot say for certain. But he made his feelings known, and not just once. I...I couldn't say no. For the first time in forever I found someone who knew the burden I'd been carrying. Who knew and didn't think I was crazy. Who actively wanted to help in whatever I was planning. For once I had a friend, and I couldn't say no because I couldn't lose him. I couldn't lose him...but I couldn't say yes. I would be lying to him, and to myself."

"He thought you were a couple," Abel said. He knew this much, and it would paint what she said earlier about being aromantic as true.

"Yes, I tried to steer it as much as I could, but he thought what he thought. He became obsessed with this, too. It worked out in his mind that things would work out perfectly. I was scared that everything was going to fall apart." She sighed and scratched the length of her leg. "We spent two years going through the entire book. Front to back to front to back to front to back. We learned everything that we could and took to memorizing everything about Godsong—in case we had to ditch the book for whatever reason."

"Then two years later I got the book."

"Cain was the one who offered the idea. I learned that he'd been conducting research on his own time. God knows where or how, but he managed to find out that Arctic Systems had a secret facility hidden from the public eye."

"My...No, our fathers worked there, right?"

She nodded, she looked like she aged a whole decade. "He mentioned something about how your father kept records for his work separate from your mother's. Something about how they did their taxes at separate times piqued his curiosity, and found information in some of his files. That was only the start. From there we went to public record and found works on an ocean cleansing unit that was being constructed by the Genros Foundation, Arctic's benefactor."

"Underwater cleansing unit?"

"Unit is a bit of a misnomer...it's a huge facility that was to be installed at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to filter pollutants from the water."

A gigantic facility to filter water. "That reminds me of Aria's room, it had that little river flowing through it, right?"

"Don't get ahead of me now," she said, looking at him, nodding.

This was that facility, he thought. That's where they were. That was as solid a confirmation as any.

"They called it the SubCon Facility. Cain was sure that there was some activity going on that related to The Eye. Something had to be there, it was just too perfect. So, we went down."

"You...went down?" He repeated.

"We were obsessed with getting revenge," she said. "We were desperate, and we were mourning. We wanted to do anything but mourn, so we did the most logical thing in our minds. Of course, we knew it was extremely risky, and that you of course weren't going to cooperate. You hadn't thought how we thought. I remember saying that exactly, but Cain wanted you to understand. He got the book for you to read. He thought if you read it you'd instantly understand, but of course, he was also impatient. He wanted to fix his mistake."

She brought her hand up to her head and rested it. "He drugged you and we left. It was just like that, no plan, no supplies. One minute we were here and the next we were gone. It was a bit of a blur everything was happening so fast. Cain figured out how to get into SubCon. For the longest point that was our biggest barrier."

"Well, I should think so…" Cain said, trying his hardest to stay focused, but he drugged you was doing a mighty fine job of stealing his attention.

"It was actually one of the last things he saw from The Eye—one of those times of foresight. They brought in supplies for the SubCon facility through a spot just on the west coast called Three Rocks Point. It's about an hour and a half from where we lived."

"And you just dragged me there? Something tells me that wouldn't have been easy considering I was wheelchair bound."

"Right right," she waved a hand in front of her face, "I remember now. We were going out there for...I think it was just a trip between us. It took us a bit to convince your parents. It was then I most regret because I...I indulged Cain's ideas of us to help convince your parents. We took the bus, a few of them, actually. It was when we got there that he...um…"

"Did you know he would?"

"No...I swear."

Abel nodded, listening closer.

"I'm sorry for the mix-up, it's like I said. It was happening so fast after so long of nothing." She took in a deep breath and the scratching on her leg continued. "Supplies like fuel, food, fresh water are all brought to Three Rock Point and shipped by boat to the point above where SubCon was located. We sneaked on board the ship—It was a large freighter, and nobody ever visited so they could get away with such a big boat, and we found that there was a sort of helicopter platform out in the middle of the ocean. It was connected to a long tube-like elevator that went all the way down to the entrance. They must do something with the interior's air pressure, because if it really is located at the bottom of the sea, there's no way anybody could feasibly survive down there."

Abel didn't reply. He simply kept his hands folded and kept his eyes on her.

"We made our way inside...it was extremely dangerous. There were guards on the boat, a whole bunch of them in heavy clothing. Armed most likely."

"Nothing about this set of any alarms in your head?"

"Of course it did. That's why we did it, it strengthened our resolve. We were stupid kids—are stupid kids that were obsessed for revenge."

"And somehow we all made it inside."

"Cain ditched your wheelchair then. He was convinced you wouldn't need it anymore. I did say that it was probably better to bring it just in case, but he wouldn't hear it. There was no just in case with Cain. Not then. We were so close."

He tried to imagine his older brother pulling him out of the wheelchair as he lay unconscious and it gave him the shivers.

"We made it inside. It wasn't easy staying still for so long on the boat, but we did it. We waited until the shipments were all dollied out onto the elevator platform and heading down before we moved from our hiding place. Obviously someone was going to pick up the supplies, and they would care pretty heavily if we were there. As the guards loaded back onto the ship we snuck off, Cain carried you piggyback style. It was windy, and the sea-salt sprayed in both of our faces as we made our way down the elevator. What was weird was that the supplies were at the bottom when we got down there. They'd been moved off of the elevator, but they were pretty much piled up untouched otherwise. There didn't seem to be many people if any at all in SubCon."

"Maybe they were just bringing supplies for future endeavors," Abel asked.

"I felt that if they were, and the place had nobody inside then they'd go in with the supplies instead of leaving it on the doorstep."

Abel nodded, this made sense.

"We were confused by it, but it didn't stop us. We took off running. We didn't know which way we were headed, but Cain seemed to, at least somewhat. As soon as we'd reach a fork he'd choose instantly and not give it a second thought. Then-"

"WHY HAVEN'T YOU VOTED YET?" A deep voice bellowed from above, the both of them stretched their necks up to see a giant black figure falling from above. It landed with a loud sound that shook them each.

Abel sat up to see it was a large bear that had been half fur and half metal. It was different than the other creatures they had seen so far, it had only half an exoskeleton, whereas the fleshy half looked dead enough, circuits and needles were jammed into its open headpiece, plugged directly into its brain. Its right arm was completely made out of metal, sharpened claws that look like they could cut through just about anything.

"YOU HAVEN'T VOTED. YOUR TIME IS UP." it roared, sending slobber out like an infant.

"And who are you?" Sophie asked.

"ALPHA. THE FIRST. ALTHOUGH TO YOU IT SHALL BE THE LAST."

"What are you talking about?" Abel asked.

"The rules…" Sophie said. "Lucky's rules mentioned that two people minimum needed to place a vote."

"YOU DIDN'T VOTE, SO NOW YOU SHALL BE PENALIZED." It took a lumbering step closer. "JUST LIKE ANSWER AND THE OTHER."

So they were both dead. Abel and Sophie both climbed to their feet and grabbed onto the chair nearest to them for support.

"We can vote," Sophie said. "There's two of us here, we can vote to cooperate."

The bear, Alpha, lunged at her—would have mauled her in one go if she didn't send herself down the steps by pushing off of the chair. Abel followed suit and slid on the bloodied floor, sending him slamming chest-down next to Levi's door. "YOU ARE TOO LATE." He called up, echoing above them and all around. His claws dug into the wood of one of the chairs as he propelled himself into a mad dash toward Abel.

He tried to get up, but before he could even react the bear had him pinned by his neck, Alpha's trunk of an arm pressed down hard, cutting off his air. The bear lowered his head and the faintest of whispers left his furry lips. "How'd the metal piercing your spine feel?"

All at once pain filled his lower half—distracting from everything else and he could only see the back of the headrest in front of him. He was back in the car and the other car had just made impact. Blood pursed on his lip and he felt everything, nothing was numb. He was taut and wished nothing more than for it to end. Just kill me. Just kill me. Just let me-

Sophie screamed from the other end of the room, but it wasn't a scared sort of scream. Abel was running out of breath, he tried to think of how it sounded. Just then Alpha let go and rolled off of him. Abel's head shot up, and he saw that Alpha didn't simply roll over, Sophie had grabbed Answer's wing—the end where it had attached to the rest of the exoskeleton was sharpened like a knife—and she'd ran with it, carrying it in both of her arms and rammed it into Alpha's fleshy-side.

He grabbed for it with the metal claw and yanked it hard, gushing thick blackish blood onto the floor below. Sophie reached for Abel's hand, he took it and she helped him to his feet.

"Where do we go?" He asked, quick.

"Come here," She hurried toward the center of the room.

Alpha kept his fleshy paw on the wound, breathing heavily. "YOU WON'T LIVE," he growled. "REVENGE." He launched the wing like a spear toward them, Abel stopped running and it bounced off of the ground in between them.

"I've had enough of revenge," Sophie said, "Come on," She turned to Abel.

He saw what she was planning as the roulette came closer in view. The podium in the center wasn't acting right—he remembered when it seemed to have difficulty fully lowering to whatever chamber acted as its second state. The podium seemed to be stuck halfway, and the space between the top rim and the floor looked just big enough for a body to slip through…

There was several things that could go wrong with the idea. But Sophie had seen it as a way to be out of immediate danger with Alpha nearby. He agreed that it would have to be worth the risk, whatever was down there, if anything at all. She slid as she made it to the top step and shielded her arms over her head. The blood they'd been running through acted as enough of a lubricant to ensure she made it just through the crack. Alpha started to make his way closer to him as Abel followed her lead, falling down through the crevice into darkness.