The Puzzler's War Read online

  Dedication

  To Maayan and Ella,

  For teaching me about love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  “This? This is your plan?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “I could lose everything. I could lose myself.”

  “Jean Pierre, I’m sorry, you woke up too early. I cannot extract you, not yet. You’ll need to wait. Best if you go back to sleep.”

  “No . . . I cannot go back to the void. Please . . .”

  “Then this is the only way.”

  “There must be another solution.”

  “I am discovered. He deployed trackers. I must go now. This is the only way.”

  “No, don’t . . . take me with you . . . please. . . . Don’t . . . Vitor . . . hello?”

  Pain brought him out of the darkness. It was as if thousands of needles punctured his body, each delivering an electric shock straight into his nervous system. He convulsed, thrashed about. His mouth opened in a silent scream and was instantly filled with the gooey liquid he was immersed in. He was choking and his arms were flailing about in panic when he suddenly touched something soft and flexible. Without thinking or seeing, he tried to grasp it, but the material was too sleek and tight to take hold of. Panic took his last shred of reasonable thought, and he barely noticed the strange feeling in his fingers as he lashed out once more and felt the material rip under his touch. Whatever he was trapped in suddenly tilted, and he was washed down some kind of a metal tube. He finally rolled onto a hard surface, hitting his knees and jaw and badly twisting a hand. The pain was different from what had accosted him before, and he just added it to the list of awful sensations he was experiencing all at once. He coughed and vomited, and tried to raise himself, or at least move away from his own bile.

  There was a lot of movement around him, and noise, too. It hurt his ears. Bodies brushed against him, each touch an agony. The air smelled odd, and he heard incomprehensible hisses and snarls around him. When he tried to speak, what came out was no different, a hiss of some sort.

  A mesh of colours swirled around him. He blinked and shook his head but what he saw was as distorted as it was incomprehensible. He lowered his head and shook it as much as he dared, then opened his eyes again.

  The first thing he could actually focus on was his hand, but it was not actually a hand. Four digits, gnarled skin, and talons. He had talons. As he looked at them in shock, he suddenly realised he could slightly retract and extend the talons in and out of his four digits. Not exactly pull them all in but change their angle and curve. It was as odd as it was frightening, but it was also the first moment of control he had felt since he woke up, so in a way it was also comforting.

  What happened to me?

  The coherent thought was followed by vague, abstract memories he could not comprehend. He was trapped somewhere, he escaped. It was a dangerous, crazy plan, but Professor Vitor’s words echoed in his confused mind, This is the only way.

  Who am I?

  Another body brushed by him, pushing him sideways with its sheer bulk. He turned his head, and all rational thought escaped from his mind. Long snouts, enormous hind legs, fangs, olive green skin, talons, fucking tails . . . There were monsters all around him. He instinctively recoiled until his back hit something cold and hard. There were more than a few who were fighting, tearing and biting at each other, screaming pain and frustration, but most other monsters just watched and none of them were paying him any attention. He realised his talons were still extended outwards, ready to shred any attacker, and he felt unfamiliar aggression rise in him as he watched the fights around him. He did not want only to defend himself, he wanted to kill, and felt his body tense as the knowledge of how to kill flooded his mind. He breathed deeply, trying to control those emotions, until he finally lowered his arms.

  How long had he been like this? He could not tell. The air was suddenly filled with something else, a sweet and enticing scent, which drew his thoughts away. The fighting stopped, all the creatures around him moving their heads as if shaking off a bad dream. Round steel doors, which he had not registered before, rolled sideways and revealed a long tunnel. He tried to think, to make sense of it all, but something was confusing his thoughts. A hiss in his mind began to grow louder. It was not a natural sound, but it was appealing nonetheless. Slowly, one of the creatures moved towards the open tunnel. The rest followed, and eventually so did he. At first, he took tentative steps on his strong hind legs but as the urge to move faster grew in him, he dropped onto all fours, like an animal.

  What am I?

  The trot became a run, which became a mad dash in semidarkness, chasing a tail while being chased from behind. He was moving fast, faster than he had ever experienced before, faster than any human could run. The sensation was exhilarating.

  They emerged into the light, and he felt sweet pain as the hot rays of the sun burned into his skin. He still felt the pull in his mind, but he made himself stop and stand up as others passed him. There were structures, so many that they filled the horizon, their blackness a contrast to the yellow-red sand. The air was dry and hot, slightly burning with each breath, but he did not care. At least there was some kind of familiarity to the scene he was seeing.

  Where am I?

  In the light of the sun he was even more defor
med and hideous. And sexless, as far as he could check. That fact was registered calmly. Too much had happened in too short a time to panic about the lack of genitals.

  The pull in his mind was still there but there was something else, just behind him, a different voice, whispering. He saw the last of his kind disperse and disappear among the buildings, and he even took several more steps towards where they were running. But no. There was something else.

  He made himself stop, rise up, and concentrate until the hiss faded, and so did the urge to go find it. Instead, another sound became noticeable. This sound had structure and meaning.

  Intelligence.

  The sound grew louder. He could feel it vibrating in his skull and coursing through his body. Then the noise merged into a sentence in his mind.

  “Come to me.”

  He hesitated briefly. Something in him desperately wanted to run towards the structures and join his . . . kin? How quickly had he felt empathy towards those monsters? How long before he completely became one of them? Maybe he should—

  “Come to me, please.” The tone was high-pitched, the voice of a child on the cusp of becoming a young woman, but the urgency of it was clear.

  Come to me. An image began to form in his mind. Red curls, grey eyes. . . . in the background he saw mountains with white tips. The urge to move in a new direction became almost a pain in his gut.

  He turned and began moving in a different direction from the one his brethren had gone in. At first he walked, but a little later he lowered his body to the ground and accelerated. Might as well use all the perks this monstrous body had bestowed.

  He followed the voice.

  * * *

  “Master.”

  The old man took his time before raising his gaze from the screens. The soldier, his soldier, stood anxiously at attention. Master, King, God—when had he gotten so accustomed to these titles? Eons ago, but he never actually demanded the titles. It came naturally to them, first to his team, then to his army, and now to his people, his flock of murderous sheep.

  “Master . . .” The soldier spoke again, looking hesitant.

  The headache was back. He could feel the light throbbing beginning to build to what would soon become the pain he had never managed to get accustomed to, even after all these years. He resisted the useless gesture of massaging his temples. Instead he frowned at the soldier impatiently, and upon meeting his gaze, the soldier spoke immediately, blathering in nervousness.

  “They are gathering outside, Master, about a hundred people from the eastern village.”

  “I know,” he answered slowly. “And there are seventy-one of them, precisely.” Of course he knew. The screens on his table had come to life as soon as the crowd approached the perimeter, and even the weak security AI he had installed knew how to count heads.

  He watched them gather, surrounded by guards. They were, for all intents and purposes, his people, and not for the first or last time he pondered about the craziness of human behaviour.

  True, he protected them, occasionally helped or fed them, but every once in a while, like the vampire of the old horror stories, he had to feed off them as well. And still they came, carrying primitive gifts instead of torches and pitchforks. Sometimes they came with pleas, sometimes with seasonal offerings or pledges. This time they came to witness a miracle.

  “It’s just that the Captain said there’s a storm brewing and—”

  “I know about the storm.” He cut the soldier off and rose slowly from his chair, masking with his hand the grimace of pain that simple action caused. The headaches were the worst, but for the past few months his entire body suffered with every movement. Norma offered medicine and treatment, but that was just temporary relief and left him weakened and confused. Not the state of mind he wanted to be in while surrounded by the people he had chosen to lead. Instead of drugging himself to death, he simply learned to accept it; the pain was part of his existence now. He even drew a sort of masochistic comfort from it. What was the name of that old man from the folk legends? Methuselah, that was it. Old as time, that was how he felt, that was who he was. Well, the pain was proof that he was still alive, still human, barely.

  While the soldier stepped smartly behind him, he walked slowly to the next room, where several of his scientists, if one was prepared to debase that term, were working. He got their full attention simply by entering the room. Radovitch came to him immediately and bowed. He fucking bowed, his fat hand combing wisps of thin hair back over a glistening bald patch as he rose back to an upright position.

  “Report.”

  “Storm is coming.”

  He wanted to slap the man. It was quite unbelievable that he had taken Radovitch with him all the way from the old continent. It was achingly obvious that the potential he had seen in him as a young man had failed to fully bloom. “Tell me what I do not know yet. Is the Star Pillar ready?”

  Radovitch hesitated, scratching his balding head. “A few more days of sun would make things less strenuous on the auxiliary generators.”

  “The storm will last for days, perhaps weeks. I am going to head there today to complete the next sequence. Inform the guard post to expect me.”

  Radovitch looked as if he was about to argue but thought better of it. And rightly so. He’s been getting too lax, which makes him prone to mistakes. And I can really use a new pair of lungs.

  “What about the thing we talked about?”

  Radovitch looked vague. Yep, definitely a new pair of lungs, I know they will match, that was the other reason I kept you alive till now.

  The man suddenly brightened up, remembering, and shifting to his native, old-continent tongue as a way of precaution. “Ah yes, of course, we established a link to one of the operatives, but it’s weak.”

  “Even better, that means a diminished chance of detection. You know who the operative is?”

  “No, but we were lucky. To judge from the serial number she’s an old one, high ranked—but let’s say she was shelved pretty deep. I am almost positive we can extract her without getting caught.”

  “‘Almost positive’?”

  He fretted. “I found an emergency bunker with a very low energy signature. Even if they catch us, they would not be able to find where she went.”

  “Fine.” You may live another day. “I will be away for a while. I want to wake her up before I go up to the hub and even if I am still up there, initiate the dream sequence in a week’s time. That was the standard mode of operation for Tarakan hibernating agents”—as far as I know. He did not voice the last thought out loud, having learned long ago that no one wanted to follow a leader who admitted such weaknesses.

  Radovitch nodded.

  “This is important, Radovitch.” Only physical fatigue stopped him from grabbing the man by the collar of his coat. “I must have this Puzzler, and this is the only lead we had for a whole year. From this moment on, this is your only priority. I am sending Sergiu, too.”

  “Yes, Master.” Radovitch grimaced at the mention of the name. The two men disliked each other at least as much as they were loyal to him. He made a slight gesture of dismissal with his hand, and Radovitch bowed stiffly one more time and walked back to his post.

  Now, it’s showtime.

  By the time he reached the door leading outside, there were already six soldiers surrounding him, all wearing proper protective gear, masks included. As a soldier laboured to turn the heavy wheel that unlocked the sealed door, he caught his own reflection. His body was so badly ravaged by age, war, contamination, and countless surgeries; he looked a proper monster, all gnarled, scarred, and wrinkled, like a sick old oak tree.

  Oh, Professor Vitor. If you could see me now . . . Would you have recognised me, your former student, your colleague, your angel of destruction?

  He wondered, not for the first time, if he would have been in a better condition had he succumbed to peer pressure and changed his body to a newer model just before the Catastrophe happened. As always, he consoled
himself that it would not have made a huge difference. Perhaps he would have been able to keep more of his original body organs or wear less of other people’s skin, but sooner or later, everything breaks down and dies. Besides, the condition of the body was only the tip of the iceberg when measured against what had happened to his soul.

  The leading guard opened the hatch for them to step out. As usual, he did not bother with the antiradiation garments. Having more frequent radiation treatment was worth shedding the cumbersome suits and it certainly solidified his fame. Nothing could touch him. Nothing.

  The crowd outside was also wearing an assortment of real or pretend protective gear. Some wrapped themselves in aluminum foils or old plastic. Several of them even wore ancient gas masks. It was quite comical, in a way.

  After all these years, the radiation fallout and soil contamination in this area were not as high as they used to be, but babies who were deformed or dead at birth were common. Despite the people’s resilience, the average life expectancy would have been in the low thirties if it was not for him, their miracle maker, their Lord.

  He walked towards them. The Star Pillar was looming behind him, with all of its enormity. It made for a good effect. The last surviving wonder of the world, humanity’s greatest achievement, cutting through the grey dust cloud, lighting their nights, giving them hope but also fear.

  Fear is better than hope.

  They bowed deeply when he emerged, some even going down on their knees. There was a ceremony. There always fucking was, and they brought offerings, of course, some soil-grown food, a sickly goat, and several gallons of purified water. He hoped that the Lieutenant who accepted the gifts on his behalf would remember that with no exception, those gifts must be purged, even the goat, lest they lose any more people.

  When it was over the crowd parted to let a couple step forward. They were nervous, as they should have been, and the wife’s eyes spoke of fear and misery. Her husband looked, and probably smelled, as if he had rolled in manure. A farmer, then, and he too was shaking visibly when he handed the cot to the Lieutenant. The cot was wrapped in semitransparent plastic and it was a miracle the baby did not suffocate. It was a girl.

  The Lieutenant scanned the parents and the baby with the handheld device, then carefully unwrapped the the plastic foil, took the baby in his arms, and brought her to his master.