Damnation Code (William Massa) - William Massa Page 0,40

always defeated the hordes of hell. Too bad we’re not playing a game, huh?”

Zagan took a step closer. Talon strained against his ropes. They didn’t budge. “I know you’re working with someone. Behind every good soldier is a great general pulling the strings. Someone has been helping you.” He paused for a moment before asking, “Who is Simon Casca?”

“I’d be careful with that knife. You might poke your eye out.”

“Sill cracking jokes in the face of defeat?”

“I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who wears a Halloween mask.”

Zagan stopped his advance for a beat. His smile was now replaced with a flicker of anger. Good. Perhaps if he played his cards right and provoked Zagan enough, the Omicron CEO would kill him and skip the torture.

“I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. You’ve seen firsthand what my program can do. Soon I’ll be able to manipulate reality like no one has ever done before.”

“Maybe try to fix male-pattern baldness, for a start. Might do wonders for your look.”

Zagan’s hand shot out at Talon‘s throat, fingers digging into his windpipe. Up close, Talon caught a full view of where his bullets had struck the man. Or was Zagan still a man at all? Steel shimmered inside the wounded tissue. What was the Omicron CEO turning into?

“I’m changing,” Zagan explained, almost as if he could read Talon’s thoughts. “Growing stronger with each sacrifice.”

Talon gasped for air.

“Each kill.”

Zagan released him and Talon struggled for air. He was still sucking in gulps of precious oxygen when Zagan dug the point of the knife into his bare chest. Talon’s muscles tensed against the assault and his lungs bellowed with agony.

“The best way to defeat someone is to make them serve you.”

Talon screamed more with rage than pain as Zagan drew the slicing edge over his chest. Another cultist filmed his ordeal and streamed it to the assembly hall’s viewing screen. These bastards were coding away to the accompaniment of his personal agony.

I’m going to kill every one of you fucking assholes, Talon thought as he gnashed his teeth with fury. The meaty stench of blood impregnated the air. He felt its warmth streaming down his exposed torso.

Zagan proceeded with his grisly work, inflicting one cut after another. Talon’s bare skin had become the canvas for Zagan’s madness. Blood dripped down Talon’s mutilated torso, staining his pants. Zagan kept slicing away with precision and a focused intent.

A minute later Zagan took a step back to inspect his handiwork. Talon peered up at his own battered image. His torso hemorrhaged an inverted pentagram. The bastard had branded him!

“I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, you’re wrong about that, Talon. You’ll serve me. You’ll serve the darkness. Sooner than you think.”

The cultist with the cam zoomed in until the inverted star on Talon’s chest completely filled the giant screen. A beat later, the image was replaced with roiling streams of code. The occult algorithm.

Talon averted his gaze but the waves of code seemed to pursue him like the floating images in a 3-D movie. Rising tides in a digital ocean. Once again, reality had ceased to obey the laws of physics.

Help me!

Memories fused with the supernova of data streaming through his brain. Sanity buckling despite his best efforts, Talon struggled to cling to something tangible, something real that would ground him.

War had taught him not to waste precious energy obsessing over details that were beyond his control. It was a lesson he’d learned during an Alpine mountain climbing exercise. He foolishly hazarded a glance upward and literally realized his whole life dangled on a six-inch metal spike. Panic gripped him. Fortunately one of his climbing instructors pulled him aside him and told to him to narrow his reality to a three-foot radius. The message was clear; he should live his life trying to affect what was within three feet of him and nothing else. Focus on that which you can control and ignore the rest.

Easier said than done.

Applying the philosophy, Talon concentrated on his breathing. He inhaled through his nose for a count of four… Held his breath for four seconds… The point was to breathe deeply and methodically, completely filling and emptying his lungs during each cycle. The technique worked somewhat, but the data floating around him remained. With each inhalation, he breathed in the program. Line after line of code. His frame convulsed.

Someone make it stop. Please, make it stop!

All thoughts ceased. His reality was reduced to the shining vision of an inverted pentagram, which