HELL IS GREEN

By Dale Glaser

All walkways throughout the Whirligig, following the overall design aesthetics of the base of operations of H.O.U.N.S.K.U.L.L., were enclosed in a latticework of black iron bands, creating the pervasive impression of cages within cages. The heavy tread of boots rang along the walkway as three conscripts traversed the length of an outer perimeter walkway, although only two of the figures rested any weight on the dulled metal surface; the third floated behind them.

The rearmost conscript was nothing more or less than a living shadow, a looming yet insubstantial creature of pure darkness in vaguely humanoid form, black and featureless except for two jaundiced eyes burning savagely in the center of its claw-shaped head. In the middle of the trio strode a lithe and well-proportioned female whose face and hair were both composed of the same material, a silvery-white lanthanide element; from the neck down her entire body was concealed within her conscript uniform, a thick layer of material as black as the living shadow behind her, accented by lavender bands of trim. The conscript in the lead, his uniform identical to his female counterpart’s, was a compact humanoid creature, barely four feet tall but heavily muscled, with organic flesh a deep shade of azure. His bald head was slightly enlarged compared to the rest of his frame, with a golden diadem running around the rear of its blocky circumference and branching into two brackets framing beady red eyes and a third band cresting the midline of his skull. A voulge-guisarme of matching gold was gripped in his right hand.

The trio reached a gap in the cage where a door separated the enclosed walkway from a large black iron cell. The lead conscript rapped impatiently on the door with the butt of his weapon’s haft, waited a few seconds, and rapped again, yelling, “Magzel! Conscription! Now!” Another span of seconds elapsed before the diminutive conscript began rapping harder still on the door. “MAGZEL!”

The portal swung open on scraping hinges, and the doorway was filled by an armored individual who hunched over in order to see beneath the top of the frame. The gray steel powersuit was the size of a small tank, studded with fist-sized rivets, and sporting massive gear-like discs ringing the shoulder joints. “I heard you the first time, Neut,” growled the man in the armor, his thick black eyebrows drawn together tightly in displeasure, his black-bearded jaw clenched. “It ever occur to you that I might have other things to do besides waiting like a dog to jump for the door whenever someone knocks?”

“Earth Gamma-Twelve is ready for the extraction of the target conscript,” the lustrous female said flatly. “The director has a Whirligig-wide address scheduled for tonight and wants the new conscript present.”

“Terbium speaks rightly,” Neut added. “And should the director ask why we were not returned in time for his address, I should tell him exactly who caused the delay.” From the rear, the living shadow hissed threateningly.

“Yes, fifteen seconds wasted knocking on my door is going to throw off the entire extraction,” Locomotive Breath gnarred, with a slight undercurrent of uncertainty. He donned his helmet, dominated by cats-eye lenses with reflective claret-tinted surfaces and a lower half which evoked the cowcatcher of a steam engine. “Lead the way, then,” he gestured. Neut, Terbium and Zuph the living shadow proceeded down the walkway, with the thunderous echoes of Locomotive Breath’s massive footfalls behind them obliterating any other noises.

The walkway followed labyrinthine slopes and angles until it delivered the conscripts to another doorway which dwarfed the entrance to Locomotive Breath’s quarters. Neut spoke the command “E-99-Superior” and the heavy barrier plates parted. The area within was the size of a small hangar, its bare metal floor unfurnished and uninterrupted except for the computerized monitoring equipment against the walls and a slightly raised circular pattern several yards in diameter in the center of the room. Two technicians in black and lavender jumpsuits were already present; one was a cyborg whose upper half was sallow-skinned and cadaverously thin, with a lower half consisting of a bowl-shaped anti-grav propulsor ringed with robotic arms, while the other technician was an imp-like creature only a foot and a half tall, with red carbuncle skin and membranous batwings jutting from its shoulders. The two H.O.U.N.S.K.U.L.L. technicians worked their way along the perimeter of screens, gauges and indicators obsessively, pointedly ignoring the four newly arrived conscripts and ignored by them in return. Locomotive Breath, Terbium and the living shadow took up positions within the central circular pattern, while Neut crossed to a holding chamber on the left side of the wide chamber.

Within the chamber, a pair of manacles on tensile cables was suspended from above. Chained by the manacles was a humanoid a few inches shorter than Neut, although there the physical similarities ended. The prisoner in the pen was naked, although his pelvis was concealed by filthy, matted brown fur. Bedraggled locks of the same shade of brown ran riot atop the prisoner’s head, and wisps of hair curled across his chest, belly, forearms and legs. The visible skin of the prisoner was dirty, unhealthily pale and hanging loosely over emaciated muscles. Abrasions and contusions proliferated across his flesh, and one eye was shiny and swollen from a recent blow. The manacles had been positioned at a height which forced the prisoner to stretch and extend his arms, spine and legs as far as possible and flex his feet perpendicularly just to be able to touch the floor with his toes, yet despite being arranged in just such an uncomfortable position, the prisoner appeared to be asleep.

“Wake up, troll,” Neut commanded, jabbing the blunt end of his voulge-guisarme between the bars of the pen. “Wake UP!”

The base of the haft slammed into the Laxidazian’s gut and elicited a pitifully weary gagging sound as he twitched to something approaching full consciousness. “Hnnh? Muh?” the prisoner squinted with disorientation.

“Earth Gamma-Twelve,” Neut said unsympathetically, turning to rejoin the other conscripts without further discussion. “And bring us back in fifteen minutes,” he added over his shoulder.

The Laxidazian peered upwards through one open eye. Set in a rod braced between the manacles was an ovoid luminous purple stone, the Infinity Gem which gave its possessor absolute mastery over Space. As the prisoner concentrated on the cosmic gem, its radiance intensified, and a corresponding glow appeared beneath the feet of Neut, Terbium, Locomotive Breath and Zuph. The violet circle of feverish light arose from the floor, sweeping up the length of the conscripts’ bodies and leaving nothingness beneath it. When the disc’s plane finally cleared the top of Locomotive Breath’s shoulder gears, it winked abruptly out of existence.

The Laxidazian sagged beneath the manacles, sickly sweat pouring down the sides of his haggard face. Any explanations for his not using the Space Gem to teleport himself out of imprisonment could only be guessed at, though the fact that a lone elfin ear emerged from the left side of his hair, while a raggedly misshapen lump of scarred flesh protruded on the right, offered some clue. The prisoner struggled to catch his breath, but before his respiration had completely slowed to normal he was already unconscious again.

Neut, Terbium, Locomotive Breath and Zuph emerged from the interdimensional warp beneath a sky full of angry dark green clouds, flickering ominously with electric lime flashes of lightning in their jade depths. Desert sands, stirred by furnace-hot winds, swirled around their boots. Distant mesas interrupted the line of the horizon at irregular intervals, but the immediate area was devoid of any features more elevated than small stones and a scattering of cacti.

“Did the troll drop us at the wrong coordinates?” Locomotive Breath wondered, swiveling his bulky armor at the waist socket to look around at the empty desert.

“If so he must be trying to commit suicide via dereliction,” Neut replied. “Not that it will work.”

“The target conscript is patrolling this area,” Terbium informed her companions. “Wait and see.”

As if in answer to the metallic woman’s assertion, a billowing trail of rising dust appeared in the distance, then veered towards the conscripts with staggering speed. A bestial growl of “Who goes there?” preceded the resolution of an emerald blur into discernible features. Once the interrogator came to a standstill, however, the overall shape was clear enough: a mutated animal with forcibly evolved humanoid characteristics. The creature had once been a wild peccary, a fact most clearly evident in the facial features still dominated by an upturned snout, protruding tusks, small eyes and triangular ears. The eyes were black and the tusks white, but the rest of the creature’s head was covered in bristly green fur, as was its barrel-chested body, powerful arms and lean hoofed legs.

Neut took a step closer to the gamma-mutant. “Baquiro,” he said in a tone that evoked both greeting and skeptical assessment.

“How do you know my name?” Baquiro snorted suspiciously.

“We know a great many things, of a size and scope you could barely comprehend, and you would do well to believe that,” Neut answered.

“That sounds like a threat,” Baquiro retorted.

“We didn’t come all this way to your dying Earth to make idle threats, pig-man,” Locomotive Breath derided. “We came to offer you a choice: come with us and live, or stay here and die.”

“Sounds even more like a threat,” Baquiro said.

“Which is why Neut suggested that you accept that we know of which we speak,” Terbium added. “The choice between life and death is real, and the more time you waste questioning how we could know your fate if you refuse us, the more likely the choice will be made for you. Not by us, but by the world around you.”

Zuph said nothing, floating ominously behind Terbium and Locomotive Breath, but raised a flat black claw and pointed into the distance. Baquiro turned in the direction the shadowy talon indicated, and spotted a rolling cloud of dust kicked up by multiple vehicles approaching.

“Pion Platoon,” Baquiro spat. “I have to warn the others …”

“Warn them about what? The little soldier boys?” Locomotive Breath scoffed. “What say we make a deal instead? We guarantee that the soldiers don’t cause any trouble for your friends, and you start believing we’re actually here to help you.”

“Guarantee?” Baquiro repeated doubtfully. Before any answer could be given, three armored personnel carriers braked to a halt before the conscripts and their target, and dozens of rifle-carrying soldiers emerged and took up positions around the huge, knobby tires. The soldiers were human, but all showed at least some signs of slight-to-moderate gamma mutation: pale green skin, or glowing green eyes, or green hair.

An officer stepped down from the cab of the lead APC, his sidearm drawn and held shoulder-high at the ready. His cranium was unnaturally enlarged, and pulsed with green veins that stood out against exposed skin, as only a fringe of black hair limned his brainpan in a line as thin as his groomed horseshoe mustache. “Everyone here is under arrest,” the officer’s stentorian voice rang out, “for theft of water supplies bound for Fort Villard and conspiracy to commit same!”

Baquiro grimaced as he raised his hands in a half-hearted gesture of compliance, glancing to the quartet to gauge their reactions. Terbium and Zuph remained unconcernedly motionless. Neut casually lowered his voulge-guisarme. Locomotive Breath rose to his full height, accompanied by a mechanical chorus of buzzes and clicks.

Without taking his eyes off the conscripts, the officer asked one of his subordinates, “These all Outcasts, Martel?”

Dr. Armand Martel, dressed in fatigues like the rest of the Pion Platoon but carrying a portable sensor array rather than a weapon, stared at the readout screens in his hands and frowned. “Unlikely, Major Sterns,” he answered hesitantly. “They don’t fit the genomic profile …”

“So the Outcasts are making new allies,” Major Sterns said, lowering his sidearm to aim the barrel directly at Neut. “Duly noted.”

“Sir, they don’t register as having any gamma mutations at all,” Dr. Martel went on. “They’re all below the standard baseline … right at the pre-Grid baseline …?”

Major Sterns narrowed his eyes. “You want to explain how that’s possible, blue boy?”

Neut shook his head ever so slightly. “There is not time to explain, and even if there were, we owe you nothing. Our business is with him,” he gestured one end of his voulge-guisarme toward Baquiro.

“Then I guess you’ll have to explain yourself back at base,” Major Sterns smiled coldly.

“I think not,” Neut countered. He lunged forward, swinging his voulge-guisarme before him like a horizontal bladed pendulum and catching Sterns just above the knees, separating the lower halves of his legs from the rest of his body in one stroke. Sterns’s gun spent its chambered round uselessly as too late he reflexively pulled the trigger, the crack of its firing only momentarily interrupting the screaming howl of agony as he fell to the desert sands. A moment later, Neut brought the voulge-guisarme’s head upward in an arc that reversed direction to slam down and cleave Sterns’s oversized skull, silencing him.

A brief firestorm of chaos followed as the soldiers of the Pion Platoon opened fire on the conscripts and Baquiro. Running in a serpentine superspeed pattern, Baquiro easily dodged the incoming bullets. Zuph ignored the hail of lead as it passed through his dark and insubstantial form, while Locomotive Breath was equally untroubled by the ammunition that chattered impotently off his armored chassis. Terbium generated an actuation field which repelled bullets effortlessly.

Neut waded deeper into the soldiers’ ranks, effectively preventing any of them from spraying automatic fire in his direction for fear of accidentally shooting one of their platoon-mates. The diminutive warrior’s voulge-guisarme spun and slashed mercilessly, decapitating and eviscerating with every pass. A soldier who had gained the sniper’s vantage of an APC’s roof took aim at Neut and fired, the bullet nearly grazing his golden diadem. Neut turned his baleful red eyes on the shooter and aimed his voulge-guisarme, unleashing a bolt of searing plasma which instantaneously reduced the soldier to charred skeletal remains.

Terbium pushed her actuation field outward and took hold of one of the APCs, sweeping it into the sky and hurling it down with sufficient force to flatten it, catching half a dozen soldiers beneath the vehicle and instantly reducing them to raw splatters of pulped flesh and mangled bone. The twisted wreckage of the transport vehicle rose up and smashed down again on another few unlucky souls before shearing apart into less useful components.

The outward faces of the gear teeth on Locomotive Breath’s shoulder rings opened to reveal launch tubes, and tiny rocket-propelled fragmentation grenades shrieked away from the armored conscript on trails of swirling steam. The explosions of each grenade detonating tore apart soldier’s bodies and another APC with irresistible fury. A soldier blindly stumbled away from one of the smoking impact craters and came within the expansive reach of Locomotive Breath, who reached out and crushed the soldier’s head in one gargantuan armored fist.

Zuph flattened against the ground between two soldiers silhouetted by the powerful headlamps of the last remaining APC, and the living shadow infiltrated the dark outline cast by one of the Pion Platoon members. That soldier’s shadow pointed its inky rifle at his counterpart, and a flurry of umbral bullets cut the other soldier down. The shadow then turned the weapon on the soldier casting it, and he too was torn apart by shades of semi-automatic fire.

Baquiro rushed behind Dr. Martel, crossed his arms underneath the man’s chin, and snapped the man’s neck with one savage superspeed twist. As the lifeless form fell from Baquiro’s hands, the Outcast looked around for another target. But on the gore-streaked desert sands between the ruined transports there were nothing but uniformed corpses, and the four strange beings who had intercepted Baquiro moments before the Pion Platoon’s arrival.

“A gateway is going to open here in one minute,” Neut announced. “If you choose, you may journey through it with us, and see worlds and worlds beyond your wildest dreams, battling alongside us. If you would rather, you may stay here, fighting pointlessly over this radioactive wasteland’s dwindling supply of unpoisoned food and water.”

Baquiro looked up at the malachite thunderheads crowding the sky as viridian lightning flashed. He shrugged his furry shoulders. “Even without threats, it’s not much of a choice,” he reckoned. And when the feverish violet portal opened in mid-air a few seconds later to admit Neut, Terbium, Locomotive Breath and Zuph, Baquiro followed them willingly enough.

“The conscription from Earth Gamma-Twelve has been successfully completed, Highest One,” Kondrati Topolov reported as the infofeed on his communications uplink came through. Topolov bore a vague and superficial resemblance to Neut, in that both were considerably below human average in height, and both possessed disproportionately large heads. Yet Topolov was half a foot shorter than Neut, pale-skinned, and combined a hunched posture and slight limbs to convey a nervous frailty at all times. His nickname, the Gremlin, was not undeserved.

“Excellent,” the director of H.O.U.N.S.K.U.L.L. answered as he finished buttoning the jacket of his martial uniform. While the conscripts, those who wore any clothes at all, were issued form-fitting uniforms, the director and members of his inner circle such as Gremlin wore more elaborate dress befitting their rank, all in the same color scheme: predominantly black, with lavender epaulets, belt, and seams on the jacket sleeves and trouser legs. But while Gremlin’s officer blacks hung limply on his scrawny frame, the director’s were perfectly tailored to his muscular physique.

“This particular conscription was … costly, Highest One,” Gremlin ventured hesitantly.

“Which is of no concern to me,” the director responded immediately. “Every price paid serves the high cause through that which is obtained.”

“The conscript has value,” Gremlin conceded, consulting a data node on his uplink. “A Class Seven gamma mutate with primary-level superspeed and tertiary-level superstrength. But to weigh one such individual against the multiple timeline translocations which preceded the conscription …”

Gremlin halted in mid-sentence as the director reached over and yanked the uplink device from his tiny hands. The stunted dwarf flinched under the director’s glare, but waited obediently as a whipped dog. “And what would have been the cost of doing nothing?” the director demanded. “Merely one less conscript among the ranks?”

“N-n-no, Highest One,” Gremlin quavered.

“No,” the director shook his head imperiously. “Had I done nothing to Gamma-Twelve, the cost would have been one more world with untapped potential in the tapestry of the multiverse. A world on which Bruce Banner did not harness the power of gamma rays for a weapon of war, but for a peaceful and plentiful power source. A world on which all of North America enjoyed unimaginable prosperity on the gamma energy grid.” He shook the uplink device angrily over Gremlin’s head. “Is there a data node which tells you what such a world might have accomplished in time?”

Speechless, Gremlin could only shake his head.

“Because such a world would be unpredictable, its future limitless,” the director went on. “I did not order saboteurs to remove the safeguards on Gamma-Twelve’s energy grid in order to conscript a single mutate. I did not unleash radiation storms and foment tribal conflict between humans and other mutate lifeforms in order to conscript a single mutate. The true victory was in laying low a world that might have otherwise risen too high. The conscript is nothing more than a trophy commemorating the deed.”

“My humble apologies, Highest One,” Gremlin whispered, “if for some reason you thought I questioned your furtherance of the cause …”

“You did question it,” the director replied. “But I forgive your lapse in judgment. Should it ever happen again, I may not be so inclined.” With that, the director left his quarters. Two members of his elite personal guard who had been standing sentry on either side of the doorway fell into step with the director as he proceeded down the cagelike black iron corridor, on his left the lupine cyborg War-Wolf, covered in equal parts tawny pelt and titanium plating, and on his right the incarnation of cyclones called Turmoil, a vaporous leaden gray being with deep blue eyes, white cloud-wisp antenna-like eyebrows and vicious white pedipalps. Gremlin scurried after them.

The director and his entourage quickly reached the heart of the Whirligig, where a large balcony jutted out over a black iron amphitheatre. On either side of the balcony hung large silk banners, ebony fields bisected by lightning bolt symbols of pale nearly-white blue and emblazoned with the profile of a visored knight’s helmet in lavender; the hounskull emblem was the namesake of the High Oligarchy for Universal Neutralizing and Sanctioning to Keep and Uphold Law and Legitimacy, while the lightning was the personal sigil of the organization’s director. He stepped onto the balcony, where other members of his inner circle awaited him, and positioned himself between the banners to look out over his army.

The effect of his presence was almost immediate. All around the amphitheatre, a hush fell as every eye turned upwards towards the director. Like a calming sea of obsidian flecked here and there with color, the uniformed conscripts and support staff waited expectantly. Not every individual present wore the black and lavender. Some, like the trolls of the Isle of Silence, were exempted due to their inherent savagery, and stood in nothing but ragged loincloths, exposing knobby limbs covered in maroon flesh and dark bristles. Others, like the greenish-gray aggregate blobs with no discernible heads, torsos or limbs, would have been impossible to tailor uniforms for. Still others, like the insectile Brood with their multiple spiny limbs, spade-shaped fang-dominated heads and hooked bodies, were both temperamentally and physiologically ill-suited for boots and bodysuits. But the exceptions were far outnumbered by the conforming cases: alabaster-skinned vampires, green-scaled serpent men, burly Femizons, skeleton warriors in rust-pocked chain coifs, colossal Kronans with cryptic orange mineraloid countenances, fearsome Haifs with pink squamous flesh surrounding bulging opalescent eyes and needle-filled mouths, gleaming chromium androids, bald and thick-thewed Infra-Worlders, indigo-furred Gynosii, frond-shrouded H’ylthri, and myriad humans and mutants, human mutates and humanoid aliens, demons and dimensional exiles, all outfitted in the colors of H.O.U.N.S.K.U.L.L. and all gazing to their leader.

He gave them all several silent moments to enjoy their awe, to experience the profound depths of their deference to him and their dependence on him. The vast assembly took in his imposing figure, his lavender skin the exact shade which decorated their uniforms, his hair the same electric blue-white as the banners’ lightning bolts, his eyes piercing black points centered in orbs of white, surrounded permanently by black shadows which bled seamlessly into his sharply arched eyebrows. And just before he began to speak, the director of H.O.U.N.S.K.U.L.L., the entity known as the Magus, bared his teeth in a worlds-devouring smile.

TO BE CONTINUED …???