The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

machinery and the room that might guide them to a different place and time in the apparently infinite multiverse. Derrick stopped at a black plastic joystick surrounded by unlabeled gemstones. As his attention turned to them, they illuminated with a ghostly backlight.

“That the one?” the tall Arridon asked, looking over Derrick’s shoulder.

“Yeah. Yeah I think so,” Derrick said, “it just feels right to me.” He stepped closer so he could grasp the control stick. He waited several seconds and then reached out, taking it in his hand as he had a thousand times before on his gaming console. The plastic felt warm, as if someone had been touching it mere moments prior.

“Do you…feel anything?”

“Not really.”

“Try touching the buttons. The jewels.”

“I’ve been touching my jewels long enough that I don’t need a frigging coach, Arridon. Give a man some breathing space,” Derrick said with a throaty chuckle.

“Okay, fine, fine. It’s just, you know. End of the world. Worlds. Armageddon and whatever. Time’s probably wasting.”

Derrick turned and lifted one brow at his new friend, and he backed off with a smile, standing closer to a sheer-surfaced console a few steps away. The boy from the moon returned his attention to the cluster of lit gems, and slowly rested his fingers on them, one by one.

A deep, mechanical hum grew around them, and a wide, softly lit viewscreen appeared above the controls bank.

“What was that?” Derrick muttered, not daring to release his strengthening grip on the joystick. “It sounds like some kind of nuclear generator starting up.”

“What’s a generator?”

“Really? You come from a world with a room like this, and don’t have generators?”

“We have magic. I can conjure a concussive force that’ll smash you into the floor like a cockroach.”

Derrick swallowed and turned his attention to the viewscreen, which was glowing brightly. Arridon hadn’t meant the comment as a threat; he was just pointing out differences in life experiences, in a colorful way.“Well, a generator produces, um, power, but not magical power, just, and, well, it sounds like waves crashing on the rocks, but nonstop and real loud.”

“I’m with you, I get it.”

Derrick turned back to the joystick into his hand. This time, he tried putting a different finger down on a different gem first.

Suddenly, images appeared on the viewscreen. As though they were hovering, then flying, Derrick could see rolling forests spilling over a valley floor; mist rising above the trees. Then, a river, running red with blood. He was startled, and backed away from the controls.

“Holy crap! Did you see that, Arridon! I did that! I turned the monitor on! We can see the whole world from here!” He looked back at the screen, which continued to fly above countryside, approaching a dark, looming cityscape. He looked excitedly to Arridon, who’d remained silent.

Arridon was in a sort of trance, his hands floating just above one of the shining rings, which glowed white, a pulsing aura of bluish light surrounding it, just touching his palms. Derrick turned back to the screen, to watch, abandoning the plastic controls and gem-like buttons.

“Oh,” Derrick said. “Okay, well, good then.”

Arridon, in his semi-conscious state, saw the images projected on the viewscreen, but he also smelled rich aromas and terrifying stenches of rot and industry in equal measure. He was overcome by feelings of cold, heat, pleasure, and the pain of a thousand different moments from a thousand different places, all at once.

He withdrew, snapping himself away from his connection with the ring. The viewscreen faded back to its dull glow. Above the skylights, shadows passed, and the sound of thrumming in London returned. Agitation and war grew closer.

“Dude. What just happened?”

“I think I got it. Do you trust me?”

“No more than a strange neighbor I’ve only barely met.”

“Sounds about right. Are you at least ready?”

“Nope, but do your crazy voodoo shit anyway. I want to find our sisters, and maybe kick some demonic, evil ass.”

“If we had ale, I’d drink to that. Hold onto your butt. It’s about to get weird in here.”

Arridon spoke the truth. It got very weird in there.

The power coursing through the room wound down as the two boys leapt out of their reality and into a far flung one. The whirling dervish gear-rings finished their scintillating dance as the empathic heat that made them glow abated. The viewscreen ground down to a halt, and to match, the glowing pedestal consoles went dark and back into hibernation.

The boys exited the chamber, stepping forward to continue their search, but behind them, the chamber that could pierce through dimensions powered up again without a god to operate it. The rings exploded into emergent action, rotating in a blitz of frenetic, orbital energy. They returned to their gleaming state, casting radiant heat and light to the walls of the towering space.

A woman stepped out of the light and looked around.

“Right. If I were a shitty, war-starting version of me, where would I be right now?”

Jenny Allsop cracked her knuckles and left the gods’ clockwork room at the pinnacle of the Shard to begin her hunt.

28

EO

Derrick and Arridon struggled with the moment; they’d never seen a vista such as the one they laid eyes on, and trying to piece together what exactly they were looking at stole every ounce of ability they had.

They were near the center of a circular room with a white floor, a domed white ceiling high above. Windows, twenty feet tall, surrounded them, and a circular staircase disappeared into the floor against the edge of the room. Outside, a field of stars in a black sky spilled up, down, and out as far as their eyes could see. To their left, a million miles away and just a few feet all the same, was a globe; an unfamiliar world, swirling with blue oceans and arid continents. Islands of green dotted the seas here and there, forests and jungles larger than states and provinces whole.

At their back was a bright yellow sun, so bright,