James Axler - Infinity Breach

“The chair that you now sit in,” Hidalgo explained, “has lain beneath this pyramid since its construction over three thousand years ago. It is a throne for the dead, and all who sit in it must surely die.”

As Hidalgo spoke, Flag could feel a cold shiver wrenching at his spine. There was something about this chair, some uncanny ability that could affect a man in ways almost beyond comprehension. The ideographs were more than simple representations of its purpose—they acted in some way to channel a person’s will, forcing them to die, their heart to cease beating.

“You feel it already, Professor Flag,” Hidalgo said, wide teeth showing in a sickening smile. “You feel the dreaded march of death’s approach.”

This strange throne was the primitive equivalent of an electric chair, Flag realized, but one that was powered solely through the will of the executioner himself. Flag’s only means of survival was to outthink Hidalgo before the dreams of death overcame him.

Flag narrowed his eyes and concentrated, his muscles tensing as his arms wrenched at the bonds that held them in place.

“You are a fool, Professor,” Hidalgo mocked as he saw Flag struggling at his restraints. “You cannot break those shackles—no man can. And, in a few moments, you shall be dead.”

Flag ignored the man’s ranting, concentrating on his inner strength, the nobility of purpose that had served him through the most dire of situations. He could feel Hidalgo’s thoughts in his mind now, sifting through them as a man’s hands will sift through sand. Suddenly, that terrible, invisible hand clawed within Flag’s skull, and the great man of science let loose a desperate gasp.

Hidalgo, that resurrected priest of a blood-soaked civilization of the ancient past, laughed as he tightened his mental grip on his victim, feeding all of his terrible hate through the strange and mystical chair through his thoughts alone. Trapped in that seat of doom, Abraham Flag fixed his fierce stare on the man in the abominable headdress, feeling the pressure bearing down upon his mind. His skull felt as though it might explode like some rotted fruit, but still Flag clung to life, recalling the miraculous things that he had discovered, thinking of all the sights he still had to see. And in that moment, something else flashed through his exceptional brain.

u x d + (c x s) - (t x b)

It was the incredible equation he had been developing at his hidden Laboratory of the Incredible in the Antarctic, the equation that proposed to hold the key to life itself. He concentrated all of his thoughts on the equation, on life itself.

Up x Down + (Charm x Strange) - (Top x Bottom)

As the equation raced through Flag’s thoughts, the ideographs on the chair began to glow and, incredibly, to alter their shape. The parable of death that had been written there just moments before changed, the millennia-old carvings shifting their lines subtly as their meaning altered forever at Flag’s command.

At first the priest, Hidalgo, failed to notice the extraordinary change that was occurring before his eyes. He stood in that tiny death chamber, grinning at Flag’s plight as he focused his thoughts to power that incredible, ancient machine. And then, like an old sheet finally wearing through, something in Hidalgo’s mind seemed to tear, ripping apart. The whites of his eyes took on an aspect of crimson as all of the capillaries burst, and blood trickled from his nose before he fell to the flagstone floor.

With a final strain of superhuman effort, Abraham Flag snapped the two shackles that held his wrists to the chair, their wood shattering into a thousand splinters as he leaped from that terrible throne of death….

KANE HELD HIS HAND over his face to protect his eyes as glass crashed down all around where he crouched on the trophy room’s floor. Swiftly, he ran his hand through his hair, and twinkling slivers of glass tinkered to the floor. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled, scrambling behind another cabinet and reeling off a burst of gunfire from his Sin Eater.

Kane’s bullets cleaved the air all around the Millennial Consortium guard, but the man rolled behind another cabinet, this one containing a carved stone wing from some long-forgotten statue.

“Kane,” Grant called from his own hiding place. When Kane looked, Grant was nodding toward the doorway. “More company.”

Kane glanced up and saw more millennialist guards rushing through the open doorway. Grant and Brigid peppered the doorway with a sustained burst, and one of the newcomers fell to the floor amid a spray of blood as his companions rushed to find cover.

“There’s no way we can get up top while they’re here,” Brigid said over the Commtact, her voice sounding frantic. “Any ideas?”

Kane’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the scene before him. They were trapped in a room full of pointless crap as a dozen armed men closed in on them. Reluctantly, he engaged his Commtact’s microphone. “I guess we play a game of Last Man Standing,” he growled.

Sin Eater in hand, Kane backed up against a glass cabinet displaying nothing more than one lone bullet, its silver casing ringed with a single line of gold like a wedding band—a marriage of violence.

All around the brightly lit storage room, a dozen foot soldiers of the Millennial Consortium were finding their own cover as they hemmed in Kane and his companions. Both Grant and Brigid were somewhere off to Kane’s right, closer to the ladderlike shelves than he was, but neither they nor he could get out of the room without moving out into the open and risking execution.

As Kane tried to track all the enemies in his mind’s eye, his Commtact burst to life once more. It was Grant.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Grant said, “but we’re outnumbered here, partner.”

“I noticed,” Kane sourly acknowledged. “Looks like they had reinforcements tucked away.”

“These see-through cabinets are no cover at all,” Brigid added over the hidden Commtact unit.

“What are you suggesting?” Kane asked, his eyes fixed on the sentry who had grabbed Brigid. The man was busy reloading his Calico subgun. Kane saw now that the sentry had entered via a smaller chamber set to the rear of the trophy room. They had to have walked straight past the inset door when they had originally entered the complex.

“A bloodbath might not be our best avenue of attack,” Brigid mused.

“Ever the diplomat, Baptiste,” Kane growled in response, but under the circumstances he tended to agree.

Though Kane had absorbed Brigid’s words, his mind was focused on the guard by the cabinet containing the stone wing. The man had already shown himself to be dangerous, with a quick temper and an itchy trigger finger. What’s more, he was deadly fast—a lethal combination to face in any armed man. Worse yet, Kane thought as he peered at the spent shells at his feet, the lunatic was using wadcutters, nasty, flat-nosed rounds that did more and bloodier damage than a standard bullet. Any of Kane’s crew hit by one of those, even a glancing blow, would likely be incapacitated if not outright killed. The carved throne at Kane’s back had great rents across its upright section now, and thick wooden splinters carpeted the floor around the busted display case where the wadcutters had torn the arcane piece of furniture apart. With fortune on his side, a man could take a bullet and remain standing; wadcutters just ripped apart anything they made contact with, and could easily go straight through the shadow suits the Cerberus team wore.

Kane turned his mind back to the conversation of strategy. “I’m gonna go make friends,” he stated over the Commtact.

HIS SUBGUN RELOADED, the guard with the wadcutter bullets inched around the cabinet, the light glinting from his shattered goggle lens. Holding it solidly by its twin-handled grip, the man poked the Calico’s long muzzle in Kane’s direction, his cheek burning from the bullet his goggles had deflected.