Infernum

The next morning, after a long and much-needed rest, Alex emerged from his bedroom to find two things sitting on his countertop, the large box with the black robe inside and the small piece of paper that he had written his note on. He grabbed the note and set it aside; as he set the box on the countertop the note fell unnoticed to the floor. Alex flipped the box’s lid open, exposing the carefully folded black robe inside. He reached into the box and grabbed the silky robe and then pulled it halfway out of the box. He turned the robe from one side to the other admiring the fine material it was made of.

Alex stood there in his kitchen holding up the black robe, all the while completely unaware of the thousands of nanites that were traveling from the robe into his body, making a complete map of his DNA strand and central nervous system. Just as the nanites were completing the task of pairing themselves to Alex’s body, he noticed that the robe had begun to shimmer. Small waves of light seemed to pulse away from where Alex held the robe. The waves of light were almost unnoticeable, but at the same time, if you were looking, they were mesmerizing to behold. As Alex stared at the waves of light the last of the nanites returned back into the robe and the entire garment began to melt in Alex’s hands. He tried to hold on to the robe but could not find anything to grab as it turned into a black metallic liquid and fell to the floor. The last of the robe fell through his fingers and joined the puddle on the floor forming a perfectly round solid black disk.

Alex stared at the black metallic disk on the floor for a moment then consulted his ánimam with hopes that it might know how to activate it. After a quick but far too detailed tutorial on the subject, Alex realized that it was not going to work with clothes on. He knew that the nanites would require direct access to every inch of his skin in order to form the millions of microscopic connections to his nervous system to function properly. He stripped down to his birthday suit then stepped onto the black disk on the floor. No sooner had his second foot touched the disk beneath him than the puddle of black nanites came to life. The black disk turned liquid and began to inch its way up Alex’s feet and legs.

He stood naked in his kitchen as the suit of nanite armor crept its way up his body, linking itself to his muscles and nerves as it went higher and higher. As the armor attached itself to him, he could feel an envelopment of energy around him. It started out as a slight tingle in his feet, but as the armor crept higher it quickly turned into an all over static feeling. By the time the armor was up to his neck, Alex felt like he was swimming in a sea of electricity, it did not shock him but rather energized his entire body. The armor was now entirely covering Alex and he felt amazing, he felt more powerful than he had ever felt before. The nanite suit not only protected him from harm but it also greatly increased both his strength and the power of his ánimam a hundredfold.

Alex walked out of his kitchen and down his hallway toward his bedroom. He stopped at the end of the hallway and stared into the large mirror hanging on the wall at the end of the hall. He stared at himself in the mirror for quite a while vaingloriously as he soaked in every detail from the fine glossy black scales that made up the majority of the armor to the exquisite engravings on his chest plate. He thought his new armor was quite medieval looking with its black spikes that came out of the shoulders and helmet. There were no chinks in this armor though, every inch of it was sealed up tight and no matter how he moved, the armor moved with him. Although this armor would protect him better than a ton of steel, it felt light as a feather and Alex could feel through it like it wasn’t there at all. He reached out and felt the mirror in front of him and was amazed how, even though he had armor over his hands, he could feel every detail of the mirror’s frame. He tried to control his armor like his ánimam, but he found that the armor took almost no concentration at all. All he had to do was start to think about something and the armor would do it. He thought about no helmet, and before the thought was finished, the nanite armor had already withdrawn from his head.

Alex turned and walked back down the hall and into his living room, where he began to think of the best way to get to Hope. He thought he would travel to the drill site where the daemons first came through. After all, if those monstrous things could get out, he would surely be able to get in through the same hole. He summoned his ánimam to make a porthole to the drill site. As the ribbons emerged from his back, they were covered by the black armor almost instinctively and Alex began to notice a strange sensation. He looked to his ánimam for answers and was not disappointed when he found out that the strange sensation was his ánimam, enhanced by the black armor, picking up Hope’s signal all the way down in the Infernum. He quickly realized that with the power of his new armor added to his ánimam, he would have more than enough energy to open a porthole directly into the Infernum without any help.

Without hesitation, Alex opened a porthole into the Infernum, as close to Hope as he could. He stepped through the porthole into the darkness and heat that was the Infernum, all the while thinking of nothing but rescuing Hope. What an appropriate name Hope was for a woman who filled Alex with such great feeling that he felt on top of the world and yet, at the same time, filled him with such terror; he feared for her very life every second she was gone.

As Alex made the transition into the Infernum, all he could think about was her. He thought of her innocent unawareness and her quirky little smile whenever she tried something new. Even the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear and not her right. A thousand thoughts of Hope blinded him as he leaped into the darkness of the Infernum to save her.

***

As the porthole closed behind him, there was a slight movement in the kitchen unbeknownst to Alex. The box on his kitchen counter began to melt onto the countertop. What was once a box was now a pool of liquid nanites that had reacted to the absence of the black robe that once lined its interior. The puddle of nanites slithered across the counter toward the range then up the wall and into the hood vent. Driven as to fulfill their only purpose in their meager existence, they slowly made their way through the hood vent until they found themselves on the roof. Once on top of the house, they began to reshape themselves to form a simple dish-like shape. And unbeknownst to anyone on the entire planet, their purpose was fulfilled as they broadcast a signal into space. A very powerful signal that was as driven as the nanites themselves, with only one purpose—and that purpose was to broadcast the location of Earth back to Lamia.