Warning zones on the floor indicated portal areas to avoid. Nine stony archways led away, each with a different receptionist. Chyron guided them to an archway with a tentacle monster.

  “Welcome to Horror!” it said.

  They walked past doors for several mad science labs, then past the office of Victoria Frankenstein. The main action was up ahead, where a foppish long-haired human in a red silk jacket waved for them to get into the Horrors of War Conference Room.

  Medieval weapon racks interspersed bookcases, with real weapons under glass and rattan weapons on the walls. Humans and anthros worked on laptops. A rapier point pressed to Non’s chest.

  “Put the stave and horse head on the table,” said the fop. “I’ll trust your brother to check you.”

  Non obeyed, setting items down as Chyron knelt to examine him. “Is the rapier necessary?”

  “Per Galactic Core, if Andromeda Traveler dies, so do you. I’m Edward Alfred, your liaison.”

  “Fullmetal Alchemist?” Non saw the man’s eyes flicker.

  “Lester, add the trope of the Elric brothers as a possible Mayhem trap. No. I wrote Icosaméron, an early hollow Earth novel that aged terribly. I made a bet on you not being a threat. Others here disagree.”

  Lester, a short, stout, untidy human, added to a board.

  Non lifted a leg for Chyron. “Fine. Let me know how I can help.”

  Edward Albert sheathed his rapier. “I’ll send it as a formal request.” He reached for a crudité platter. “GC hasn’t had a fit of pique since Alexander the Great died without a backup. But still a threat.”

  Non made the note visible. “Picoid has GC’s memories. Let’s not upset the big guy twice in one hour.”

  Edward found a plum. “Agreed. Picoid, please restrict access to memories safe for us mere mortals.”

  Chyron stood up. “My brother’s clean, Edward. He’s a free agent. Maybe fill me in more?”

  “Your brother’s name change, Nonce-?once-Non, along with a word notoriety claim by Mayhem triggered a tilde bug that’s now fixed. Nothing happened when Andromeda Traveler seized Picoid’s hidden fortune, so I bet that Non Sequitur and Picoid will remain a non-threat.” Edward bit into the plum.

  “I have a note here,” said Non, putting it on a screen.

  Edward Alfred changed his mind on the plum, setting it on a refuse tray. Non claimed it.

  “Eleven days?” A man pressed a button on the table. “This is Alastor. Andromeda wrangled eleven days for us. There’s a countdown timer.” Cheers from a remote room erupted through the speaker.

  Lester stepped through the doorway and brought back an old bottle of whiskey. “I won this in a game against Robert Smalls. With eleven days, I’d say this is a fine time to celebrate.”

  Others in the room didn’t seem so ready.

  Non finished the plum and opted for more restrictions. “Picoid tells me that one of you may risk accessing the last six thousand years. I’ll need a formal request.”

  Victoria’s eyes hazed as Non granted access.

  “If I got a new name, would that help? Maybe Nonchalance? If it helps CCC or Picoid, I’ll do it.”

  “Nonchalant you’re not, brother. Eat these radicchios. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Victoria?” As she slumped, Alastor lifted her limp form, then laid her on the table.

  “Stay calm, Alastor. It might take a while,” said a squid head.

  Except for Edward Alfred, the room’s attention had switched to Victoria. As Non cronched radishes, he looked through the doorway behind Lester at a vast table map covered with high detail figurines.

  “My office. That’s the called-off WW2 invasion of Japan, a wargame.” Lester tapped his board. “The CCC programs have a protective AI. A fog of war might thwart changes to Mayhem.”

  “Grace told me that Mayhem traversed CCC files. Has a spy been found?”

  “A million work for CCC; here, branch offices, Earth; all transitioning eighty thousand minds a day,” said Edward. “Anyone that avoids the extremes of laziness, zealotry, despair, hubris, brutality or greed. There’s a lot of gears in this clock. Who knows what espionage might escape these escapements?”

  Chyron touched Victoria’s brow. “It’s good that you restricted Victoria to six thousand years.”

  “I need to use the water fountain. Be right back,” said Non, stepping out. He consulted the old floor plan that Tycho had found. While drinking, he pondered escape routes. Edward Alfred shadowed him.

  In his floor plan pop-up, he saw “Usher Mayhem” over a desk in the lab of Victoria Frankenstein.

  Non made his pop-up visible. “Dr. Mayhem used to work for Victoria Frankenstein?”

  “Oh, dear. I’ll find the details,” said Edward Alfred. “I was not told of this.”

  The lab and office stood opposite each other. The painting Prometheus on the Caucasus hung on the far wall in Victoria’s office. The lab featured two huge slabs and other mad science contraptions.

  “Dr. Mayhem worked for this branch for two years. Then he faked his death, apparently.”

  “Why even bring someone like Usher Ravensbourne here?”

  “Good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. Also, not many chimera.”

  “He used to have a desk right there,” said Non.

  The lab matched its blueprints exactly. Widening the search, the office across had a minor error.

  “Let’s get back,” said Edward Alfred. “Mayhem faking his death can wait.”

  Victoria rose up from the table, looking to the bird. “Picoid. You have good dispositions; your life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial. Now that I have a knowledge of your crimes and misfortunes, I can see your memory wasn’t loaded with abhorrence and opprobrium.”

  “Picoid is safe?” asked Non.

  “No,” said Alastor. “She ruled that the easy answer, death, is unjustified. We still need to assure that Non Sequitur and his minions pose no risks to Sagittario’s plans.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ”Perhaps a mind swap with his twin brother, using the Dr. Grimstone device,” suggested Victoria. “That could also give us data we need, for science. We should go to Ingolstadt. My lab.”

  “Dr. Grimstone left to visit W.H. Donovan and Prof. Dowell,” said Lester.

  “I stayed in Dowell’s hotel room in Athens last night. If you need that mind swap, brother, I’m fine with it,” said Chyron.

  “But then I’d have snakes, like Mom,” said Non. “I’m not sure how I’d explain that to anyone. They fit better with being a healer.”

  “You have snakes?” asked a squid head, backing away.

  “Can we see them?” asked a nosferatu programmer.

  Snakes emerged from slots behind Chyron’s shoulders. “The green snake is Asclepius; the pink snake is Caduceus.”

  “Hi!” said the green snake. “Watch out, the pink one bites.”

  “Vicious lies!” said the pink snake. “But I do have sarcasm.”

  “Let’s head to the lab, brother, it’s over here. And taste the water in the water fountain, they have great water here,” said Non, rechecking his maps of the lab.

  Chyron drank at the water fountain. "You have quite the discerning palate, this water is truly superb."

  Non checked for how people were positioned around him, unsure whether to fight while labeled as a Level 2 Galactic Threat. Then he reexamined the 30 centimeter error in Victoria’s office.

  “Edward, would you say this painting is gruesome?” said Non, walking to the back of Victoria Frankenstein’s office. He pointed to the signature.

  “Get out of my office! Get in the lab. We’re doing an investigation of a galactic threat!”

  “Why the horror for Prometheus Unbound?” asked Edward Alfred. “Your brother is right; you are not nonchalant. Eagles eating the liver too graphic for you? Now then, Mayhem obtains points via themes, connections and hidden clues. I can see the signature. But antecedent necessities are chimerical.”

  “What are you two talking about? Out!” said Victoria.

  “Dr. Isabelle Stone helped Mayhem modernize these labs,” said Non. “Cyclops lists her as missing.”

  “Do you think Mayhem killed her?” asked Edward.

  Non nodded, then pulled down the painting, exposing the blank plaster wall behind it.

  “Isn’t this the horror section?” asked the pink snake. “I am appalled by the angst and dread in here!”

  “This is one reason I hide them,” said Chyron, as he finished drinking.

  “Prometheus on the Caucasus! My favorite mountains!” said Caduceus.

  “Hey Caduceus, did you notice we scared Cthulhu?” said Asclepius.

  “From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent,” said the squid head.

  “Calm yourselves,” demanded Edward. “Is a mind swap essential?”

  “Does the Grimstone device invoke the Prisoner of Benda theorem?” asked Non.

  “Dr. Griffin would know,” said Alastor. “Has anyone seen Dr. Griffin?”

  Victoria seethed. “Non, go to my lab and lay on my slab.” A stitched giant Non’s height joined her.

  “What happened to Dr. Stone, who rewired your lab with Dr. Mayhem?” asked Non.

  “She left after doing a woeful job,” said Victoria. “Adam, please assist Non to a slab.”

  As Non dodged the stitched giant, the cthuloid wrapped its tentacles around Non’s head.

  “Squidly Hideous uses a mind-link insidious to make my vision non-Euclideous?” said Non. “Let’s prove the Perkel graph and 57-cell equivalency, the fun way.”

  Sudden polychoronic agony seized the creature. It screamed as it backed away.

  “You thought a mere Poincaré projection would petrify a geometer? Have a Paincoré disk.” Non pinned the cthuloid head to the wall with his badge.

  The eight foot tall stitched humanoid figure grabbed Non’s mane.

  “Just flee, Non,” said the green snake, Asclepius. “We’ll convince your brother to cover your escape. Hey, Chyron, want to hear a cool idea?”

  “You can’t escape destiny by running away,” said a nosferatu, launching itself at Non’s throat from the side, the equitaur going down as the long claws squeezed his equine neck.

  Non maintained eye contact with the nosferatu as a vector from his staff brought him back to a standing position. Then he hurled the creature at the exposed plaster wall, cracking it.

  Non held back Adam with Icosian. “Victoria, how did you injure both legs?”

  “How do you know about that? It was a lab accident,” said Victoria. “Isabelle’s fault.”

  As the nosferatu got up, Non crushed Adam into it, breaking a hole in the wall. The taur opened the gap further with Adam’s head, then reached into the hole, hoping to pull out evidence. He got an old, dusty clipboard. More plaster rained down as Picoid hammered on the wall.

  Non went with the clipboard while parrying Adam’s arm. “You verified lab changes with this checklist, Victoria,” said Non. “You checked off the Jacob’s ladder and slab angle, but not slab height. What happened next?”

  “Nothing happened. I demand you stop this outrageous behavior!”

  Non reeled at a punch from Adam, and Non’s arm went through another part of the wall. He felt something inside. Heaving Adam back allowed the taur to see a dusty metal disk. A film canister?

  “We can watch the film to find out, Victoria,” said Non, going with it.

  “There’s a film?” said Victoria. “The slab fell on me, on my legs. Then a fire started.”

  Non pulled a celluloid reel out of the film canister, then walked back to Alastor and Victoria. “Mr. and Ms. Modern Prometheus Unchained. Can we guess the contents of this film?” Alastor lowered his gun as ?? opened a projector cabinet in Victoria’s office.

  Under Picoid’s tapping, the wall collapsed to reveal a legless skeleton with a nametag.

  “Dr. Isabelle Stone, I presume. The first woman to get a Ph.D. in physics.” Non stepped to a film projector in Victoria’s office.

  After dimming the lights, Non started the film.

  Alastor looked at Victoria in horror. “My love! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Has Dr. Mayhem blackmailed you, Victoria,” asked Non.

  “Lester! He’s Professor Mirzarbeau!” said Victoria.

  ‘Who?’ As security arrived, Victoria started a frantic confession.

  “Do you trust them?” asked Edward Alfred. “Should I inform GC?”

  “That decision is above my pay grade.”

  “Doctors will soon arrive to examine Mayhem’s surgery,” said Chyron. “There’s a chance it may suddenly go bad. I’ll stay. Try to eat and rest, brother.”

  “Back to the conference room,” said Edward, gesturing.

  “I knew you were the one to trust, Edward,” said Non, waving to Chyron before moving.

  “My expertise as a manipulative scoundrel swayed you. I deceive both knaves and fools without the slightest qualm of conscience. You’d need to know me well to dislike me,” said Edward, his charming smile turning into a laugh. “Does my pedagogy require perfidy? I poked your chest earlier.”

  “I know I can trust you for at least three minutes.”

  “Certainly. A charlatan gets out of rifle range before a ruse is exposed.”

  ‘Note to self: stop liking Edward Alfred.’

  Security guards led Lester away with a bag over his head.

  Non picked up his badge. “Was Lester in programming or horror?”

  “War and Weapons. Armor, planes, trains, ships, bombs, spacecraft, mecha, character items.”

  “Wait. Lester was Professor Mirzarbeau of The Violet Flame, by Fred T. Jane? The first book with a world-destroying death ray? The founder of Jane’s Information Group, with specs for all weapons?”

  “Just the public weapons.”

  “Could I look at Lester’s invasion map of Japan?” asked Non. “It’s right behind this door.”

  “Let’s,” replied Edward, opening the door to show four other agents engaged in the search. Non studied the vast table map and the many miniatures upon it.

  A vixen in a vest stepped up. “Agent ??, I’m Agent Bystrou?ka. How might I help?”

  “Determine if this map is Earth or Icarus. Find his opponents and which weapon systems exist.”

  “This is Icarus’s Japan. You can tell by the shape, these islands, the Kyodaina Kazan volcano and the proximity to California territories.”

  “I see,” said Non. He stared at the map and figurines.

  A chalkboard listed six Kriegspiel opponents. Psykter, his uncle’s name, had been erased months ago, but a chalk ghost of the name remained on the DO NOT ERASE board.

  “An amateur painted this ship,” said Edward Albert. “An expert painted most of the others.”

  Non missed that. “Myself, I see nothing. Thank you. Any recommendations, Edward?”

  “Elevator. Lunch. Then a character sheet expert.”

  “Sounds great. Lead the way.”

  “Thanks for visiting Horror!” said the tentacle monster receptionist.