by Tim Akers
CONSEQUENCES
My parents and I waited at the curb while the fire department went through the house, or at least what was left of the house. The facade still stood, but the inside looked like a giant had come through and scooped it out. Which was literally what had happened, I suppose. The wreckage was strewn across the yard, clothes and furniture and memories littering the neighborhood like confetti.
“This is all my fault,” I mumbled. My mother was numbly picking through the detritus scattered across the front yard, looking for anything of value. Her face was scratched up, but other than that, she and Dad had come through unhurt. Dad stood in the street, just staring at the house. I looped my arm over his shoulders and pulled him close. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Act of God, son,” was all Dad could say. “Act of God.”
“Pretty sure she was some kind of harpy. I’d have to check the monster manual, or maybe...” I looked up. Dad’s eyes were glazing over. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Act of God.”
It was no use disagreeing with him, though the theological details were a little different than what he was thinking. Microburst, they were calling it, an extremely rare and completely made up meteorological phenomenon. And exactly the sort of thing reality would do to cover up a storm goddess come to earth to wreak vengeance on her dead husband’s murderer.
“I can’t believe this. I just...can’t believe this is happening.”
“It is.” Gabrielle’s voice came from the street behind me. I turned to see her step out of an impossibly nondescript car. “For this you probably could have called.”
“I tried,” I said. “My phone turned into a tarot deck.”
“Maybe we’ll need to get you a landline. Something from the 1800s, at least.” Gabrielle stood with her arms folded next to me, squinting up at the ruin of my parents’ house. “Though in extreme cases like this, sometimes carrier pigeon is the only way to go. How do you feel about pigeons?”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” I snapped. She raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“They’re not so bad. You can pretend it’s a pet owl, and that you’re some kind of special magic person, toiling away in the mundane world, keeping your secret magic owl. Except it’s a pigeon, and the only thing it does magically is poop a lot. After all—”
“I’ve heard enough about your damned bird,” I said. “You think you can just roll in here and make a sad face and then offer me a pigeon? Do you not see what’s going on around you? Look at my house! Look at it!”
“Kid, I’m perfectly capable of seeing. And yeah, it’s a damned shame, and inconveniences like this are part of your life now. But—”
“Inconveniences like this? A damned shame? A damned. Shame. I’ll say it is!” My voice was getting louder, and both of my parents were staring at me, along with more than a few of the firemen, but I didn’t care. “That thing nearly killed my parents. It nearly killed me, and it did a lot more than inconvenience my house. And the best you can do is offer me a freaking bird? No. No way! This wasn’t supposed to happen, and it did, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you make excuses. We’re going to Esther. Now.”
I stood vibrating on the curb, my face flushed and red. Gabrielle just stared at me, looking a little disappointed.
“No, we’re not,” she said, turning away. “You’re going to stay here, and keep your head down, and do a better job of calling us the next time this happens.”
“The next time? No, there’s not going to be a next time. This is Esther’s fault for sending me home. And your fault for making me think everything was going to be okay. It’s not going to be okay. It’s never going to be okay again. So you, and Esther, and that meatwall you call a driver, are going to start fixing this shit. Now!”
Gabrielle stared at me for a long heartbeat. Then she shook her head.
“No, kid. We don’t fix the real world for folks. Especially not for people who think we owe them something.” She turned on her heel and walked away. “And now you’re on your own. So good luck with that.”
I waited a heartbeat while she walked back to her car. When it was clear she wasn’t going to turn around, I stormed past her.
“Then I’m going to find her myself. Weird shit keeps happening around me. You think I won’t be able to just walk right into your silly little secret base? I just knocked out a storm goddess with a splitting maul. Knight freaking Watch doesn’t stand a chance.”
I got about ten feet past the car before I felt a hand on my shoulder. Well. More than a hand. Two tons of hand, and the kind of pressure you usually find at the bottom of an ocean. I stopped, because the alternative was to have my arm torn from its socket.
Owen loomed over me. I could feel his hot breath on my neck. I tried to turn, but he tightened his grip, pinning me in place. He looked back at Gabrielle.
“Fine,” she said. “Better we walk you in than you try to storm the gates. Way things are going with you, that might just be enough to get us all killed.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Give your folks a good story. You’re going to be missing for a while.”
Owen released me and made a sound like a brontosaurus sighing. I shook the life back into my arm and marched back to where my parents were watching.
“So,” my mom said hesitantly. “This seems complicated.”
“Yeah. Um...I’m going to be helping these folks with some stuff. Just for a little while,” I said. “But it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Is it drugs?” Mom asked.
“It is not drugs,” I said quickly. “Or a cult, or the police.”
“The government then,” Dad said with a wise and knowing nod. “When they take you to the aliens, remember to not look them in the eye. I read on the internet—”
“Be safe,” Mom said quickly, cutting off any more of my father’s speculation. “And make sure you come home this time.”
“I will. And I’ll call, I promise.”
“Sure you will,” she said, patting me on the arm. “Sure you will.”
I went back to the car and sat in the back. My mom was already organizing my dad into a recovery effort, collecting the remains of their lifelong home. Father bumbled along, seemingly unperturbed by the destruction all around him. Gabrielle turned around to look at me.
“They’ll be fine. Probably better without you around, to be honest.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Probably,” I answered. Owen grunted and started the car. We rumbled off down the street. I wanted to watch my parents as long as I could but made myself look forward. I’ll fix this, I promised myself. I’ll fix it, and then everything will be okay.
We picked up Chesa on the way to HQ. Turns out she’d been dialing Gabrielle nonstop since Eric disappeared, and the order had come through to collect her. That’s the only reason the MA team was in the neighborhood when the tornado struck. When Chesa heard about my house, she got really quiet. Pretty sure she blamed me for it. I sure did.
This time they left the burlap sack off our heads. It was a mixed blessing. Apparently, this vehicle didn’t have access to the mystical powers of teleportation that the car that brought me here contained, so I was subjected to rush hour traffic.
Chesa was quiet the whole way. I didn’t know what to say, so I matched her silence. I was worried about Eric, and angry about my house. Angry that I hadn’t called MA earlier, angry that Chesa had, and that they hadn’t done anything. I was itching to get a hold of Esther and give her a piece of my mind.
Eventually we turned off the main roads and started rumbling down backstreets, gravel pinging off the car’s undercarriage as we rolled further and further away from civilization. We finally came to a paved driveway with a faded wooden arch over it. The arch had the word “Camelot” carved into it.
“That’s a little obvious, isn’t it?” Chesa asked.
“So obvious it’s unbelievable,” Gabrielle answered. “And it gives the boss a kick every time she sees it.” She turned back around to s
quint at me. “Are you the one who made fun of the name?”
“Yeah, uh, I mean—”
“Don’t make fun of the name,” she said, then turned back around.
The driveway wound through some dense shrubbery, then climbed a shallow hill before emerging into a parking lot that overlooked some water. A small lake spread out before us, its shores lined with red and white pebble beaches, surrounded on all sides by low berms that kept the water in. An artificial lake, obviously, but why?
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Where’s HQ?”
“Underneath,” Owen said, his first words to me. It was so startling to hear him speak that I didn’t ask any more questions.
“Explains the mold problem,” Chesa said. Owen snorted, then steered us down a narrow cobblestone path, descending out of sight of the lake. The air grew cold, and suddenly we were facing a concrete drainage pipe just wide enough to allow the car to enter. Owen drove into it without turning on the headlights, and soon we were speeding through the dark, the only light coming from the dim glow of the dashboard.
“Are you sure—” I started, just as the car pitched forward, slamming me into the back of Gabrielle’s seat. Chesa hissed as she gripped the door. I heard Gabrielle snicker as I yelped. “Guys! Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“You wouldn’t believe us anyway,” Owen said. He sliced the car back and forth, following unseen roadmarks. My door bumped against a concrete barrier, showering my window with sparks. In the brief light, I saw Chesa’s face, her eyes wide with terror. Gabrielle hissed and turned around, staring out the back window.
“Would it kill you to turn on the headlights?” I asked.
“Yeah, it would, actually. That’s how it hunts,” Gabrielle said. She squinted into the darkness for a long time before continuing. “Don’t think it saw that.”
“Better pray not,” Owen said.
“You don’t think what saw what, exactly?” Chesa asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Owen answered.
“Since when did you become such a chatterbox?” she shot back, but then the car sloughed to the side, tires screeching.
Owen accelerated, the tiny engine of the car whining in the close confines of the tunnel. He turned once more, then a couple of canvas flaps slapped against the car’s hood as we emerged into a parking lot. A handful of cars lined the walls, and three guards stood next to an elevator, talking among themselves. They turned to watch as Owen braked hard, swerving into an empty space. He slapped the car into park, then got out of the car while it was still rocking back and forth, to stand staring at the shifting canvas curtain that we had just driven through. The guards watched silently, just as tense as the big MA agent. Several moments passed.
“I think we’re good,” Owen said finally. Gabrielle let out a long sigh, then unbuckled and got out of the car. Chesa and I followed.
“That’s how what hunts?” I asked again.
“The thing in the tunnel,” she said. “It’s not ours, but it acts as a pretty good watchdog. If you’re careful.”
“What do you mean, not ours?” Chesa asked.
“Knight Watch attracts curious visitors. Some of them are very dangerous,” Gabrielle said. “Now let’s get moving. Esther’s really interested in speaking with you both.”
Owen grunted, then wrenched open the trunk and started unpacking enough guns to start a small revolution. Gabrielle slung a shotgun over her shoulder and made for the elevator. I turned back to the curtain.
Something slithered against it, black scales and long whiskers that tickled the concrete floor. Owen saw it too, and there was a brief moment when I thought he was going to open up with his arsenal. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I was already passing Gabrielle, halfway to the elevator before her voice stopped me.
“Hey, we’ve got notes on you!” she yelled. “No elevator. We take the stairs.”
There were a lot of stairs. The walls were gray concrete painted in chipped institutional green, the kind of stairwells you might find in haunted insane asylums, or worse. There were landings every few flights, with doors that looked like they could have survived a direct nuclear blast. The whole place had a government feel to it. I once read a book about missile silos in the Midwest that extended for miles underground, supposedly still lurking under office buildings and soccer fields throughout the middle of the country. None under lakes, though. I asked Gabrielle about it.
“Might have been, but if so, the boss has really expanded it. There’s a whole city under here, or so I’ve heard.”
“A whole city? Then why do the elites live out in the mundane world?” I asked. “Seems silly to have someone like St. Matthew slumming it in the second-floor walkup if you’ve got a secret base under a lake.”
“Compartmentalization. Sometimes a domain goes bad, and if the portals are close together, it can spread to the rest of the team. Plus there’s a lot of interference between the medievalists, the clockwork types, those guys in the spacesuits...” her voice trailed off. “Actually, that’s probably more than you need to know.”
“Esther said something about that,” Chesa said. “What does that mean, exactly? Clockwork guys?”
“Let’s just say there are a lot of different kinds of myths, from a lot of different time periods. Folks like you, you’re in it for the fantasy stories. But there are others.” Owen tapped her heavily on the shoulder. “Right. Outside my paygrade. If you need to really know that stuff, I’m sure Esther will explain it.”
“So...” I paused on a landing, hoping they would stop so I could catch my breath while we talked. They didn’t. I gulped air and hurried after. “So this is a big place. I’ve seen the medical ward, the actuator. What else is there?”
“All MA operations. Servers, barracks, the motor pool. We don’t get magic homes like you guys. That’s the core. And then wrapped around the core are the various quarantine zones, where the elites go to decompress after missions, but before they can return to their domains. Also where they meet to plan operations, argue about theology...whatever it is you guys do. I’ve never really seen those zones. Folks like me and Owen, we don’t get outside the core, unless it’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” I asked, thinking about the black and gray scales brushing up against the curtain in the parking garage.
“Usually the kind of emergency caused by geniuses like you,” she answered. “So try to not do anything apocalypse-worthy. Here we are.”
She stopped on a landing just like all the others. The door looked welded shut. I leaned against the wall, my breath coming in ragged gasps, as I tried to rub some feeling back into my legs. Owen stared at me with open contempt.
“So do we...” gulp, breathe, gulp. “Do we knock or something?” Neither of my escorts looked even winded, and Chesa was absolutely glowing. I straightened up, tried to contain my breathing, realized I might pass out. “Or is there a doorbell?”
“They’ll let us in,” Gabrielle said. Just then, there was a series of knocks inside the door, and the portal swung open. Gabrielle gestured at it. “Ta da! Just like magic.”
“Not even sure you’re joking,” I said. Gabrielle motioned us inside. Owen sealed the door behind us. We were in another hallway, this one about as uninteresting as a stretch of carpet could make it. In the distance I could see doors lining the hall, with flashing lights over each one. We started walking. I fell in next to Gabrielle, with Chesa half-a-step behind me. “So, you said something about the core? What’s that mean?”
“Home base for Mundane Actual. It stretches straight down the middle of HQ, top to bottom. Your side of things is wrapped around it like the rings on a tree.”
“And where I was before, with Tembo and the Saint guy, was that part of the core?”
“Probably not. They don’t let the elites into the core. Contamination risk. We had to walk so far down to keep you away from the data servers, the generators...all the technical stuff. Don’t want you scre
wing up central processing, do we?” Gabrielle asked. “Not after what happened to noble Shadowfax.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Part of the job. Monitoring anomalous ephemera. Trust me, you’re lucky to have us watching you,” she said.
“Then why’d it take so long for you to get to me? Why’d I have to fight off an angry storm goddess all by my lonesome?”
“That’s...I mean,” Gabrielle narrowed her eyes at me. “We’re still looking into that. Nothing came in on the actuator. Almost like you were shielded or something.”
“Shielded? And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Just be happy your friend made the call,” she said, pointing down a crossing hallway. “We’ll be handing you off to Esther’s team in a minute. Got to process you first.”
A door opened to our right, and Jerry Left stepped into the hallway. When he saw me, his watery little eyes lit up.
“You came back,” he said. “You make the most excellent sheets!”
“How are these guys not contamination risks?” I snapped. Gabrielle laughed, then handed the janitor her shotgun.
“The janitors go everywhere. Not following the usual rules is kind of their thing. You’ll get used to it. How’s the kitchen situation going, Jerry?”
“Jerry no longer has a kitchen,” he said. “I got to the point when it’s simply easier to burn down the rest of the house and start over. So, very well, thank you!”
“Good to hear,” she said. “Only way to handle that kind of roach. You’ve met John and Chesa?”
“Slayer of dragons and his queen of elves!” Jerry turned and offered me the squirming digits of his hand. “I promise to not exude certain secretions, John. Esther spoke to me of your discomfort with the procedure.”
Hesitantly, I extended my hand and watched as the janitor’s squamous fist enveloped it. The whole process was very much like dipping your hand into a bucket of worms that were trying to mate in the spaces between your fingers. Bile rose as far as the back of my throat before retreating. I tried to smile.