by J M Guillen
“Baxter!” Alicia crouched next to him.
“Ow,” he grumbled. “That fucking hurts.”
“I bet.” I stalked over to him. Four separate claw marks had shorn through the front of his shirt and torn the skin below.
“I don’t think it’s too bad.” Rehl prodded at one of the obviously ‘bad’ slices, making Baxter hiss.
“It’s not very fucking good.” Bax stared up at us, his eyes a bit wide.
“You probably won’t bleed out if we tie you up.” I frowned and wished I knew anything at all about first aid. “It looks like the thing tore into your flesh, but I don’t see any ribs. No lungs.”
“Grab that blanket.” Alicia gestured at a folded quilt hung in a display case behind me.
I did, and we dabbed at Baxter’s wounds. I couldn’t help but curse inwardly. We’d gone through all the trouble to come on campaign, but didn’t even have the sense to pack a first aid kit.
We had no water, no antibiotics, and the best we could scrounge up was some cloth to tear into bandages.
Stupid. So stupid. It had only been a few hours, and we already found ourselves over our heads.
Had it only been a few hours?
“It’s been days. How have you survived in here all this time?”
I remembered Garret’s haunting astonishment, and I turned back to where I’d just seen him.
The Asset was gone. Only stacks of dinnerware and old records lay there now.
“We keep the light on.” Rehl’s voice wound tightly around his words. “Maybe everyone can see us, but we can’t afford to be attacked from the dark again.”
“Agreed,” Baxter said weakly. “It’s difficult for me to tell you just how much that sucked.”
“Liz, can you cut some strips?” Rehl held up a quilt. “We need to get moving as quickly as possible.”
I set my knives to creating bandages.
Alicia did her best to bind Baxter, but it was slow going. More than once, as soon as she got one bandage tied, another had bled through.
Bax… didn’t look good.
As I watched ’Licia’s tender ministrations I noticed Rehl obviously limping as he walked around us to watch the darkness.
This isn’t going to work. I frowned to myself. I had expected we would charge into Fallen Leaves and face the Gaunt Man almost immediately. We had geared for that, for an assault.
Yet, obviously, the Gaunt Man didn’t need to stand against us himself. All he had to do was allow us to wander ourselves to death. Even if he didn’t unleash his servitor creatures against us, I had undoubtedly released dozens of them.
Some of them might not be grateful. Some of them might be hungry.
“Maybe… maybe I step ahead,” I rambled. “I don’t have Abriel’s light, but I can use the Empyrean sigils to see by.”
“You can’t constantly use your power, Liz.” Alicia gave me a tired look. “It’ll exhaust you, just like before.”
“I don’t know that we can lose you just now,” Rehl said.
“I just saw Garret. The Assets are close.” I paused. “They gave me medical aid, before I came down the alleyway. Maybe they’ll do the same for Baxter.”
“Unlikely.” Alicia snorted. “Abriel thinks that if they helped you, it’s because they want something from you.”
“Well, yeah.” I didn’t grasp how they didn’t see this. “They want me to help them with the little problem I discussed with you before. And I want them to help me now.”
“They aren’t people, Liz.” Alicia’s eyes had gone almost entirely white. “You cannot trust them to honor simple bargains.”
The discussion came to an end at the sound of an unearthly wail, a cry that sounded like screaming fury from a hundred mouths.
“Oh, God.” Rehl stared off into the darkness, his eyes wide.
“Yeah, that’s our cue.”
Alicia and I helped steady Baxter, while Rehl watched all around us, looking for trouble. We got Bax to a stable standing position, and Alicia helped him walk while we crept forward.
That sound came again, a high pitched, keening wail.
It set my teeth on edge.
Abruptly, silence fell.
“I really don’t like that.” Baxter breathed. “Can we be further away from that?”
“Agreed.” I peered into the darkness, but I only saw rows upon rows of displays with bookshelves, a large hourglass, five globes, a stack of magazines…
The labyrinth just never stopped.
“We need to at least find a place where we can be somewhat secure.” Rehl gestured at a particularly large armoire. “We have the means to create a defendable area, if we have to.”
“What we need to do is find Simon and get out.” I bit my lip, irritated.
Off in the dark, many voices were yelling.
Garret? I thought maybe, but it was so hard to tell. That huge space yawned about us and loomed like a shifting, malevolent force of nature.
“Something.” Rehl peered into the shadows to our left, his gun at the ready. He held himself taut, as if every muscle had been sculpted of spring steel.
Footsteps headed our way in the gloom.
“Liz,” Alicia whispered. “Should we go dark?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I simply stared into the shadows, knives in hand, Wind at the ready.
“No!” A feminine voice tore at the darkness, ragged with exhaustion and fear.
Those steps came from an aisle over and grew closer.
Wailing followed.
“What’s our play, Miss Lawson?” Rehl kicked a table aside then leaned into a large bookshelf. He set his back against it and pushed it back a few feet.
“Something’s chasing her,” I whispered and leaned further out of our aisle, toward the next.
“Who is it?” Alicia’s voice, typically quiet, practically vanished in the shadows.
“It’s the wit—” I paused. “One of the Assets. I saw her outside.”
“You aren’t saving her, right?” Baxter coughed, and the sheer wetness of that sound alarmed me. “Liz, five hours ago you were worried about a black bag. Now you want to bring them to the party?”
“Anything we can do against the Gaunt Man is a win.” I turned and stared at him.
Baxter tried to shrug, winced, and fell quiet.
I wrapped myself with tight, sharp bursts of Wind and watched the female Asset as she ran toward us, only malevolent shadows behind.
But she glanced over her shoulder.
Something chased her. Something that clearly frightened the living shit out of an Asset of the Facility.
Catching a swirl of movement in the air behind her, I squinted to make it out.
They flew like bloated horseflies, drunk and glutted on blood. Their bodies were gibbous things, blobs of loathsome flesh with many insectine legs. Their multitude of buzzing wings cried with a low, whining drone.
As horrific as their bodies were, it was their heads that truly revolted me. A knot of pink and black feelers bunched around the front of the creatures, writhing tendrils that grasped and wriggled.
The one closest to the Asset reached outward with those squirming little appendages. A mouth hidden behind the clump of disgusting, worm-like phalanges opened.
And screamed.
As if in answer, the other bloated insects screamed also, a wailing, keening cry that made my teeth ache.
“Holy fuck.” Rehl peered into the next aisle too.
“When the Asset passes, I can hurl wind their way.” I bit my lip. “Throw them back.”
“But if they stop chasing her…” he left the obvious implications unsaid: will they then come for us?
“It’ll have to be a lot of wind.” I nodded. “But I can do it.”
WHUF came from the opposite direction and perhaps a little further away. Somewhere in the distance I heard male voices shout.
“No!” The witch ran even faster, and the swarm buzzed forward, eager tendrils writhing.
Alicia doused Abriel’s light.
Without that shine, the store fell shrouded into darkness. I understood the reason—just the sight of those horrors made my skin crawl. The idea that her light might act as a beacon for them, shining in the night, inspired panic on an elemental, primal level.
Yet now I couldn’t see either.
With a tiny act of will, as if I forced my muscles to relax into a chair, I released my mind into the Wind.
Although I didn’t strictly require the Empyrean sigils Simon had taught me, they helped me focus. I called the Seal of Oeriim. I kept every intricately scrawled line crystal clear in my mind.
When the power of the Wind touched that mental construct, it exploded into brilliant, turquoise radiance. The savage shine of it burned around me and cast wicked shadows all about.
I could see the witch again.
She saw me as well, eyes wide with panic and animal terror.
“Run!” I yelled and prepared the Wind. Once she got closer, I could hurl a wall between us and the bloated grotesques, but I needed the Asset to be just a bit c—
Gunfire. Panicked screams.
“What the fuck?” Rehl peered far off to our left. “Did they get split u—?”
One of the Assets, the gigantic, hairy one, kicked over a wardrobe and stepped into the aisle.
The large, man-shaped creature had a ragged, weary look to its face. Its eyes were tight with savage fury.
Garret stepped into the aisle behind him.
“Liz?” The Asset blinked, dazed in the cerulean light. “You were just back there!” It threw a thumb over its shoulder.
“No.” I looked at Garret, confused. “You were just behind us, the other way.”
The third Asset, the witch with the long hair, screeched in panic.
“Motherfucker,” the large Asset spat, a southern sweetness in the curse. It turned and that rivet gun keened a high pitched whine.
WHUF. WHUF. WHUF.
Three blue, slightly glowing hemispheres blossomed behind the fleeing Asset. They engulfed several of the fluttering miscreations and they abruptly froze over. Several more flew squarely into those shining globules, became glazed with frost, and abruptly smashed into the floor.
For all of that, the woman remained in danger. More of the droning creatures swarmed from the darkness, far more than the Asset could shoot with his bizarre weapon.
“This is about to get stupid.” I told Rehl as he sidled closer.
“Don’t be stupid,” he whispered.
I stepped forward and held one hand out. The Wind teased at my hair. Brilliant blue sigils and Seals burned in the darkness.
A wall. I focused on the Seal of Oeriim, and it blossomed brighter. I might have been worn down, but I had to do something. Even at this distance—
She screamed, a wet gurgling cry of elemental terror.
The swarm fell upon her, a tide of malevolent, insectine darkness.
I caught a glimpse of the woman’s face—
“Larissa!” the large man screamed.
Garret tried to step forward, but his partner caught his shoulder.
The sound of her flesh being ripped while the bulbous, droning horrors tore into her living organs…
“Oh no.” Baxter’s piteous whimper sounded like the smallest thing in the world. “Oh, fuck no.”
She screamed longer than I thought possible, her agony like shards in my mind.
The swarm fell upon her with a will and devoured her as she wailed, gagging, and gurgling in what sounded like anguished Russian.
The large man had his hand on Garret and tried to pull him back. No words passed between them, yet Garret finally gave in.
“Fine. Fine, God damn it.” He glared up at the large man. “If we can’t go get her, that’ll have to satisfy the Primary Protocol.”
“Fuck.” The man with the rivet gun shook his head and spat.
The creatures swarmed around the corpse of the woman, seemingly driven mad by her blood and flesh. Horrific to see and awful to hear, I couldn’t help but be happy for one thing:
They didn’t seem to be interested in us.
“You’ve got injured.” Garret nodded at Baxter.
“We’ve got more than that.” I fingered the earring and nodded at Alicia. Even if I hadn’t been able to see her face in the azure light, I would have imagined the slight frown on the edge of her lips.
But the ember of brilliance burst above her head. Both Assets flinched, although I couldn’t tell if from shock at the light or concern that she might attack them.
“We’re on our way, Simon, hold on,” I half whispered, half thought, and the words echoed around me. As the Wind gently caroused through my hair, a silver thread appeared, outlined in Abriel’s light.
“What’s that?” Garret asked me.
“It leads to the man I’m looking for.” I nodded at him. “After I find him, we are out here.”
“Out of here?” The larger man laughed. “Honey, I think you’re a bit optimistic.”
“If we do get out of here, you’re coming with us.” Garret poked to me in the chest, not hard enough to be painful, but hard enough to make his point. “We didn’t come here to get all caught up in your bullshit.”
“We had an agreement.” I held Garret’s gaze and felt the eyes of my friends on me.
“I never agreed to anything. Especially not,” Garret gesticulated all around us, “all of this. You tricked us into coming here.”
“Even if I did, you deserved it,” I hissed. “Every time you show up, you’re all bound and determined to Shanghai me off for your own purposes.” I gave him a smug look. “You just don’t like it when it gets done back to you.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” His eyes were hard as he repeated himself. “When we leave here, you’re coming with us. You tricked us into running in here. Assets aren’t typically geared to be this far adrift. We’re like fish in a barrel.”
“No.” I had a flash of inspiration along with a whisper of intuition. “That’s not how it happened.”
“No?” Anger seeped into Garret’s voice.
“What now?” The large man cocked his head.
“The moment I brought up the Gaunt Man, she—Larissa—became very interested.” I glanced at the bear-like Asset and then back to Garret. “I stood there while you all did your—” I cut off to twitch my head violently and roll my eyes back in my head.
“Ha!” The bearded Asset shook his head, ruefully.
“So, no telling me you didn’t choose to come in here.” Now, I poked Garret in the chest. “I don’t know where you get your marching orders, but you can’t entirely lay this at my feet.”
“No,” Garret sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” He paused for a moment, and his tone softened. “We’ve lost three people in here, Liz. It’s been a trying three days.”
“Three days?” Rehl limped over to us. “It’s been three hours.” He paused in thought. “Maybe.”
“Our system time—” The large man paused as Garret shot him a look. For a moment they were both quiet.
“It’s been longer for us,” Garret clarified. “Time flows differently here.”
“Larissa said the laws of physics were different in the different aisles,” the large man muttered.
“Hello.” Rehl put on his most endearing smile and extended his hand to the large Asset. “Please ignore my rude friend. My name is Rehl.”
“Why, hello there, Rehl.” The large man extended his hand. “I’m—”
Horrific laughter echoed in the labyrinthine darkness, cutting through the shadows.
That sound hurt my ears. The deepest portions of my heart quailed at the noise.
No sane and whole mind could make a sound like that.
Garret turned and gazed at his friend.
The large man struck a few keys is on the crescent-shaped keyboard on his hip.
“It’s him,” Garret whispered.
“I’m afraid we need to haul ass, Rehl. Introductions
later,” the big Asset apologized.
“Simon, we’re still coming.” I cradled the earring in my hand, and as I whispered, that slender filament of magic shone again, outlined by Abriel’s light.
“We ready?” Garret turned to me.
“That way.” I nodded to the Assets. “We’re hauling ass that way.”
6
The passageway wound forward, twisting and turning past old furniture, stacks of clothing, and racks of magazines. One aisle held a collection of old dress forms and manikins.
The moment we turned down that way, Garret raised his pistol and blew the head off a silk draped dummy.
“Thank you for protecting us,” I said softly. “That was a close one.”
Garret shot me a look but said nothing.
His buddy snickered.
The two Assets remained out in front, with me just behind them. Alicia and Baxter hobbled along behind while Rehl watched the shadows at our back.
Every few moments that laughter cut the air again. I had never heard a sound so cruel, so maliciously viscous.
“He’s been toying with us the whole time,” Garret explained. “Doesn’t show his face because he doesn’t have to.”
“He’s got things trapped in here,” the bear-like Asset explained. “Just sets ’em loose on us. Then he stays out of sight while we get tore up.”
I started to contribute, thinking to tell them about the creature that had attacked Baxter. However, before I could, we heard the cackling another time.
It came quieter, far closer.
“You surprised me, to be certain.” The Gaunt Man chuckled quietly from the far side of the aisle. He stood wreathed in the sable shadows. “You’ll have to forgive me. I haven’t had the opportunity to entertain your kind in several hundred years.”
The Assets stopped in place. The large pack on the back of the bigger Asset, whirred as he tapped at the keys.
“I never in all my days expected to again meet any of the deputies of the rosy cross.” He drawled, “It’s been a true delight.”
“Rosy cross?” Baxter asked. “I hope that confuses everyone else too,” he whispered to Alicia. “Because I’m lost.”