by wildbow
Some distant part of me realized I’d seen something similar to that folding and unfolding once, in a much simpler form. A tesseract, a fourth dimensional analogue to the cube. The difference was that while the cube had six flat faces, each ‘side’ of the tesseract had six cubes, each connected to the others another at each corner. To perceptions attuned to three dimensions, it seemed to constantly shift, each side folding or reshaping so that they could all simultaneously be perfect cubes, and each ‘side’ was simultaneously the center cube from which all the others extended outward.
The primary difference between these things and the tesseract was that these beings I was looking at were alive, and they weren’t simple models I was viewing on a computer screen. They were living entities, lifeforms. There wasn’t anything I could relate to any biology I knew or understood, nothing even remotely recognizable, but they were undoubtedly alive. They were enigmas of organs that were also limbs and also the exteriors of the creatures, each simultaneously some aspect of the entity as it flowed through empty space. It didn’t help that the things were the size of small planets, and the scope of my perceptions was so small. It helped even less that parts of them seemed to move in and out of the other dimensions or realities where the mirror images were.
The pair moved in sync, spiraling around one another in what I realized was a double helix. Each revolution brought them further and further apart. Innumerable motes drifted from their bodies as they moved, leaving thick trails of shed tissues or energies painting the void of empty space in the wake of their spiraling dance, as though they were made of a vast quantity of sand and they were flying against a gale force headwind.
When they were too far away to see one another, they communicated, and each message was enormous and violent in scope, expressed with the energy of a star going supernova. One ‘word’, one idea, for each message.
Destination. Agreement. Trajectory. Agreement.
They would meet again at the same place. At a set time, they would cease to expand their revolution and contract once again, until they drew together to arrive at their meeting place.
—the Merchant caught me off guard, as I reeled from the image of what I’d just seen. He caught me across the cheekbone with his elbow, and pain shot through my entire skull, bringing me halfway back to reality. Someone grabbed me, her chest soft against my back, her grip around my shoulders painfully tight. Charlotte? Or Lisa?
The shift from what I had seen to relative normalcy was so drastic that I could barely grasp what I was sensing. I opened my mouth to say something and then closed it. I couldn’t unfocus or take in the scene as a whole, as the entirety of my attention was geared for seeing… what had I been looking at? It escaped me as I tried to remember. I shook my head, striving and failing to see past the countless minute details or the shape of things: the way the Merchant’s facial features seemed to spread out as he advanced towards me, the contraction of his body as he bent down, the nicks and brown of rust on the knife he picked up, the one I’d dropped. I still held my good knife.
I closed my eyes, trying to blink and fix the distorted focus, and it only helped a little. I looked to my left for help, saw Minor and Jaw with their hands full, their movements too hard for my eyes to follow. To my right? Lisa was slumped over, and Brooks held her. Merchants were closing in on them. Senegal stood in front of me, and though his gun was gone, he was using the length of chain that he’d taken from one of the Merchants to drive our opponents back and buy us breathing room. It wasn’t enough. Three capable fighters weren’t able to protect seven people in total.
I used my power, and wrenched my eyes closed. It helped more than anything, as the tactility of my swarm sense gave me a concrete, solid sense of the things around us. Many of the Merchants had lice on their skin, in their clothes and on their hair. A small handful of flies buzzed around the area. With a bit of direction to guide those flies to where I needed them, I had a solid sense of my surroundings and what the enemy combatants were doing.
With panic and disorientation nearly overwhelming me, I had to resist the urge to use my power to call a swarm together. Using this many bugs, to get a sense of what was going on? It wouldn’t attract undue attention. I let bugs gather on the ceiling of the mall, drawing them down through the large crack where part of the roof had caved in, as a just-in-case.
I kept my eyes closed as I fought back, pulling out of Charlotte’s grip to strike at the Merchant, cutting him across the forehead. He growled something I couldn’t make out and charged me. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to beat him in any contest of strength, I threw myself to one side, landing hard on the ground and nearly tripping Senegal. I brought my knees to my chest, and then I kicked outward to strike him in the calf with both heels.
I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have predicted that he’d fall on top of me. His shoulder hit my chest, his body weight heavy on top of me. His knife hand was trapped under his body, near my waist. I was more fortunate, with my right arm free, and I pulled the knife’s point across his ribs, aiming for a shallow cut that hurt more than it injured. He screamed and dropped his weapon, and I scrabbled to slide it back towards Charlotte, Brooks and Lisa.
Senegal turned and kicked my attacker away from me. While Senegal used the lock on the end of the length of chain to strike the man in the jaw, I tried to stand.
Stupidly, I’d opened my eyes as I stood, instead of trusting to my power to keep a sense of the immediate situation. Motion sickness hit me like a sack of bricks, and I nearly fell over. Charlotte caught me to keep me from tipping over, only narrowly avoiding stabbing herself on my good knife.
“Oh my god,” she murmured. “You’re…”
Had I given myself away? I hadn’t used that many bugs.
No, it was something else. I could tell from the flies I’d placed on her head that she was looking up. Her attention turned to me, then Lisa, and then back to the higher object. I forced my eyes open, controlling my movement and my breathing to reduce the threat of nausea, and saw she was looking at Skidmark’s platform.
Skidmark was slumped against the railing, struggling to his feet. Squealer, Mush, Trainwreck and their other subordinates weren’t faring much better.
Skidmark grabbed his microphone and broke into laughter, the nasty chuckles echoing through the area.
“Seems like one of you assdrips just earned his stripes,” he cackled.
I saw a flash of white from within the ring and it dawned on me what had just happened.
Another flash sparked in the ring, then a second. Both were in close proximity to a boy no older than I was. White smoke poured from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth, with smaller traces flowing from his scalp, stirring his hair.
He flinched as someone whirled on him and raised their weapon, and a burst of white light appeared two feet to the other person’s left. A miss. The person swayed toward where the flash had been, as if it had pulled at him. The glowing boy stuck one arm out, towards his target, and another flash of white appeared a yard behind his target.
The man charged, and the boy tried a third time. The blast intersected the man, and when it faded, the man’s upper arm, forearm, elbow, and the right side of his torso and hip were gone. Blood gushed from the area where his flesh had been carved away by the light, and his dismembered hand dropped to his feet.
The boy screamed in some combination of horror, pain and rage, and flashes of the whiteness erupted randomly around him. Some caught people who were lying prone on the ground, others hit standing combatants, while most simply hit thin air.
A trigger event. I’d just seen someone have their trigger event.
But what had happened to Skidmark’s group, Tattletale and I? I could vaguely remember something, thought about trying to put it into words, as if describing it could help call it to mind in a way that I could describe it, but they disappeared as I reached for them. I was reminded of Imp’s power. Before I could get a handle on it, I’d forgotten entirely, and I was struggling to
even remember what I was trying to do, my thoughts muddling the idea of it with my attempts to get my bearings.
And Charlotte, who was helping me stay balanced on my feet, was staring at me wide-eyed. I remembered her exclamation of surprise.
If everyone on stage with powers had been affected, and Lisa and I were reacting the same way, it couldn’t be that hard for her to put the pieces together. Charlotte knew.
I looked to Lisa, for advice or ideas, but she was still slumped over, and she wasn’t recovering. Why? If this was some kind of psychic backlash from someone else having their trigger event, had she maybe been hit harder because of her power?
I hurried to her side, while Brooks turned to rejoin the fight and help re-establish our front lines.
“Lisa!” I shook her. She looked at me, her eyes unfocused.
“They’re like viruses,” she said. Her voice was thin, as if she were talking to herself. “And babies. And gods. All at the same time.”
“You’re not making any sense, Lisa. Come on, get it together. Things are pretty ugly right now.”
“Almost there. It’s like it’s at the tip of my tongue, but it’s my brain, not my tongue,” her voice was thin, barely audible, as though she was talking to herself and not to me. “Still fillin’ in the blanks.”
I slapped her lightly across the face, “Lisa! Need you to come back to reality, not go further into your delirium.”
The slap seemed to do it. She shook her head, like a dog trying to shake off water. “Taylor?”
“Come on,” I helped her to her feet. She almost lost her balance, but she was still recuperating faster than I had.
Charlotte took over the job of ensuring Lisa was okay, and I moved forward to help back up the other guys. With a knife in each hand, I stood behind the trio of Brooks, Senegal and Minor, ready to stop anyone who tried to slip by. I kept my eyes closed. I could manage so long as I didn’t try to move and keep my eyes open at the same time. It was swiftly receding.
The last group to tackle us had largely been beaten back. Another group made some threatening moves, but they seemed to be in rougher shape than us. Their leader was an amazon of a woman with a wild look in her eyes and matted hair, and I could see concern flash across her face as she looked us over and noted the disparity in the condition of our groups. It struck me she was in a bad spot, knowing her group would be thrashed if she took us on, but at the same time, she couldn’t order her guys to back off without looking like a coward.
Whatever decision she would have made, we didn’t get to find out.
“Stop!” Skidmark hollered into his microphone.
It took a full minute for everyone to break off in the fighting and back off to a point where they didn’t feel immediately threatened.
So many injured. How many of his own people had Skidmark just lost in this stunt?
Did he care? He stood to gain five new parahumans for his group. Six if you counted the guy who’d had his trigger event.
“If we wait any longer, there’s only going to be one of you cockbiters left in the ring! We got five of you fuckers left, and that’s all we need!”
Only five? There had been at least eighty in the ring at the beginning, and still more had joined the fight afterward, one way or another.
I could see the remaining five as the audience moved back to give them space. A family of three, it seemed, a woman with a gaping wound in her stomach, her hand crimson where it pressed against the injury, and the boy who’d had his trigger event. I didn’t see Bryce or his new ‘family’ in the mist of the people retreating from the scene.
A flash of light marked another uncontrolled use of the new cape’s power. It struck close to the ground, removing the leg of someone who lay unconscious or dead on the ground, but it left the ground perfectly intact. Why? When it consumed clothing and flesh but not the building itself?
“Boy,” Skidmark pointed. “Approach the stage!”
The ring flashed and disappeared. The boy turned, as though in a daze. He flinched as another burst of light sparked a good ten feet away. He limped toward Skidmark and stared up at the Merchant’s leader.
“You’re gonna need a name, kid, if you’re going to join the Merchant’s upper circle.”
The boy blinked, looking around, as if he didn’t quite understand. Was he in shock?
“Come on, now. Let’s hurry it up.”
There was a spark of the boy’s power, and the flash removed a beachball-sized section of rubble beneath Skidmark’s ‘stage’. The boy stared at it.
“E-Eraser?” he answered, making it a question.
“Like the puny pink nipple on the end of a pencil? Fuck that,” Skidmark snarled.
“Um,” the boy drew out the noise, all too aware of his audience, probably unable to think straight.
“Scrub!” Skidmark shouted, and the crowd roared.
How in the hell was Scrub better than Eraser? In what insane reality?
Skidmark waited until the noise of the crowd had died down before he raised the vial, “No point in you having a drink of this shit. Wouldn’t do sweet fuck all. Pick someone.”
The boy stared at Skidmark, processing the words. He flinched as another flash occurred near him. A hand clutching one elbow, he turned toward the crowd. When he spoke, his voice was shaky, “R-Rick! Doug!”
Two people emerged from the massed people who stood around where the audience had been. One had blood running from his scalp to cover half his face, while the other was coughing violently, blood thick around his mouth and nose.
“Can… Can I give it to both? Can they share it?” the boy with the glowing hair asked.
Skidmark chuckled, and it was a nasty sound with very little humor to it. “No, no. You definitely don’t want to do that. Pick one.”
“Doug. Doug can have it.”
The boy who was coughing looked up, surprised. The one with blood on his face, Rick, suddenly looked angry. “What the fuck!?”
A flash of white high above and to the right of the boy with the powers made everyone nearby cringe. It tore away a chunk of a metal beam that was helping to support the damaged roof. People were giving a wider berth to the boy with the powers. I suspected his abilities and his apparent lack of control were the only things keeping Rick from running up and punching him.
Was this division and the hard feelings on purpose? If it was intentional, if Skidmark was dividing his allies from their former groups and cliques so they couldn’t gang up against him, I’d have to adjust my estimation of him. Not that I’d like him any more, or even respect him, but I’d give him credit for intelligence.
“You didn’t help me when I got pulled into the ring,” the boy with the powers told Rick, “Doug at least tried. He gets my prize.”
As Doug approached the stage, taking the long way to keep his distance from his newly empowered ‘friend’, I became aware that my bugs were dying on the roof, where I’d gathered a swarm in preparation during the chaos. A patch here, a patch there.
No. Not dying. They were stunned, their senses obliterated by bursts of chaos and false sensations. I had an idea of what it was. I’d felt the same thing before.
I turned to Lisa. Moving my left hand from the scratch on the back of my upper arm, I discreetly pointed up and murmured, “There’s company on the way. We should go before there’s trouble.”
She looked up, then nodded assent. Tapping Minor on the shoulder, she gave him a hand signal, and he notified the others. We began moving.
The person on the roof was joined by others. Some bugs died beneath their footfalls. More bugs were stunned as the first individual crawled forward on all fours, around the lip of the roof and onto the ceiling of the mall, hanging off of it by his hands. With the building largely unlit, I couldn’t make him out.
Newter was here, and the rest of Faultline’s crew.
We reached the first exit, and no sooner had we reached for the door than the handle disappeared. The gaps separating the door from the
wall filled in, as though wax matching the color of the door was dripping through the gaps. There were similar things happening at the other entrances, I saw, the doors fading into the walls, becoming little more than discolored blotches. Nobody else had seemed to notice, with their attention wholly focused on the woman who was making her way down from the stage with the vial for ‘Doug’.
When the fighting had started, Lisa had dissuaded me from using my power, out of a concern that the ensuing riot and chaos would get people hurt, and that the mob might start to hunt for strangers in their ranks.
I had no idea why they were here, but it seemed Faultline was about to crash the party in a far more direct way than we had. We were about to see that bad scenario unfold, and our escape routes had vanished.
Infestation 11.7
Newter dropped from the ceiling. The main part of the mall had only the one level to it, but the roof was arched slightly, and he was dropping from one of the higher points. I was bad at estimating distances, but what was that? Fifty feet? Sixty?
He landed in a crouch, a hair behind the girl who was carrying the vial down the pile of rubble to the base of the platform. As she turned, dust, papers, cigarette butts and fragments of rock stirred around her. They moved in a counterclockwise orbit, rising, increasing in intensity over a span of one and a half seconds. Whatever her power did, Newter stopped it, smacking her in the forehead with his palm, almost gently. She stepped back, as if she’d lost her balance. The building whirlwind around her dissipated into a billowing cloud of dust and her legs turned to rubber beneath her as she tried to step back once more. She fell.
Newter’s tail encircled the vial before she could drop it, and he flicked it into his left hand. An instant later, he was racing for the stage, almost casually finding stepping stones as he made a beeline for Skidmark and the rest of the group. He was going for the case and the vials.