Felix says, “Please just make sense for five seconds!”
“She’s a member of the Thae’st Ra’yho tribe of the A’uhlt-Yha diaspora. I honestly have no idea what she’d be doing on this side of Junction Town right now, though. How’d you meet her again?”
“At a party. She just showed up high off her ass and I think I reminded her of somebody. I think she has maybe a crush on me.”
“Lucky you.”
“Why?”
“Tribal women of the Thae’st Ra’yho, especially warrior idols like this one, are known for their… marital talents, let’s say.”
“Are you serious with this right now?”
“Totally. They’re fiercely romantic ladies,” he says and chuckles. “And they’re even better in a fight.”
Felix decides not to explain what he actually meant and just says, “You know that from experience?”
Wahrheit ignores Felix’s question and continues his examination with the calculation of a naturalist.
“She has the distinct queue-esque hairstyle. That particular one is the oldest, least used, and most recognizable across the tribes. The braids are a cute touch. The dyed markings on her hair seal it as Thae’st Ra’yho, though. She has heavily toned-down her face paint into a makeup job which is totally understandable while slumming in Pinkland and this particular style makes me think she was going to pay respects to a fallen comrade. I would have to assume she has extensive tattoo work in a roughly Asian style. Most likely with a focus on monstrous creatures and/or dirigibles and airships and/or flowers and/or wind and watermills?”
“I… I saw sakura and zombie sea creature people…”
“Mm-hmmm… These contacts are new to me, though. Not common by any means. You met this woman… at a ‘party’?”
“That’s what I said,” Felix half-growls, getting really tired of re-answering questions.
“Must have been quite the soiree…”
Wahrheit looks like he’s decided on a plan of attack. He gently inserts the needle into her neck and empties the smallish tube. Then he pulls down the silky bandana from over her mouth and nose and detaches the chain with the little hammers on it from her nose ring, lets it dangle down her neck from her ear lobe, and places the mask over her face. It sucks into place as he produces another of the plum-sized spheres from his duffle bag. He presses a button and lets it spin up a bit before gingerly placing it against the left side of her hoodie above one of the Lusitania smoke stacks. He steps back just in time.
Siobhàn is pulled out of what Felix can only think of as normal time with a sound like distorted suction then platform-wide shuddering and she makes it a couple long, warped blob strides before gagging and choking for breath. She collapses against the first few rows of stairs but catches herself on the way down and succeeds in whipping around into a cautious crouch with her feet and hands supporting her on different steps.
She fights to catch her breath and her eyes dart around, taking in the situation and strange warping of space in time.
“Not… again…” she says as she finally gets some air. She grimaces as a wave of nausea washes over her. She lifts one of her hands and watches it warp into a blob as she wags it back and forth. “Gah, I hate this shit…”
Her eyes dart around again then her head and she blurts out, “Where’s the fucking porker?!”
Wahrheit answers, “We returned it to the primordial abyss.”
“Good riddance,” she replies.
Siobhàn notices the clear mask on her face and starts to take it off.
“You’ll need that. The gas is still on.”
She looks around at the vents and thick green fog and seals it back in place. She stands and scans the platform, ready to run again given the slightest hint of a reason.
Siobhàn asks, “Who are your friends, Felix?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Felix replies.
Wahrheit walks over to where Felix is still sitting on the platform and offers his hand to help him up.
“You’re in a lake of shit, man.”
Felix takes his hand and Wahrheit pulls him to his feet.
“I’ve got to get you to-”
Felix puts the business end of the Mayor against Wahrheit’s forehead and says, “Wahrheit’s dead! Who the fuck are you?!”
Wahrheit raises his eyebrows then his hands in surrender.
Sujit looks back. In fluid motions, he detaches and secures one of his Lugers in his coat then pulls out a nickel-plated but otherwise unmodified automatic pistol and points it at Felix’s head down the platform.
In forced English Sujit warns, “Bad… plan.”
Wahrheit says, “Wait,” and Felix realizes he’s addressing Sujit and not himself, the person holding a gun to his head. Felix can feel Sujit deciding the best angle to shoot him with any chance of not killing Wahrheit but he doesn’t care anymore.
Siobhàn says, “Ooh-ooh, quien es mas macho?” and mock fans herself. “You’re givin’ me the vapors!” She shakes her head and says, “Idiots.”
Wahrheit says, “Felix, I know all this is confusing but-”
“I saw Wahrheit’s body; what was left of it! Who are you?!”
“Felix, ask yourself what you saw. I know you didn’t see my face ‘cause I didn’t die in that trailer park. You probably saw Chucky C.’s body, sad as I am to say it. I had some of my street team sergeants over for a meeting when we got raided. Only Sujit and I made it out. For all I know, there’s parts of Bianca and the rest of ‘em in that mess I just made. Look at me, Felix. It’s definitely me.”
“After all the shit I’ve seen, I don’t trust your word or your face!”
“Fair enough…”
Wahrheit starts vibrating and with a shudder he becomes a moving blur- And Felix is slammed flat on his back on the platform with his legs kicked up and Wahrheit is standing above him holding the Mayor and watching Felix’s legs crumple back down to the floor. Felix has to catch his breath again, this time in a totally different swirl of confusion.
Wahrheit looks down at him and says, “Please, don’t do that again. The Ref is already fixin’ to give me a yellow card, so the less I do that the better.”
He releases the chamber on the Mayor and examines the shells.
“One bullet? You were going to try to ace that Alptraum with one normal bullet? What are you, John McClane? And that fool had two.” He laughs and empties the chamber into his open duffle.
“Yip-pie ki-yah…” Sujit quotes, then chuckles and holsters his normal pistol and goes back to scanning the platform.
He focuses on the ceiling and floor, which is strange to Felix but what about this isn’t?
Wahrheit extends his hand down to Felix.
“Shall we try again?”
Felix cautiously takes Wahrheit’s hand and is hauled to his feet. He coughs to clear his throat and asks, “Okay… You’re Wahrheit. But what are you doing here?”
As they speak, Wahrheit takes the Mayor apart, grabs mods from his bag, and deftly installs them. Securing brackets, ampules, pressure button to the right rear of the chamber.
“Well, I’m here to make sure that Alptraum doesn’t kill you. Oh wait, did that. Other than that, I’ve got to get you to Walt and Izzy in Sausalito.”
“What? Why? How do you know them?” Felix asks.
“I’ve known them for decades. Best hackers in this or any remotely close layer. I haven’t shown up to the tree house in person in almost twenty years, though, so I had no idea what you looked like. If I had known you were their Felix, I wouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”
Felix ignores the stranger parts of what Wahrheit just said and asks, “Why?”
Wahrheit says, “Because you’re… special.”
Felix says, “Oh, stop it! Don’t even start!”
“I know, I know… but it’s true. They’ve been protecting you since you were young. They didn’t know what you were, but they knew it was important to the Refs and maybe even whoever they answer to.”
Felix is angered by the absurdity of the situation but he decides this might get weirder before it gets better so he reluctantly goes with it. He sighs in defeat. You can’t fight a dream with logic from within I guess… and I wouldn’t call this dreaming lucid. He asks, “Okay, from what? What would I need protection from?”
“Hard to say. Maybe they didn’t even know themselves… but either way they failed. All that time keeping you safe and you end up bumpin’ uglies with none other than Obrist’s little witch.”
Felix shakes his head and says, “Obrist? Witch? You don’t make any sense, man.”
Siobhàn seems interested now.
“The man you know as Doctor Fleischmann is actually Albrecht Obrist. He made the FMC and Harmonia to control pinks and keep them from seeing, like I told you at my house. That’s more like a hobby, though. He does a lot more than that. Just to name a few things, he also made those vents that materialize, this gas, and the creatures your friend here calls ‘porkers’.”
Siobhàn asks, “Made them? How is that possible?”
“They’re basically golems of flesh, organs, bones, and fluids held together by a nasty glop he siphoned from the Big Black. He perfected the process in the fifties after moving his previously Nazi-funded research facilities from the Vosges Mountains in France to northeastern Greenland.”
Felix’s head is spinning for a few reasons and he’s just trying to keep up so he asks, “So… he’s like a Nazi scientist?”
“Not really. He took funding and resources from the krauts for work on highly advanced weapons, vehicles, and super soldiers to help them beat the allies but mostly used it on his obsession with immortality. He did make huge advances in all of these things but he either kept them for himself or gave the Nazis all but faulty or useless prototypes for his own amusement. He was able to make most of these advances with the help of his witch.”
Felix says, “Okay, you keep talking about this witch, but I don’t remember stickin’ it to a witch. I’m no choirboy but it seems like something I would remember.”
Siobhàn says, “You’re cute but you’re not that smart, are you, Felix? I barely know you but even I can see he’s talking about your girlfriend.”
“Audrey?”
Wahrheit says, “Yes, Audrey. Now, as far as I’ve been able to glean, Audrey and Obrist have been on the outs for decades but you getting your hands on the four-two-six and flipping out must’ve made her desperate. She probably went to him for your treatment knowing what you had seen. What she is. When it comes to re-pinking people, ‘Fleischmann’ is the best.”
“Why do you keep calling her a witch?” Felix asks.
“It’s what the soldiers called her in the camps and ‘research’ lab. She knew things she couldn’t know about science and technology and many other things and to them that meant magic and evil, ironically enough.”
“Okay… what is she then?”
“She’s an immigrant. As far as the Refs are concerned, she’s an illegal; only they can’t touch her. She can’t be deported or punished. She’s unstuck from time and impervious to their abilities because of the crude yet powerful method that was used. She has something like a reluctant amnesty.”
Siobhàn turns her head away and looks like she might cry for a moment. It’s the strangest look Felix has seen on her face and even in profile it reminds him of the hollow look she gave him the night they met. It’s just a flash then she’s back to her predatory feline observation and confidence, but Felix feels like it told him how little he actually knows about her, or any of this, really.
Felix shakes his head and says, “The more you tell me, the less I understand… or care. Can we just get out of here? I don’t want to die today.”
“I don’t think you’re the one in danger,” Wahrheit responds.
“What? Of course I am!”
“No, I think you’re under Audrey’s protection.”
“I thought you said Audrey was Fleischmann’s witch. Why would he listen to her?” Felix asks.
“I said that’s what they called her. I always got the distinct impression that she was in charge. Obrist is in love with her… or was. I don’t think she’s been active for decades so he’s basically king shit now, but I don’t think he’d risk upsetting her further by letting you get hurt.”
Wahrheit finishes modifying the Mayor and releases the chamber again. He takes a quick-loader out of his duffle which holds six translucent .410 bore shotgun rounds. Each round has three large, translucent blue pellets with concentrations of the wrapped up equations at their centers. He inserts the rounds into the chamber and releases the quick-loader, dropping the rounds in place.
“‘In love’? Great… So who is in danger then?”
Wahrheit whips the revolver chamber closed and looks at Siobhàn so Felix does too.
She scowls and says, “I don’t even know this kid! I came here to get away from bullshit like this!”
Wahrheit says, “I was wondering about that myself. Why are you running around with him anyway? In this realm, no less…”
Siobhàn’s glinting eyes slowly roll from one scared, all-but-frozen commuter on the platform to another as she says, “Not that it concerns you, but I came here to get away from the tribes… and my lover. She’s too impressionable and if I stuck around, she’d end up worse than me. The tribes have become so self-serving, cold, and brutal and it’s my fault.”
Wahrheit chuckles and says, “I knew it! You’re not just a lesser warrior idol… You’re the Thae’st Ra’yho idol queen!”
“What of it?” Siobhàn practically sneers.
“No offense meant. I am curious, though…”
“About what?”
“What led you here… at this particular time? Honestly.”
Siobhàn seems to fight off a sarcastic retort then furrows her brow and thinks for a moment. She says, “I was in Lower East Junction getting ready to take a small rented amphibious air skiff through the locks to Wei-Tshi on Iya Prime. My loose plan was to go sky fishing in low atmosphere storms for a while to clear my head then do some climbing in the mountains and maybe even get a monkey to pick some tea for me. I’ve never pulled that off even to this day.”
Wahrheit narrows his eyes and says, “But something happened and then you had a different plan?”
Siobhàn studies his face and eyes.
She says, “Yeah, actually. I passed a small aquarium and remembered my shop in Chinatown here. It belonged to another of my ex’s ‘cause I gifted it to her, but it’s still mine. So I came here to relax instead. Should’ve just gone sky fishing…”
“And something called your attention to the aquarium, right?”
Felix scoffs and says, “Who gives a shit?”
Siobhàn ignores Felix and says, “Now that you mention it… a fight broke out in a tavern on the other side of the street between two Sken’ghi pirates. In the reflection of the tavern window I saw the colorful aquarium and looked over. How did you know?”
“I have this theory that the Refs are guiding us. They can’t directly influence anything unless it breaks the rules but beings capable of doing that are rare at this point. So, I think they use little tricks of circumstance and association to guide us. They’re bringing us together for a greater purpose. I think that’s how Felix ended up with Audrey. We just have to-”
Felix says, “That is fucking fascinating, but if we don’t get out of here, we’ll all get the Rudy treatment!”
“What happened to Rudy?”
“I thought you knew everything!”
The strange, inky darkness descends upon the platform again and they all look around. The light from the glowing spheres on all their chests is enough to give off a dim illumination not unlike tactical glow sticks. As their eyes adjust, the smooth white light is more than enough to see several feet around in front on them but drops off dramatically past that. The eyes of the frozen silhouette commuters reflect the glow of the spheres and they look like a huge pack of
animals lurking just outside the periphery of a prairie campfire on a night with no moon.
Siobhàn says, “Not more porkers…”
A hum grows in the ceiling. Wahrheit readies his Bergmann again with one hand and aims at the spot where it seems to be strongest.
He flips the Mayor in his other hand and offers Felix the modified pistol, grip first. Felix takes it and examines the new additions to make sense of them.
Wahrheit says, “You have to press this thumb button to prime the catalyst elements every time or it won’t fire.”
The hum gets louder and more familiar to Felix.
Grieves drops from the ceiling, his head and feet rotating counter-clockwise around his center as he descends.
“More-troubble com-ming! Morre trou-ble coooooming!”
Felix yells, “Don’t shoot!”
Wahrheit tenses and steadies his Bergmann with his other hand as he aims at Grieves’s descending center-mass but doesn’t fire. Sujit also refrains from firing but doesn’t look happy about it.
“More mons-turrs onn the w-” his speech is cut off as his head rotates down and into the floor and then his body follows, phasing out of sight.
“What the hell was that?!” Wahrheit demands.
“My friend Grieves.”
“Friend?! How does he…” Wahrheit trails off for a moment as he tries to get his head around what Grieves must be.
Very different shuddering and groaning vibrations grow in the ceiling above. The ceiling darkens unnaturally in one spot then another several feet away. Wahrheit aims at one dark spot and Sujit at the other. Siobhàn looks around for a way out. She takes a few steps toward the stairs Wahrheit and Sujit came down, but stops and crouches.
“Felix…”
Felix hears fear in her voice and crosses to her side.
Colorful, psychedelic circles of blue and green and red dance in dense patches near the top of the long, dark stairwell back up to the station and multiple sets of splashing, slapping steps can be heard.
All Felix can say is, “So many…” as he shudders and holds back his urine. He’s far from convinced that he isn’t in danger. He looks back toward Wahrheit and Sujit just in time to see the dark spots in the ceiling disgorge most of their contents like huge boils being lanced. Malformed blobs of muckman strain like huge black pupae and their eyes loll around until they find Wahrheit and Sujit.
A Tear in the Veil Page 40