The Observer’s lights are all aimed at one of the central square supports running down the platform closer to Wahrheit and Felix and Felix sees that in the shadows created by the overpowering lights, Siobhàn is pressed against the dark side of the support, shoulder against it and peeking out of the shadows sporadically as she curses and retorts. The Controller’s phalanx is posted up about thirty feet down the platform from the platform and Siobhàn.
As Siobhàn continues to argue and joke with the Controller’s weird PA and camera system creature, she slides back and forth on her back across the support, seeming to glean structural details as far as Felix can gather from the brief glimpses when her face leaves the shadows. The next glimpse he gets is of her face a few feet lower and she must be crouching.
Felix’s eyes adjust to the shadows created by the support as he focuses on it and he can just make out Siobhàn scanning the platform. Her view locks on one of the dark tree people several feet away from her on the platform. Something about that changes her posture and demeanor.
Siobhàn peeks around the edge of the support toward the Controllers again but instead of looking around she makes an almost inaudible whistling sound. She seems satisfied and slides back into the shadow. In half-silhouette, Felix watches her take off her brocade bag and set it on the floor. She pops the still shrouded time sphere off her hoodie and presses it against her chest then unzips her hoodie, takes it off, and drops it gently onto the bag. She slides back up to a standing position against the pillar.
Siobhàn’s retorts go from playful and sarcastic to two steps louder and threatening. The distorted voice from the Observer increases in volume and intensity in response.
There’s a pregnant pause, then the light goes from bright blue to pulsing blood red and the Fat Boy shifts and seems to be prepping the net gun. The Controllers activate more red lights and what look like electric shock or stun nodes embedded in the surfaces of their padded riot shields and start to advance at a cautious, slow pace. The arrangement of the stun nodes is like the six side of a classic pip style die and arcs of bluish-white electricity crackle across their circular surfaces.
Felix shifts nervously and says, “She needs help, man.”
“You will do nothing,” Wahrheit commands.
“I’m sorry about your friend, but–”
“‘Friend’ doesn’t cover it, you little prick. That’s got nothing to do with this.”
“So, what is it? Are you studying her? This doesn’t seem like the time for that.”
“Felix, has it occurred to you that she doesn’t need any help? Now shut the hell up and let me watch. Probably won’t ever get another chance on this side of the breach.”
Felix looks over at Wahrheit but Wahrheit doesn’t return his hard, questioning glare. He is practically entranced by whatever it is that has him so fascinated by Siobhàn. Then Felix looks back at the platform in time to learn a little of what Wahrheit already knows.
Siobhàn closes her eyes and breathes slow and deliberate. There’s a long moment that’s hard for Felix to take when she seems to be meditating against the support as the Controllers continue to advance, then her eyes open and reflect the red light pouring around the sides of the pillar.
She looks like a fucking demon.
The shade of red is just slightly different between the Observer lights and the shields and she seems to study the changing layers of the light cones as they advance. They’re only about fifteen feet from the support now and Felix is really getting anxious. He keeps squeezing the pistol grip of the Mayor like an unyielding stress ball.
Back still against the pillar, Siobhàn lets out a last taunt in that weird language then raises her cut off red-gloved hands up and out so that they jut out from the sides of the pillar on the ends of her tattooed forearms and she flips the Controllers off double. Then she curls her fingers so that the middle and thumb press together–
Felix closes his eyes just as she snaps her fingers. It’s enough to avoid the full blast of light and heat he didn’t feel when running from the porker upstairs but he’s still half-blinded by the light through his eyelids. He flutters them back open as Siobhàn is dive-rolling across the platform toward the tree person.
Siobhàn rolls up onto her feet and pries something flat and rectangular out of the slowed-down person’s grip and there’s a raspy sucking sound. It looks like a touch screen tablet but the screen is a dull blur from the artificial darkness. She turns back toward the Controllers, takes a long step for momentum, then flings the tablet hard and it arcs up toward the platform ceiling but she’s put so much English on the spin that it curves back down and whirs down over one of the Controller’s riot shields. It connects with a hollow thud and crack but the mirrored black egg helmet stays intact.
Siobhàn whistles a note which quickly becomes a harrowing shriek in her throat and Felix and Wahrheit have to cover their ears. The Controller’s helmets vibrate and shudder and when she hits the highest part of her rising shriek, the helmet she struck with the tablet shatters, exploding out like a glass bomb and shattering most of the other’s helmets too. She shifts the note and rises again and the helmets that were cracked open and shattered by the first one explode too, destroying the last of the helmets in a blast of cascading translucent obsidian.
The Controllers spasm and collapse, some dropping their shields and some keeping them half-raised as the contents of their helmets come out like liquid noise made real and swirl like chaotic, fleshy smoke or Co2 haze rolling down off of dry ice and pouring across the floor. Felix can’t look directly at the leaking mess of light and solid/fluid/smoke madness because he can’t get his mind around it existing. The intensity of the synesthesia is too much and it defies what he’s come to accept as physical laws even more than some of the really dicey stuff he’s seen.
The chopped up, distorted voice on the Observer goes ape shit.
When the Controllers hit the ground, a few of their mottled, pickled heads just splash apart like organic slush and others come apart more in chunks. One of them claws up at its own head, accidentally taking it apart while it tries to keep it together and another’s exposed head connects with the top edge of its riot shield on its way to the floor and breaks open like a rotten melon dropped from a height.
The Fat Boy growls bubbly in its shifting diopter filled helmet and most of its eyes lock on Siobhàn. It advances and levels the big net gun at her, stomping with a pronounced limp through the pulsing red light, haze of green gas, and organic noise liquid rolling and spreading across the floor like living mercury smoke.
Siobhàn lowers into a half-crouch and raises her right hand to snap again. The Fat Boy stops and presses a button or small pressure plate on its helmet, which causes a black mirror cover to slide down over the mostly transparent central faceplate.
Unfazed, Siobhàn spreads her arms wide and starts running toward the Fat Boy. Felix ducks his eyes below the level of the platform as she slaps her hands together hard in front of her face like a Buddhist monk minus the big prayer beads. He feels a blast of heat roll across and over his head. The sound of this mighty clap vibrates the platform and it’s immediately followed by what must be the sound of the big gun firing its net projectile.
Felix looks back up. The net is sprawled out and empty by the stairs toward the Powell side of the platform, Siobhàn is gone, and the Fat Boy is jerking what serves it as a head back and forth in its space helmet trying to find her.
Then Felix spots Siobhàn sliding upside-down across the ceiling on a painted concrete beam like she’s on a flat waterslide. Her feet, butt, and hands are the only contact points as she glides down the beam underside above and past the Fat Boy. She slows herself somehow, tucks her head to her knees, and flips down to a low crouch on the platform floor facing the back of the Fat Boy.
Felix doesn’t know how she did it, but those mean looking butterfly knives of Siobhàn’s are in her hands now and she’s gripping them reverse-hand, slight sickle curved edges out.
>
Siobhàn spins up out of the crouch with knives outstretched and whirls like a demented ballerina jumping into a pirouette then ends back down in a half-crouched defensive stance. The Fat Boy roars and wobbles around to face her but she’s already attacking again, flipping the knives to forward grip and whipping them from arms wide to across her chest then whipping them back out wide, slicing across its bulk in a squat X on X pattern. Felix can see more of the organic mercury, Co2 haze stuff seeping out through gashes on the creature’s padded back armor and it starts to do the same from the chest slices. She goes to slice again and the Fat Boy raises the net gun up in defense and she cuts into its matte metal surface, leaving visible gouges.
What are those made out of?
The Fat Boy swings the big gun toward her and she throws herself back. It swings it again, advancing this time. Siobhàn throws herself back again as well but this time arches her body and spins, slicing the thrice thick arm the Fat Boy has closer to her in its swing before landing in a defensive stance again.
More of the weird stuff pours out of the arm slits and the big suit of padded bomb squad/cosmonaut armor is becoming more misshapen and asymmetrical as it loses its grotesque filling.
The Fat Boy tries to reload the net gun but Siobhàn has other ideas. She flips her knives closed and drops them to the floor, each one sending warped ripples flowing through the crazy smoke juice on its surface. She gracefully brings her arms up from her sides, raises them above her head, and brings them down and together at the pinky side edges with palms toward her face. She takes a deep breath and holds it.
Felix notices the air distorting and warping like a mirage on her exposed arms and face and it occurs to him that it must be doing this over the tattooed patterns he saw in the black light.
She presses the tips of her fingers together and begins turning her hands away from herself then opening and thrusting them toward the Fat Boy as she exhales smooth and slow.
Instead of a flash of heat and white light, the living mercury closest to her ignites and blinding white flame burns across all of it like a pool of gasoline. The Fat Boy drops the net gun and actually turns to run away from Siobhàn but she finishes her forward thrust, grabs her knives from the floor, and flips them open as she runs after it.
The white flames chase the Fat Boy too like he’s carrying a leaking gas can. Siobhàn gets ahead of them and springs up onto the Fat Boy’s back then sinks the blades into its thick shoulder armor. She climbs it like a little moving mountain and when she has footing on part of the flopping less-filled parts of armor, she proceeds to stab and cut into it until geysers of the synesthesia-inducing pseudomatter are spewing out at all angles.
The white flames catch up as the creature slows down and they ride the spraying weirdness into the suit, burning it away from the inside as it tries to crawl away. It crumples to the ground and writhes a bit as the last of it burns and melts into nothing, leaving Siobhàn standing atop a smoldering empty suit of padded armor. With her visage of sheer menace turning to triumph with each hard breath, Siobhàn looks like a master huntress atop fresh kill. Then a perverse smile stretches across her face and she looks to be in a kind of murderous afterglow.
Felix doesn’t want to interrupt her moment but he figures they don’t have much time before another wave of evil nightmare people and things descends upon them so he raises his mouth over the platform edge and he whispers, “Siobhàn.”
Siobhàn whips her head and right knife toward Felix and glares hard before recognizing him and pulling back her intense malignance. She fans her knives and flips them closed then tucks them in the back pockets of her jeans.
Wahrheit climbs onto the platform and Felix follows. He takes the shroud off of his glowing sphere so Felix does too.
Siobhàn steps off the empty Fat Boy armor and walks back to her bag and sweater by the support. She slings the bag and drapes the hoodie in half over it loosely.
The Fat Boy and Controller armor, riot shields, shattered helmet glass, and net gun start decaying and breaking down and the Observer seems to be the cause but it’s unclear how. Then a pulse from it blasts them apart like piles of black ashes and dust before a second pulse zaps the ash away entirely, leaving only scorch marks and boiling fluids.
The Observer is still directing threatening comments at Siobhàn in the Junction Pidgin as Wahrheit called it, but one of its eyes locks on Wahrheit and follows him.
Siobhàn says, “They’re sending more. We should skedaddle.”
The Observer stops ranting abruptly and for a few seconds only a pulsing tone and clicking can be heard. Then the eyes flutter back to life and focus on Wahrheit and a different distorted voice with a German or Swiss accent says, “–Kendall? Einfach unglaublich! My, this is serendipitous!–”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Wahrheit responds in a cold, defiant tone. He approaches the Observer and pulls an unmodified Beretta 93R out from under his coat while still holding the modified Bergmann by its pistol grip in his other hand. Without seeming to care about accuracy, he flips the selector to burst fire then flicks the safety off and unloads several sets of almost deafening triplets across the thing’s psychedelic projection warped surface.
The voice just laughs in a menacing tone which is served well by the distortion and ascends into what Felix can only equate to a shimmering “acme hole orifice” in the ceiling which swallows it up and disappears immediately after. The inky darkness disappears with the Observer and they’re left in the sludge of crawling time with the almost statue people instead of dark trees.
Wahrheit ejects the Beretta’s mostly spent magazine into his duffle bag and replaces it with a fresh one, chambers the first round with the slide, and flicks the safety near the base of the hammer back down. As he’s tucking the pistol back under his coat, he says, “Okay, new plan.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to your old plan,” Siobhàn retorts with no small degree of suspicion and menace.
“Does she speak for you, Felix?”
Felix starts, “N-no–”
“Yes. He’s a child. He doesn’t know what’s going on here.”
Wahrheit blinks and asks, “Where is this coming from? What’s your interest in him anyway?”
“Not your concern. That squawk box knew you. Someone on it did. This kid owes you nothing and I don’t need more drama, fehr-shtayst doo?”
“Cry me a river, Stretch! I’m the one that should be upset! I get this close to Obrist… Then I meet this ‘kid’ and most of my crew and higher associates are wiped out in less than a week!”
Felix says, “Let’s hear what he has to s–”
“This man doesn’t care about you,” Siobhàn interrupts.
Wahrheit narrows his eyes at her but says nothing.
Felix asks, “What do you… what does she mean, Wahrheit?”
Siobhàn says, “You are a pawn here. That’s all I know.”
“Wahrheit?” Felix asks expectantly.
Wahrheit seems to consider lying then says, “Listen, Felix… You seem like a good guy…”
“This isn’t a confession session, man! What does she mean?”
“Okay, she’s right. I’m not helping you because I like you. I broke some of the rules recently and I got a yellow card from the Refs. Then I broke another one getting away from the Alptraumen and… I’m facing a red card now.”
Siobhàn says, “So, this is more like a plea bargain or deal for you.” “Sounds accurate.”
Felix furrows his brow in confusion and asks, “You work for the Spaznoids?”
“‘Spaz’ what?”
Siobhàn answers, “Yes, he works for the ‘Spaznoids’.”
“A red card is a ticket to oblivion and I have too much to do before I can die.”
Siobhàn chuckles mirthlessly at this and says, “At least you have purpose.”
Felix asks, “What purpose?”
“He wants revenge.”
Wahrheit says, “Very perceptive. I want it, I deserve it,
and I’m gonna get it. But I will protect Felix because I have to and because it’s the right thing to do. You’re right, he owes me nothing. If anything, I owe him for messing up and giving him my pills without proper supervision. I was busy and didn’t know he had straight up got himself on the bad side of Albrecht fucking Obrist himself. I won’t be that sloppy again.”
Siobhàn softens some upon hearing this.
Wahrheit studies her eyes, thinks, and says, “Nice lenses. Never seen ‘em quite like that… How many homes can’t you go back to, sister?”
It’s Siobhàn’s turn to narrow her eyes and consider lying but instead she says, “You have no idea, flyboy.”
Wahrheit says, “How’d you figure that one out?”
Siobhàn just winks at him.
“So, new plan?” Felix prods.
Siobhàn says, “Why not? Mine are all about running away and-or killing and such. You got something else?”
“I’d love to watch all of that… for research purposes, I mean.”
“I bet you would,” Siobhàn says.
Felix feels like he’s watching Walter and Isidora argue and make up and says, “You guys should break each other off and be done with it, damn.”
“Can’t say I’d complain, but she’s made her choice in the courting department for the moment.”
Siobhàn’s eyelids flutter then her eyes dart in Felix’s direction but she stops herself from looking at him and looks away like she’s scanning for danger. Felix thinks he sees a slight reddening in her cheeks but before he can be flattered or maybe happy about it, Wahrheit is tucking something small and round into his right hand and closing his fingers over it. He tells Felix, “Hold that until I say when.”
Wahrheit gives another of the small spheres to Siobhàn and she takes off one of her gloves to hold it in her gently clenched fist.
“New plan is this–you two get to Walt and Izzy’s in Sausalito and explain what’s going on. That’s if they don’t already know. They’ll know better than I do what should be done either way.”
A Tear in the Veil Page 42