Hellbender

by Dana Cameron

  I liked techno as a way to get into a different head space, and heaven knew I was running on a sleep deficit. All I needed was to dance, and maybe I’d find my way to do what I needed to do.

  The landscape shifted so quickly that I almost fell over with vertigo. No more lab—and that brought a heart-pounding nanosecond of terror—because it had been replaced by an anonymous industrial space. I was only reassured when a heads-up display showed me my new lab-campus complex with Dr. O’s research lab, mine, and a new dance club.

  Inside, screens flashed images of flowers—on high speed, opening and closing, but never dying away—psychedelic patterns in orange and green, and superimposed over consumer ads from the early sixties. A DJ, a young man in bare feet with his hair tied in a knot at the back of his head and dressed in flowing trousers and tight tank top, played trance that had the crowd moving, swaying, their arms tracing out intricate patterns only they could see.

  Close, but not enough. Too mellow, more like something for the early morning, watching the sun rise after a long night.

  I needed more.

  As soon as I had the thought there was another shift, more subtle than the last one. The DJ was a shorn and shaved young blond in a hoodie and jeans, with Nike Air Force Max Area 72 kicks that would go right back into a carrier when his set was over. The screens were more on the order of spray paint dripping and being sucked back into the can and film stock of a family vacation burning and turning different colors.

  The depth and loudness of the bass were better, and I could feel the urge to dance take me.

  But it just wasn’t fast enough, loud enough, anything enough . . . I couldn’t focus.

  The crowd got bigger, more lively, and now the DJ was a young Asian woman who looked as though she was dressed for speed skating. The new song was pressing the outer limits of the speakers, in a way that was both pleasing and in no way approved by the Underwriters Laboratory. I could feel the beat driving my feet, felt the base changing the rhythm of my heart, filling my head.

  Still, I wasn’t getting there.

  Suddenly Geoffrey appeared. He handed me a couple of green star-shaped pills and a bottle of water, putting another into my backpack. “This is what you need. Don’t take anything from anyone but me.”

  “What is it?” I asked a little suspiciously. Was this an attempt by him to derail my planned attack on the Makers?

  “It’s a metaphor, silly girl, a little energy in reserve, a little push over the edge. A little confidence. You can do it,” he said. “And there’s this.”

  He opened a long, thin, flat, brown polished wooden box with an ornate latch and hinges. Inside was a replica of a Time Lord’s sonic screwdriver.

  I laughed, shrugged, and clipped it behind my trowel. Might as well take it; I needed good wishes and encouragement. “Thanks. But why do you say not to take anything from anyone but you? The crowd is cool; this is inside my space. No one but me, nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Not anymore. And those guys . . .” he nodded to a couple of the large cone-orange intruder types standing on the sidelines, craning, looking. “Those guys are big trouble.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “This is no longer your own private preserve. It could be the same as the others—someone sent by the Makers; they may be getting worried about you. In any case, they’ve found a way in. Did you eat anything at the Castle, ever? Take anything from there?”

  “Not beside the—oh.” I remembered long ago, I’d taken the lighter and two joints and drunk a beer with the Administrator.

  “Ah, there’s the problem,” Geoffrey said. “The clock is not only ticking, Zoe; it’s sped up. You got about fifteen minutes now. Get busy, child.”

  I blinked and realized if Fatima could know about the Hulk, Geoffrey could know the Chemical Brothers lyrics. I nodded. “You got anything that can slow those thugs down?”

  The two guys were starting to press through the crowd and not in a “May I?” fashion. Just the feel of them let me know he was right. They weren’t me; they didn’t belong here. “Slow them down a lot?”

  Geoffrey smiled, a secret, nasty smile. Maybe there was a little more werewolf from his father’s side affecting him than he thought. Maybe I was affecting his afterlife more than either of us wanted to admit. “I’m yours to command.”

  I suppressed a shiver. I didn’t need any more distractions now. “Just keep the collateral damage down, ’kay?”

  “You just take the pills and get to work.”

  The BPM kicked into the 160–180 range. I swallowed the pills. The music went past 200 BPM, to 500 . . .

  I began to dance. Things started to blur, lights began to trail, and I began to see the individual bands of light prism and sparkle. I began to taste the music and feel numbers as parts of me began to melt away.

  I have to see if Geoffrey has any more of this, I thought giddily. I’ve never taken anything this good, have never been able to afford it, and now I have my own private chemist who is turning out some seriously good shit . . .

  I started to feel nauseous, a little throw-up in the back of my throat. Only to be expected, I thought, a small price to pay for this—

  I turned inside out. My brain split in half.

  I was outside the club—or was it above?—watching things unfold there. There was a blank area beyond that indicated where I needed to get to. Geoffrey was using moves straight out of a Hong Kong action film, keeping the bad guys at bay. It was like being outside of two different theaters, watching two different plays, while I was simultaneously acting and directing them. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, if I said it was easy. It felt as if my skull were being cracked open, but the fact that I could do it at all gave me the motivation to keep going, see how far I could take it.

  I couldn’t stay here; I needed to get to that ominous blank space. I reached out for the dragons. “Quarrel, Yuan, Naserian? If you could get me where I need to go, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “We will escort you, Hellbender,” Yuan said.

  “No, I need to be stealthier than that. They see you guys, my chances are blown. But thank you.”

  In an instant, I was there.

  I didn’t recognize where there was and was afraid that I’d miscalculated. What I saw was a rippling wave of black, so black, I could barely detect that it was moving. But very rarely, every here and there was a break, a line of bright red or silver or pale blue that showed me the black was billowing in waves, like a silk sheet being shaken out. I tried to look beneath it, but no matter how far I followed it down, I couldn’t find the underside of it, and there were curves that made me wonder if I weren’t moving in circles, or some trick of the near light that altered or distorted my perspective. So I followed one of the red lines back, finding no end.

  I pulled the sonic screwdriver out of my pocket—I would have used a rock if I’d had it—and threw it at the blackness. It caused a furious rippling, and now I could see, very distantly and less faintly, how the lines were interwoven, warp and weft.

  A crack appeared in the fabric; there was a noise like ice creaking and glaciers calving. A flare of color like the aurora borealis and a portion of the dense black nothingness shattered, falling away to nothingness. I could see many of the fine threads now, bundled into very large groups, like individual strands twisted into a heavy rope. The larger bundles were like wires or circuits interconnecting, overlapping against the wider darkness. All the lives I knew or could imagine in the multiverse, intertwined and overlapping. Geoffrey had suggested there might be streams of particles bridging the overlapping multiverses, and maybe this was it.

  I recalled the fight with the Administrator’s überdragon. My dragons had been on silver threads, ever so much finer than these cables, when I’d taken over command of them. The Trips had a red thread binding them together, and Carolina had a pale blue one associated wit
h her.

  I saw a heavy silver rope quivering and glinting starlight in the darkness of whatever meta-space the Makers and I shared. Strands emerged from that main rope to form new connections with other, crossing cables.

  I followed the heavy silver cable until I found three cut edges; three cobweb-fine loose ends fluttered from the main rope, but already a kind of self-healing was occurring, reweaving new threads grown from the cut end into other circuits.

  This is where I’d freed the dragons from the Makers. This is where I’d seized their power.

  I traced their threads back to where they connected into the main rope. The silver threads of the dragons and many other silver threads were bound up with a blue one, barely perceptible, that was wound around them.

  This blue thread was the Fangborn connection to the Makers and the way they could control us. While it was probably not the only one, it was the most obvious and easiest one for them to use.

  I was going to cut the thread. This is how I would unchain the Fangborn.

  I had no idea what side effects doing that might have. Most of the Fangborn systems I’d encountered were redundant, many times over, so this might not be the only way for the Makers to reach us directly. It probably contained elements of other powers in ways we didn’t understand.

  But for now, it wasn’t a matter of prophecies or being the chosen one. There was no chosen one; Fangborn prophecies were fragments of communications intercepted by the oracles, imperfectly received or understood by them. They were not so much prophecies as someone getting a sneak preview of the workings inside the machine, the grand scheme of things. Maybe the prophecy that seemed to fit my situation was a part of a warning label for that thread: “Danger! Do not cut!” or “Caution! Live Wire!” or “Broken, removed for repairs.” But why were the Makers so intent on repairing it?

  I didn’t know if I was acting as Atropos, severing a fateful, fatal thread, or if I was acting as Perseus, freeing Andromeda from the rock.

  I summoned the katana and drew it back, ready to cleave that binding blue thread. I pressed the sapphire jewel I’d been given to do the Makers’ bidding.

  The power surged through me and I suddenly had a good idea of what it was like to be in a jet going supersonic. I had no idea of the proper way to use the katana in real life; here, with that loaned power, I was a master of what it represented. The sword was no longer perfect steel, folded over and over ten thousand times; for my purpose, it had turned into black diamond, flecked with moonlight. I Changed, not able to wield this power without summoning some of the strength my other nature represented, and stood on top of the blue thread, which was now as massive as a drainage pipe with my new perspective. I swung with everything in my being.

  I brought the katana down.

  It bounced off the thread, as if it was made of rubber. Just like the intruders in the mind-lab.

  I tried again, feeling the borrowed power course through me.

  Nothing.

  Squinting, I could barely make out where I’d hit the blue thread. I reached out and tried to pull it apart with my hands. It burned with cold to my bones.

  The katana wouldn’t do it. Like the tools that belonged to the orange demo crew, it was a product of the Maker influence on its Fangborn artisan.

  I summoned the hybrid Celtic/Anglo-Saxon sword I’d found in Kanazawa; I knew it had tremendous power, but not from the Makers.

  I swung.

  A cut appeared in the blue thread, like a notch axed from a tree. My arm went numb at the blow. I summoned all my reserves, feeling the strain pulling at the core of myself, threatening to tear me apart, and swung again. Sparks flew, blinding me. A cacophony filled my ears, the sound of worlds exploding. I prayed it was not indicative of what was happening in the here and now.

  There was a bellowing in the void around me; the überdragon, even larger than last time, was on its way. I’d woken up the Makers. This was not what they thought of as orderly. It was not what they wanted. Three hydra heads of the überdragon appeared, followed by its massive body, the noise like a bomb blast.

  I was a sitting duck. I swung again at the cable.

  Halfway through, this time. One more would have to do it; it was all I had strength for.

  A blast of energy appeared so powerful, it lit up the void. Heading my way, it fell short and dissipated, but the überdragon was following, preparing another blast.

  Flashes before my eyes—I couldn’t tell if they were from the silver thread or my brain collapsing in on itself. I lifted my arms, feeling them wobble under the weight—what weight?—of the sword. I felt about as tough as a plate of soggy pasta. My heart pounded so hard, so fast, I thought it would break out the cage of my ribs.

  Last chance, Zoe.

  The überdragon was nearly on me now, and I knew I would perish with its next burst. I paused, pulled out the blaster, and fired at the hydra. I felt myself go weak as it drained my energy. I could barely move but had bought myself some time.

  I swung, and this time, the sword cut cleanly through but only to the last core of the strand.

  It was not going to give under the sword. Any sword.

  I had one trick left. I pulled up the bone-and-soul-chilling thread and bit it. My werewolf fangs sheared through the last fragment.

  The thread was broken.

  I howled, even as my life was leaving me. I felt a tremendous rushing, like rapids heading for a waterfall, and my feet were knocked out from under me. I grabbed at what was left of the thread; it turned white and disintegrated. With a planet-shattering rumble, the black waves rearranged themselves and swallowed up the hole left by the vanished thread. I was unmoored and unsupported. A tiny pop of emptiness deep inside told me I’d been successful. When the wave hit me, I was knocked far away.

  I saw Dr. Osborne hovering near me. “I think it’s time to jump ship, Zoe. Unless you want to get sucked up into the vortex.”

  “Good idea,” I croaked. “Dragons?”

  “We’re on it.”

  A volcanic roar in the void as my three friends appeared, straining, screaming with indignation at the überdragon, who was struggling to get one last blast at me. They grabbed me and I followed them back home.

  I found myself in a pile of blood and sweat on the floor of my room on Flock Island. My clothes were limp and soggy, as though I’d had a fever. The cat hissed at me.

  Oh, gross. Cleanup in aisle five, I thought before I passed out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I woke up, stiff as hell, with a terrible hollow feeling inside and out. A soft moist snuffling under my nose; I snorted, and sneezed. The cat, who had been inspecting me, took off.

  It was as if there was nothing inside me, and nothing in the outside world capable of sustaining my skin, a leaky balloon. I just wanted to ooze into the floor, but it kept falling away from underneath me. It was the definition of misery.

  I was on the floor, having fallen off my chair. By very carefully flexing one muscle at a time, I was able to determine that none of my bones were broken, but I was bleeding from the nose and chin, where I’d landed. While it had not been a physical battle, a serious toll had been taken nonetheless.

  I lay there hating the feel of the gritty floor under my cheek but unable—at least unwilling—to get up. Faced with the prospect of spending the day there, I have to say, I gave it considerable thought. Not only did I feel like a sock full of hammered shit, I had another bunch of high-risk, no-reward tasks to do before I dared to rest. I shoved myself up and fumble-grabbed a bottle of water and drank it all without stopping.

  I coughed, and called out. Claudia poked her head in the door, saw the blood on my face.

  The cut was already starting to heal. That was a good sign.

  “Holy God, Zoe!” She ran to me. “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  “Later,” I said. “What
’s going on?”

  “Lots. Same as a minute ago. We’re on for I-Day.” She shook her head, frowning. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I mean, maybe. I mean, did anything happen? Out here, with you, with any of the Fangborn?”

  She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  I swallowed my frustration. I had to know. “Like, did you sense any disruption here, in this world? No flying squids in the sky? It’s still just after breakfast on I-Day? Can you Change?”

  “No, yes, hang on.” Claudia Changed, as effortlessly as ever, her face shifting from human to violet and serpentine. I felt the familiar frisson of energy and felt the urge to follow her suit. I did so, and then Changed back.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I said. So far, so good.

  She Changed back.

  “I think I did it.” I said the words, dazed, not believing them. “Claudia, I think I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Unchained the Fangborn.”

  She looked astonished and scared and excited. “Okay, the prophecy—how—I don’t know what . . . but you did?”

  I nodded.

  “So, I-Day?”

  “It’s on, as planned.” I took a deep breath. “It’s been a long time coming. The Normals could use a little excitement.”

  Claudia frowned, but nodded and took off.

  I dragged myself up to the table, sat down painfully, and found my phone. I made two calls: one to Senator Knight to tell him I’d succeeded and one to Danny.

  I noticed there were little indentations all over my bagel where the cat had licked off the cream cheese. Someone was settling in to his new routine.

  Finally, I texted three words to Vee: The game’s afoot.

  I waited until the phone binged, letting me know Vee had texted me back: Done. The game is ON.

  I grinned weakly, amazed at how much that simple act hurt. Without many Family ties of her own, for I-Day Vee was going to involve her Normal friends, whom she’d once described as her “techies and geekdoms.” They were going to solicit a little help from the willing uninitiated, crowd-sourcing the problems of I-Day and integration via several online communities. The social media blasts had been carefully planned, hashtags ready. Additionally, certain groups of scientists and researchers were going to get very interesting emails with carefully selected information about history and biology. It was going to be done quietly, resembling more an IV drip into a bloodstream than a series of press releases, so certain folks would get a head start on what was coming and hopefully take our side. I’d also put Vee in touch with Ariana, my Italian vampire friend, who was going to release her new game, “Wolf, Raven, Snake.” The card game looked remarkably like Fangborn adventures to me—with us as the good guys, of course.