The man was pulling with such force that his face contorted into a sneer of muscle strain. Krouse wasn’t so strong, nor quite so tenacious. He felt the gun slipping from his fingers, felt himself reaching the point where the pain in his hands was overcoming his desire to keep the man from getting the rifle. He knew he’d get shot if it happened, or struck in the head with the butt-end of the weapon, but the pain…
He reached out, and he found something. He wasn’t thinking in the right terms. Was still thinking too much about shape and not about mass. The heavy wool blanket that was draped over Noelle had roughly the same mass as the gun.
But he had to be looking at both to swap them. Krouse let the gun go, backed away as rapidly as he could as he got to his feet. The uniform was standing, moving his hands to get a grip on the trigger and barrel-
-And the gun was gone, replaced by a blanket. Krouse tackled his unarmed opponent, knocking him to the ground, grabbing at his wrists.
Krouse closed his eyes and slammed his forehead into the lower half of the uniformed man’s face. He headbutted the guy once more. Blood welled on his own forehead, where a tooth bit too deep into the skin. His opponent got one hand free, punched Krouse in the ribs, three times in quick succession, each blow stronger than Krouse might have expected.
I’m going to lose this fight.
Using his power to get a sense for where it was, Krouse reached over to the gun, got a grip on the rifle and swung the end of it into the uniformed man’s face. He kept swinging until the officer stopped putting up a fight.
He managed to climb to his feet, blinked slowly as he looked down at the uniformed man. Not a cop, not a soldier, something else. The guy’s face was a mess of blood, and his gaping mouth had at least two broken or missing teeth.
There were nurses and doctors in the hallway, staring. Krouse stepped towards the door, and they ran.
Noelle was still struggling, thrashing.
“Come on, Noelle,” he whispered. ”Best thing you can do for me is stay alive, here. Don’t let this be where I accidentally kill you. Can’t live with that.”
He paused. There were other footsteps coming down the hallway.
“And if it’s not asking too much, hurry it up some?”
When he’d disconnected from reality and seen whatever he saw in the visions, how much had he seen? Was she halfway done, only a tenth of the way?
Krouse moved the chair to block the door, then dragged the man he’d bludgeoned into place so the unconscious body would keep the chair in place and the door closed.
“Come on,” he said. ”Come on…”
For the third time, he found himself someplace else. All of the memories and thoughts of the hospital room and Noelle thrashing receded as he found himself plummeting, felt the heat of entering the atmosphere, and didn’t care in the slightest. Emotion didn’t factor in, from this perspective.
A waterless, lifeless earth loomed beneath him, stretched out until it consumed his senses.
The impact didn’t hurt any more than the atmospheric entry had.
-And he was back in the hospital room. He staggered, nearly fell, but managed to keep his balance.
“How much more, Noelle?’
She was panting, not screaming, sweat beading her brow.
“I… I’m… I think it’s over,” she said. Her voice was stronger.
“Feel better?’
She touched her stomach, pushed herself to a sitting position with her arms. Her eyes widened. ”Yes.”
Krouse felt a smile stretch across his face, so broad it hurt. ”Fantastic. Feel different?”
“No… not really.”
“Well, you only got half a dose. If you get any powers, they’re liable to be pretty weak. Could be that you burned up whatever juice is in that stuff, healing the damage.”
“Maybe.” She touched the hospital gown.
Krouse looked away, feeling somehow abashed. ”You’ll want to get dressed. I saw your stuff in the cupboard, with the sheets.”
He found the half-full cup and tipped the contents into the vial, then slid the vial into the canister. As Noelle climbed out of the bed, Krouse turned his back to her to give her privacy, screwing on the cap and closing the canister with the remaining formula.
Someone banged on the door, hard.
“There’s more of these guys. Thought the process would be faster,” Krouse said.
“Can we get away?”
“Depends on how much backup they get. The more the better.”
“Don’t you mean-”
“Nope,” Krouse said. ”Best case scenario, they’ll have tons of backup.”
“I… my bare skin’s fizzing.”
“Fizzing?”
“I can’t see it, but I feel like there’s bubbles, and they’re so tiny I can’t see them, but they’re flowing down from my skin.”
“Huh. You can’t control it?”
“No. Or… sort of? If I concentrate, pull on my skin, it speeds up.”
Fizzing and pulling on her skin. It wasn’t the most apt description, but Krouse wasn’t sure he’d be able to accurately describe the pressure or the feeling of heft he got when he pressed his power into something.
“Does it feel different when you touch stuff?”
“Yeah. Feels like my skin’s fizzing against my clothes, as I’m putting them on, where the cloth touches me.”
“Touch other stuff. If we can figure out your power, maybe we can use it.”
There was a pause. Krouse waited while she experimented.
The door banged. He tensed. This time, at least, he’d be ready.
“Not much. Less than from my clothes.”
There was another bang on the door. The chair shifted, and Krouse moved it back.
“Worry about it later. We’re stuck with just my power until we figure yours out.”
Noelle entered his field of vision, wearing all of her winter stuff.
Krouse stepped over to the window. The street was lit only by the minimal moonlight that filtered through the clouds. There were police cars and fire trucks massing inside the quarantine area, as well as black vans with pale purple stripes and the letters P.R.T. on the sides. The people outside the black vans had uniforms like the man he’d just beat up, only they wore helmets.
There were capes, too. Krouse could see the one with the brown cloak and staff. Myrddin. A half dozen superheroes clustered around him. His team? It was a surprise that so many heroes were still present in the city. Did they have to undergo their own kind of quarantine processing as well?
Doing this all backwards, deciding on a strategy before I’ve fully tested my powers. Don’t even know my own range.
Krouse pushed his power away from himself, reached for two of the men in the P.R.T. uniforms, each on opposite sides of the crowd.
They swapped places. He couldn’t really see the physical differences between them, but they were alarmed, confused.
“I can swap us out with someone in the crowd, if it comes down to it. Happen to know anything about Myrddin? Maybe Jess said something?”
Noelle shook her head.
“Fuck. And we have even less chance of knowing something about his subordinates. Far as I know, he does something with these dimensions he carts around. When I ran into him, he sort of banished me into this phase state where I could move around and stuff, but I couldn’t touch anything either.”
Noelle nodded.
“He didn’t mean to, though. He thought I’d pop back in like I’d just left. His power, it doesn’t work well if something’s changed between dimensions too much. Which means it won’t work a hundred percent right with us.”
“Would he listen if we talked to him?”
Krouse looked outside.
“No. I don’t think we could. We’re on our own. Just… we just need an opportunity. Stay close to me.”
Myrddin was flying, now. Two of his subordinates were advancing as well. One had a beachball-sized ball of jet black extendi
ng a foot away from his splayed hands, crackling with arcs of electricity that were both absolutely black and somehow still glowing enough to be seen in the dark. The other figure was an Asian woman with a painted mask and a giant lantern in her hands.
“We have a fight incoming,” Krouse said, backing away from the window.
Myrddin waved his staff, and the window shattered. With another movement of his staff, he plunged down into the room, landing with an audible impact.
Krouse had a better look at the guy: A brown cloak-and-robe combination that might have been burlap, but with a heavier material beneath. If the raised metal collar around his neck was any indication, Myrddin was wearing some kind of armor or protective gear beneath the robe. It should have been heavy, but he wasn’t having any apparent difficulty. His staff was a gnarled stick of dense wood, worn by weather. The upper half of his face was hidden behind a metal visor that served more to cast his face in shadow than to be actual armor. He sported a thick, well trimmed beard. Brown, not white.
This wasn’t a guy that Krouse could fight hand to hand, and between his armor and his stature, he was too heavy to be swapped with anything that wasn’t an appliance.
“Stand down,” Myrddin ordered.
“I’ll pass,” Krouse replied. He looked at the injured P.R.T. soldier, “We’ve got-”
“Begone,” Myrddin said, pointing his staff.
The officer vanished in a cloud of mist.
“-A hostage,” Krouse finished.
Myrddin looked at Noelle, then at Krouse, “So there’s two of you.”
“One of us, two bodies,” Krouse said.
“What?” Myrddin’s eyes narrowed.
No clue. Just confusing matters. His eyes flickered to the scene behind Myrddin. No luck just yet.
The man with the black spheres floating around his hands leaped up to the shattered window. Krouse could see the Asian woman holding the handle of her lantern as it raised into the air.
“Banish one?” the man with the spheres asked.
“Already banished their hostage.”
“Want me to grab one to take into custody?”
“Be my guest, Anomaly.”
Anomaly raised one hand, and the sphere floated up until it was level with Krouse’s head.
Krouse felt a pull, stepped back and grabbed the footboard of the hospital bed.
The pull increased steadily, intense enough to pull at his hair with the strength of a gale. Noelle said something Krouse couldn’t make out as she began to slide towards the thing.
Myrddin, for his part, didn’t budge an inch. The girl with the lantern held onto the handle with both hands to avoid the suction, setting her feet on the windowsill and perching with a crouch.
Noelle slid, and Krouse caught her with his power. He found the lantern girl, snagged her-
And Noelle was there, on the windowsill, losing her balance. The lantern girl slid into the sphere, virtually folded over it as it pulled her tight against its surface.
Noelle caught the side of the shattered window with one hand. He could see her grimace in pain.
Shattered glass. Sorry.
He swapped Noelle for Anomaly, and both she and the lantern girl fell hard to the ground. Anomaly tipped from the window to the interior of the room.
“Who are you?” Myrddin asked.
Krouse glanced out the window. No. This might go badly before he had a chance to execute their escape. If he had to teleport to the back of the crowd, they could wind up in a situation where there was no escape.
“Nobody dangerous.”
Myrddin shifted his staff, and Krouse tensed.
Where the staff-tip moved, a thread of blinding light was drawn in the air, loose and loopy, like the light trail from a sparkler.
The light exploded outward with a concussive force, and both Krouse and Noelle were slammed against the walls. The shape of the trail Myrddin had drawn meant the resulting blast passed over and to either side of his lantern-bearing teammate. Her clothes were barely ruffled.
He has personal dimensions he carries around with him, Krouse theorized. And each one follows different rules. One holds banished people, maybe that one holds energy or compressed air, and he just needs to open it a crack to let the stuff out.
“Can you open doors between worlds?” Krouse asked.
Myrddin went stiff. ”No. Are you implying you’re one of the creatures from the world she opened a door to?”
She. The Simurgh.
“Nah,” Krouse replied, climbing to his feet. ”Just wondering.”
“Stay down,” Myrddin warned. The hero drew another glowing ribbon into the air, more intricate and convoluted than the former. Krouse braced himself for the resulting impact.
Then he saw it. A belated arrival to the party. A police car coming down the street in the distance, maneuvering to pull in and join the ranks of officers and rescue personnel on site.
Krouse turned his head, trying to catch Noelle and the crowd in the same field of vision.
He swapped her for someone at the back of the crowd. A moment later, gathering enough air, he swapped himself.
The cold air was like a slap in the face. He reached for her hand, grabbed it. This new vantage point let him see the inside of the police car. He reached for the officer and partner, then swapped again.
Krouse found himself sitting backwards in the driver’s seat. He flipped himself over and, as nonchalantly as he could manage, pulled away, heading deeper into the quarantine area.
We’ll abandon the car as soon as we can, then go back to the house. Face the music.
He reached for Noelle’s gloved hand and squeezed it, but she didn’t smile, didn’t show any relief. She looked troubled.
He realized why. Her left hand was undamaged where she’d slashed it on the shattered glass of the window.
■
They traveled the last leg of the journey to the house on foot. There were no words exchanged between them, even as minutes passed.
As they approached the house, Krouse was left to wonder which one his friends would be in. He settled on the first house they’d broken into.
Jess, Luke, Marissa and Oliver were there, arranged in the living room. It was dark, barely lit. Makes sense. They’ll be looking for houses with lights on.
“Noelle,” Marissa said, leaping to her feet. ”You’re okay!”
She hurried across the room, reached out to give Noelle a hug, and was stopped. Noelle had her hands on Marissa’s shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” Marissa asked.
“Nothing,” Noelle said.
“You really did it, Krouse,” Luke said. ”I almost didn’t believe them. That you’d be that stupid.”
“Oh, I’m a hell of a lot stupider than that,” Krouse said. ”But I saved her.”
“You gave it to her? The can?”
“Half,” Krouse said. He withdrew the canister from his front jacket pocket and switched it with a book on a nearby bookshelf, then threw the book aside. ”Just enough to heal her. Save her life.”
“And now you two have superpowers,” Luke said. ”You’re doing exactly what we said we wouldn’t.”
“The Simurgh set it in motion, not really my fault,” Krouse said.
“That’s bullshit,” Luke replied. Unlike Cody, he was quiet, and the words almost had more impact as a result. Krouse wondered, Is it because he’s my friend?
“If I hadn’t done it, things would have gotten even worse. If she wants us to use the stuff, then we eventually would have. It’s extortion, extortion through fate, I dunno. But I chose to pay the price rather than wait for her to ramp things up until I had to. If you want to blame me, blame me.”
“No fucking shit we’re blaming you,” Luke said, and the hint of anger in his voice wasn’t as calm as his earlier words had been.
That anger seemed scarily similar to what Krouse was used to seeing from someone else.
“Where’s Cody?”
“Here,” Cody
said, from behind Krouse.
Krouse whirled around.
Cody was smiling, swaggering.
“You too?” Krouse asked, unsurprised. He’d left Cody in the house with the four remaining vials.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Everything in the room shifted. The curtains flickered and appeared in a fractionally different position, Noelle had moved a foot away, now squarely facing them, and Cody was in the center of the room.
“See?” Cody asked.
“What just happened?”
“I got powers. The paperwork said it was the ‘Vestige’ can. And as luck would have it, my power counters yours. Totally and completely.”
There was another shift, things moving all at once, and Cody was now a foot in front of Krouse. He was laughing.
Teleportation? No. The others wouldn’t move like that.
“Stop it, Cody,” Marissa said.
“He doesn’t care, he doesn’t know,” Cody said.
“Just stop!”
Everything shifted positions again, and this time, Cody was swinging a punch at Krouse. It connected and Krouse crashed to the ground. The punch had landed painfully close to where Krouse had been struck not long ago, and the resulting pain seemed to radiate across the surface of his skull.
“Only bad part is,” Cody said, shaking one hand as though it were sore, “If I use it on myself, I don’t get the satisfaction, and if I use it on him, he doesn’t even know.”
“Just leave him alone,” Marissa said.
Krouse looked at Noelle, saw her with gloved hands pressed to her mouth.
“What’s he doing?” Krouse asked, not moving from the ground.
“Time travel,” Luke said.
Cody shrugged, “Directed time travel, anyways. Backwards only, a few seconds at a time. You teleport away, I set you back to where you were, then kick you in the balls for being an asshole.”
“Well,” Krouse said, “Do you feel better now? After however many beatings you just gave me? Kicks in the balls?”
“I feel a bit better. But what has me tickled is that I can do it again and again, whenever I feel the urge,” Cody said, smiling.
“Don’t,” Luke said. ”That’s…”
“Brutish,” Jess said, her voice low. She was glaring at Krouse.
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