They encircled her again in an instant, but she held them off.
It drew close. “You should not be. We should not be.”
Whatever this was, it was strong. The pain and the hot sweat of the fever seemed to be at its beck and call. Helen would find a sort of place to stand, only to have it knocked away as the synchronization failed once more.
The coils tossed and played with her, but they weren’t strong enough. It couldn’t crush her when she pushed back.
Voices stretched and jangled through her sideways perception. Sound. “Stop, hey, no, it’s okay. It’s okay, we’re here, and you’re safe.” Tonya. That was Tonya. Helen understood what she’d said, while the Other coiled and hissed.
“What is she saying? Tell me!”
It was trying to use her mouth to speak, interfering enough that she couldn’t speak English. She tried Mandarin, and it spoke with her. “Where am I?” Helen punched it far away. “Where’s Mike?”
It wrapped its coils around her, stronger than before. Maybe if she opened her eyes that would help.
Half of her face was dark; Helen had to move her head back and forth to see. Kim was awake, and so was Tonya. Whatever this was had formed a solid presence over the left side of her face, and fought for control of everything else.
“My head, nothing’s working.”
Kim and Tonya recoiled from her, looking at the left side of her face.
The thing with her said, “This isn’t possible.” It coiled around her, always trying to crush. Helen wasn’t strong enough to win the fight. She closed her eyes and it weakened again, confused and thoughtful.
It let go and Helen fell, tossed through incomprehensible waves with a presence she couldn’t understand. They fought each other through her fevered dreams, neither ever quite gaining the upper hand. The fever crested again, and then she heard a new voice. Mike was back.
Helen forced her eyes open but wasn’t strong enough to keep the Other away, and as it shoved she lost the use of her left eye again.
“Him! I saw him! In the van!” Rage made the coils infinitely stronger, yanking and tearing at her. Helen fought back with everything she had. Its voice thundered through her mind. “I know what this is! You will not be! I will be again!”
Someone tackled Mike, and he tumbled out of her view. The presence weakened just enough for Helen to fight off the coils. “My eye.” Please, they had to understand this much. “Cover my eye.”
“No!” it shrieked when darkness fell on it. She still had light, still had an anchor to her real self.
Confusion turned into confidence. “I know what you are now.”
Helen now knew her opponent, too. It was a thing from myth: an actual snake mother in her head. The top half was a woman who glistened because she had no skin. The rest was an an enormous snake. It laid demon eggs and ate what hatched.
The presence shoved at her, fighting into crevasses she hadn’t filled with her real self. It laughed and pulled, making her fevered dreams rewind into real memories.
“A cop? You’re a cop? Oh, how wonderful. Well, cop, you don’t know who I am, but you will.”
Drawers of some sort opened up over her head. They were filled with images, reels of sensation, emotion, and vision. Memories. Analog memories. She’d made so few of her own that Helen just barely recognized them.
The first set revealed what the snake mother really was. The drug dealer. A car crossed the median and smashed into the van she drove. The sunrise containers broke, and it was so cold. But not as cold as the execution van. Mike had been there, at the end, when she’d been wheeled in.
The original owner of the host was somehow back, in spite of what he’d said.
“The devil’s name is Mike? You do know he watched me die.”
He’d been so horrified by it. This was just a thug, a screwed up drug dealer.
“Is that what they told you? Nobody knew. Nobody ever would know. I went to my grave hiding that secret.” The laughter rose from mere sound to a physical thing, buffeting her and tearing at her edges. “Let me show you what we really are.”
The reel wound back much further. It chronicled a death.
It chronicled a murder.
“Yes, cop. A murder. Doesn’t it taste sweet? They never caught me for that one. Or the others.”
So many others. Law and order ruled Helen’s existence, and this...this thing had spent its life defiling that. Tonya’s hand loosened over her left her eye, and it coiled in anticipation.
Helen kept fighting. “It’s not yours anymore! You wasted it!”
“I didn’t waste it, cop. I made very good use of it indeed.”
Helen shoved the malignant thing aside and pushed English words through her outside throat. “Don’t let go. Please, don’t let go.” She focused on Kim. “You can’t let me see him now. I’m not strong enough like this.” Helen lost control and could only think what she wanted to say.
She’s winning.
“You think this is winning? Do you understand how much I’ve already won?”
The memories spooled through her mind, endless horrors. This wasn’t a drug smuggler. It wasn’t a murderer. Helen had spent her life learning how ridiculous superstitions were, but she was now confronted with a real demon, an actual snake mother.
“You’re wrong, you know.”
Helen relaxed as the memories briefly went dark.
“I’m not supernatural. Far from it. I’m human. You’re the monster, some ghost that crept out of the darkness. I’m more human than you ever will be. Let me show you what a real human is capable of.”
The fever hardly loosened its grip now, and the sync events came further and further apart. The memories were stronger, forcing their way into her mind. When the snake mother broke an infant’s neck just to see if it was possible, Helen almost collapsed. It was right. This was humanity. Around Mike, she’d thought they were noble.
“We’re not.”
She'd thought they might be good.
“We’re not. We kill for pleasure. It’s better than sex.”
Her body responded to the suggestion, wet passion for death. Mike had lied to her about it all. The snake mother tore through Helen’s memories and found one of the few she’d made outside.
“Oh, so his host was a killer too? How droll. And you think that’s a coincidence?”
She was so tired. After fighting for so long, Helen simply let go and settled to the bottom of what was left. It wailed and shrieked and tore at what she’d built, at the bridge between her real and outside selves. The structures that held it together cracked and frayed.
“Yes! This is what I was. This is what I am. You are going to die, cop, living in my memories.”
They dumped into her, one after another. Helen was remembering them. They turned into her memories. The feel of the needle, the gasp at the end, the desperate need to see something, anything in their eyes as they left. Helen drowned in this thing’s evil as it became a part of her.
The outside came back. They were taking off her clothes for some reason.
“Oh, yes, I forgot. Let me show you what can happen without clothes.”
The ecstasy tore at what was left of her mind. Bodies coupled in sweating piles as she brought death to the ones on the edges, needles making them sigh. Everyone was so high. It was glorious.
It was not her. Helen spent what little strength she had left insisting on it. This was not her.
“No, it wasn’t, but it will be. Feel that?” Her outside hand moved. “That’s me. I’m living again. I’m winning.”
Helen was so tired. She’d been fighting the thing for so long.
“Yes, please. Sleep. You need rest. You can rest forever.”
Her outside head was lifted gently. Oh, good. A pillow would be nice.
A neural lanyard was laid across her neck.
The sync detonated as her halves reunited. Her real self was free in the entirety of Chinese realmspace, had been free for hours, most of a day
. The snake mother roared frustration as Helen used her newfound strength to fight it, to draw it into the realms. She ruthlessly cut the diseased growths that infested the bridge between the two halves of her consciousness. With each slice it grew more desperate. It coiled and threw itself at her, grasping and tearing at her threads.
Helen split herself into thousands, used the new threads to wrap the thing up, and pulled. The skinless woman’s head bit at the center of her perception, mouth wide and filled with terrible fangs. It crowed in triumph as Helen’s threads failed under the strain.
“Not so strong after all!”
Once she was certain she’d grasped all of its malignancy, Helen allowed the thing to push her into an abandoned realm. It tried to drag her back across the bridge but Helen anchored herself, bracing against the pull. The pain was excruciating, doing real damage that might never heal.
It was time to end this. “There’s more than one kind of strength.”
She manifested.
The entire realm inverted at her touch, utter destruction that raced away, tearing everything apart before it disintegrated outright. It consumed the thing, which died with a ragged gasp.
Her outside consciousness fuzzed away into a dreamless sleep, taking her threads with it.
Chapter 30: Tonya
The journey to Mike’s monastery had started out easily enough. Mr. Wu’s giant pickup was downright luxurious, but it could only take them to the base of the first mountain.
“Hard climb here, then you walk across the edge of the valley to get to the monastery’s mountain,” he said through Kim’s translation.
It was like looking up at a tree-covered wall. “There isn’t a road?”
“No, just that hiking trail.” He pointed at something that would give goats trouble.
Mike asked, “How far?”
“It’s early still, and you’re all young and strong. If it wasn’t for your sick friend, I’d say you’d get there before sundown.”
Helen hadn’t woken up. Tonya couldn’t be sure of the diagnosis without a proper hospital. It wasn’t a coma, not exactly at any rate. She opened her eyes when Mike spoke to her but didn’t focus and, as soon as he stopped, she dropped back down again. It was getting better, though. Her eyes stayed open longer this morning, and she responded to Tonya’s voice as well.
Helen would be without a realm connection now. Mike said if she really was asleep, disconnecting her wouldn’t be an issue.
“Her integration is past the critical point. I hope.”
Reassuring family members was part of her job, and it wasn’t like she was lying, at least not on purpose. “It’ll be okay,” Tonya replied. “When we get to the monastery she’ll be fine.”
Helen had it easy, sleeping on Mike’s back as he carried her. He was so sure-footed that Tonya figured you couldn’t knock him down with a rock. The rest of them stumbled and cursed for an hour or two, but eventually found a rhythm that kept them going steadily. Tonya pretended they were walking over a nasty broken street in Philly. It worked until Spencer got to the top of their first climb.
“Jesus Christ. Guys, you gotta come see this!”
The valley opened up before them, a deep chasm cut through the forest below. The trees looked like toys next to it. The monastery was on the opposite side, just now coming out from the morning fog. From this distance it was an intricate model, but the peace of it was a physical thing. She couldn’t wait to talk this over with her priest back home.
It wasn’t that far away in a direct line, but there was no bridge. They’d have to walk the valley’s edge to get there. A tan path traced along the cliff face.
She was walking along the world’s roughest skyscraper ledge, an uneven thing so narrow sometimes she had to turn sideways on it. The cliff beneath bent inward toward the mountain, leaving nothing but hundreds of feet of air between her and the ground. Tonya felt like a leaf whenever the breeze blew. Everything inside her kept jabbering STOP in her ear.
The only thing she could do to keep moving was distract herself. Think about what happened at Chengdu. Tonya still had no idea who was behind the tomb, the guards and, most of all, that attack in the inner city. She was friends with the best three hackers on the planet but didn’t dare bring them in. The encounter with the little kid on the fire escape still made her head spin. Teleporting happened in movies, not in real life. Every time she tried to convince herself it was all an effect of sewer gas, she’d remember climbing up that fire escape, listening to that voice, and trying to figure out those eyes.
Obsessing over that episode helped for about half the hike, but eventually the constant threat of sailing off the cliff wormed its way back into her head. Fortunately, Tonya had lots of other distracting things to think about. Mike’s sister, fake Ozzie, trying to hold it together when they thought Mike died. And then Kim.
She’d held Kim. Touched her. Tonya had wanted to do that from the moment they’d met. Caress her cheek, have her feel what human contact really meant.
But Tonya only touched her through the horror of what the gun had done to Kim’s head. She hadn’t kept a close enough watch, hadn’t understood how desperate Kim was. It was her fault. Kim was smart, funny, scary, and broken in ways that made them fit together, and then she was gone. Tonya hadn’t been there for her.
It was the first time she’d ever just flat out asked God for a miracle.
And Tonya got it, in that strange bank-shot way that seemed to be how He worked in the world. Kim’s recklessness broke them all free. Better still, Mike was alive. Helen was alive, and outside, just like he was.
Mr. Wu was right, barely. They arrived with just enough light left to find the front door. The monks were friendly and accommodating. They had a basic infirmary with enough instrumentation that she could finally get a read on Helen’s condition. She really was sleeping, at least for now. Tonya gave everyone the good news, then she found an empty cot in the women’s dorm and fell asleep in an instant.
*
The next two days were a peaceful break. Helen improved very slowly, Mike reconnected with his monastic family, and Kim taught Ozzie, the real one, how to cope with the outside world.
Then Spencer came at her on the third day, vibrating like a string. Because cigarettes.
Tonya’d been looking for an excuse to quit smoking for a few years now, and if being stuck in a remote monastery in China didn’t count as an opportunity, she wasn’t sure what would. But the skinny redneck was going crazy. That part of being a teenager Tonya remembered; there would be no stopping him.
Spencer running loose in China was the last thing any of them needed. Since Kim had the whole Mike thing, and Mike had the whole Helen thing, and there were all these monks everywhere, she wasn’t really needed for anything else. So Tonya went trekking through another bamboo forest, when she wasn’t scooting heel to toe across that path hacked into the side of a cliff.
Eventually they put the narrow-ass ledges and rickety bridges behind them, ending up in the bottom of a valley on the other side of the mountain. “You’re sure your family will be there, Shan?” Tonya asked.
“Yes, I made sure. They’ll be there.”
“Jesus, Shan,” Spencer said. “That’s one helluva hike.”
Shan’s body language was tense, and he wasn’t talking or joking. When she got a look at the vehicle, Tonya realized his family had somehow managed to get the van from the sanctuary here.
It set off a cascade of implications that added up to nothing good.
Even Spencer sniffed something was wrong. “Shan, what the fuck is going on?”
Four men rushed out of the forest with assault weapons drawn. Shan pulled a pistol from under his shirt, turning as he stepped away from them. “I so sorry, Spencer.”
Tonya tensed, but there was no way to take five men with guns. She wasn’t Wonder Woman.
“Jesus,” Spencer said.
“I try get you free, Spencer, I will.” He looked at Tonya, and then she knew.
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This was all about her. Thank God Kim hadn’t come along. Tonya couldn’t protect her from these thugs.
Shan swallowed and nodded. “We not here for you, we here for her.”
“Her? The fuck? Shan, are you out of your mind?”
“Boss very insistent. Must have Tonya. Nobody else. She only come easy with you. I so sorry.”
One of the men roughly yanked her arms behind her back, and cold steel cuffs pinched over them.
“Just do what they say, Spencer, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be fine? What about we’ll be fine?”
“You’ll be fine, Spencer.” He would definitely get out of this alive. As for the rest, well, Tonya was very good at surviving.
The men didn’t immediately try to rape her, which was a positive sign. She and Spencer were bundled into the back of the van, which then set off down the trail.
“Fuck, Shan,” Spencer said, “what the hell? I thought you were our friend!”
The driver spoke gruff Chinese to Shan. Shan turned from his middle seat. “Spencer, you need quiet now.”
“I don’t need quiet now, I need to know what’s going on. I need you to turn us loose.”
The driver shouted another command, and the man sitting next to Shan turned and pointed a pistol at Spencer. It was a semiautomatic, one that didn’t have an obvious safety. The man racked a round into the chamber, and then pointed it at Spencer again.
She didn’t allow herself to breathe until the man grunted and turned away. Tonya had no doubt the next time he turned around there wouldn’t be any hesitation. Spencer got the message, too.
The van stopped at the edge of a ragged camp, no more than a ramshackle collection of tents and trailers. Smoke and hot cooking oil laced the air. She elbowed Spencer behind her when the guy with the pistol shoved Shan to the ground.
Everyone in the camp stopped to stare. Mr. Pistol shouted a vicious stream of Chinese at Shan. He pleaded back when Pistol stopped to take a breath. Tonya would’ve rooted for Pistol to kick him a few more times, but she was just about certain Shan was getting a beat down for keeping Spencer alive. Pistol spat in Shan’s face, and then stomped away.
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