by William Hawk
“This doesn’t have to be your concern,” he said.
“Why not?” asked William.
Proof’s eyes lighted on each of the three remaining team members. “Because you’re going to CA3.”
A smile spread across Trina’s face in spite of the present situation. “Really?”
He nodded. “I’ve coached a lot of teams, and all the signs are there. Everything is lined up.”
“So you’re saying that Jeremy doesn’t matter?” asked Grace.
Proof shrugged. “It’s our problem, not yours. You don’t need to think about this.” His hand thumped lightly on the pod.
William, Grace and Trina looked at each other as if searching for answers. “But I thought you said that we all have to advance as a unit,” said William. “First we lost Hunter.”
“The Ancient Engineer made an exception for that,” said Proof.
“And now we lose Jeremy.”
“You had it before this,” said Proof. “You’ve advanced to CA3. The only question is . . . ”
“Do we want this weighing on our consciences,” finished William. He sighed and began pacing the room, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. “That’s really it, isn’t it? The reason for this entire parallax exercise was to learn empathy. Would it make any sense for us to abandon it now?”
“But what can we do?” asked Grace. “We essentially have Little Horn trapped inside this pod.”
“I don’t know,” said William.
He thought about it. “We could go back for another snap, if Proof would let us. And maybe we could defeat Little Horn there.”
Trina butted in. “What good would that do? It’s Little Horn. You said that nobody knows how to fight it.”
“If we could find it, instead of the other way around,” said William, “then maybe I could catch it by surprise.”
“And then what?” said Grace. “You could frighten Little Horn? Say boo?”
“There’s another risk,” said Proof. “Right now your CA3 status is assured. But you could lose that status if you mess this up.”
“How?”
“Do something violent. Attack somebody. Anything that requires loss of empathy. So you’d better figure out how you’re going to do that.”
The scraping from Jeremy’s pod grew stronger. Then he started punching the sides of the pod. They could see stress fractures forming.
“Whatever you decide,” said Shana, “it should be done pretty fast.”
The three team members looked at each other. “Should we do it?” asked William.
“We’re following you,” said Trina. Her eyes glanced at his bracelet. “You’ve got the magic thing.”
“William, I was meaning to ask you, what is that?” asked Shana.
Trina looked at William. He felt acutely embarrassed. “You don’t remember giving that to me?”
“I never gave that to you,” she said.
Now all eyes were on William.
“Stop lying and tell us where you got that,” said Grace.
William took a deep breath and decided to come clean. “The Ancient Engineer gave it to me.”
Grace was aghast. Shana’s jaw nearly hit the floor. Even Proof sat back and looked at William with new eyes.
“You met him?” asked Trina.
“Yep.” William tried to make it sound like no big deal.
“What’s he like?” asked Grace.
“Pretty normal, really. But he gave me this bracelet and said it would protect me against Little Horn.”
Grace grabbed his wrist and studied it. “What are those etchings?”
“I really don’t know,” he replied.
“Let me see it,” said Proof.
William removed the bracelet and handed it to the team coach. Proof studied the etchings, peering closely.
“This is a script I haven’t seen for a long time,” he said.
“Where does it come from?” asked Grace.
Proof shook his head. “It would take too long to explain. But I think I can understand what it says.”
They all waited expectantly. At last Proof looked up. “Oh, do you want me to tell you?”
“Yes!!” the team all shouted. Even Shana had positioned herself alongside them.
“It says that Little Horn has a weakness.”
“What is it?” they asked in unison.
“Water. It hates living water.”
William nodded. It made sense, since water was the single element that gave life. Little Horn, on the other hand, sought to take away life.
A huge crack sounded from Jeremy’s pod. The top was nearly broken.
“We have to decide now,” said Grace.
“Let’s do it,” said William.
“There’s no coming back if Little Horn gets you,” said Proof.
“It won’t,” William replied, climbing into the pod. Then he looked up at the others. “Aren’t you coming?”
Trina and Grace climbed into their pods. Shana affixed the armbands to each one, the sound of shouts and barks and punches sounding ever louder from Jeremy’s pod.
“Is he going to snap with us?” said Trina, motioning toward Jeremy’s pod.
“He’d better,” said Proof. “Otherwise, we have a bigger problem on our hands.” He clapped William on the shoulder. “Godspeed.”
“You know I’m going to have to take full control of my host,” said William.
“I do know,” said Proof, “but you didn’t tell me that.”
Proof tried to hand the bracelet from the Ancient Engineer back to William, but he refused it. “No. It’s time for me to have faith. I’m supposed to be the bait.”
Shana affixed the cuff to his arm. “You be careful, William.”
He smiled. “You’re a good egg, Shana. You know we couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“Good luck, William,” she said. Then she slid the pod shut.
The parallax appeared overhead. They hadn’t assigned the selection to anyone, but William assumed it was up to him to decide.
He saw an image of an ocean, a body of water, and chose it.
CHAPTER 33
NAP.
William found himself aboard an aircraft carrier, wearing a sailor’s white long-sleeve shirt, neckerchief, and round white cap. His pants were bright white and his shoes gleaming black. He figured out right away that he was in the navy.
Five hundred breaths.
It was a long cruiser, with a pair of anti-aircraft cannons, one fore and one aft. He was chatting with another sailor, who looked to be all of nineteen years old. A plug of tobacco bulged out of the sailor’s cheek. He was gesturing to something on his foot when an alarm sounded.
Awooooooooga! Awooooooooga!
It was the klaxon. Incoming!
William’s host and the other sailor instantly broke into a run. They fled across the deck and then scampered up a ladder to the front of the ship.
Four hundred sixty-four. Four hundred sixty-three.
William felt himself hyperventilating. The stress of the incoming attack had pulled his fight-or-flight trigger, and the adrenaline was elevating all of his bodily systems: blood pressure, cortisol, respiration. He knew he would have much less time than usual in this snap.
Which meant that he had to find Little Horn quickly. He decided to call to it telepathically.
“I’m here,” William said.
While his host battened down hatches and readied lifeboats, William waited for a response. There was none, so he shouted again.
“Little Horn! I’m here!”
His host stopped moving and looked around. William knew that he’d heard the telepathic shout, which meant that he had a few abilities. William decided to speak to his host directly.
“You’re about to be attacked,” he said, “and you’ll need to let me guide you.”
“Who is this?”
William ignored the question. “It won’t be an enemy you can see. It will be an ancient entity. It’s
called Little Horn.”
He could feel that his host was thoroughly confused. “Who is this?”
William ignored the question again. “When it comes, I’m going to take over your body. You’re going to find yourself doing some strange things. Is that okay?”
Pause. Then the sailor asked, “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
William tried to shout one more time. “Little Horn you unholy freak, you wanted a fight and I’m going to give it to you! Come find me!”
The klaxon was still blaring. Awooooooooga! Awooooooooga! William found himself climbing down a ladder, through a hatch, into the bowels of the ship. The corridors were so narrow that men had to turn sideways to pass one another. Everything was illuminated a sickly red from the fluorescent lights behind steel cages.
His host ran down the corridor and then dashed right. He ducked his head and passed through a low doorway and entered what seemed to be the infernal bowels of hell.
It was the engine room.
Three hundred thirty-seven. Three hundred thirty-six.
On either side of him the engines towered three stories high. The room stank of oil and iron and fire. The sailors who worked here, the grease monkeys, were strange-looking creatures. They held wrenches and hung from rafters and clung to catwalks.
As William moved through the room, he noted that fear had settled upon their faces.
“William,” said a voice.
He froze. He knew that voice. It was Jeremy’s. William looked around and quickly spotted the host.
A young sailor was perched on a catwalk overhead, a light blue nimbus encircling his head. But William forced himself to remember that Little Horn had swallowed Jeremy’s soul. That wasn’t Jeremy up there, and it wasn’t Jeremy’s host either.
It was Little Horn.
William summoned all his energy and yelled at Little Horn at the top of his telepathic lungs. “Leave Jeremy! Leave the host! I want to see you alone!”
“Try to make me,” said Jeremy’s voice.
Suddenly the host leapt onto a large, slowly turning vertical gear. With superhuman agility, he slid down the side, hit the ground, and crept toward William. As the young sailor drew closer, William could see that he was covered in grease, smudged head to toe in black gunk. The only thing visible in the dark maw of his face were the whites of his eyes.
And they looked positively demonic.
Two hundred seventy-two. Two hundred seventy-one.
William took over his own host now. In the blink of an eye, he fully inhabited the young man’s mind, the spirit, the body. It came so easily, he was surprised that he’d had difficulty doing so in past snaps.
“Jeremy isn’t the one you want,” said William. “I’m the one you want.”
The sailor drew close to him, so close that they were nose to nose.
“Humans have need for power.”
“Some of us already have it,” said William. “I’m CA3.”
The sailor laughed. It began like a human sound and then slowly transformed into a horrendous alien cackle. The sailor stepped back, clutched his head, and collapsed on the grate.
William stood looking at him, until he became aware of a presence at his side.
It was Little Horn, in its regular guise: humanoid shape, pale white skin, flat face with no features.
“You.”
William took off running, back through the low gate to the engine room. He looked back over his shoulder. Little Horn was just a few paces behind, cackling gleefully.
“Run Change Agent, he might get you!”
Little Horn could taunt him all he wanted, but William knew that his task had been achieved. It’d taken a lot of taunting, but Jeremy was free of Little Horn.
He dashed down the ghastly red corridor, which was blissfully free of other sailors.
Awoooooooga! Awooooooooga!
The klaxon was still going, stronger and stronger. He could hear the sound of airplanes droning overhead, growing louder.
“You’re going to die,” said Little Horn.
William had neither the breath nor the force to answer. He had one destination in mind.
The ocean.
One hundred fifty-six. One hundred fifty-five.
Still running, William arrived at the ladder that led up to the hatch on the ship’s deck. He threw himself onto the ladder, grabbed hold, and scampered up the rungs. Halfway up, something grabbed his ankle. He looked back.
Little Horn had caught up. Its smooth white face was distorted into a caricature of hate. Its eyebrows angled downward, its eyes squinted into thin sharp slits, and it was showing its black teeth.
“Change Agent, Change Agent, where do you think you’re going?”
William tried to shake its hand off, but the grip was unreal. Little Horn had a strength far beyond its shape.
“Let me go and we’ll fight this on the deck,” said William.
The ancient entity made a horrible gurgling response. It opened its jaws and fastened its mouth around the sailor’s ankle. William screamed in pain. It felt like red-hot knitting needles being jammed into his host’s body.
Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven.
William was halfway turned around on the ladder now, his arm hooked around it. He kicked harshly, but Little Horn wouldn’t release him. The ancient creature made small barks and growls like an animal that had just discovered a new favorite toy.
Then William saw something that made his blood run cold.
The small horns on the creature’s skin began to open and close as if yearning to devour human flesh and human spirit, and this time, he was going to be the victim.
“Get off!” William shouted.
“You’re mine,” said Little Horn.
Panicking, William hauled his arm back to sock the creature, but before he could, an enormous explosion shook the ship. It was a deafening noise that shook William to his teeth. Immediately came the sound of steel rending, and then the ladder lurched to the side.
Hanging on as the ladder pitched over, William felt the rung tight underneath his armpit. Little Horn had been caught unaware. The pale humanoid released William’s ankle and flailed for a grip. Too late. It tumbled down the ladder and hit the bottom.
William didn’t waste a minute watching it. His overriding goal was to lure it up to the deck.
Fifty-two. Fifty-one.
William pulled himself up the remaining rungs to the hatch. It had already been closed in preparation for the attack, so he quickly turned the crank. Seven, eight, nine revolutions before a sliver of daylight shined through the rims of the hatch.
Forty-three. Forty-two.
A moment later, he pushed the hatch open and climbed out into the daylight. The smell of exploded munitions assaulted his nostrils. The deck was a wreck, a missile or bomb had ripped open an enormous hole on the starboard side of the ship. It was a tangle of twisted metal and smoking debris. A few bloody corpses lay on the deck, the casualties of war.
William moved across the deck, barely noticing the other sailors, the wounded ones, crying out for help. People had lived, fought and died throughout history. His actions here would save perhaps one, but he had a bigger goal to remember.
Twenty-five. Twenty-four.
He looked back at the hatch. It was open, empty, waiting for the ancient entity to climb up through it and give chase.
“Where are you?” he said to Little Horn.
At that moment, the humanoid burst from the hatch like a person shot out of a cannon. It leapt fifteen meters into the air and landed on the deck.
“Prepare to be lost,” it hissed.
Little Horn loped toward William. Its strange splayed feet slapped against the deck, and its little slitted eyes were zeroed in on its prey.
Twelve. Eleven.
Even though William had prepared for this moment in his mind, he wasn’t ready to experience it. An outlier, a strange aberration. That’s what the Ancient Engineer ha
d called Little Horn. He also had called him dangerous.
“My friend,” said a familiar voice.
William twisted around. Another sailor stood behind him, feet splayed wide apart, a demonic grin plastered across his face. A black nimbus floated like an evil mist around his head.
It was Hunter.
“I’m not your friend,” said William.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Hunter hissed.
William rolled to the side just as Little Horn leapt, and the ancient evil entity ran smack into Hunter’s host. He tackled the man to the ground and began to devour him, the same way he’d done to Jeremy’s host, but this time there was no resistance. Hunter was welcoming it.
Horrified, William scooted backward, away from the tiny horned plants opening and closing on the entity’s skin. Hunter’s host had a terrific smile plastered on his face as a slick of fresh blood spread on the deck beneath him.
Satisfied and soaked in the sailor’s blood, Little Horn stood up. A black nimbus was wreathed around it head. “That feels better,” it said.
William cocked his head. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard Little Horn’s voice or Hunter’s voice. They seemed to have melded together.
“But I need more, William. I need you.”
The ancient entity advanced toward him once more. William took a step backward, and then another step, but Little Horn accelerated suddenly. In the blink of an eye, the creature was upon him, and William found himself tackled flat on his back, Little Horn on top of him.
“You’re mine!”
“Never!” said William.
Little Horn gripped his wrists. William felt the tiny carnivorous flowered horns of his skin opening and closing. They were starting to absorb his host’s body. It was bizarre and disgusting. Even worse, he could feel himself weakening, his life force draining.
Nine. Eight.
Another massive explosion ripped through the port side of the ship. This time, William felt the shock wave, the blast of heat, much more intensely than he had on the ladder. He felt his body, and Little Horn, lifted by the force and carried several meters to the right.
When he landed, William felt a searing pain on his right side. He looked down. Hot bits of metal shrapnel were burning into his body. In fact, his whole right side was peppered with small holes.