Calculated Risks

by Seanan McGuire

  Which meant they’d frozen the campus as it was when we’d arrived, and only moved the people who were actively blocking the resources we needed for the ritual.

  Why Iowa, I still had no idea. Something about the location had been numerically perfect, and as that had mattered very deeply when I was standing in the middle of the equation, I had allowed it to dictate its own needs. The campus hadn’t been crowded, exactly, when we arrived, but it had been occupied, and the cuckoos had taken care of it.

  Some of the students and faculty were probably dead now, their bodies dropped into basements or culverts as unpleasant surprises for the authorities to find. The rest might be back in the remains of Ames, wondering where their campus had gone. And of the remainder, a little less than half of them were, apparently, in front of us.

  I focused briefly on the building, feeling my eyes light up as I reached out to get a more accurate count. I’d taken one when I did my initial scan, but after meeting the hollowed-out cuckoo, I didn’t trust myself anymore.

  “We still have eight inside, plus the three cuckoo children, minds intact,” I said, relieved to confirm that even when fully sunk in the grips of the equation, I hadn’t been feeding it kids too young to know what they were or think that they were better than every other form of intelligent life. A baby viper is still a viper. That doesn’t mean it needs to die for having the potential to bite someone.

  “And the students are human?” asked Annie.

  “Seven of them are,” I said. “The eighth is a bogeyman trying to figure out how she’s going to explain her light sensitivity to the others when they decide it’s time to go outside. She’s also the only one who hasn’t already manufactured a familial connection to the cuckoo kids.”

  “I saw more than three kids when we charged into the ritual circles,” said Annie.

  “So the others are either dead or elsewhere,” I said. “I could easily have missed some when I was trying to process the information from scanning the whole campus at once. Just because I can do that now, doesn’t mean I’m good at it yet. I’m not picking up any faculty. Not even any cafeteria employees. One of the engineering students is upset because he can’t get the microwave to work.”

  “Of course not,” scoffed Annie. “We left the power lines behind on Earth.”

  “I somehow doubt these kids have jumped to ‘we’re in a whole new dimension,’” I said dryly. “They still think this is business as usual, within the limits of ‘everything outside the campus is missing and the sky is the wrong color’ and—oh, fuck—they probably think we’re in the middle of a nuclear war or something.”

  “Nukes don’t turn the sky orange.”

  “They do in bad science fiction movies.”

  Annie paused. “Okay, fair point. Are they hostile?”

  “Not right now. Mostly, they’re freaked out and upset and trying to figure out if this is really happening. Three of them think this is a really vivid dream. Three of them think it’s the rapture. None of the others are projecting hard enough for me to read them without pushing, and I’m not willing to do that.”

  Annie laughed a little. “Of course I get the only telepath in the world who’s not willing to be a tactical advantage if it would mean violating someone’s boundaries.”

  “You’re part of what made me this way.”

  “Whatever.” She made her gun disappear again, back into her clothing where it wouldn’t risk upsetting the locals—although this was Iowa. Odds were decent that at least a couple of them were as heavily armed as she was. “Let’s go meet the locals.”

  “Sure,” I said, and together, we walked into the building.

  Six

  “It’s never fun to be the stranger. It’s never fun to be the one who’s out of place and doesn’t know what’s happening. But it happens to everyone eventually, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it teaches us something.”

  —Alice Healy

  Entering a university cafeteria full of potentially hostile strangers because that’s the smart choice

  The cafeteria had clearly not been designed for extended use during a power outage; walking through the doors was like stepping into the antechamber of a haunted house, minus the theatrically groaning high school drama students and the polyester cobwebs. Shadows clung to every surface, some thick enough to make me question once again whether light worked differently in this dimension. The floor was white industrial linoleum that reflected as much of the outside light as it could, but it was a losing battle; nothing short of a full bank of overhead fluorescents was going to make this room anything other than direly gloomy.

  Coat hooks hung on the walls near the window, about half still holding various pieces of outerwear. The cuckoos probably hadn’t allowed anyone to stop and grab their coats before banishing them from campus. I paused, holding a finger to my lips, and pointed silently down the hall toward the main room. The people were in there.

  Annie nodded and started forward, trusting me to follow her. Since it was the first time she’d trusted me to do literally anything, I fell in step behind her.

  She pushed open the door to the dining room and stepped through, me on her heels. We were immediately hit by the beams of no fewer than four flashlights. Any element of surprise hopelessly lost, Annie made a noise of protest and threw up her arm to shield her eyes.

  “You want to point those somewhere else?” she demanded.

  “Are you with the police?” asked a voice.

  “She’s not with the damn police, she’s wearing a hoodie,” said another voice. I put a hand over my mouth to smother my smile.

  “The other one’s wearing a nightgown,” said a third voice. “And she’s barefoot.”

  “How about you stop lighting us up and tell us what’s been going on in here?” said Annie. “This is not helping my temper, and I’ve had a long, long day already. You do not want to piss me off.”

  “We’ve been in here since the earthquake,” said a fourth voice. There were eight people in here, not counting the cuckoo children. I hoped they weren’t going to sound off one by one like some sort of rogue’s gallery. I was sure they were all lovely people with complex inner lives, but, honestly, I didn’t have the patience. Or the time, because Annie’s patience was even thinner than my own, we had no working cellphones, and none of the people currently looking for the other group of survivors on campus were going to welcome a message from Radio Cuckoo right now.

  “Earthquake?” asked Annie.

  “You know, when the whole campus shook and the power cut out?” This voice, thankfully, belonged to the first speaker, the—I sent out a quick tendril of thought—boy who’d asked if we were with the police. He stepped forward, flashlight no longer aimed at our faces, becoming more visible as he put the other flashlights at his back. “We lost Internet at the same time. We’re cut off, and we’re not sure it’s safe to go outside when the gas isn’t working.”

  “You tested it?” I asked, horrified. We don’t get a lot of earthquakes in either Portland or Columbus, but Oregon is technically inside what geologists call “the Ring of Fire,” meaning there’s always the possibility of a chain of earthquakes setting off a series of massive volcanic eruptions.

  Maybe it’s not kind to Iowa, but I was suddenly very glad the equation had felt the need to be completed so far away from both my homes. And all my family members, save for the ones who’d gone there knowing what they were getting themselves into.

  “Some of the ovens were on when the shake happened,” he said. “We were a little worried about exploding in a ball of fiery death, so when we realized we couldn’t smell gas, we turned them off. If the gas main broke, I think it happened far enough away from here that we’re in the clear.”

  I wasn’t sure that was how gas mains normally worked, but since in this case, the gas main was literally in a different dimension, that was probably fine. �
��How many of you are in here?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know.

  “Eight adults, and three kids; no faculty,” he said. “Miranda brought her little sisters to school with her today for some ridiculous reason.”

  So all three juvenile cuckoos had latched onto the same person? That was an interesting development. It might make them easier to get away from the humans. It also might do permanent damage to poor Miranda’s brain, which would be rewiring itself constantly to try and accommodate for her being responsible for three sudden sisters.

  “Okay,” I said. “Is it safe for you to stay in here? I mean for right now, if there’s no gas smell.”

  “It’s going to get dark soon,” said the boy who had elected himself the speaker for the group. “We don’t have candles, and without electricity, we’re just going to be sitting like rats in a cage waiting for the firefighters to show up or the Internet to come back on.”

  “My phone doesn’t work,” said a new voice petulantly, setting off a chorus of complaints: phones didn’t work, the Internet was down, they had celiac disease and without lights they couldn’t find anything gluten free, did we know what was happening, did we know why the police weren’t here yet, did we know anything? I knew it was strange how none of them asked why the sky was orange, but maybe they hadn’t been outside to look yet.

  Then again, the cuckoo children had been outside when the ritual happened. I squinted into the darkness behind the boy with the flashlight, looking for hints of the bioluminescent glow that would mean they were actively influencing the human minds around them. Normal cuckoos can’t consciously use their abilities prior to their first instar. Early trauma can sometimes snap them into a more advanced state, almost like they’re borrowing from their future potential. It had been the trauma of losing the McNallys that enabled me to broadcast loudly enough for Angela to hear me in the first place.

  These kids had been kidnapped, presumably against their will, from the human families they’d considered their own, and then dropped into the middle of a world-shattering ritual that had gone so comprehensively wrong that they’d seen people die in a variety of deeply unpleasant ways. That had to count as trauma. And if it had been traumatic enough, they might already be well on their way to conscious use of their abilities.

  And if it hadn’t been, they might not need to reach their first instar to start hurting the people around them.

  I didn’t see any unexpected glimmers of light in the darkness. I reached out cautiously, scanning the minds around us for ill intent or further comprehension of our situation. I found it, but not where I expected; the kids were all terrified and clinging to the friendly biochemistry major who had somehow become their honorary big sister. One of the men in the back of the room, on the other hand, was thinking about how with the cell network down, he could do anything he wanted and no one would be able to call the police.

  His thoughts were like pond scum, polluting and coating everything they touched. I disengaged from his mind as quickly as I could and sent a thin arrow of thought toward Annie.

  Antimony, we might have a problem.

  She jerked around, spinning to face me. “What was that?”

  “I didn’t say anything.” I know you’re not used to this anymore, but I need you to listen. There’s a man in the back of the cafeteria. He told the others he’s a student, but he’s not, and he doesn’t belong here. His name is Terrence. He’s planning to clean out the registers and then break into the student health center. He has a gun. I don’t think he intends to hurt anyone if he doesn’t have to, but he will if they get in his way.

  People are terrible, Annie thought blankly. Aloud, she said, “Hey, did I see Terrence come in here? I was hoping to find him before I go back to our friends.”

  The man I knew was in the back of the room didn’t reply. Only silence answered her question. But his thoughts began to race, tinged with hectic borderline panic.

  Not sure what you were hoping to achieve with that, but he’s freaking out, I informed her.

  Good. “We’re going to move along,” she said. “We have people waiting in the classroom where we took shelter. If we see the authorities, we’ll send them your way.” We weren’t going to see any authorities, but these people didn’t know that, and maybe this would help them stay calm and inside for a little bit longer. Inside, whatever hunted the flying sky bugs wouldn’t be able to get them, unless those hypothetical hunters could chew through walls, and if they could do that, we were all screwed anyway.

  Annie started to turn away. Lacking any better ideas, I followed her.

  Cuckoo kids are never raised by their biological parents. The girls currently attached to Miranda—whose mind felt reasonably intact, around the vague confusion that came from trying to retroactively incorporate three younger sisters into her childhood experiences, some of which didn’t make any sense in a world where she would have been expected to babysit—didn’t recognize me as anyone they would be inclined to trust or follow. The only adult cuckoos they’d ever seen had been the ones to kidnap them, leaving them with no reason to want anything to do with me.

  No one spoke as we walked away. Annie led me to the door and out onto the dying grass, the luridly orange sky casting strange shadows on her face. She motioned for me to be quiet and follow her as she started around the building. I blinked and followed, resisting the urge to reach out mentally and find out what she was up to.

  And she was definitely up to something. Her thoughts were tightly controlled, reined in to a degree that she had learned in self-defense when we were kids and she wanted to think about naughty things without me asking questions about what she meant. She probably didn’t even realize she was doing it, and why would she have? She had no reason to have developed those skills, since as far as she was concerned, we hadn’t grown up together. She was Miranda in reverse, like her in silently justifying things that didn’t make sense, because acknowledging them would do even more damage than setting them aside.

  Despite the level of control she was demonstrating, I could feel the fizzing pop of her excitement, like her emotions had been carbonated, as she led me around the side of the building to a plain metal door, painted brown to blend with the brick around it. She positioned herself to one side, waving for me to get out of the way. I did, plastering myself to the wall like I was afraid the sky was going to fall at any moment. I thought Annie rolled her eyes. It was fine if she did; it was better than any of the things she could have thought about my overreaction.

  Treating her like she was made of glass—fragile, but incredibly dangerous if dropped and reduced to a handful of razored shards—was going to get old, fast. We needed to find a new equilibrium between us, even if it wasn’t going to be her trusting me any time soon, or we were going to be in deep, deep trouble.

  I was contemplating ways to broach the subject when the door banged open so hard that it slammed against the wall on the opposite side, where neither of us was hiding, and Terrence rushed out.

  He was an unremarkable looking man, as I measured such things, pale-skinned and brown-haired, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans. Not faculty. Not a student, either, for all that he’d been on campus when it was taken. I’d need more time to dig in and find out what he’d been doing there. It looked like I might have the chance, since he had barely crossed the threshold when Annie grabbed him by the back of the head, locked her arms around his neck in a chokehold, and spun him around to slam face-first against the wall.

  “Hi,” she purred, voice poisonously sweet. “Going somewhere, good friend Terrence?”

  “He was getting out of here before we could tell anyone he didn’t belong,” I reported helpfully, stepping up to catch the door swinging and ease it shut before it slammed. I couldn’t feel anyone coming after the unfortunate Terrence—not unfortunate because he was a bad person; unfortunate because he was a bad person who’d been caught by my cousin—but I didn’
t want to make it easier for anything to get inside and eat the other survivors.

  “Let me go, you crazy bitch!” he snarled, struggling against her grasp.

  It wasn’t going to do him any good. Once Annie gets hold of somebody, she keeps it. I’ve only seen someone break one of her holds twice, and both times, it was Alex, after they’d been sparring for an hour and she was getting tired. Here and now, she was both fresh and pissed-off, and he’d just made the massive mistake of making himself a target.

  Not the best choice anyone had ever made, to be fair. Even if he hadn’t known he was making it.

  “Sexist and ableist,” said Annie, grinding his face harder into the brick. “Try again, and maybe I step away before I break your bones.”

  “He has a gun,” I said, keeping my tone as bored as possible. “Thought you should remember me telling you that if you’re planning to release him.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Not sure,” I said, and was rewarded with Terrence immediately thinking of the gun’s location, tucked into his left sock. “Left sock,” I said.

  Terrence shot me as much of a glare as his current position allowed, which, to be fair, wasn’t much; it was more of an aggravated side-eye that would have been difficult to read without telepathy even if I’d been able to recognize the subtleties of his expression. It didn’t matter. I was already going for the gun, a crappy little thing that no member of my family would have been willing to carry. I popped the chamber and dumped the bullets into the grass before Annie could object to my being armed. Then I held it up for her inspection.

  “Classy,” she said, shoving his face even harder into the wall. He was going to need some serious exfoliation when she was done with him, assuming he was still among the living.