by John McCrae
“Stop. All this praise is going to make me blush.”
“Sixth grade,” Marissa said, turning to Noelle, “He tells his teacher-”
“Aaand I’m out of here,” Krouse said, making sure to interrupt her, “I forgot Marissa knew about the more embarrassing stories.”
“Good riddance to you, then,” Marissa said, smiling lightly.
He wasn’t two steps away when he heard her saying, “The Ransack qualifiers-”
He turned, interest piqued.
“What?” Marissa said. ”Do I need to get back to the story to scare you off? Or are you going to make some crack about girls and video games?”
“No, I’m not. You said qualifiers? As in competitive level?”
“Yeah. We have a club we organized through the school, to manage it. It was the only way I could get access to a computer without my mom looking over my shoulder.”
“No kidding. That’s the same one Luke’s in? You know Luke Brito?”
“Yeah. He’s in the group.”
“Ah,” he said. He floundered. ”I’m sort of lost for words. The bar for that sort of thing is higher than a lot of people think. Even getting to the point where you’re in the qualifiers is pretty respectable. Kudos.”
“Thanks,” Marissa said.
“I won’t subject you to my presence any longer. Good luck tonight. Really.”
“You play?” Noelle asked, the question abrupt. She tore off a bit of pizza crust and popped it into her mouth.
It took Krouse a second to mentally shift gears. ”Some. Casually.”
Marissa looked at Noelle to double check, then gestured towards the empty seat across from them.
Krouse sat, winced as a plastic tray clattered to the ground.
Marissa screamed, the sound abruptly cutting off as she was tossed from the counter where the plastic trays were stacked to the ruined counter where the soft drink dispensers had been. She gasped for breath, struggled to climb to her feet and fell. She was too dazed, and the ruined counter didn’t offer much in the way of solid traction. Gwerrus advanced on her.
Krouse forced himself back to reality, hurried to climb to his feet, only to feel the scythe’s blade press hard to his neck, only his scarf keeping it from severing flesh.
The screaming in his head was back, worse than ever. After the peace of the memory, the tranquility of being free of the screaming, still experiencing the warm buzz that surged through him, this wasn’t where he wanted to be.
“Began’na weorc,” Egesa hissed in his ear.
“Don’t understand a fucking thing you’re saying,” Krouse responded. In a strange way, he was pissed. Pissed in the way he might be if he’d been woken abruptly from a good dream. He knew it wasn’t rational, knew it wasn’t even healthy to think that way when the Simurgh was this dangerous, this insidious, but he was still upset.
So maybe, in the smallest way, it gave him the push he needed to reach beneath his coat, to where he’d stashed the sheathed kitchen knife. With his other hand, he found and dug his gloved fingers into the wound the spear had made, simultaneously twisting, putting his less vulnerable shoulder in the way of Egesa’s scythe-hand.
It didn’t matter. Egesa’s knees folded as Krouse twisted his fingers in the wound, dug deep. The knife’s sheath clattered to the ground, and Krouse dragged the blade across Egesa’s long neck.
Egesa pushed him away, blood fountaining down the front of his body. Krouse’s fingers were plucked free of the wet, sucking wound as the freak backed away. Egesa disappeared into wisps of dark smoke.
“Stupid brave boy,” Gwerrus said.
Krouse glanced around the room as the massive bear of a woman turned to face him. Marissa was only just managing to stand, while Cody had backed up to the opposite end of the room, crowbar in hand. Matryoshka was on her hands and knees, not far from Cody.
“Run!” he shouted. ”Scatter!”
He was only turning to run away from the brutish Gwerrus when he realized the others might not be in a state to run. Marissa had been thrown hard, and he wasn’t sure what kind of condition Cody was in.
Not that it mattered. Gwerrus picked Krouse for her target.
She wasn’t fast. There was some small blessing in that. But he quickly realized that she was keeping up with him, and she didn’t have half the trouble he did in wading through the deeper patches of snow. Slipping on ice, too, didn’t prove to be a problem for her when she weighed enough that the ice shattered with each footfall.
She caught up to him before he was clear of the plaza, grabbed him by the seat of his pants and the back of his coat.
He stabbed at her hand with the knife, and felt a fierce agony tear through his own hand.
Blood welled out from his palm, warm as it ran down his arm to his elbow. Krouse screamed.
“No,” Gwerrus growled in her deep voice. ”Stupid boy.”
“Begone,” a man intoned.
Krouse felt himself slip from her grasp. He dropped to the ground.
“Do it quickly,” another man said.
Krouse turned to look, but he saw everything through a monochrome haze. His own hand seemed smoky, faint.
I’m a ghost?
“Any insights, Myrddin?” a man in armor spoke. Gwerrus backed away as he advanced. A giantess and a man in a suit of gleaming armor. The man twirled a halberd in one hand.
“A protective power. I just got a glimpse of the idea behind it. Retribution,” the first man said. He was behind the man in armor, wearing a robe. ”Her power’s based around retribution for damage done.”
“Damage reflection?” the man in armor asked. ”Or does she get more durable as you attack her?”
“More likely to be the former than the latter.”
Krouse stood as the man in armor walked up to him. Walked past him as though he weren’t even there.
“I am stronger than you,” Gwerrus snarled.
The armored man didn’t reply.
“Why do this? Why hunt us?” Gwerrus asked, backing away.
The armored man slammed his halberd down against the ground, and smoke billowed around him. A moment later, there was a sound like a gunshot. Gwerrus dropped to one knee, one meaty hand pressed to her chest.
There was a tink and she was set on fire, head to toe.
The flames were hot enough and close enough to Krouse that they could have burned him, should have burned him. But he barely felt the warmth of them. Barely felt anything. The Simurgh’s scream had faded, and his own wounded hand was little more than a dull throb.
“Hey,” Krouse said, turning to the man in armor. There was no response. ”Hey, my friend needs-”
“That was reckless,” Myrddin said, speaking over Krouse. ”Attacking when we didn’t know the particulars of her power.”
“Two most likely vectors for it,” the armored man said, talking as though he couldn’t hear Krouse. He raised his voice a little to be heard over Gwerrus’ screams. ”Either she needed to see me, or there needed to be some correlation between me and the damage done. Smoke plus a nonlethal bullet works as a test for the first case. Besides, priority one is minimizing interactions, right?”
“Yes. But it was still reckless.”
Krouse turned to Myrddin. ”My friend’s dying. Can you help her?”
Myrddin walked ahead, dismissing the smoke with a wave of the craggy wooden stick he carried.
“Dragon?” the armored man said.
“I’m here,” the woman’s voice came from the armbands that they’d fixed around their wrists.
“Myrddin just shunted some kid out to minimize contact. I saw some blood. If I mark the location, can we get emergency services here for when he pops back in?”
“We’re overloaded. Was it a severe injury?”
“Bad, but not severe.”
“We don’t have the vehicles or personnel to spare, and quarantine will still be in effect.“
“Right. Where did our target land?”
“Two hu
ndred feet away, down your four o’clock, Armsmaster.“
“How are we for exposure?”
“You two are good for another seventeen minutes at the exposure you’re facing. Twenty if we push it. I can have a flight unit to you shortly.“
Krouse hurried to follow them as they changed direction and began briskly walking toward the end of the street..
Myrddin spoke up, “How’s the fight going?”
“It goes well. But we can’t let our guards down.“
“No,” Myrddin agreed. ”This is a bad one. Too many possible avenues to cover, too much exposure time across the board.”
“We’re doubling down quarantine, and we’ll have a processing center in place shortly. The President is pushing the D.D.I.D measure.“
“It’s going to backfire,” Myrddin said. ”I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now, and I’ll remind you all I said it with every chance I get, from now until the day I die. It’s going to backfire.”
“I don’t disagree,” Dragon said.
“But you’re helping to enforce it.”
“I’m following orders.”
“No offense, I like you, Dragon, but that’s the oldest excuse in the book.”
“I’m merely picking my battles.“
“If you’re not going to fight this battle, then what will push you to make a stand?”
“Myrddin,” Armsmaster cut in, “Ease up. And pay attention. This is it.”
Krouse stared. It was a section of building. White tile and white walls, a desk, and a metal cabinet with a shattered glass pane. File folders were strewn over the floor and desk. In the midst of it all was a man in a white lab coat. His body had been shattered by the impact.
“Damnation. If we could only look into this…” Armsmaster said.
“Priority one. Minimize exposure.”
“I know. But this stands to answer a great many questions. If we can find where she opened that portal to-”
“If she’s answering questions for us, we don’t want to know,” Myrddin said.
Armsmaster sighed. ”I know. Can you shift this into one of your pocket dimensions?”
“I get bad interactions if I transition something in of one of my dimensions and back, or if I take things out of one dimension and put them into another. It doesn’t compartmentalize into the dimension properly if it’s been elsewhere too recently. Whether these people and objects came from somewhere halfway across the globe or some pocket dimension, I don’t think we want to test our luck and risk something disastrous.”
Krouse startled at that. Is that what happened to me? Some bad interaction of interdimensional crap?
“I’m thinking white phosphor?” Armsmaster suggested. Myrddin nodded.
Dragon chimed in, her voice sounding from the armbands on their wrists, “Can’t call in a strike until fifteen minutes after the Simurgh is gone. Mark the area. I’ve got another danger site a quarter-mile to your six o’clock. Then we’re getting you clear.“
“Got it,” Armsmaster said.
Armsmaster tossed a small canister into the middle of the section of laboratory, they cordoned off the area with red tape, and then they left. Armsmaster used a grappling hook to fly to a nearby rooftop while Myrddin took to the air.
With no way to follow, Krouse was left standing there. He prodded at a piece of rubble, but his hand passed through.
Yet he was able to walk on the hard ground? He couldn’t process it.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered to himself.
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
He folded his arms. That’s not something I ever expected to hear. ”You can’t blame me at least a little?”
“No,” Noelle said, shaking her head. She looked miserable, and he felt a knot forming in the pit of his stomach as he saw just how unhappy she was. It wasn’t something he was familiar with, on a lot of levels. Quiet, she said, “You’ve been great.”
He spread his arms, “I don’t get it. I thought we were doing fine.”
“We aren’t! This is… it’s not working.”
“I’m okay with it. I enjoy spending time with you, and I didn’t get any impression you were having that bad of a time, either.”
“But we don’t- we aren’t-” She stared down at her feet. ”We’re stalled. It isn’t fair to you.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Don’t dismiss my concerns,” she said, managing to sound a little angry.
“No’, it’s fine. It’s cool. I get that there’s stuff you’ve got going on that you don’t want to tell me about. I can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but I’m not an idiot. And I’m not going to twist your arm to get you to share, either. That’s your stuff, and I figure you’ll tell me in time. Or you won’t.”
“It’s not fair to you,” she repeated.
“I’m not saying things have to be equitable or balanced or fair or any of that. So who cares if things aren’t fair?”
“Don’t do that!”
He spread his arms for the second time in a minute, helpless. Don’t do what? Don’t make sense?
Long seconds passed. He studied her, saw how dejected she was. Only minutes ago they’d been having a good time talking. Then things had fallen apart without warning, and it sounded like she wanted to break up.
It’s like karma for all the times I’ve pulled shit on others. Only I did it in fun, and this isn’t fun in the slightest.
“Someone said, a little while ago,” Noelle spoke without looking at Krouse, “That I can’t really forge a good relationship with others until I have a good relationship with myself.“
“You don’t?”
Noelle didn’t say anything.
“I think you’re fantastic, if that counts for anything.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I’ve been getting to know you some. And I have yet to see anything that’s going to scare me away.”
She stared down at her feet. ”…I don’t think we should date.”
“Okay. If you think that’s for the best. But I just need you to do one thing. Look me in the eye as you tell me that.”
She glanced up at him, then looked down. She didn’t say a word.
“Because,” he went on, “I think you’ve seemed happier than I’ve ever seen you since we started going out. Marissa said so, too.”
Noelle glanced at him.
He continued, “If you really feel like us dating is making things worse in the long run, then I’m perfectly okay with breaking it off. I can leave the club if that makes things easier on your end. It was your thing before it was mine, and you’ve got enough on your plate with being team captain.”
“I don’t want you to leave the club.”
“Okay,” he said. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. ”Listen, I get the feeling today is a bad day. Don’t know why it is, but it is. And that happens. Fine. But I’m not willing to end this if it’s because the stars aligned wrong. So I’m asking you to tell me that you’re worse off because we’re together. Not asking for an explanation, just-”
“Never mind,” she said.
“Never mind?”
“I’m- just never mind. Can we forget this conversation happened?”
“Sure,” he said. He saw how dejected she looked. ”Want me to walk you home?”
She nodded.
It was odd. He’d been punched before, had failed a grade, he’d lost his uncle, and yet it was here, beside his girlfriend, that he was unhappier than he’d ever been. He was helpless, confused, frustrated. All he wanted to do was to help her, but he wasn’t sure how.
He fought the urge to sigh, and drew in a deep breath instead. The air in his nostrils was so cold he choked on it. All of his senses were plunged into high gear; a keening song so high pitched it made his ears hurt, cold throughout his body, the smell and taste of dust thick in the air, and pain lancing through his right hand.
Coughing, bewildered, he stared at the pile of rubbl
e and the laboratory. Whatever effect had encompassed him, it was gone.
Noelle.
He scrambled up the pile of rubble. He remembered how they’d said they wouldn’t bomb this site until after the Endbringer was gone, so he still had some time.
He needed a first aid kit. He went through the cabinets and a set of drawers. Nothing. Empty test tubes, glass vials without any contents, canisters without contents, and paperwork. Lots of paperwork.
His eyes settled on a metal briefcase beneath the desk, within a few feet of the dead man’s hand.
His fingers crossed for a portable case of medical supplies, he set it down on the desk and popped it open. Disappointment overwhelmed him.
Six metal canisters recessed in black foam with slots cut out to hold them, paperwork was set in a flap in the lid.
He swore.
…newly purchased superpowers…
He winced. He’d turned his head too fast, and the movement had almost made the song in his head worse, like the pain prompted by moving a broken limb.
As had been the case with the birdcage and the newspaper, Krouse’s eye had caught on something. He’d always been a fast reader, was used to skimming through books, picking up the necessary words. As his glance had passed over the case, he’d read something in the text without even registering that he’d done it.
He reread the first line, underneath the header.
Congratulations on your newly purchased superpowers.
His eyes moved down to the vials.
He slammed the case shut and turned to leave. There was nothing here he could use for first aid, and certainly no doctors. He could only hope that Cody or Marissa had caught up with some of the people who they’d rescued from the three monsters. If there was any justice in the world, there would have been a doctor among them, and Cody or Marissa would have brought them to the house.
He ran. He had to get back, rendezvous with the others, and get to someone who knew him. If he didn’t hurry, he was worried he would slip into another memory and fail to find his way out again.
The cold air burned in his lungs as he ran, the metal case swinging from his good hand, banging irregularly against his leg.