by John McCrae
“Fucker!” Cody shouted, from across the room.
“I… well, I guess I deserved that,” Krouse said.
“Krouse-” Jess started.
“Hm?” he turned her way, touched fingertips to his nose to check for blood. Only a little. ”It’s fine.”
Better they’re mad at one of us than both of us.
“Fine?” Cody growled. ”We’re fucking stuck in a world with Endbringers like that psycho alien bird bitch! And we’ve got you playing head games with us on top of that!”
“He wasn’t playing head games,” Luke said. He winced as he moved his injured leg from his footrest to the ground. Not exactly.”
“Thank you for saying so,” Krouse said.
“Don’t thank me,” Luke said, angry, “I’m not on your side. I’m just saying you didn’t fuck with us for your own gain, you fucked with us because you thought it was in our best interests.”
“So that’s it?” Cody asked. ”It’s not just that we’re pawns in some crazy chess game the Simurgh is playing. We’re stranded here?”
“Yeah,” Jess said. One word.
“There’s got to be ways home,” Luke said.
“Probably,” Krouse replied. ”But they won’t be easy to find.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Oliver asked. ”If we go to the police-”
“They’ll realize that we’re probably pawns in the Simurgh’s game plan,” Krouse said. ”We’ll be detained. And let’s not forget, they killed that superhero, because he might have been caught in her web. Odds are pretty fucking good that we’re caught in it, between the coincidences Jess mentioned and the fact that the Simurgh pulled us from our world to this one. The people in charge? They won’t fail to notice.”
“You think they’d kill us?” Oliver asked.
“It’s hard to believe, but I find it hard to believe they killed the cape and they did. Yes. I think they’d kill us..”
When a minute passed and nobody spoke up, Krouse turned the volume up for the television.
“…final decisions. In the meantime, plans are underway to build permanent blockades around the affected area, with concrete walls placed South Midvale Boulevard to the west, Capitol Square to the east, and Haywood Drive to the south. A quarantine processing center is already established at St. Mary’s Hospital, servicing city residents who were not evacuated before temporary blockades were set up.
“Restitution will be offered to citizens displaced from their homes, paid for with international funding. Authorities report that no catastrophic damage was done, and the situation was quickly brought under control by the first responders to the scene. Chicago Protectorate leader Myrddin is quoted as stating, ‘This is a win for the good guys. Scion arrived early to put the pressure on within minutes of her arrival and Eidolon delivered the final blows, driving her off. We’re getting better at fighting these guys, and it’s showing.’
“However, insider sources in the PRT suggest that things are not so glowing. A vault holding the equipment of now-deceased supervillain ‘Professor Haywire’ was accessed by the Simurgh. Shortly after, the source alleges, the Simurgh activated a large-scale replica of the devices, depositing large amounts of foreign bodies in the heart of the city. Among these bodies, multiple reports say, were innumerable monsters with superpowers and hazardous materials. When asked, the Chicago PRT director declined to comment, except to say that there have been no breaches of quarantine and there is no indication of risk to anyone in the vicinity of the quarantine zone.”
“MWBB coverage of the Endbringer attack will continue for the rest of the day, but next, we have a story of-“
Krouse turned off the TV. ”St. Mary’s?”
“Not in our world,” Jess said. ”And we’re running a lot of risks by going…”
“We don’t have a choice,” Krouse said, looking at Noelle. “We’ll find a map, and we’ll need a car, with half of us unable to walk. Let’s get Noelle to a hospital, ASAP.”
■
Finding the car proved to be the hardest part. There wasn’t a car in the garage of the house they were borrowing, and though Krouse saw a car in the driveway of the neighboring house, he couldn’t find a set of keys in any of the obvious locations.
Be nice to know how to hotwire a car.
In the end, they headed out as two teams. Krouse was joined by Marissa, while Oliver and Cody formed the other team. It was dark, the streets were empty, and snow still drifted in dense clouds. Few places had lights on, but that proved fortunate, as those places tended to be businesses.
They found a car rental place, but metal shutters on the window barred their access. The keys are probably in a safe or something, Krouse thought.
They ran at first, jogging lightly as they hurried from place to place. As they ran into continual failures, failed to find a car they could use, they slowed to a brisk walk. It meant preserving their stamina, even as the slowness of it made Krouse anxious. Every second spent looking was a second that Noelle had to wait. Settling in and leaving her to linger in a nigh-unconscious state had been their only option before they’d heard the broadcast. Now, though…
They passed the area with the restaurants and patios as they continued searching for a usable car. Every time he passed a car, he peered inside to see if there was a key in the ignition, if maybe it had been left abandoned by the owner. No luck.
This is pointless.
He checked another car, wiping snow from the window, then hurried to catch up to Marissa. She was checking the cars on the other side of the street.
“No luck,” she said.
“Can I ask what you saw?” he asked.
“What?”
“When the Simurgh showed you stuff. What did you see?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m trying to get a sense of what her game plan was. Cody told me that she reminded him of me. Brought up all the bad memories of times I gave Cody a hard time, times he thought I slighted him or whatever. I’m wondering if it was the same for you.”
Marissa shook her head. ”If I say no, will that be enough?”
“I won’t force you, obviously. But… I’ve been trying to think about all this the way she‘s thinking about it. Anticipate her moves. It’d help a lot if you shared.”
Marissa made a face. He couldn’t see a lot of her face, with the white scarf that was wrapped around the lower half, but he saw the grimace, the skin wrinkling on her nose.
“Okay. It’s fine, don’t stress about it,” he said, hurrying to check more cars on the other side of the street.
She called out after him, “I was on stage!”
He stopped, turned.
“I was on stage. It was just before I stopped doing all the dance and music stuff. The whole thing then had been lyrical dance. But I’d been rebelling…”
She trailed off.
“I don’t follow.”
“I was fighting with my mom, top of our lungs screaming at each other, always about stupid stuff. The color of my dance uniform, and what I was eating for dinner, the amount of homework I was or wasn’t doing. So I stopped practicing. Started hanging out with friends like I’d wanted to do for years. Thought I was getting back at my mom, that I’d get on stage, and I’d get fourth place, and she’d be pissed, whatever.”
“But?”
“I froze. It’s never really happened to me before. My mind went blank, I, um, I couldn’t even bring myself to move, or pull one coherent thought into my head. I was sweating, breathing hard, to the point that I almost thought I’d finished, except I hadn’t even started.”
“Scary.”
“It’s… it’s worse than that, but it wasn’t scary so much as… devastating? I don’t know if I explained it right, but it’s like, I managed to get a little of my own strength, break away from my mom’s grasp, and all the pressures she put on me, become my own person. And then I’m standing there on stage, and I feel a bead of sweat run down the inside of my leg and for
just three seconds, I-”
She stopped.
Krouse didn’t want to interrupt, and Marissa was busy talking, so he took over checking the inside of the car windows as they walked. He peered inside the next car. “You thought you’d pissed yourself.”
“…I don’t know why I said that out loud. You fucking mention that ever again, and-”
“I won’t.”
It was another ten seconds before she continued. ”I must have turned bright red. I’d felt strong, felt independent for the first time in my life. And then it turns out like that. And she’s in the audience, front row. My mom. She’s smiling, because she thinks it’s a victory for her. The rebellious daughter discovering that mom was right about everything after all, you know? That’s how she probably saw it.”
Krouse nodded.
“That smile? That was what the Simurgh showed me. Except it lingered. Couldn’t shake it. Almost as if it was the Simurgh doing it and not my mom.”
Krouse scraped at ice that had packed against one passenger-side window, peering inside. ”What happened after that?”
“Here or back then?”
“Back then.”
“I had a bit of a breakdown. My grades went to hell, I stopped doing everything, all of the music, all of the dance, all of the after school stuff. Retreated to my room. Wound up going to therapy, but my mom sat in on all of the sessions, and how could I get better when the person that’s ninety-percent to blame for the problems is in the room with me? Stopped going to that therapy until I could get a therapist who’d be for me and just for me. That’s where I met Noelle. Chris backed me up in general, but it was Noelle that helped me find my way.”
He could see her face fall, understood why. ”I’m sorry about Chris, by the way.”
“He was a genuinely good guy.”
“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t get to know him more. He was always more your friend than our collective friend. But he was nice enough.”
“And without Chris or Noelle, there’s nobody left in the group that I really could talk to,” Marissa said, “So it’s the same for me, now, kind of.”
“Yeah,” he said. ”You can talk to me, if you need to, you know.”
She snorted.
There was a break where they only investigated the cars. Krouse knew he should be on the other side of the street, looking for keys, but it was fruitless. There was an expensive looking hotel at the end of the street that had a parking garage, and he held out hope that the place would have valet parking.
Oliver had been saturated with self-doubt, loathing, all the things that made him introverted, passive, even whiny. He’d been brought to tears at one point, even. Marissa had been brought back to the stage, her focus turned to her relationship with her mom.
What purpose does that serve?
The only thing that Krouse could think of, and he had to ask Luke to get a third data point, was that the Simurgh had wanted to distract them. Cody, meanwhile, had been set against Krouse, and Krouse’s attention had been turned to Noelle.
This doesn’t strike me as the kind of maneuvers she’d be making if she was planning something for years from now. This is more imminent.
“What are you thinking?”
“That I need to talk to Luke about what he saw.”
“To make sure he’s okay?”
“That, and to round out my theory. With your situation, what you were talking about with the aftermath of the stage fright, was that it? There was nothing afterward? Things got better?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Marissa shrugged. ”It was good to be free, to have time to myself, without my mom, um…”
“Your mom’s intensity?”
“Intensity. Yeah. But it sucks, because I’m a year away from the point where I could move out. Maybe more, depending on how long it takes me to get first and last month’s rent together. And until then, I’ve got to put up with dinner conversations where every other sentence has a hidden barb, a prod to accomplish something, or a dismissal of the stuff I’m actually interested in.”
She’s talking like all that’s still a consideration. We’re a long way away from that stuff, from our families and having to worry about rent. Krouse knew she’d feel worse when it hit her, if she kept thinking that way.
“You don’t need to worry about any of that now, at least,” Krouse said, trying to sound nonchalant, checking the next car.
He didn’t hear a response. Turning back, he saw her eyebrows drawn together in a frown. He asked, “Sorry. Was that too blunt?”
“No. Um. I dunno. Is it strange I miss my mom?”
“You know your feelings better than I do.”
“For years, I’ve dreamed about running away, or getting enough money together to move across the country and cut all ties with her. Only now a situation like that’s been dropped in my lap, and I realize I might not see her for a long time, if ever, and Chris on top of that…”
“I think these circumstances would make anyone feel lonely,” he said.
Marissa nodded. ”How are you holding up?”
“Just want to get Noelle help.”
“And your hand?”
“Hurts like a bitch. But it feels silly to complain when we have bigger problems and other people are hurting more. And I’m getting antsy, taking so long doing this. Looking in the car windows isn’t getting us anywhere, and it’s getting too dark. Let’s check the hotel.”
“Okay.”
They crossed the street and found the front door of the hotel unlocked. Only half the lights were on, set for daylight rather than evening, and the interior was abandoned.
“Everyone really did evacuate, didn’t they?” Marissa asked.
Krouse hopped onto the front desk and swung his legs around to the other side before hopping down. “Two ways to deal with the Simurgh, I guess. Far easier to be preventative than to clean up the mess afterward.”
He opened a drawer and found a mess of business cards, each organized into neat rows with elastic bands around them. The next drawer was locked. ”Mars!”
Marissa returned from the employee-only hallway beside the front desk, “What?”
“Can’t get this open with one hand. Want to try?”
She tried and failed to get the drawer open. Struck by inspiration, she hurried back into the hallway and then came back with a toolbelt. It took less than three minutes to get the drawer open.
Half of the drawer were largely empty, containing only two credit cards, a piece of jewelry and a paper noting procedure for managing the lost and found. The other half of the drawer was sectioned off with a grid of wood panels, with keys and slips of paper in some and plastic cards with numbers in stylized golden letters in the others.
“Score,” he said.
A dozen keys in hand, they made their way to the parking garage, stopping at the stand with all the brochures to find one with a map of the area. Marissa got in the first car they found. Testing the remaining keys, Krouse made another nearby car beep. Seven of us, and Noelle should lie down. This works.
They opened the metal paneled door to the parking garage and hurried back to their cars. He followed her out.
The plan had been to loop around and find the others. If they couldn’t, they were to beep and signal them. With things this quiet, it wouldn’t be too difficult to hear the horn. Still, he’d rather not have to. There was no guarantee the freaks weren’t still around. Two people would be hard to spot in the gloom and the curtains of falling snow, but cars with glowing headlights?
Oliver and Cody were nowhere to be seen.
He beeped twice and waited, while Marissa drove ahead and did the same. A minute passed as they staggered their movement across the area Oliver and Cody had headed off to. The pair didn’t show up. Either Oliver and Cody were in trouble, or-
He peeled out, driving past Marissa.
Was the gut feeling his own, or was it something implanted in his head by the Simurgh?
The wheels skidded on the snowy surfac
e of the road. He didn’t have far to go. If he was wrong, he knew this would cost them only a little time. If he was right, though-
There would be a car parked outside the house. There was; Cody had left it sitting in the middle of the street, by the fence. Krouse pulled his car to a stop and climbed out.
The soldiers on the other side of the fence were still there. All but a few were inside their vehicles, now. Others were outside, smoking. They didn’t seem to care about what was unfolding ahead of them.
Krouse rushed into the house. He glimpsed at Noelle. She didn’t seem to be any worse, and Oliver was beside her. Jess shot him a concerned look, but Krouse wasn’t waiting long enough to exchange words. He rushed towards the kitchen.
Luke was standing, one leg bent and off the ground, holding a door frame for balance.
“Cody-” Luke started.
“I know,” Krouse replied.
There was a noise as someone ascended the stairs. Cody burst into the kitchen. ”Where are they!?”
“And you call me the asshole,” Krouse said.
“Fuck you. You hid them.”
“Close, but no cigar. We did leave the suitcase in plain sight, took the canisters out.”
“Where!?”
“But we didn’t hide them. Jess and I destroyed ‘em, before we started cooking dinner.”
“Bullshit.”
“We weren’t going to use them,” Krouse shrugged. ”It’s a bad idea.”
“You fucker! Making decisions for the rest of us!”
Krouse shrugged. ”Cope.”
Cody turned towards the area where Luke was at the door frame. ”Luke. You’re going to stand by and let him act-”
“You don’t have any ground to stand on,” Luke said, interrupting. ”Not that Krouse is doing much better, destroying those vials before we had a chance to discuss it further, on top of what he’s already pulled, but the worst Krouse has done thus far is lie by omission. You lied to my face. Said you were looking for something to help transport Noelle.”
“I’m willing to bite the bullet,” Cody said. ”I’ll take the hit. I’ll drink the stuff, or inject it, whatever. And if the Simurgh has things set up so I get fucked over down the road, I’m okay with that. I can still use whatever powers I get to get us out of here. Maybe get us home.”