by John McCrae
“Where’s Defiant?”
“Complete radio silence.”
She was half again as tall as she had been, fit, glittering in armor, carrying a weapon and shield, and she felt more fragile than she had in a long time.
Incomplete.
Her vision flickered again, like lightning before a crash of thunder.
As the Faerie Queen, she’d had a mission. She’d been a part of something vast, a powerful engine that had reshaped whole civilizations, then erased worlds from the universe.
“We’ve got muscle now. Might be we can make headway. Retake the Eastern Queens portal.”
“Shh.” Eyes turned towards her. They talked about her like she was a secret.
Too many people. She needed to talk to the therapist, but Ms. Yamada wasn’t here. She’d come at a moment’s notice, with only one phone call, but it somehow felt like that would only compound the feeling of fragility.
I wanted to be more human.
Never human, per se. Only more human. Parahuman, instead of inhuman.
She’d spent so much time in therapy, figuring out what Scion had been to her, coming to terms with the loss of the pillar he’d become in her psyche.
In trying to distance herself from him, had she set herself on the exact same path?
Seeing the flickers in the crowd wasn’t helping. She avoided them, making her way downstairs, into an adjoining structure. Once upon a time, she’d used that other sight exclusively. In this, in the here and now, she was warring with the keeper of the dead. A part of why she felt incomplete, fragile. They craved purpose. It took a special kind of willpower to avoid using abilities altogether. Some did, but they were rare.
Using her power meant killing, it meant being around the dead, immersing herself in the gravest kinds of conflict.
Would her experiment in humanity be so short lived?
She found an empty hallway and took it. Things were under construction here, hidden behind plastic. She ignored it, taking the paths that were available to her.
Finally, she came to a large room, a cafeteria, apparently, unfinished. Only half of the tables were present, the kitchen unoccupied and unstocked. The serving area had two tracks where trays could slide. One of the two racks was behind a thick plexiglass barrier.
She sat down on a table, her feet on the bench, lost in thought.
Not five seconds in, her official phone rang.
She ignored it. I only want some peace.
This wasn’t her. Had it been madness? Arrogance? Joining the side of the angels?
Her vision was distorting. Even this far away from other parahumans, her other sight was showing their presence as a glow, as ripples. She turned her eyes skyward, but one figure streaked through the sky, well above her.
She heard voices, and turned.
“We meet again, Faerie Queen,” the voice echoed through the chamber.
She turned to see a thin man accompanied by a brutish caveman of a figure, walking on the other side of the thick plexiglass. A child was on this side, petite, blonde, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with pink sneakers.
Valkyrie felt a pang of jealousy. She missed her old body, and the girl resembled her, superficially.
“Goblin King,” Valkyrie responded. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”
“A pity, a pity. This is my Alice, visiting our not-so-wondrous Wonderland.”
“Riley,” the girl said. “I keep telling you, it’s not Alice, Riley.”
“A mere title, not a name,” the man tittered some. It was an eerie sound, coming from someone his age and gender. Not that Valkyrie minded. She’d dealt with worse in the Birdcage.
“Nevermind,” Riley said. “Alice it is. Whatev.”
Valkyrie looked between the two. “Are you allowed to be here?”
“I’m incarcerated,” the Goblin King said. “She’s visiting.”
“Officially visiting. They’re watching me. Probably watching you, too. We’ve played nice for the last stretch, and the illustrious Nilbog gets visits as a reward, so long as he’s good. We each keep our distance from the barrier, and they don’t use the cameras to fill us full of darts.”
Valkyrie followed the girl’s eye to a camera mounted in the corner.
“As you can tell, I keep friends of the highest caliber,” Riley said.
“Yes, yes,” the man said, seeming very pleased with himself. The sarcasm appeared to be lost on him. “A fallen king is still a king, yes?”
“If he can hold his head high, then he’s more kingly than a man who relies on the crown and silks,” Valkyrie said.
“Yes! Yes! Quite right!” Nilbog agreed.
Riley was smiling, as if despite herself.
The phone was ringing again. Valkyrie canceled the call. She knew why they were calling, now. They were less than comfortable with this trio in one room together.
No matter.
“I came for my weekly dose of sanity, if you know what I mean,” Riley said. “Spend enough time with them, you need a break from it all.”
“I do believe I know what you mean,” Valkyrie said. You mean just the opposite. A weekly dose of madness. A return to the familiar. Both for comfort, and to serve as a reminder of how far they’d come.
Dangerous, perhaps. She wondered if she’d share this with Ms. Yamada.
Probably. People would pass on word. They were all being tracked, no doubt.
But would she share what this meant to her? That she felt more secure than she had, leaving the rooftop meeting and speech?
“Shall we share stories of long ago?” Nilbog asked. “Of our kingdoms, as they were?”
“We could,” Valkyrie said. “Tragedies? Comedies?”
“In my stories,” Riley said, “The line between tragedy and comedy is awfully thin.”
“I suspect my stories are mostly tragedies,” Valkyrie said. “Everyone worth talking about dies in the end.”
“Just the opposite for me,” the Goblin King said. He ran one hand along the cheek of the neanderthal figure beside him. When he turned to face the barrier, he limped, and the brutish man helped him stay balanced. “My favorites persist, they keep coming back to start the adventure anew, a little different every time. This is my helper. They allow me him, only him.”
For a man talking about comedies, he looked sad.
The amnesty still hasn’t gone through in entirety. There are snarls, like this king without a crown or a kingdom.
There were distant running footsteps, growing in volume as they drew closer, suggesting that capes were en route to intercept her.
Valkyrie glanced over her shoulder.
“I suspect this visit will be cut short.”
“Fuck,” Riley said. “Not that the goblin king isn’t awesome, but…”
She trailed off.
“Maybe another time,” Valkyrie said. She raised her hands as the capes entered the room from the far corner. She had to pick her words carefully, so she wouldn’t sound strange. “I’m being good.”
“We’d like to play it safe,” one of the capes said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I understand.”
“Another day, Faerie Queen,” Nilbog said. He smiled, bowing a little.
Valkyrie returned the bow. When she rose to her full height, she was smiling a little in turn. It surprised her.
Flip sides of the same coin.
Rebirth.
The act was an idle one, like one might move a hand inside a pocket to double check there was nothing inside it. She used her power. Bringing one of her warriors through, on the other side of the barrier.
The neanderthal reacted. Valkyrie’s warrior didn’t manifest in full, but it flowed through the neanderthal’s body before rejecting the host.
Almost. Close.
Shepherd of the dead, Valkyrie thought, as she walked away. The Goblin King was shushing his creation.
They were all parts of a whole. The Chirurgeon, the Maker, the Keeper of the Dead. It only made se
nse that there would be synergies between such abilities.
A way to bring her dead back, perhaps?
She could see them, in the dark recesses, waiting, loyal, obedient. The ones she’d collected, some still mending from the great fight six months ago.
She felt better now. Less incomplete. Her other half was content with this line of thinking.
She just wasn’t sure where she’d take it.
E.2
Nero leaned back in his chair, propping a boot on the edge of his desk. His lieutenants were bringing a line of prisoners into his ‘office’.
They were treated to a view of a tall, muscular man, wearing armor on his legs, shoulders and arms, his chest and stomach bared, marked with small scars. His helmet had dark slits forming an ‘x’ over each eye to allow him to see, and the metal came together in the middle to form an axe blade, extending from his chin to his forehead. His longer brown hair and beard were visible behind and below the edges of the mask.
Braziers burned on either side of him, in the corners of the room, casting him in a flickering orange-red light while filling the room with a haze of smoke. Things had been expanding quickly enough that they couldn’t give away of all of the wood they were cutting down. Some wood was reduced to planks, while other trees were stripped of the exterior bark and branches and used wholesale, forming older-looking log buildings. Problem was, every tree that came down and every tree that was stripped meant huge amounts of debris. There were crews working on producing sawdust and chipboard, but even that was work intensive. Most went into the fires.
This first winter would be the biggest test for the various settlements. Six months in, there were still far too many displaced people, and far too little in the way of shelter, despite wholesale efforts to put things in place.
The prisoners, the slaves, finished filing in with their shuffling footsteps. Many looked at him, then looked away, spooked. More than a few were still in sleepwear, a couple were less than fully decent. They’d been dragged from their shelters and homes, forced to climb into trucks and shipped here.
The resentment and fear was clear on their faces.
He took his time looking them over.
Lucan stepped up to the desk. “The product-”
“Is it urgent? Are people dying?”
“No, but-”
“Are we going to die because of problems with the product?”
“No. People getting sick. It was cut with something ugly, we think.”
“That can wait.”
Lucan nodded, stepping back.
“I am not an especially cruel man,” Nero addressed the prisoners.
They didn’t believe him. Nobody relaxed or even moved, at those words.
“You work, you get your tokens,” Nero said. He opened a drawer, grabbed one pile of chains with attached tokens from inside, and then tossed the things onto the desk. They clattered, and one or two prisoners flinched.
“This is my system. We can’t police things every step of the way. Shelter, food, supplies, it slows things down, creates too much confusion. We use these.” He stabbed the pile of tokens with one finger. ”So long as you have one, so long as you earn one, you can have what you need for the week. Food, water, and shelter. Get more tokens, you get access to more. Luxuries, comfort, a chance to voice concerns to me and my men.”
He turned his gaze on each of the prisoners. “You took these things without a token in hand, which makes you thieves. If you had empty pockets when it came time to pay in a restaurant, they’d make you work as a dishwasher. I’m going to do the same. You’re getting punished, and then I’m giving you to Lucan there. He’ll work you for the week, keep you in chains and give you the bare minimum you need to get by. You’ll earn the tokens you pretended you had. Tokens you more or less stole from me.”
He gestured to his lieutenant with one gauntlet. Lucan held a shotgun, and one of his eyes was bloodshot, a perpetual beam of light extending from it. Lucan offered a sly smile.
Still, the prisoners didn’t move.
“If you try to run, you won’t escape. One of the names they gave me was Persecutor. I was good at finding things and finding people before I got powers, and I got better after. If it gets to the point where you’re back here a second time and I recognize your face? It’ll get uglier. If you try to shirk your duties and leave, it’ll get uglier. You follow?”
There were reluctant nods from the line of prisoners.
“This is the way things are,” Nero said. “You’ve got guys like me in charge because you need us in charge. Adapt.”
“Adapt?” one prisoner said. An old man, his hair sticking up from sleep and a lack of shampoo. He sounded just a little drunk. “Only reason you’re there and we’re here is you got powers.”
Nero didn’t move. “Did you have tokens my lieutenants didn’t find?”
“No tags. I worked a full nine days, and they didn’t give me any tags. How am I supposed to work the next seven?” the older man retorted.
“If you don’t have three tokens, then you don’t have the right to look me in the eye and talk to me.”
“Then punish me, but I’m going to say what I want to say. You don’t deserve this. Being in charge. You’re causing more trouble than good. We were doing fine before you came. You’re a thug who got a lucky roll of the dice.”
Nero shifted position, leaning forward, setting one armored elbow onto the desk. The posture helped to show the golden dot-within-a-circle emblem on his upper arm. “You don’t know what powers take from you, old man. What they cost us, the wars we’ve been in, the people we’ve all lost. Hell, you don’t know what it takes to get ‘em. So when you find that out, when you get your own powers, enjoy them for a bit, then you can talk to me. If you don’t get that far, you’d better learn to bow and scrape. I’m better than most, believe me. I’m actually fair.”
“Your lieutenants demand two weeks of work for one week of sustenance. They demand sexual favors and help themselves to the things we managed to bring with us. Precious things. To me, that means you have to be a fucking idiot, running the day to day while they take advantage of you.”
Two teenagers in the group cast a worried glance in the man’s direction. Roughly the same age, seventeen or eighteen. Nero stared at them for long seconds as he considered the man’s words. He glanced at Lucan.
Lucan shrugged. When the gunman looked towards the line of prisoners, the red laser that extended from one eye moved to suggestive places. The prisoners shifted uncomfortably.
Hooligan, Nero’s self-imposed jester, entered the room with a canvas bag, open at the top and sides, wood scraps and sticks stacked within. He unloaded it in the brazier. Where snow lingered on the branches, the fire popped and steamed, adding to the heavy atmosphere in the room. He paused, glancing at the prisoners, then looked at Nero.
Nero raised a hand, gesturing for Hooligan to stop. “Stay, Hooligan”
He stood from his seat, crossing the room until he faced Lucan. He was three or four inches taller, which combined with his armor to make him rather intimidating.
“Sorry,” Lucan said, his voice a bit rough, “Man’s right. I’m milking you for everything you’re worth, Persecutor. Manipulating you left, right and center.”
“Tragic, a travesty,” Nero said. Then he allowed himself a chuckle, looking at the prisoners, “We’re old friends. Next time, don’t go thinking you can turn people against one another, if they’re close enough to have matching codenames. Want to try anything else, old man?”
The man didn’t show any disappointment. “Do your worst.”
“Ah, that’s not smart,” Nero said. He paused, as if suddenly restless. When he did finally speak, it was with a steadily rising volume. “Breaking my rules while living in my territory, you insult me to my face, and then you tell me to do my worst?”
The older man didn’t flinch.
“Those two,” Nero said, pointing at the two teenagers who had reacted earlier. Nero didn’t tak
e his eyes off the man. “They were with him?”
“No,” the old man said.
“Yeah,” Lucan answered. “All squatting in one room.”
Nero nodded slowly. His fingertips drummed on the table. “Don’t touch the old man. Lock him up, but don’t touch him. His kids…”
“No,” the man said. “No!”
“They take it instead. Let’s leave no doubt they paid a price,” Nero said. “Shave their heads, then give them tattoos, nice and big, in a place where people can see.”
He raised his hand, cupping it. A device, slowly rotating in midair, began to appear, slivers flying out of nowhere to fit in together like pieces from a puzzle. A long needle, a site for the ink to be plugged in, a handle… it was soon orbited by three vials. Rather than slivers, the liquid came in as round droplets, seeping into the vials to fill them before the splinters sealed the exterior.
“Face? Neck?” Lucan asked.
“No!” the man’s scream was ragged.
Nero held out his hand, and Lucan took the device, holding out another hand to intercept the vials of colored ink as they completed one last rotation, slapping his palm.
Nero approached the youths, taking hold of one’s chin and the other’s neck. Slivers appeared, converging on a point inside them, but when he pulled away, there was nothing visible. “Face or neck will do. Both, maybe. Something like ‘property of Nero’, a drawing of my mask, or maybe a thank you to daddy, just to drive the point home,” Nero mused. “He did say I should do my worst, so be sure to give them a light beating, and… hm. We sell all the product already?”
“Still some left over,” Hooligan said. He was smiling, still holding the empty canvas bag. Enjoying the show.
“Then, as long as this merry band wants to take stuff for free, give this man’s son and daughter a share of the product.”
“No! No! Please!”
Nero stared at the screaming man. “By the time they go back to their daddy, I want them hooked enough they’ll beg to do my lieutenants favors or give my lieutenants anything of value they can think of.”
The older man crumpled, doubling over, falling as much as he could fall with the chain stretching between his shackles and those of the people on either side of him. The pair of teenagers were cowering as Hooligan and Lucan approached, but the chain limited their ability to move to mere feet.