“Hey,” Regan said when he could speak again, heart still pounding from the surprise, and the stranger’s bizarre appearance. But the strangest thing of all was that it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. “You… you knew me. Yesterday, outside.”
The strange figure sat scarecrow-still under their many layers of clothes, and behind their dark, mirrored sunglasses. For several seconds, they didn’t move a muscle or say a word. If Regan hadn’t seen them move before, he wouldn’t have even been sure they were alive.
“What’s… your name?”
Now they moved. Very slowly, they reached up with one very long, thin arm and slid the sunglasses down, peering at Regan over their lenses. One green eye and one bright blue eye stared at Regan, and he found he couldn’t look away. “Zilch.”
A shiver he couldn’t explain ran down his spine. He didn’t feel the urge to run. He didn’t know what he wanted or needed or remembered, what he was looking at and not seeing—but it was something. “Okay. Hey, Zilch.”
They were quiet for a full second. Two. Only an EKG machine’s slow, steady beep broke the silence. When they spoke, their voice was guttural, rasping, and unnaturally toned, as if the cords were somehow… off. “Hello, Regan.”
Regan just nodded back, but couldn’t think of what to say to make the strange moment any clearer. But now that he looked away, he couldn’t stop staring at the hospital bed. Carefully tucked under the starched linen sheets was Hans.
Not the grinning ghost in the skinny jeans and feathered hair that flicked in and out of Regan’s vision. He was older than the Hans projected in Regan’s brain—at least ten years older, hair taking on a premature grey instead of blonde highlights. He was smaller than Regan’s mental projection appeared, thin, skin pale and sallow, eyes bandaged shut. There were IV needles taped to his bony wrists, and plastic tubes connected him to a respirator.
“You’re not hallucinating.” Zilch said suddenly. Regan jumped just a bit; when they spoke it was very abrupt, a fast break from their unnatural stillness.
“What?”
“Hans. I see him too.”
Regan shot the ghostly form over his shoulder a nervous glance. “Really? Good. That’s—good, okay.”
“You thought he was…?” they trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished but easily inferred. It seemed like they were unused to forming complete sentences, or maybe it was that their vocal cords—which sounded malformed, or maybe mismatched like the rest of them—tired easily.
“All in my head?” Regan ran his fingers down the loose flap of skin at his neck, unconsciously setting his frill in a neater order. “It crossed my mind.”
He waited for Zilch to reply, but they didn’t. For once, Hans didn’t fill the silence with his chatter either. Feeling like he was supposed to do something other than just stand there, Regan circled the bed and lowered himself into the remaining chair. “Someone wanna tell me why I’m here?”
“Can’t. Sorry.”
Regan folded his arms and frowned, tilting his head to the side. “Okay. Then how about the name ‘Gabriel?’ Does that mean anything to you?”
This time, he didn’t get any response at all. He did notice with some alarm that Zilch didn’t seem to be breathing. Even more alarming was the fact that they didn’t appear to need to.
“Oh, come on,” Regan gave a slightly nervous laugh. Up close, he could see the individual stitches that ran across Zilch’s definitely corpselike face, and the conspicuous way their eyes never blinked or moved from what they were looking at. Right now, that was him. Making eye contact back was a challenge. “You’re the first person to actually see the ghost kid or seem to have any answers at all. So why not share some?”
“Hans… has leverage.”
“What, he got your brain too?”
“No. My heart.”
“Oh.” Regan’s eyes couldn’t help flicking down to the only other visible part of Zilch’s skin; their hands. A stitch ran around their left wrist like a bracelet. That hand was darker than its wrist, and it hadn’t yet lost all its color. It still wore chipped red nail polish. The other, much lighter, grey hand didn’t. “That would be a problem.”
“I’m not easy to kill,” they said in response to Regan’s obvious morbid curiosity. Now their voice was even flatter than before and they stared at the opposite wall, eyes dull, half-open, and still as the rest of them. “I don't need to breathe. Or eat or drink. If I fall into the fire, my skin will burn, but I’ll live. An arm can be replaced. A leg repaired. But my heart…”
“Yep,” Hans confirmed easily. “One little poke with a pin, and pfft! That’s it! Done. Not just a pin, I mean, there are all kinds of ways. Hearts are super fragile, but I mean, you’d know all about that, I can basically just—”
“He'd do that?” Regan stared in horror, first at Zilch, then at Hans in the bed. “You’d really kill them? Just to get what you want?”
Hans’s ghostly projection floated back across Regan’s frontal lobe with a sharp, thin smile. “Hey, I want what you want. Escape, hope, life, all those great things! And yes, really. I’d do anything.”
“No. This isn’t the way you get it. You can’t—”
“Sure I can,” Hans said, shrugging. “But I don’t think I’ll have to. I’ve got tons of ways to get people to do what I want…”
“So you’d stop their heart…” Regan glanced at Zilch, then paused. A slow smirk spread across his face. “And do what to me, exactly?”
“Oh. My God. Are you really going there, lizard boy?”
“Why not?” Regan challenged. “You’ve got the power of mind control, right?”
“Yeah! It’s a nice little toy. Everything’s a nice little toy when you’re me!”
“Then if you're so smart and powerful,” Regan said very deliberately, feeling the upper hand for the first time. “Why are you messing around with all these games? Making me forget, pushing me through all these complicated steps—why don’t you just make me do whatever it is you want?”
“Because I don’t think he can,” Zilch interjected softly, eyes flicking up to meet Regan’s. He could swear that strange, lopsided mouth was curling up in something like a smile too. “He would if he could.”
“Sure I can!” Hans retorted with an annoyed glare. “I just want him to do it himself. For personal growth, like a whole big journey thing, or whatever.”
“Liar.” Zilch smiled.
“Am I?” All at once, Hans’s voice was much louder and seemed to come from all around them, as if a movie theatre’s speakers had just turned on. “I told you. I can do whatever I want.” Suddenly Regan jerked as if he’d been struck by lightning, every muscle rigid and locked. His head snapped back so he was facing the ceiling. His eyes were wide open and staring, and their vertical pupils grew so round and dark the golden sclera nearly disappeared. He held so unnaturally still and upright it was almost as if he were suspended by an invisible string, only movement the frill at his neck when it flared out, twitching in rapid spasms.
“No!” Zilch lunged forward now, statue-like stillness gone as they rounded the bed. Until now they hadn’t raised their death-rattle voice above speaking level, but they were shouting now. “Hans, let him go!”
“Love to! You know, soon as you admit you guys were wrong, and you’ll actually listen to the stuff I say. It’ll just make life easier on everybody.”
“I’m the one you made the deal with!” Zilch’s voice sounded like it was being ripped out of their mismatched vocal cords, torn; somehow it harmonized with itself in layers of pain. “You want to hurt somebody, I’m right—”
Regan’s hand shot out and clamped down around Zilch’s bony wrist. The rest of him was paralyzed, but his panicked eyes locked with theirs when they looked up. Zilch turned fully to face him without hesitation.
“Chimera,” Zilch’s voice dropped to a near-whisper as they spoke a word like an incantation, almost powerful enough to let Regan take a breath. Almost. The word—the name?—was strange
but familiarity rang in the back of Regan’s head even as panic overwhelmed him. Zilch’s hand spread flat across Regan’s chest, finding it still except for the panicked hammering of his heart. The other went to his neck, first smoothing down the frantically shaking frill, then slipping beneath it with unexpected gentleness. Somehow, Regan gasped in precious oxygen. “There is enough air.”
“Mm, there really isn’t.”
Zilch ignored him, keeping the very light contact on Regan’s chest, and even lighter touch on his neck beneath his frill. Regan’s hand tightened around their wrist, pulling them closer. “He does not have you. I have you. There is enough air.”
“You know why I’m doing this, right?” Hans floated idly by like a leaf on the surface of a creek. “You just had to push my buttons. Just had to—”
Zilch’s head snapped up. “He can’t breathe, Hans!”
“Oh, sorry, do the living need to do that? My mistake…”
Regan gagged as bile burned up his throat, teeth clenching together so hard his jaw ached and trembled. Zilch looked up to see tears spilling from his still-open eyes.
“Chimera,” Zilch’s voice lowered to a near whisper again as they spoke the unfamiliar but very important word, the ragged and dissonant tones overwhelmingly familiar instead of alien. Without knowing why, Regan relaxed by degrees—even as his knees started to shake beneath him. There was nothing holding him up except this malevolent spirit’s will—until the hand on his chest moved around to support his back and keep him from falling. The other hand at his throat could still feel the pounding of his heart, desperate and fast as the terrified wing beats of a frightened bird.“Listen to my voice. Feel this. Right here.”
Slowly, Regan’s other hand reached out a few agonizing inches to touch Zilch’s thin outer shirt, fingers curling around it.
“Yes. You will survive this. There will not be fire. There will be another night. There is enough air.”
His chest rose as he sucked in the first lungful of oxygen since this awful possession began. A long shudder went through Regan’s flared neck frill, and it fell flat and limp, as if exhausted. He breathed.
Zilch watched for the space of a few breaths. Then they shut their eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“There you go!” Hans chirped. “Was that so hard?”
Regan fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and Zilch caught him long before he hit the floor.
“See?” Hans shrugged as Regan coughed and sobbed for breath on the floor. He hadn’t let go of Zilch’s shirt, kneeling upright instead of lying sprawled or even leaning against a wall. “That’s why it’s a good idea to listen to me, so I don’t have to do that again.”
Zilch’s blue-and-green stare was steady, narrow, and very hard. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Whatever,” Hans yawned. “Now you know I’m serious. Try to run away, or get all heroic or anything—oh, or tell anybody, definitely if you tell anybody about this, my plans, me in general—I’m doing that again. Got it?”
Silence, except for Regan’s labored wheezes.
“Okay, great! Love the enthusiasm, guys. So now if we’re done here, let’s get down to actual business. Regan, the first part of your assignment is preparing to withstand a great deal of heat. So you’re gonna need someone who can... what?” Neither of them responded. Hans rolled his eyes. “Ugh! This isn’t hard! Fireproof suits! And guns! Lots of guns. Who do we know who can make guns? And bombs?” Now Hans shot an intense, raised-eyebrow stare at Regan, arms akimbo.
“Danae?” Regan managed to get out, rubbing his sore neck. He was sure his tender frill would be bruised blue and purple tomorrow, somehow, despite the fact that the only painful pressure had been non-corporeal. Zilch’s solid hands hadn’t been nearly as rough—and now they seemed to realize one of their hands was still resting on Regan’s back, and moved away.
“Good! Yes!” Hans gave them an exaggerated slow clap. “Bingo, good job! Wow! How hard was that?”
“Hans…” Regan slowly rose to his feet. “You want my attention? You’ve got it. So just… enough. Tell me what you want. What we’re actually doing. Just tell me the truth.”
“Mmm… no.”
“Why?”
“Because if I told you, you wouldn’t do it.” Hans said flatly. “And then we’d all be dead. Even more dead, I mean. Faster.”
Regan stared, for once completely speechless.
Hans lowered his 'voice,' and his presence took on more the feeling of an intimate chat. “But really, for real, I’m doing this to make the world a better place. With the fires out, and once the river comes back, everything will be the way it should be. People will stop dying, we can bring the barrier down, everybody gets out of here, everybody lives…”
“You can’t be serious.” Regan shook his head. “Nothing’s that easy. Not in Parole.”
“I know. But soon we won’t be in Parole.” Hans spoke quietly, without a trace of his usual cavalier snark—instead, there was a strange hope in his eyes. “Just like you always dreamed… Chimera.”
Regan suppressed a shudder. When Zilch had called him by the strange-but-familiar name, it had been comforting; he felt grounded just from the memory. Coming from Hans, the syllables sounded mocking and wrong. “I don’t think we’re dreaming the same dream.”
“Uh-huh. So anyway, you two have your little projects and I’ve got a lot on my end too. So if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to see today.” Hans began to fade away before their eyes, vanishing like smoke in a breeze. “Just remember—don’t go spreading our business where it doesn’t belong. Nobody else needs to know about any of this. Or we’ll do this again. And again.”
“Wait—” Regan grabbed at him, but Hans just smiled and disappeared faster. “The fire! You can’t make us go down there! Dammit!”
He was gone. After a few seconds marked by the regular beep of the EKG, Regan glanced around and lowered his voice, making sure they were alone. “Zilch?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That was… that wasn’t fun.” His damaged frill twitched at the memory. Not just of the too-recent pain, the terror of being unable to breathe, the panic, the shock of adrenaline. There were hidden memories in the back of his brain, waiting just around a corner or behind a door. He knew the feeling of one hand on his chest, another at his neck. Or behind his back, keeping him from falling. These had happened before.
He knew the slow, wordless nod Zilch gave him in reply.
“Can I ask you something?”
Another nod.
“You called me something… another name. Chimera. Does that mean… were we friends?”
Zilch did something very strange with their face; the lower half twisted one direction and the upper another, mouth opening over chipped and broken teeth and black gums. The expression was horrifying, or would have been to most other people—but here again was the reprised feeling of recognition. Zilch was smiling. He even recognized the sadness in their mismatched, clouded eyes. They stood there, looking at Regan for a moment, then took a long-legged step toward the door.
“You really can’t tell me anything? Nothing?”
They just stared at him for a moment, then slowly put the dark sunglasses back on. “I can’t. But keep asking questions. Curiosity doesn’t always kill… cats.” With that, they stalked out the door.
Danae held her hands over Rose’s barrette and concentrated. She closed her eyes and chewed her lower lip; her fingers stretched and flexed and twitched with the effort involved in bringing the metal to life. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she fell into a quiet place in her mind. The edges rippled and slowly the hair clip curled into a delicate spiral. It lifted slowly into the air, changing as it rose. It shifted and melted and turned in midair and Danae let herself smile, power surging through her like a current of pleasurable electricity—then it stopped, and the half-formed thing fell to the tabletop with a sudden clatter.
Danae panted, crushed—it had taken all of he
r energy, all of her will, to make this sad, crumpled little thing, dead before it had even begun to live. She sat there, hands curled into fists, clenching her teeth against hot tears.
Rose had always been the one to bounce back first, find the jewel in the turd. She was out right now, walking in the gardens with Jack, trying to bring the flowers back to life and actually making something of their time in this bleak house. But when Danae closed her eyes, she saw her front door shot through with bullets, heard Jack screaming as Toto’s screws and clockwork spattered across the floor. The armed men in the police gas masks, the eyeless faces…
“Aagh!” Danae shoved her chair away from the table, snatched up the twisted barrette-thing and flung it against the wall. The half-transformation had made it brittle, and it shattered. Danae raged. She stomped around her room, punched pillows, kicked the bed and the walls—then picked up the abused pillows, pressed them to her face, and screamed.
“WHY—WON’T—THIS—WORK?”
After several minutes of rampaging around her room like a girl-shaped Godzilla, she stood very still and tried to get her breath back. The rest of the floor was silent, thank God. Nobody had heard her. And now the room seemed six sizes too small. Danae stomped out into the hall and slammed the elevator button. It dinged and opened, and she huffed inside. She folded her arms and flopped against one wall, drained after her outburst.
Then she caught sight of something orange out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t alone.
“Bwah!” she yelped, jumping back from the elevator’s other occupant.
“Hi!” The young man with the bright orange hair and wide smile said, sticking out his hand for a shake, which she shook automatically despite her shock. “Remember me?”
“Uh, uh,” Danae stammered, trying to get her heart rate back under control. “Finn, right You, uh, you drove us here. I wouldn’t forget that drive… ever.”
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