by Rob Horner
The darkness of a power outage was here too, and the red emergency lighting cast a lurid sheen over everything. The low tables were flipped on their sides, and I crouched behind one of them. Somewhere in the room there were guttural voices speaking an unintelligible tongue. There were bodies strewn across the floor, some behind the tables, or half-draped over the other furnishings. Gina, James, Angelica, Tiffany…they lay in pools of blood, bullet-ridden corpses facing in two directions.
For some reason, I was still alive.
Slowly, feeling the solid grip of a pistol in my right hand, I eased my head over the side of the barrier…
…and found myself upstairs in the parking garage standing in a group with Iz, Ricardo, a tall guy with broad shoulders whose name I didn’t know, Chris, and Jason.
“--clear that Mandatum has been overrun,” Fish reported from the shotgun seat of an idling black van. The garage doors were open, sunlight streaming into the underground facility. There were several bodies down on the ground, dark pools gathering around them that reflected the sunlight. They were dressed alike, in dark uniforms with wide belts holding a variety of pouches and weapons.
“Are those police?” I asked wonderingly.
“All right. Let’s load up and regroup at rendezvous point Alpha,” Iz said.
It wasn’t possible, being in three different places, privy to three different aspects of what must be the same attack on the facility.
Jason turned away to throw up violently, his right hand holding onto the back of the van for support. Chris moved over to him, mumbling words too low for me to hear. Jason shook his head, the move faster than a normal person but still slow enough to perceive, then vomited again, the noise like an explosion…
…that blew open the doors of a large office building I’d never seen before. Glass shattered from large, floor-to-ceiling windows which looked out over a parking lot where dozens of police cars and a SWAT van blocked the view of any other vehicles. Their light bars strobed blue and red into the building, reflecting and refracting off the thousands of glass shards littering the floor.
I was standing in the center of an aisle made up of portable dividers which separated cubicles containing nothing but a desk, a computer, a phone, a chair on rollers, and a secretary, though not all of them were occupied. From my position, I couldn’t make out a company logo or name, and the police piling into the building made a search for evidence unwise.
I dropped to the ground between fake aisle walls, scurrying on hands and knees into the nearest unoccupied cubicle. My heart raced and my hands clenched and unclenched, that fight or flight response shooting adrenaline through my arteries, setting every nerve alight and ready to respond.
I could purge them all, I thought, and immediately my hands began to glow.
“How do we get in?” a human voice asked. No identification, no presentation of a warrant.
A female voice with a huskiness to it that sounded like something needed to be cleared out of her throat answered, “There’s a stairwell down into the facility in the back of the building.”
A second voice, also female, also unusually husky, said, “I can manually open the parking garage as well.”
The first voice added, “Do you want us to come?” Her voice was even deeper, like she was gargling, a certain precursor to Manifesting.
“No,” the male voice, the police officer, said. “Hold the line here.”
Maybe he started to turn away, using those cool hand signals you see the police give each other on television and in the movies, but a third female voice said, “One of them is up here. I saw him duck into the middle aisle.”
Now there were footsteps, booted feet tramping across vinyl flooring, keys, handcuffs, and God-knows-what-else jingling as an untold number of well-armed policemen moved into the building. From the sounds, they were spreading out, surrounding the middle aisle by coming up the rows from either side.
The glow in my hands intensified. It was happening much quicker this time, the light growing to a blinding aura. Had any of my other discoveries grown so easy so quickly? Or had I done this more than once?
“It’s him!” someone shouted from behind me. “The Banisher!”
Oh cool, I have a nickname, ran through my head a split-second before another officer yelled, “Don’t just stand there. Shoot him!”
There might have been pain just before the deafening roar of a gunshot, I don’t really know. Something hit me, throwing me forward…
…onto a very thin carpeting covering a hard metal surface. Every muscle in my body ached. My hands, which helped break my fall so that my large and angulated nose didn’t have to, were covered with scrapes and scratches and blood, most of it old and flaking, though some was fresh and wet. The rest of my body felt similarly abused.
A groan escaped me as I tried to bring my hands in to push myself up. A foot landed on my back, holding me down. Opening my eyes, I saw a pair of black shoes standing in front of me, the tips close enough that I could spit-shine them without needing a deep breath. Not that they needed it. The shoes already shone, a black that harbored a dark redness deep inside their luster.
“Let him up,” a man said, and the foot came off my back.
Closing my eyes against the pain, I repeated my attempt, forcing muscles that had already worked beyond their endurance to gather and press. I got my knees under me, then my feet, and rose.
I was in a box. That was my first thought. A small box no more than ten feet on a side. The only furnishing was a small table to my left, and on it was…
On it was the resonator, the black box we’d worked so hard to get to.
I was in the trailer.
There was someone in front of me, but my mind didn’t want my eyes to see him yet, like it knew that would be the worst thing I could do. Harsh breathing behind me gave me a reason to delay. Over my right shoulder were the heavily draped windows I’d peeped through so many weeks ago, ages really, when you think about all that had happened. The door to the trailer was also on that side, standing open to the night. Blocking it and filling in the area between were as many demons as could fit in the tiny space.
Red eyes filled with hatred set deep into a face that was a grotesque cross between a human and a dog stared into mine. Its skin was a dark brown marbled with maroon and composed of thousands of tiny, overlapping scales like a lizard. Its mouth widened in a toothy grin, revealing rows of teeth like a shark. Had any of the others I’d faced had teeth like that? “What’re you looking at, Banisher?” it growled at me.
“Now now, we’ll have none of that,” a voice said, forcing my attention back to the front.
The polished shoes met the long hems of a pair of black tuxedo pants, though the shiny stripe on the outer sides of the legs glistened like wet red paint. The pants were buttoned and belted over a tucked-in white shirt, complete with ruffles that ran up the sides of the placket to the collar.
Disco never died for this dude, I thought, feeling a hysterical laugh trying to build inside of me. Whatever had happened to this point, I was at the end of my strength.
The hands jutting from the sleeves of the shirt were normal. No claws, no extra knuckles. Raising myself to my full height, I looked into the face of my captor.
“Did you expect to see a monster?” he asked.
His face was utterly normal, not too symmetrical, and without any distinguishing features: brown hair cut short and neat, brown eyes that gave away nothing, and a mouth set in a placid line that could turn up or down without warning. He was an inch taller than me, maybe two, and as he opened his mouth to say something else, his voice vanished.
All sound vanished. The breathing of the demons behind me, the dull, monotonous roar of carnival midway noise I hadn’t even been aware of at first, it was all gone, like I’d been struck deaf. I could see his mouth moving, forming words, but their meaning was lost.
The only lips I’d ever read had been pressed against mine, words felt in the heart more than heard.
The trailer shook violently. Even the plain guy felt it, staggering back and sideways a step. When he caught his balance and turned around, he held one of those demon statues.
Something hit me from behind, a powerful blow to the back of my head, forcing it forward and down toward the statue. I closed my eyes…
A pounding in my head brought me awake. The linen sheets beneath me were wadded and damp from sweat.
“He’s awake,” a woman’s voice said.
I tried to open my eyes, but the very act of letting in light caused my headache to worsen exponentially. A sound escaped me, somewhere between a curse and a groan.
“What is it?” a man’s voice asked. “I need to know where you hurt to fix it.”
“It’s his thing,” the woman said. “My power just kind of heals everything, but it’s superficial. His has to be focused, but he can fix anything.”
“Part of me thinks we should be able to triage ailments with our powers,” the man said. “But I haven’t figured out how, yet.”
A hand touched my forehead, soothing and cool, Angelica’s healing hand. That coolness spread out from the contact, until my entire body shared the sensation. Her power didn’t touch the headache, and that single pain was so great that I couldn’t tell if she’d helped anything else.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Tell me what hurts,” the man’s voice said again, his words quick and clipped. Ricardo, the Hispanic guy.
A memory from last night: “Don’t worry,” Tiffany called. “Ricardo can heal better than anybody.”
Keeping my eyes shut, I said, “My head. It’s the back of my head.” The act of trying to control my breathing enough to form words created a surge of nausea. My mouth filled with a cold saliva. “Gonna be sick.” I was a second or two from rolling onto my side and emptying every meal I’d ever eaten onto the floor.
And then two strong hands gripped my head, one on each side. Like two electrodes conducting electricity, an energy moved back and forth between the hands. It was one of those synesthesia moments; the energy felt blue.
The nausea receded.
The pain in my head ebbed.
“Damn, epidural hematoma,” Ricardo said. “Good thing I was here.”
The energy moving back and forth through my head intensified. My skull felt the same way your hand might when you dip it into a fast-moving stream, the current strong enough to force your arm to move. It was a wholly unique feeling and not unpleasant, and it became even stranger when the energy coalesced into a place near the base of my skull. Ricardo’s hands never moved.
“Hematoma means bleeding, right?” Angelica asked.
“An epidural hematoma is a collection of blood between the skull and the outer layer of the brain. It’s pretty-rare, but usually fatal if you can’t drain the blood and prevent it from putting pressure on the brain,” Ricardo answered.
The pain in my head disappeared.
“It generally affects young men, and is most often caused by a head injury, like what happened to you when you fell backward.”
My eyes opened, focusing on the caring brown eyes of the healer as he leaned over me. “I’m sorry if I’m scaring you,” he said, meeting my gaze. “It helps me focus if I talk through the pathology and physiology while I work.”
“He was an Army doctor, before all of this,” Angie offered, which made me re-evaluate his age. My initial perception was mid-twenties, but he must be older than that, one of those people who aged well.
“Getting this power, it’s like a dream come true,” he said, “but at the same time, it feels like I spent a lot of time in school to learn skills I don’t need anymore.”
His hands fell away from my head, and the last of the pain went with them. Gingerly, anticipating a return of the headache, I sat up, swinging my legs over the side. There was no spinning, no dizziness, and my head stayed pain free.
I was in the small infirmary, three narrow beds separated by blue curtains on ceiling rods that could be pulled all the way around to provide as much privacy as possible. There were none of the usual pieces of medical equipment one might expect, no vital sign monitor, no crash cart, though there was a small set of drawers set off to the side, its top covered by one of those blue and white absorbent chucks. The room wasn’t overly large, just a white on white rectangle maybe twenty feet on the long side. I was in the first of the three beds, and the second one was empty. The curtain was pulled around the third bed. There was a door on the wall nearest my side, and another in the center of the long facing wall, roughly in line with the foot of the second bed. There were large windows along that wall as well, providing a dim view of the hallway we’d walked along when Iz led me from the elevator to the Distilling room.
“What happened?” I asked. “How long was I out?”
“Do you remember what you were doing?” Ricardo asked. Angie looked like she’d been about to say something as well.
The moments just before I was knocked unconscious were clear and easily recalled. Equally prominent was the dream of an attack by the police, or by Dra’Gal masquerading as police. The timing leapt out more than anything. Sometime after we did something at the police station, or something at the mall. Since neither had happened yet, we should be safe, if the dream was anything like the others and not just a fabrication brought on by a traumatic head injury.
What did it mean that I witnessed the attack from so many different locations? They were all me, all from my perspective. I was sure of that. But it wasn’t possible to be in so many places at once.
“It was pretty amazing,” Ricardo said. “You’ll have to watch the video recording to see for yourself.”
“There’s a video recording?”
“Iz insisted,” Angie said. “Said if we’re going to be keeping prisoners, then we need to make sure they stay prisoners.”
Her comment reminded me of something heard while the light was building between my hands. “I heard someone shouting.”
Angie sat down on the foot of the bed, her hands resting in her lap. “First of all, you should know that your trick, thing, whatever it was…it worked. You purged all those Dra’Gal. Including the one who was also gifted.”
“He’s still unconscious,” Ricardo added, nodding in the direction of the curtain-blocked bed. “The rest are, too, but they’re being kept comfortable in the same room. We just wanted to separate him.”
“And Josh,” Angie said. “Don’t forget about him.”
My face must have shown my confusion, because she hurried to continue. “He’s one of the guards who was stationed down there. You might have noticed them when you walked in.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
Angie looked down, and though I didn’t know her that well, her expression appeared to be embarrassment. The scarred side of her face was turned away from me, and without it, she looked…vulnerable. She took a deep breath and said, “You told me before that your friend’s inability to turn her sight off saved you several times, right?”
I nodded.
“And even though you said that, I’ve been surprised more than once when you remind me to look, and I see a white aura alternating with the red. It’s second nature, now, to live with it off, because having it on feels like I’m just not seeing things clearly.”
I started to say something, but she hurried on, overriding me. “Like now, with you in the room. You glow so brightly that it’s distracting, and it feels like I need to turn my power off just to think straight. Well, I never bothered turning it on with the people who were already here. I don’t know if there are supposed to be other failsafe mechanisms in place, or if they really are just counting on people like me to keep my eyes open, but I really screwed up with Josh.”
“He was a…convert?” I asked.
“We think so,” Ricardo said, giving a brief pat to Angie’s shoulders. “As soon as your fists started to glow, he tried to leave the room.”
I remembered the shout
ing.
“What we experienced in there was amazing,” the Hispanic man continued. “Bright as the sun, but not painful. When you closed your hands, it was like one of those made-up special effects for the Big Bang, these millions of tiny, white particles expending out in a ring from you, washing over everything. The Dra’Gal went down like a light switch was flipped, collapsing right where they stood.”
“Did it hurt you?” I asked.
“No, but I felt something. I’m not sure if it was just because it seemed like I should feel something, a psychosomatic symptom, or if it really did something to me, but I felt at peace.”
Angie was nodding along.
“But it didn’t last long and then you were down on the ground and unconscious.”
“Gina said something similar happened when you helped her with the wall,” Angie said, “so I wasn’t too worried at first. But when you didn’t wake right up, and my power didn’t help, we got Ricky to look at you.”
“And as we left the room, we saw Josh, face down in the corridor,” Ricardo said.
“He’s in with the others right now,” Angie finished. “We’ll see how much he remembers when he wakes up. That’ll give us a good idea how long he’s been converted.”
When she fell silent, no one said anything for several minutes. I hoped the brunette wasn’t feeling too bad about not using her power all the time. Crystal complained regularly about how bright Tanya and I were, how hard it was to look at us, but even after figuring out how to turn it off, she left it on. Part of that was undoubtedly her worry about being surprised again, and with good reason. Her power saved us more than once, and there was no way to know how things would stand if she hadn’t been able to warn us about the invisible demons.
Dra’Gal, I amended silently.
“You’ll need to look at everyone,” I said softly. I hadn’t been able to see much while tucked up under a desk, but some of those workers in the office had to be Dra’Gal. “Including in the offices upstairs.”
“I know,” she said. “I…what? What do you mean the offices upstairs? No one goes up there. It’s part of the cover.”