The Walls of Orion

by T. D. Fox

  Thanksgiving Day. Today. Mere hours ago. Fingers shaking, Courtney put the phone down. The jolly vocals of Burl Ives filled the kitchen once more. She stared at the counters she had just cleaned. Somehow, they looked dirty again.

  Her cell phone rang. Wary, she watched the screen glow, cutting off the Christmas music a second time. But it kept ringing. Not an alert, but a phone call. Glancing at the caller ID, she breathed a sigh of relief, and answered it.

  “Hey.”

  “Courtney. Thank God. I didn’t think you were going to answer.”

  Courtney frowned. Dina never called her by her full name. “Well, yeah. I’m having a late night.”

  Dina pulled in a breath. “How are you doing?”

  “What do you mean, how am I doing?”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  Courtney tossed her rubber gloves into the sink and turned on the tap. The plastic smell of bleach filled the kitchen. “Cleaning.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “What? It’s midnight.”

  Dina paused. “You haven’t been watching the news.”

  “News? Uh, not really. I saw a couple of alerts, but I didn’t look at all of them...” A sudden, sick feeling rose in her throat. “Did I miss something?” Did he do something worse?

  “Don’t. Don’t turn on the TV. Wait, please, don’t do anything until I come over. I’ll be right there. Give me ten minutes.”

  “Dina, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

  “Just... sit down and have a glass of water or something. I’ll be there soon. Okay?”

  Courtney watched the steam rising from the sink. “Okay.”

  Dina hung up. Courtney stared at the little gray numbers that read “Dina Ramirez, 12:47 a.m., 36 seconds.” She didn’t think she’d ever had a phone call so short with her best friend. Alarm thrumming in her chest, she turned toward the living room.

  She hadn’t sat down to watch the actual news channel in forever. Fishing the remote out from between some cushions, she turned on the TV. It took a minute or so of flipping before she found the right channel.

  BREAKING NEWS read the red-and-white caption along the bottom. A reporter sat before the camera, looking grim. In the top corner of the screen, a tiny photo—probably of a missing person—hovered.

  Courtney’s mouth went dry.

  “—was seen running through the streets, completely in the nude,” announced the anchorwoman. “Conrad Spencer, forty-eight, was declared missing this evening after what appears to be a psychological breakdown. Spencer was last spotted on Harrison Boulevard, disrupting tonight’s Thanksgiving festival, where he was recognized by a coworker.”

  The shot switched to a man standing on a street corner, looking frazzled, a microphone in his face. His eyes darted around.

  “Uh, yeah, I work with him. Conrad, he’s a nice guy. I can’t believe... I saw him this morning—”

  The microphone moved. “Can you describe for us what you saw?”

  “It was unreal. One minute, I saw Conrad, and everyone was shouting and pointing. It was crowded and he was naked, somebody was screaming. And then everyone was screaming, and by the time all the people moved out of the way I couldn’t see Conrad anywhere, I just saw this huge animal charging through the crowd. Then this big van pulled up. Almost bulldozed half the people in the street, I swear it hit somebody. These guys jumped out, all in uniform like soldiers or something. People were running around so much I couldn’t see what was going on. But I saw the animal. I couldn’t get too close, but it looked like a lion.”

  Courtney sank down to the couch. The remote slipped out of her hand and hit the carpet.

  The picture returned to the anchorwoman, who’d painted the appropriate amount of professional sympathy on her face. “This is the second person to go missing this week in conjunction with a wild animal sighting. Animal control has received numerous calls, and they are handling the situation. In the meantime, authorities are working round the clock to locate all missing persons. We ask anyone who may have information on Spencer’s whereabouts to please call the number below.”

  The woman looked down, flipped to another piece of paper on her desk, and continued, “Next up: Are the rumors true? Is a serial killer at large in Orion City? Police have no answers after finding three doctors dead in separate residences...”

  A dull roaring in her ears drowned out the sound of the TV. Courtney felt her chest growing smaller, tightening in on her airway. Her lungs burned.

  Fathers are overrated.

  She gasped. The air wasn’t getting in. Her throat was closed, she couldn’t breathe, she needed out, she needed air...

  She stood up so fast her head spun. Stumbling away from the couch, she made for the door. Her fingers shook on the deadbolt. She flung it open, and a blast of cold, wet air slid through her clothes. She stepped outside. Rain slapped her hair, running down the back of her neck.

  Keeping your head down, living like you’re small, you think things might not get better, but at least they can’t get any worse. She wasn’t sure if the voice was real or not, a memory or her own imagination, sliding in like a cold knife.

  Darlin’, you’ve got another thing coming.

  She’d kept her head down, shut out her father’s pain as she struggled to survive her own. Tonight, she might’ve walked away limping. But he... hadn’t.

  He hadn’t walked away.

  A dim, distant instinct warned her she was barefoot. The temperature was dropping; the rain would turn to ice soon. The landing of the stairs stung the bottoms of her feet. But she was already walking. She kept walking, down the stairs, out onto the sidewalk, away from the apartment building.

  The door was open. She’d left it open. Her brain latched onto that one stupid thought as she strode farther and farther away. Her apartment would be freezing when she got back. Sleet might sweep in. Anyone could walk inside.

  She kept walking, focusing on the sting of the concrete beneath her feet. It tethered her. But ten more steps, twenty more steps, and they started to go numb. She walked through a puddle, and felt nothing. Her feet didn’t belong to her anymore. They carried her out beyond her street, past the building next door. Through the alley where she’d met the real W. Out across Main Street and into the night.

  She had no idea where she was going. She couldn’t think. The sound of the rain drilled away all other sounds in her head. Her toe scuffed against a bump in the concrete. She waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. Part of her screamed in the back of her skull, a tiny instinct yelling at her to turn around and get back indoors. Call Dina. Call Jasper. Get off the streets, out of the cold. Put some shoes on.

  A different, tinier pair of feet in too-big shoes flickered across her brain. A different day, a different freezing sidewalk. Margo. That little girl squatting beside her soda-can tower, nose reddened from the cold all those weeks ago. Where was she now? Maybe W had killed her.

  The thought was so cold. But also so, so far away. She couldn’t feel anything but the burning, deep within her gut, spreading outward. She wasn’t cold. Her clothes were drenched, clinging to her body. But she wasn’t cold. Should that scare her?

  She passed an alley. From inside, she heard the scuff of a footstep. She kept walking. Didn’t turn around. Another footstep rustled behind her. What if she ran into another prowler looking for trouble? A horrifying little laugh bubbled up from her throat. What if she ran across the guys from days ago? They’d be scared of her, now, wouldn’t they? The girl who walked with the Whistler.

  The footsteps were definitely following her now. Courtney slipped her numb fingers into her pocket, and they bumped against something solid. She closed her hand around the switchblade. Of all things. She’d left her phone, her keys, and her shoes behind, but she had W’s knife in her pocket.

  She stopped and turned. There were two of them. Not the same two; these guys hardly looked more than teenagers, slouched in their dark hoodies and sagging jeans. They paused when
she turned. One leaned in to say something to the other, and a low snicker carried across the sidewalk. They continued toward her.

  Courtney moved, too—toward them. Her bare feet sloshed through a puddle. She was so numb. But her heart was beating. She could feel it again, finally, a warm drumming against the knife in her palm. She kept walking.

  The two young men slowed. They leaned in again, muttering something she couldn’t make out. One took a step forward past the other.

  “Hey,” he called. “Out late for a pretty girl, aren’tcha?”

  Courtney kept walking. Her eyes caught his, somewhere under the shadow of that hood, and didn’t let them go. He wavered.

  She realized she was shaking. But not from fear. Cold? Her heart picked up speed. No. Not the cold. The burning spread, radiating from her abdomen to her chest, down her arms.

  “Go on. I dare you.” Her low voice carried over the rain. She slipped the knife out of her pocket. “I dare you.”

  Anything. She needed to feel anything other than the terrifying combination of burning and numbness. Her heart beat faster. She picked up her pace.

  The young man stopped. He leaned back, making his buddy pause with him.

  “Go on!” The snarl startled all three of them. She gripped the knife so hard it shook, her voice rising. “You think I’m going to run from you? You think you’re scary? You haven’t seen scary. Go on! I DARE YOU!”

  That did it. Her final, unhinged screech killed whatever bravado the teenagers had worked up. Both boys spun around, swearing.

  “Psycho!”

  They took off in the other direction. Courtney watched them go, trembling from head to foot. The knife slipped out of her hand and rattled to the concrete. She stumbled back.

  Fire.

  Fire everywhere. She couldn’t breathe. Her stomach lurched, and she doubled over. Nothing came out. Something twisted, deep inside her. Her insides moved.

  The first dose of real fear pushed through the pain. Courtney stumbled again, tripping backward over her own feet. She reached out, grabbing for the wall. Her hand hit empty air. She fell hard on the wet concrete.

  Fathers are overrated.

  She couldn’t hear anything but the roaring in her blood, yet somehow that stupid line replayed in her ears. Dad. Dad. She’d snarled in his face. The last moment she’d ever get to speak with him, she’d told him he didn’t matter. She’d let her own pain hijack her attempts to heal anything, and now he was gone. He was gone, and she’d never get the chance to...

  Blackness carved in on her vision. She fought to get control of her limbs. She tried crawling. She needed to get to the alley, to get out of the street. But she was on all fours, and her insides writhed. Her hands buckled under her weight. They folded in on themselves, bones cracking and popping.

  She screamed.

  She fell, face forward on the concrete. Her legs twisted beneath her. The bones in her spine ground together, rolling sickening vibrations up through her whole body.

  She screamed again. Burning. Ripping. Tearing.

  She didn’t stop screaming until the blackness took over.

  ⬥◆⬥

  The street glowed. Rain hung on the air: delicate, freezing, sharp. It glittered in the light of the streetlamps. The moon was hidden tonight, a faint smudge behind the clouds. Even at this hour, a handful of lights glimmered from the windows of the high rises on either side. The lights never went out in Orion City. Too many people were afraid of the dark. Or, rather, of what moved in the dark.

  W tugged on the fingers of one of his gloves, slipping it off his hand. He removed the other and crushed them both into a wad, dropping them in a trash bin on the street corner. An unnecessary addition, of course. One didn’t need gloves when he could change his fingerprints within the space of a blink. But they acted as a barrier. An extra precaution, more a matter of preference than anything. Blood clung to his skin even after a shift. With gloves, he merely had to peel them off and throw them away. No stains, no scrubbing and scouring. Clean hands at the end of the night.

  A shrink would probably have a field day with that one.

  He walked through the rain, tipping his head back so he could feel it on his face. Three in one day was bold, even for him. Well, in actuality, two out of three. He’d sent one of his people after the third. But if the newspapers wanted to credit him for that one, he wouldn’t object. It couldn’t harm his reputation.

  The soft chirp of his cell phone echoed from his coat. Pulling the little burner out of his pocket, he glanced at the message.

  It’s a no-go. They upped security after today. It has to be Needle in the Haystack.

  W sighed. Without pausing his steps, he typed out a reply. Can you get me clearance?

  The device vibrated again. That would be hard. I’m just an orderly.

  Then why am I talking to you?

  The phone was silent for a moment. W was about to slip it back into his pocket when it lit up. Give me a week. I’ll get you in.

  Good. W put the phone away. A low whistle slipped past his lips out of habit. It wasn’t his usual tune, but it’d be enough to keep the streets clear around him at this time of night. He didn’t feel like running into anybody. Today had been long. And... singularly unproductive. The only thing he’d learned from the doctors was that it was going to take more than fingerprints and a keycard to get his people inside AITO. Needle in the Haystack was far from foolproof. They’d failed once, spectacularly. He might not get another chance if he failed again. He wasn’t a one-man operation anymore, but if things went south next week... he doubted there’d be anyone stepping up to take his place.

  A shrill, distant scream reverberated off the buildings ahead. W looked up. He cocked his head, listening. It was one a.m. In the middle of Westside, a scream or two wasn’t out of the ordinary. But this wasn’t a help-me-I’m-getting-mugged scream. It was primal. Animal, almost. Pure pain and terror.

  There we go. Perhaps he could make this night productive after all. Moving into the street, W headed for the source of the cry.

  Ahead, two shadows burst from around the corner. A man and a woman sprinted through the rain, the girl looking over her shoulder as he tugged her along. W heard faint voices, breathless from fright.

  “What was that?” the woman gasped. “Should we help, or—?”

  “No way! That was one of them.” The man pulled her forward. “Come on! We should call the police.”

  They didn’t notice W as they pounded away. He watched them disappear around the corner. Quickening his pace, he moved with swift, long strides toward the alley ahead.

  He had a few minutes, tops. Once the police called AITO, the vans would come skidding in from every direction. They had at least a dozen secret hideaways all over the city. W envied their ability to move so fast. He’d thrashed four or five of the bases he’d found, but more popped up in their place. It was like a ridiculous game of Whack-A-Mole. His people couldn’t beat them down fast enough.

  This Changer was lucky. A shift in the middle of the night meant fewer witnesses, which meant more time for W to find them. Had it happened a few hours earlier, the White Coats would have already bagged them.

  Slowing, W rounded the corner. A single street lamp lit the alley halfway down the narrow road. The rain slashed through the glow in golden spears, obscuring his view of whatever lay beyond.

  He reached into his coat, pulling out a long black pistol with a silencer.

  Moving into the alley, he squinted past the burn of the street lamp. A couple of dumpsters blocked his vision. As he drew nearer, he could see it stopped in a dead end against a third building a dozen yards in. Something shuffled in the blackness ahead. A snarl rattled out of the dark.

  Ah, there you are. Continuing his careful tread, W loaded a single syringe into the chamber. As it snapped into place, the growl tapered off to a high whine. W slowed his pace. These eyes, out of all the ones he shifted between, were the sharpest. He waited until they adjusted to the shadows.
Shapes emerged from the black. At first, the alley looked empty, only a brick wall, littered with trash around the base, scrawled with peeling graffiti.

  Then he saw it. The form huddled in the corner, trying to make itself as small as possible. Large yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness. The thick coat of fur may have once been copper, but it was covered in so much grime it served as a shadowy camouflage, almost blending into the darkness around it. The creature shrank back even further, ears pulled flat against its head. The snarl intensified.

  W stopped a few feet away.

  A wolf. And a small one, at that. He lowered the gun. Tranquilizers came in handy for bears, gorillas, and the like. This huddled creature looked more terrified of him than anything. Unloading the gun, W tucked it back into his pocket, and pulled out the phone instead. He dialed, not taking his eyes off the Changer.

  “Boss?” buzzed a voice at the other end.

  “Des. Bring a van. Corner of Ninth and Harrison. Quickly.”

  “Is it a big one?”

  “No. Just get here fast, we might have AITO on our tails.”

  “Got it, Boss,” Des said.

  He hung up. Slowly—every movement brought a growl from the creature at his feet—he took off his coat. He crouched down to the wolf’s level.

  “Shh,” he murmured, spreading out the coat at arm’s length. A barrier between himself and the teeth. He inched forward. “Easy, there.”

  The wolf whimpered, scooting back further into the wall. It couldn’t go anywhere. Hyper-aware of the teeth a mere foot from his forearm, W closed the gap.

  “Shh, shh, shh...” He wrapped the coat around the animal’s shaking form. The wolf shrank down, lips pulled back over its teeth. But W kept his hands on the coat, pressing down against the creature’s shoulders. Weight and pressure. These two things were a tether even when the mind was far away. Beneath the material, W felt a shift. There. Just a few more moments, now...

  He heard the pop of bones. A piercing whine slid through the wolf’s teeth, rising to a guttural snarl of pain. The Changer doubled inward on itself. Muscles twisted, bones contorted and realigned.