«Are you sure she’s faster?»
«Definitely. And think about it. We got superpowers from being exposed to the rift. Why not the Darklings too?»
«Impossible,» Aria said. «The Dark and the Light are incompatible. Wraith said it back at Popigai’s office: They’re non-overlapping magisteria.»
«Wraith also told us that plenty of Darklings are trying to break that barrier,» Ninety-Nine said. «My head is full of official reports where Darklings bathed in weird chemicals or ran naked through cyclotrons in an attempt to become super. It hasn’t worked so far, but they keep trying.»
«Looks like somebody finally succeeded,» I said. «Except it seems to have driven the panther feral. She’s … oh damn, here comes the bear.»
THE DARKLING POLAR BEAR EMERGED FROM THE RIFT
It landed on the floor with the force of a meteor impact. The floorboards splintered and broke. They were thick fir planks that could hold the weight of market-day throngs, but they couldn’t withstand the bear’s landing. I didn’t know the normal mass of a feroform were-bear, but this one was obviously way off the charts.
The bear glowed with the same brown nimbus as the panther, but I didn’t expect super-speed. This time, I thought the nimbus implied a greatly increased mass, likely with a corresponding boost in strength and damage resistance.
«Feroform polar bear,» I transmitted to my teammates. «Super-dense, so probably super-strong and super-tough.»
«On it,» Aria said, and this time I didn’t stop her. If the bear had become as feral as the panther, it would attempt to rip out the guts of some unlucky bystander. We couldn’t let that happen again.
«I’m on backup,» Ninety-Nine said. She leapt up onto the nearest support pillar, then swung from pillar to pillar toward the stairway. (That girl played way too much Tomb Raider.) Her moves kept her above the heads of the crowd, letting her make faster progress than she would have on the ground.
I gritted my teeth but said nothing. I had to stop thinking Ninety-Nine was weaker than the rest of us. In fact, I had to stop thinking of everyone as a weak link, including myself. Time to become the shining Zircon.
MEANWHILE, DAKINI APPROACHED THE WIDOW
She clearly trusted Aria and Ninety-Nine to handle the downstairs fuss. However, dealing with the were-beasts was only symptomatic relief. Dakini wanted to understand the roots of the problem. She thought she could do that by dumpster diving into the Widow’s brain.
Dakini slid behind a pillar a few paces back from the Widow. A violet tendril extended from Dakini’s forehead and snaked across the intervening distance, jabbing into the Widow’s skull like a plug into a socket.
I thought Dakini’s powers were only visible to me, but the Widow sensed the attempted intrusion. A black aura sprang up around the Widow’s body, and a moment later, the tendril disintegrated in a whizz of violet sparks.
The Widow wheeled toward Dakini’s position. She raised a finger like an angry schoolmarm. The finger aimed at Dakini. Black energy emerged, with the look of a diseased nerve cell. The cell’s nucleus nestled against the Widow’s fingertip and a thicket of black dendrites bristled out in all directions, but a single long axon shaft lanced straight toward Dakini.
Dakini threw up a violet barrier to stop it. For several seconds, the axon stabbed the barrier over and over, making no headway. Then Elaine, standing beside the Widow, laid her hand on the woman’s arm. Elaine whispered and, after a moment, the Widow lowered her finger. The attack on Dakini vanished.
Elaine looked at Dakini. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I could ask the same question,” Dakini said. “Do you realize your companion opened a hole in the universe?”
Elaine looked at the Widow in surprise. The Widow showed no reaction. I wished I knew what secrets they were hiding; clearly Dakini wished the same, because a new violet tendril sprang out of her head and slithered toward Elaine.
The Widow pointed her finger at the tendril. Dakini backed off.
Before anyone could speak, another detonation went off downstairs.
ALL THIS TIME, I’D BEEN EMBEDDED IN THE WALL
I’d moved my viewpoint, but not my body. When the building shook under the second detonation, a shock of air blew into the mouth of my hiding place. Lucky for me, I was a boat in a safe harbor, only catching the edge of a storm.
Outside was worse. Fires had ignited from candelabra knocked over by the blasts. Mostly, the candles had just gone out, extinguished by gusts of wind. Only a handful had stayed alight, and even fewer had fallen onto anything flammable. When I’d surveyed the building after the first explosion, the fires were just getting started; with my bright-as-day vision, I hadn’t even noticed that the candlelight was gone. Now the fires burned harder and were spreading in all directions, perhaps feeding on magical energies woven into the merchandise.
The people still on their feet were mostly Darklings. Non-Dark staff had been bowled over by the explosions, unless they were far removed from the double ground zero. Even those still upright had injuries: cuts from flying debris, plus damage from two consecutive concussion blasts. Blood ran from ears and noses.
The whole bottom of the building was knee-deep in vapor. Brown gas flooded from the rift, which was growing. Its top nearly reached the lower floor’s ceiling, and the base dug into the ground. Where it touched the floorboards, they ceased to exist, negated from reality.
«FUCK»
That came from Aria, speaking inside my head. I needed a moment to locate her. The most recent explosion had tossed her against a wall, far from both the rift and the replicator. She’d saved herself from the impact by throwing up her golden force field, but as she got to her feet she seemed wobbly.
«What happened?» I asked.
«The fucker exploded!»
«Which fucker?»
«The bear! He headed for a woman like he intended to eat her, so I sang him in the face. The stupid bugger started vibrating like a jackrabbit. Next thing I knew, kaboom.»
«Vibrating?» That came from Ninety-Nine. «Shit.» She yelled out loud, “Everybody run!”
«What’s wrong?» Aria asked.
Ninety-Nine didn’t answer. I saw her sprinting like Usain Bolt for the stairs to the second floor. I moved my Spark-o-Vision back to see what she was running from.
The were-panther lay on the ground near the man she’d been eating. She must have caught the brunt of the blast when the polar bear exploded. Now she lay unconscious, her body quivering unnaturally. In Spark-o-Vision, she strobed like a cheap visual effect, alternating rapidly between bright white and deep black, the way that Dalek death rays used to.
Light-dark-light-dark. I had a sick suspicion what it meant. I yanked my Spark-o-Vision far back from the panther’s strobing and shouted through my comm ring, «Brace for impa—!»
THE PANTHER BLEW UP WETLY
Under Spark-o-Vision, the explosion combined both bright and black—a moiré pattern of black and white bands fluttering stroboscopically.
The effect burst outward, smashing anything that got in the way. After the two preceding explosions, much had already been flattened, but the bulky wooden pillars holding up the building were still intact. The blast lashed into them, flaying off splinters and exposing the raw wood beneath. The fires that burned all around the ground floor seemed to feed off the explosion’s energy: Flames whooshed and spread into hotter infernos. The outburst of power also fed the otherworldly rift. It dug deeper into the floor and up into the ceiling, ramming a hole to the building’s upper floor.
Nothing remained of the panther. Her body had been rendered into light, heat, and fumes. Nothing to see except floorboards charred black where she’d been lying.
Spontaneous Darkling combustion. I suspected she wouldn’t be the last.
«What the hell is going on?» Aria demanded. After the bear’s explosion, she’d been slammed into the building’s outer wall. Now the blast from the panther had smacked her against the same damaged
wood, and this time, she’d gone through. She lay half in, half out of the building, sprawled on a litter of broken lumber. Snow drifted down onto her golden gown and mask.
«The super-Darklings are unstable,» Ninety-Nine said. I’d seen her racing for the stairs, but she hadn’t gone up them. She’d run behind, taking shelter in the gap beneath the steps. Only her head stuck out as she surveyed the damage. «It must be what happens when a Darkling gets superpowers. The Dark can’t hold the Light. If anything hits ’em hard, they fly to pieces.»
Aria said, «So the polar bear … I was the one who made him blow up? I hit him with a sound blast.»
«Dude,» Ninety-Nine said, «the guy was a pimple ready to pop. And he was going cannibal, right? You had to stop him.»
«I had to stop him, not kill him.»
«Popigai killed him,» Ninety-Nine said. «Popigai turned him into a crazed carnivore time bomb. All you did was put the poor guy out of his misery.»
«But … »
«Aria,» I interrupted, «you’ll have a second chance to see if super-Darklings can be saved. Here come the vampires.»
I’D SEEN MOVEMENT INSIDE THE RIFT
Both vampires were on the move, flailing in zero-G toward the portal. The male made it out first, tumbling onto the floor in a cloud of brown mist. We didn’t have to wait to see what superpowers he’d acquired. The moment he got to his feet, his eyes flared like furnaces and sizzling brown beams shot out.
The vampire’s target was a were-eagle who’d just flown down from the second floor. The eagle might have intended to help the wounded, put out fires, or otherwise make a constructive contribution. At least, I like to think that—it’s nice to believe a person’s last thoughts are virtuous.
The vampire’s brown lasers struck the eagle. The beams sliced through the bird’s wings with surgical precision, severing both at the shoulder. The eagle’s body dropped, but not as fast as you might imagine: Its bones were hollow, its body was light, and its singed, smoking feathers caught the air, slowing the descent. The eagle’s wings took even longer to fall, buoyed up on the air like kites. They tumbled and twisted all the way down, until they landed in two floppy heaps.
The eagle shrieked in agony, thrashing on the ground and trying to crawl toward its wings. The vampire’s face stayed deadpan. He merely scanned the area for someone else to hurt.
THE FEMALE VAMPIRE EMERGED FROM THE RIFT A MOMENT LATER
She toppled onto the male vampire, who was still standing right in front of the rift’s mouth. He’d been so keen to use his laser eyes that he hadn’t put any distance between himself and the portal. He turned to gaze at the female vampire, and shot her with his eye beams.
Smoke billowed from her flesh where the beams struck. She hissed in rage. Her body started strobing light-dark-light-dark, but that didn’t stop her from retaliating. Her arms transformed into shining silver cleavers and slashed at her male counterpart. She didn’t quite lop off his head, but she left it dangling from strands of gristle at the back of his neck.
Double strobe effect. Ninety-Nine and Aria simultaneously yelled, “Fuck!” Ninety-Nine dived under the stairs again while Aria (now outside the building) flew straight up and out of sight. Ninety-Nine shouted, “Everybody, get to cover!” just before both vampires went off like incendiaries.
I’D BEEN WATCHING THEM CLOSELY. BAD IDEA
Before, when the panther exploded, I’d pulled my Spark-o-Vision back to a safe distance. This time, I forced my perception to stay mere inches from the vampires. I thought maybe if I saw exactly what happened, I might be able to do something the next time. The Bride and the bogeyman were still in the rift, and I could guess that they’d soon be coming out.
But when the two vampires detonated, my head filled with the flash of their annihilation: Light and Dark energies bursting outward. Fire and ice stabbed into my brain; flame through my right eye, cold through my left. The stabs seemed like physical things—a red-hot poker and an icy needle. Something went SNAP inside my skull and I went blind.
More accurately, my Spark-o-Vision cut out. I could see, but only with my damp physical eyeballs, nearsighted and dependent on photons. I found myself in near-total blackness. Only a hint of light reached me in the hole where I’d been hiding all this time.
Even when I clambered out, I could barely see. The rift, still growing, was a ghost in the darkness. The fires throughout the building seemed dimmer than before. Had some of them been extinguished by the explosion? No. I realized that my eyes were just too small to catch much light. If they were a thousand times smaller than normal human eyes, they’d only receive a thousandth of the usual input. Or was it a thousandth squared? One way or another, everything was much much darker.
I grew to the size of a butterfly. My vision improved, yet I still felt blinkered. I’d only had superhuman perception for a few hours, but it was already the way I knew vision ought to be. Losing it hurt. I hoped the loss was just a brief overload that would fix itself as fast as Ninety-Nine recovered from wounds. But the SNAP in my head had been ominous—the sound of something breaking forever.
THE RIFT PULSED LIKE A DRUMBEAT
In that moment of pulsing it grew, thrusting farther through the ceiling and floor. Without thinking, I tried to shift my viewpoint to see how close the rift was to breaking through the roof. My weak mundane eyes remained stubbornly in my head.
I didn’t need Spark-o-Vision to know the building was in trouble. Its timbers had taken a beating. And what about the snow? The roof slanted so that most snow would slide off, but the flakes were sticky enough that a layer would cling to the roofing. The weight would be pressing down on damaged supports.
If the building collapsed, Darklings and humans alike would get crushed. No one on the bottom floor seemed conscious except my teammates. People on the upper floor weren’t badly injured, but how could they get out except through the ground floor?
I used my comm ring. «Dakini, if you see fire exits up where you are, start everyone evacuating. If not, rip a chunk out of the wall. With all the snow we’ve been getting, maybe it’s deep enough for people to jump into without getting hurt.»
«I’ve already begun the evacuation,» Dakini said. «What about the three of you?»
«I’m fine,» Ninety-Nine answered. «I’ll start carrying out the wounded.»
«But carefully!» Aria said, wherever she was. «Some likely have spinal injuries.»
Ninety-Nine said, «You seem to forget I’m an Olympic-level EMT. And an MD too, now that I think of it. Whoa! I really am a doctor. I know all kinds of shit about … oh fuck!»
«What’s wrong?» we all said in unison.
«My brain just downloaded an entire medical library. You do not want mental pictures of every known skin disease.»
«Less talk, more action,» Aria said. «Meanwhile, Zircon and I … fuck, here come the demons.»
THE BOGEYMAN EMERGED FIRST
He was wreathed in brown vapor. It curled and eddied around him like a cape, quite possibly a result of his powers. In a movie, the effect would be pure cheese, but not with a real-life Darkling. The bogeyman’s Shadow was so intense, even clichés became terrifying. With my diminished vision, I could barely see him; he was just an unfocused blur inside the vapor cloud, and he still nearly made me pee myself.
Then the bogeyman disappeared. Right from under my eyes.
«Invisibility?» Aria said. «Are you fucking kidding me?»
«Can you pick him up on sonar?» I asked.
«No good,» Aria said. «His powers must work on sonar too.»
«Then stay near the ceiling,» I said. «He may be invisible, but he likely can’t fly.»
«Screw that,» Aria said, «I have a force field. I’ll let him grab me, then I’ll fly him straight into the stratosphere. If and when he explodes, no one gets hurt except the ozone.»
I didn’t say it, but Aria was putting a lot of faith in her force field: not just that it could prevent the bogeyman from hurting her (with wh
atever superpowers he now possessed) but that her field would also protect her if the bogeyman blew up while he was holding her.
Still, I had no better ideas for dealing with Mr. Bogey. At least Aria’s plan would avoid more injuries to people and the building.
If it didn’t kill Aria herself.
I TOOK TO THE AIR, FLYING SEMIBLINDLY TOWARD THE RIFT
Ahead of me, the Bride awoke. She uncoiled from the fetal position and floated out into the Market. Brown vapor dropped away from her like a discarded amniotic sac. She shone clearly and more distinctly than the world around her—the only thing my dim eyes could bring into focus.
A vision in white. Then she began to scintillate with power. Flecks of energy shot off the Bride like sparks from a welding torch. Each spark had a different color: hot reds, blues, and greens. A burning yellow one came straight at me with the speed of a meteor.
You know those cartoons where a huge ball of snow rolls down a mountain and plows into somebody at the bottom? I had no time to get out of the way. There was only the moment of seeing it shoot toward me on a collision course. Then I was completely engulfed in yellow light.
My brain erupted in agony—sharp pain and dull throbbing, like a migraine and stuffed sinuses with a toothache on top. My eyes flooded with tears. My stomach heaved. Yet a pinprick of clarity shouted inside me. Psionic attack. Induced nausea. Fight it.
As Dakini had warned, it didn’t matter if my body was too small to see. My psyche loomed large enough for the Bride’s mental powers to target.
I could barely think from the pain, let alone move. I managed to flap my arms, more a spasm than a deliberate action. I was totally blind now, my real eyes as dead as my Spark-o-Vision. Even so, I could feel myself moving closer to the source of my torment. Pain intensified, pounding in my temples like a rock hammer. I flapped again; the pain increased. Over and over I flapped forward, barely conscious, as if something alien had taken possession of my arms.
The alien thing was Zircon, finally freed in full. Kim was in too much pain to exert the slightest control.
But even Zircon had limits. It persisted far beyond Kim’s mortal endurance, but in the end, even a Spark of the Light can exhaust its strength.
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