Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14)

by Robert J. Crane

  Some competent assistance, Harmon said.

  “Oh, shut up and help me win this fight,” I said, sweeping toward Friday and the mercenaries.

  As I came blazing around the corner and got ahead of Friday, something curious happened. It was as though my mind … opened up. Like a fog was lifted, and suddenly I could see around the corner, could see past the next fiber of carpet standing like a tree blocking my path. I could feel things, see things, know things that I wouldn’t have been able to a moment earlier. The nearest merc in front of me had an itchy trigger finger, had already fired a dozen rounds because his squad leader had told him to. He had his gun down, searching for prey that was low to the ground …

  I went high and came down on him. He saw me just in time to want to let out a scream of panic at the tiny human shooting toward him, but I stifled his panic and rocked him with a perfectly placed hit to the jaw that put his lights out. He sagged, and I came up and smacked the squadmate just behind him who’d caught sight of me but hadn’t said anything yet because I had shut down his speech.

  Two more guys came bounding up behind him, and I could see their intent to fire before they did. Through their eyes, I could tell the aim path of their guns, and I moved accordingly, dodging as they shot. I turned down their perceptions—

  I’m doing that, actually.

  —Whatever, Harmon turned down their perceptions, and they were suddenly blissfully unaware of each other as I dodged between them and they blew each other's brains out. Meanwhile, back in the tight cluster behind them, a subtle adjustment to the hearing centers of the next squad coming up made them all think that the gunshots had come from behind them—

  I hit them while their backs were turned, beating their asses in a frenzy, fighting these giants that were four times my size while pasting them with metahuman strength that allowed me to shatter bones and hit like a bullet. They would have screamed and cried, but I made them hold it in, crippling and killing them the way I could now tell they would have happily done to me if they’d but had a chance.

  Friday came charging past with a merc clutched in his arms, looking a little like an ant carrying away a morsel three times its size, singing the song “Runaway Train” at the top of his lungs. Which I had to turn down in the perception of two of the nearing squads. “Is he singing …?” I asked as he tore past.

  “Be my Eric Clapton in this duet!” Friday shouted, throwing the soldier in his hands up in the air. The guy smacked off a carpet fiber and came flipping back down, landing fatally hard. He did not move.

  “… No,” I said as I dove toward the next squad. I was going to take these assholes apart. If Friday didn’t beat me to it.

  69.

  Greg

  “It was always going to come to this, wasn’t it?” Sam asked as Greg wrapped his hands around Sam’s neck and started to squeeze.

  “Pretty sure,” Greg said as Sam whipped a thumb at his eye. Greg broke his hold and tossed Sam back to avoid it, but Sam started to grow.

  The world around them was a frightening spectacle at this size. Motes of dust drifted by like asteroids running across the heavens above them. The slightest breeze could move them at this mass, and Greg considered it lucky that the air conditioning and heat didn’t seem to be running, and that the door to outside wasn’t in this room.

  Greg slapped a hand on Sam’s, gripping him tight, then stopped him from growing.

  Sam just stared at him, straining like he was trying to lift something a few tons too heavy for him. Finally, he stopped. “Well, damn. You never told me it worked like that. What is this? Like a thumb wrestling contest? You win, so I can’t shrink or grow while you’re running the show on me?”

  “Something like that,” Greg said, and plowed him in the face with a hard hit, growing as he did so. So long as he held on to Sam, Sam couldn’t use his power, which meant that Greg could just grow to the size of an adult compared to Sam and smack him around like a misbehaving child.

  Sam shook his head, a little shadow of blood staining his upper lip. “You look like you’ve done this before, Greg. You give your kid a good smack every now and again when he lips off at you?”

  How does he know about Eddie …?

  Greg froze, not catching Sam’s grin until it was too late. He brought his hand down on Greg’s wrist and a shock of pain ran through it as Sam broke the hold and grew a few inches, smacking Greg across the face as he did so.

  He didn’t know … he was just talking until he hit a nerve …

  “I don’t like this side of you, Greg,” Sam said, tromping toward him as he swelled in size. “Feels like you’re denying who you really are. You’re acting all weird, throwing in with your marks, people you’re supposed to be killing.”

  “The contract was cancelled,” Greg said, picking himself up and trying to match Sam as he grew, wiping a trickle of blood off his own lip. “And I don’t like any side of you.”

  “That cuts me right to the quick,” Sam said, coming at him again with a hard punch that Greg shrank to dodge. “Hits me in the heart, you know.”

  Greg flicked at his fingernail, and the pistol he habitually hid right underneath it. He made it swell as he knocked it loose from the place where it sat buried in his skin, lifting it up as he drew aim on the center of Sam’s chest. “No, but this will.”

  He fired and Sam grew swiftly, trying to outrun the damage of the pistol shots. Greg grew as well, trying to match it, but he knew already he wasn’t having much luck. The bullets were pinpricks and little else, and if Sam kept going …

  “Gimme that,” Sam said, swiping for the gun. Greg shrank it out of his grasp and reached up, tagging Sam in the mouth with another punch that rocked him back a step. “You know,” he said, rubbing his jaw, “you hit pretty hard for a little guy, Greg. I always thought it fit real well that you went the opposite direction of most Atlases with your powers—you know, given how stunted your ass is by nature.”

  “Now who’s cutting who to the quick?” Greg said, elbowing Sam as he made another clumsy attempt at physical combat. This was something of an impasse; Greg had tools he could use, of course, but they’d keep changing sizes. Sam had a slight advantage in that it probably wouldn’t bother him to go big, big enough to maybe even destroy the building like Godzilla, but Greg couldn’t allow that. It would draw the sort of scrutiny he wouldn’t care to deal with.

  “Well, you took the legs out from under me by taking out McGarry,” Sam said, dodging backward and stopping. They stood facing each other, both of them acknowledging the standoff. “That was a real blow to my future prospects. Hit me right where it hurt, I’ll admit.” Sam grinned. “Maybe now I’ll do the same favor—hit you right where it’ll hurt, take away one of your new friends—” He smiled and darted off, growing all the while, zipping around the corner toward where they’d left Sienna and Friday behind—

  70.

  Augustus

  “Anybody else hungry?” I asked, sticking my head up above the people all ensconced in their paperwork, focus down. The bullpen was like a funeral home in the middle of a wake, no one daring to raise their voice—until me. “I’m thinking I’m going to go to Punch and get a pizza. Anyone else want one?”

  “I’m good,” Veronika said, still working diligently. She’d been damned quiet today, and she didn’t even look up now. Something was stealing her feisty.

  “Think I’ll get takeout from Manny’s later,” Scott snarked at me.

  “I’m good,” Jamal said.

  I paused when they stopped talking, wondering if I was hearing a faint buzzing noise. I looked around, trying to find the source. I’d thought I’d heard it a few minutes earlier, super faint, from somewhere near the entrance to my cubicle, but … there was nothing there but empty carpet.

  “All right,” I said, shaking off that weird feeling, “well, if anyone wants anything—”

  “Text me your order,” Colin said as he shot to his feet, “I’ll save you the carbon.” And he blew past the ent
rance to my cubicle at warp speed, sending a wind through that I had to block with my body to keep it from destroying my stack of papers.

  “Damn, man,” I said as the place started to settle down once his windy ass passed through, “I just wanted to get out of here for a little while.”

  “Send him your order and get back to the grindstone,” Reed said from behind me, barely stifling a grin. “Come on. We get through all this crap, I’ll take you all out for drinks tonight to celebrate.”

  “Yay,” I said, settling back in my chair. Something moved again, out of the corner of my eye, at the entrance to my cube. I spun in my chair and stared. Huh. Just a ratty piece of commercial carpeting. Nothing going on there. Shaking my head, I went right back to work, counting the number of forms I had to file before I could call this day done.

  71.

  Sienna

  INCOMING! Harmon screamed as I was wrecking a squad of guys on the far side of the battlefield. The carpet was really working to my advantage in giving cover, and so was the fact I could fly, because for some reason these idiots seemed to think they were in a real war, in a real forest, and that people couldn’t swoop down on them from above. The good news was they weren’t learning, because they were dying too fast to.

  I looked up when Harmon screamed his warning right in my head, but it didn’t do a bit of good. Something blew past like the shadow of a demon rising up from hell. Something smashed the carpet forest next to me, but I was already heading low before it picked up again and was gone, leaving a bunch of guys squished in its wake.

  But that wasn’t the only effect of the hell beast that had just ended the world slightly to my left. The thunderous impact had rocked the ground beneath, a compression wave of sound flattening the soldiers who weren’t affected by it directly, and launching the others into the air from the earthquake effects.

  “Friday!” I shouted as I saw him tumble by, a hundred feet off the ground. I reached over and snatched him before he hit his apogee and started sailing back to a crushing death below.

  “Whew,” Friday said as I realigned my grip so as not to absorb him, “that was starting to get really ugly. What do you suppose that was?”

  “A foot, I think.” I thought immediately of Colin Fannon, the speedster. He’d probably blown past in a whirlwind of action, and damned near cleaned us out in the process.

  “Anyone left alive down there?” I asked, circling low again.

  Not many, Harmon said. Greg and Sam were behind the cubicle wall over there, but they’re headed back here—oh, no—

  “Wha—” I started to ask, but didn’t get the chance.

  As I came in for a landing, Sam lunged at me from behind a blind carpet fiber corner. I hadn’t even known he was there, now that I was out of telepathy mode. He came at me like Superman, fists forward, and I snapped into a defensive stance, throwing Friday to the side in one smooth motion.

  “Wheeee!” Friday shouted as he flew laterally.

  I put my hands up as Sam came closer and closer. It was a standard move, designed to allow me flexibility to bat away a strike, to catch a punch in my hands, and to lift my arms and wrists to use as shields against battering blows.

  Sam … didn’t do any of those things.

  He shrank before my eyes, nearly disappearing as he shot toward me. I wasn’t quite quick enough to smack him like a fly, and he sailed under my guard—

  Sam struck me in the chest, perfectly placed between the ribs, breaking through the skin and entering my body like a bullet.

  “No!” Greg shouted, coming around the corner. “No!” He took one look at me, eyes falling right to my wound, and he paled visibly. “He’s—he’s in your bloodstream.” He looked up right at me, like he was pronouncing a death sentence, “He’s … he’s inside you now.”

  72.

  Greg

  “How rude,” Sienna said, a look of irritation flashing briefly across her face.

  Greg couldn’t find it in himself to laugh, nor to cry, though he did feel closer to the latter. Hadn’t he told her? Hadn’t he warned her about Sam’s means, his common method of killing? He was sure he had, thought it had stuck in her mind. How could it not? Inducing an aneurysm? Hell, Sam could just grow in her heart, destroying it completely. She was so small right now, no one would ever find the body.

  “This is a catastrophe,” Greg whispered, looking back up at her, unable to quite catch his breath. He was about to witness this woman—this brave woman—die in front of his eyes at the hands of cowardly Sam.

  “Tell me about it,” Sienna grunted, sighing.

  “I’ll—I’ll go in after him,” Greg said, taking a step back, ready to jump into the wound. If he could get in there in time, maybe—

  “Hold up there, cowboy,” Sienna said with a weary sort of patience.

  Greg just stared at her, gawking. Did she really not understand that death was sweeping through her veins right now, heading toward her heart or brain? “But—”

  “Catch me,” she said, and lifted a finger—

  Which she then lit on fire—

  And rammed right into the hole between her ribs.

  She didn’t scream, but only because she passed out within a second of sticking the flaming finger between her ribs. The sick, searing smell of meat cooking made Greg take an involuntary step back, so that when she toppled over, unconscious, he couldn’t even catch her—

  “Gotcha,” Friday said, darting in behind her and breaking her fall. He had her in his arms and laid her down, across the base mat under the large carpet fiber tree that stretched above them.

  “What did she do?” Greg marveled, staring at the hole in her side. Blood bubbled out, steaming, and a couple seconds later, a small, almost invisible little lump washed out—

  Greg snatched it up, growing it in his fingers until it was doll-sized. He stared at the burned skin, the hanging body limp in his grasp. “Oh.”

  “That’s your boy Sam, right?” Friday asked, still kneeling next to Sienna’s head.

  “Yes,” Greg said, staring at the lolling little corpse as though it would spring to life and start cursing him, a tiny leprechaun with a drawl. “Did she … boil him to death in her own blood?”

  Friday guffawed. “That sounds like something she’d do, yeah.”

  He stared down at Sienna, who lay flushed and unmoving upon the matting. “Is she going to be all right …?”

  Friday glanced down, and ran his hand over her forehead. “Yeah. Wolfe’s probably—”

  Sienna sat up suddenly, her mouth gaping open and a smoke ring puffing its way out. “Hot damn,” she said, and then launched into a fit of coughing that she only stopped once she caught sight of the corpse of Sam perched between Greg’s fingers. “Oh, good. I was worried he’d get stuck in my body and I’d recirculate him until he started to rot. Give me assassin blood cancer or something. That cannot be good for your health.”

  “Not as bad as an aneurysm,” Greg said, lifting Sam up to look him in the eye. They were open, staring, his face nearly seared off. “Or a heart attack.”

  “Hey, can I see that?” Friday asked, hand extended.

  Greg took a look at Sam’s corpse, then offered it to Friday. “Yes. Why do you wa—”

  Friday snatched it up and then slammed it against the latticework of the mat. The body broke into pieces and Friday laughed. “Kittens! That was so cool.”

  “Ugh,” Sienna said, getting to her feet. She was still looking a little flushed, so Greg came to her side and offered her an elbow. She shook her head, and stood there, getting her balance. “So … I think that’s the end of the mini-mercs.”

  “Yup,” Friday said. “And we wiped out Sam the Spam. No, wait—Sam the Sham? Sam the Sham-Not-Wow?”

  “We saved your life, Friday,” Sienna said wearily. “And that of everyone else in the room.” She looked around, though it was near impossible to see anyone from here, them being so small. “Not that they’ll ever know.”

  “Mmm,” Greg sa
id, nodding. “This feels … curiously satisfying.”

  “Welcome to Team Good Guy,” Friday said, clapping him on the back hard enough to nearly send him flying into the carpet fiber they were beneath.

  “Yeah,” Sienna said, “you’ll like it here. We’ve got cupcakes. And unicorns, maybe. I don’t know, something cool.” She seemed to be reserved, holding something back. “So … we’ve got one last thing to do before the job’s done …”

  73.

  Augustus

  I worked until I couldn’t handle working no more, couldn’t dot one more I, cross one more T, and I stood up and said, “That’s it! I’m taking a break!”

  “Take a break then,” Veronika said, not lifting her head. “You’re a big boy. No need to be a drama king about it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, no one else speaking up, “I’m gonna go … get a breath of fresh air or something … maybe have a talk with an actual person and not a paperwork drone … like y’all,” I gave ’em a shot.

  “Let us know if the real world is still out there,” Scott said, leaning his head back against his seat. “All I have seen in my life and all I have known is the bite of a pen at my fingers and the rough touch of paper forms at my hand.”

  “And you thought I was dramatic?” I tossed at Veronika as I weaved my way out of the cubicle farm and toward the lobby. “Also, where’s Colin with my pizza? Because the Flash does this in like two seconds.”

  “Colin has to pay,” Veronika said. “With a credit card, because paper money is just so—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said, throwing a hand back at those poor people still laboring under their forms. Craziness. It was a beautiful May day outside, and we were all stuck inside doing this crap. I looked out the front window as I popped into the lobby. Casey looked up at me from her phone as I came in, and I said, “See? You got the right idea. At least you’re playing Solitaire or something. Those guys in there,” I waved back at the bullpen, “they are crazy. They’re all doing—”