Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  “We will not help you, monster!” Iara called, and added a click at the end. She heard the feel of the creature, and it was as it had been yesterday in the laboratory. She was not a woman with eels under her control. She was the eels. They made up her body, even the parts of her that seemed to be human.

  The miracoral might have helped, perhaps, but Iara had dropped it when the puppets attacked. It was back in the clothing room now. It might have been a world away.

  “You will,” Tiamat called, and her voice was a spike of pain that cut through Iara’s mind. With her perfect hearing, she could hear it coming from everywhere, and it was too loud, too much. “Where is the other one?”

  “Lori has not come back to us,” Iara said, the words flowing from her like water, and she wanted to say more, she knew Lori’s address, even, and started to say it, but Tapper clapped her ears, and the pain shot through the voice for a moment, letting her fall silent. At least that meant Lori had escaped, Iara thought with a grim satisfaction.

  “Have you discovered anything new from the miracoral?” Tiamat asked, coming closer. Hawk put himself between her and Iara, even as he and the others all spat out answers.

  “No.”

  “Nothing.”

  “No.”

  “It’s kind of heavy.” That was Maya.

  “Useless.” Tiamat snarled. “I cannot use it, and I cannot destroy it. But I can grow the eels inside you as I would inside another of my kind. Perhaps you will prove more helpful once the eels have taken your pain.”

  “Or perhaps you will die!” Iara yelled. “Now!” And she threw out her keening scream directly at the heart of the beast.

  Tiamat collapsed, her human shape falling apart into a mass of sickly yellow-green. Before the pile of wriggling flesh even hit the water, Iara was moving, diving forward with the others close behind.

  Tapper ran past her, leaving a plume of white water behind him. He swept into the cloud of eels like a pinball, blurring here and there, leaving crushed bodies behind him. Hawk was there a moment later, crushing the biggest eels in his bare hands. Even Maya leaped into the fray, twisting through the writhing cloud.

  Iara struck with all her strength, smashing the blunt faces with blows from her hands. All the while, she kept the keening wail coming, leaving the eels to twist and shudder and giving the Nix a fighting chance.

  “There’s got to be a big one!” Hawk yelled. He smashed another one, then lunged at one as large as he was. “Find the one in charge!”

  “No no no no!” Tapper’s voice seemed to come from everywhere as he flew across the room. “We’re fighting blind, Pint-Size! We need to run!”

  Iara’s voice was growing tired. She crushed another eel, swatted a large one out of her way, and through the cloud saw one in the center of the mass, half again as large as she was. “There!” she yelled, and then forced out one last keening burst.

  The cloud of eels shuddered, leaving a gap, and Tapper grabbed Hawk and blurred both of them close. Even with his speed, a wave of yellow-green flesh crashed down toward them . . . only to collapse on Maya instead, as she grabbed hold and pulled the mass of eels out of the way. With a last grunt, Tapper threw Hawk through the closing gap.

  Iara’s voice failed her, but she saw Hawk hit the massive eel in the middle of the cloud. He gripped it with superhuman strength, and even as the swarm descended on him, he tore it in half, spewing ichor everywhere.

  Then the mass coiled around Iara, snaring her arms and legs and throat all at once. One wrapped around her mouth like a gag, and she tried to keen again, but it was too tight, and all she could do was choke. Helpless in the coiling mass, she felt herself rising. A moment later she was out of the water, as were the others, each tangled in a mass of eels that held them fast several meters above the water.

  A nest of the eels coiled together above them all, and its color slid to blood red, and then it was the Tia Lake shape again, staring at them all with contempt, human from the waist up and eels below.

  “I told you,” she said, “and you did not listen. I cannot die.” Her face was naked in its grief for a moment, and then she was angry again. “I thought you might be the key, but you are nothing. The Nix are just the miracoral amusing itself while it hides in this world. Broken humans for whom it felt sympathy. You cannot stop me. You cannot even escape me. Let us see whether the miracoral pities you when you lie screaming on my table.”

  She floated toward Iara, her blood-red fingernails extended. “You annoyed me, dear. We’ll quiet you down first.”

  Iara tried one last keen, but the eel that kept her gagged was too tight. She bit into the sour flesh and growled her final defiance.

  Tiamat smiled and raised her hand, fingers curled into claws.

  And with a tiny pop that only Iara could hear, Lori Fisher blossomed into existence in midair and punched Tiamat square in the face.

  BEN

  The man in the black suit waded into the ball pit, and Ben didn’t know where to go, and the man was really big and didn’t care that he was shoving other kids out of the way to get to Ben, and Ben shrank back—

  —and then Ben was somewhere else, and then Ben was in his living room.

  “Hunh,” he said after a moment.

  He wasn’t sure what to do. Was Jenn still in trouble? What had happened with the men who had been chasing him? How did he get here?

  A phone on the table buzzed. Ben looked over at it. It had a cover with the Lego RoboDragon on it, and at the top, the name BEN in big letters. He picked it up as it buzzed again, and then turned it over to see what was making it buzz.

  Handler: It’s okay. You play here and stay safe.

  Handler: I’m taking care of Jenn and Lori and everyone else.

  “Hunh,” Ben said again.

  A new phone wasn’t as cool as the RoboDragon Rampage set, but it was still nice.

  LORI

  Lori felt the crack of her fist on Tia Lake’s face, solid and satisfying, before she plummeted several meters down and into the water that had half filled the former shopping mall where Lake and her friends were fighting.

  It was colder than the water at the canal, but that was all right, because as she went under, she sucked in a breath and felt the shock and chill, and then felt her lungs fill . . . and work again.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a single long buzz. Yes.

  She kicked to the surface and saw the Nix pulling free from the tendrils as Tia Lake shook her head, glaring down at Lori in fury. “So you live, little feeder?”

  The words pulled at her, but she didn’t fight them this time. “I’m human, not a feeder. But yes,” she called back, spitting the words up at the towering half woman above her, “I live. And so does the feeder who takes care of me.”

  “Impossible,” Lake hissed, and dove down at Lori, hands curled into claws and a thousand eels baring their fangs as they descended—

  Now, Lori thought.

  —and crashed into the water where she had been, as Lori watched safely from the doorway. Lake spun as she saw her. “How could it survive? Why would it come back here?”

  Lori looked over at the Nix, at Iara and Hawk and Tapper and Maya, now all of them free as Lake focused entirely on Lori. “Because she found friends,” she said, “and so did I.”

  Her phone buzzed, and she fished it out.

  Handler: Found them. Corner of the room behind you.

  “And you cannot have any of them,” Lori added, and the world flashed around her again.

  She caught a glimpse of it this time, of that impossible dark expanse. Only this time, the darkness was pushed back not by the shaky light of her phone but by the golden glow that came from Handler’s injured side, where a great mass of miracoral clustered around her wound and countless crayfish forms worked in unison to stitch it shut.

  She splashed back into the water in a room filled with floating clothes and the remains of guard puppets. Fluorescent lights lit the area, but beneath her, Lori saw the golden gl
ow she had been looking for.

  The miracoral, the piece the Nix had taken when they fled from Tiamat’s lair.

  She dove down into water that was higher than her head, kicked toward the miracoral. It flickered orange, crackling at her approach.

  Then it returned to its friendly golden glow, with a warmth that no longer hurt her eyes.

  She reached out and grabbed it.

  The coral was rough like a pumice scrub, and heavier than she had expected, but it didn’t shock her, and no crayfish darted out to rip into her with their claws.

  She kicked for the doorway that led outside. Behind her she heard the water froth with Lake’s approach, and Lori swam as hard as she could with only one free hand, out of the clothing room, into another room where waterlogged mattresses sat near piles of bloody clothes, the remnants of Lake’s testing.

  An eel wrapped around Lori’s ankle. She looked back, and Lake was there, with her mass of eels writhing around her.

  “You are nothing!” Lake snarled, and the eels coiled around Lori.

  Lori turned and thrust the miracoral square into Lake’s face, and as the light turned red and the crayfish swarmed out to snap and shock, as Lake screamed in pain and the eels flinched back, Lori yelled through the water, “I am small, and I am weak, but I am not nothing!”

  Lake recoiled, and Lori kicked away and swam again, through the room, to the air lock. She looked back to see Lake again, her pretty face burned from the crayfish. “And neither are you!” Lori added, her voice bubbling through the water. “You were here thousands of years. You could have helped people. You could have made this world better!”

  Lake screamed, and the eels all swarmed around her, and then they were her, and there were no eels anymore, just a flawless woman in a red dress who walked through the water as though it weren’t there, her heels clicking on the floor, her face unscarred again. “For what?” she snapped, her voice sending ripples through the water as she approached. “For the humans? You are things! I exist in a dimension you cannot even understand, little girl.”

  “But we’re still real,” Lori shot back, and swam through the air lock. Whatever had happened to it, both doors were open, and while the flow of water was no longer a staggering rush, it was still coming in strongly enough that she had to force her way through to get outside. “We’re real enough for our memories to keep you here.”

  Lake stepped into the air lock as Lori kicked her way out. “Trapped,” she hissed, wrenching the half-opened door aside. “Broken! Do you know what that feels like?”

  “Yes.” Lori answered before the words could even force themselves out. “That’s what you don’t get.” Something started to bubble up inside her, and she thought it was a sob, but it came out as laughter instead, laughter that sent little bubbles up and away as she kicked out into the cold open water. “Everybody knows what that feels like! Handler, the coral, the Nix, all of us! We all feel exactly the same way you do!”

  She hung in the open water. Below her was the darkness, inky black, and in it a sound so low that it registered only as a rumbling in the pit of Lori’s stomach. A moment later she felt the water grow hot around her.

  Tia Lake stood at the edge of the air lock, looking out at Lori. She didn’t look angry anymore. She looked sad and . . . something else. Sadder, smaller. Maybe even human.

  “How do you make it stop?” she asked softly.

  Lori shook her head. “You don’t. You find other people and try to help them. You go forward.”

  The water tasted of blood now, and green bubbles frothed up around Lori as Tia Lake swallowed. “I can’t do that,” she said. She clutched the edge of the air lock, her fingers digging little grooves into the metal. “I want it to go away. I want to go away, but I can’t, not as long as they remember me.”

  Lori looked down, where through the darkness she felt a sense of motion, of something huge. Tiamat’s main body. When she looked back up at Tia Lake, the other woman’s eyes were hard and set again. “The miracoral would not call the Leviathan for me. Perhaps your little feeder will call it for you.” She glared. “Why are you smiling?”

  “I feel sorry for you,” Lori said, even as the water below her swirled. Finally she added, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do,” Tia Lake said.

  Below Lori the real Tiamat rose, its great maw wide like a chasm, ringed with hundreds, thousands of eels that coiled around it in a writhing dance. It was too large for this world, and Lori hung in the water over that gaping impossible maw, feeling the heat of the green bubbles rising from inside it, and thought, Now.

  She drew the miracoral out again and held it up.

  And in her hand it blazed a perfect white and screamed.

  The piercing wail cut through the water, cut through Lori, cut through the very world, and it was pain and fear and loneliness all mixed together and forged into a crystalline sound that shone pure beyond measure. Every sickly green bubble hissing around Lori popped, and the water went cold again. Nothing in this world or any other could ignore that sound.

  Tiamat, the great beast, stopped dead in the water.

  A moment later the Leviathan came.

  It had no form. It was not a thing as much as it was an effect on the world. Tiamat’s impossible maw, too huge for the entirety of the ocean, dwindled and shrank and fell into nothingness, and the current from its movement slammed into Lori with the force of iron. She spun dizzily, clutching the miracoral with both hands now, her legs flailing, and then she slammed into the side of the building, not far from the air lock, and the water breath was shoved from her lungs by the impact.

  Standing in the air lock, Tia Lake looked down at her.

  The flawless face smiled softly.

  “Thank you,” she said, and then her form slid away into a dozen eels that in turn slid away into the darkness, receding and dwindling as though being pulled somewhere Lori could not follow.

  She barely heard it, coughing and struggling to breathe, and with her free hand, she grabbed for the edge of the air lock, but the current slammed into her again and tore her away, and she hurtled down into the darkness, spinning. There was no Tiamat, not anymore, but the thing that had taken her, the Leviathan, had drawn Tiamat into its jaws with a great inhalation that threatened to suck Lori down with it.

  Lori thrashed desperately. The air lock was a tiny beacon of light far above. The miracoral had gone dark, hiding in her grasp, too small again for the Leviathan to notice now, but the current still pulled her down, down, down, and she didn’t know how far it was—it was too large for this world, and distances meant different things—but she knew Handler couldn’t pull her away, not without revealing itself as well, so she kicked and pulled with one arm, fighting back toward that light.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The current was dizzying, and she could sense it now, the Leviathan, still hunting, still searching, opening its jaws to pull in everything nearby, feeder and human and part of the world alike.

  This is how the water rose. This is how my parents died. Ben, I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but I tried to keep you safe. You and the Nix and everyone. I tried.

  She shut her eyes as the darkness overcame her.

  Then, with a rush of bubbles, something grabbed her arm, and a voice yelled through the water, “Rrrblhere!”

  Lori opened her eyes and found Tapper holding her with one arm. His other arm blurred, as did his legs, frothing the water as he pulled against the current.

  “We have you!” came Iara’s cry, and then she was there on the other side of Lori, catching her other arm and swimming hard, the two of them heaving to pull her up.

  Iara reached for something with her free arm, and Lori looked up. There was Maya, stretched out impossibly far toward them, both arms reaching, and Iara and Tapper shouted with effort as they pulled against the current, pulled Lori up, and grabbed Maya’s hands.

  Up in the air lock, metal groaned, and Lori saw Hawk holding M
aya’s legs, straining with all his might.

  They all hung in the deep water there for a moment, the Nix holding Lori up as the Leviathan pulled her down.

  Then, with a low twisting groan, the air lock doorframe sagged and began to break free—

  Pretend for a moment that you’re not good at this. Pretend you’ve been trying as best you can, and some days you’re tired, and some days you’re scared, and some days you have no idea what you’re doing. Pretend you came here to hide, and because you felt sorry for a microbe on a plate, because it hadn’t had any more luck than you had.

  Pretend that microbe saved you, and now it was in danger, and so were its friends, and you’re still not sure about a lot of things, but you’re sure about this: You and the microbe and its little brother, you don’t know where you’re going, and you might get there late.

  But you’ll get there together.

  —and as the air lock doorframe broke free, massive jaws sprang out of nowhere to lock around the edge, holding up the frame, and Hawk, and Maya, and Tapper and Iara, and Lori, who looked up at Handler, so huge and scary and so tiny compared to the terrible darkness below her, and thought to her, Thank you.

  They all hung in the water there for a moment, straining against that impossible current.

  And then, with a sigh that shook the world, the water went back to normal.

  Dizzy and exhausted, Lori felt air on her face, and as her vision cleared, she saw that she was looking at the shops of Reef Square from the middle of the little harbor. They had cleared the chasm.

  Tapper and Iara were still beside her, breathing hard, and a moment later Hawk and Maya surfaced as well.

  “So that was superdangerous and dumb,” Maya said, “and I’m not sure, but I think I dislocated some stuff, wait, no, never mind, it’s back.”

  “That Leviathan thing was big,” Tapper said, gasping.

  “Big enough to destroy Tiamat herself,” Iara said with satisfaction.

  “You didn’t . . .” Lori caught her breath. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. “You didn’t have to—”