Bleedover

by Curtis Hox

  “Alice, please, move!” Hattie heard herself say aloud.

  Alice began whimpering and stammered, “There’s … something in here,” as she watched, spellbound.

  * * *

  The combined elements of Towns’s projection coalesced before their eyes. This process was different from a full instantiation, mused the cool, emotionless, scientific part of Dr. Sterling’s mind. Hexcom’s manifestations wouldn’t fully incorporate, she believed. But Corbin had only sent her a projection—not as real as the apple, but real enough. It struggled to make the full transition, becoming solid before flickering out for a few seconds, only to return again. The thing that flashed into reality defied logic. How it operated within the laws of nature, she had no clue.

  A smoky tendril extended from the vestibule and became solid. It formed into a tentacle with dagger-like talons on one side and a serrated row of spines on the other. A misty bulk followed the tentacle through the doorway, then congealed at the last minute into the full monstrosity. A massive fifteen-foot creature in human form stood in the atrium. Articulated limbs ending in squid-like tentacles extended from its back. Thick mucus dripped from its sickly, gray skin. A long maw of needle teeth extended from a plated, scaled face, whose deep-set obsidian eyes stared directly at Alice. Its appendages flared in unholy aggression. Then it stepped forward.

  “Look …” Dr. Sterling said as two figures emerged between her and Masumi, and Alice.

  Alice stood alone, trembling, staring in shock at the horror before her. The next moment, a huge shape solidified out of the air behind her.

  She turned and saw a knight on horseback with a long, steel lance. Lacquered plate armor filigreed with symbols of righteousness glinted in the electric light, and crimson pennons streamed behind it as if blown by a strong wind.

  The horse, in full panoply, reared once, then charged.

  At the same time, a man in black military gear formed behind Alice. Stepping to the side, he raised an automatic weapon and fired. The atrium filled with the incongruous sounds of medieval and modern warfare.

  Corbin Lyell’s demon assassin, Dagon, reacted to the threats of the Saint George and Rick Bauman wards by roaring its annoyance.

  It batted aside the charging lance, snapping it in two. Then the thing struck with powerful talons at the ends of three tentacles, and horse and rider crumpled to the floor like smashed piñata pieces. Saint George tried to rise once, then disappeared in a flash and a muted bang.

  Alice’s sole protector strode forward, cursing behind a flame-spitting submachine gun.

  The rounds punched through the demon’s torso in sickening spouts of black ichor. The demon smashed two tables aside as if they were made of balsa. The weapon’s magazine emptied.

  In two large strides, it reached the lone figure standing between it and Alice, swiped downward, and took the man’s head from his shoulders. Twin spurts of carotid blood gushed into the air, then disappeared before blemishing the place, the body gone before it hit the ground.

  “Alice!” Dr. Sterling yelled. “Run!”

  But Alice remained rooted.

  The demon looked up and found the other targets. Alice just happened to be in the way. With a swat, it struck her in the side and sent her flying across the chamber. Like a flung rag doll, she bounced off a load-bearing pillar under the first-floor gallery.

  * * *

  In the few seconds that passed as the demon-thing plowed a path of destruction through the reading tables, Hattie understood that her St. George ward had been defeated. She had no defense now. Her bag with the Bastard Buster ward lay on the table where Alice had sat only seconds ago. It didn’t matter, anyway—her personal ward would have no effect on this devil thing. Corbin had been right after all. His dream of constructing an actual monster and letting it loose in some contemporary American setting had come true.

  She shut her eyes as its bulk filled the atrium in front of them. Both women cowered in each other’s arms.

  Masumi had watched the events in silent acknowledgment; she would never be the same again. She had been walking a thin line these past few weeks between the rational and something else. Something suprarational was happening, and she was privy to it. And now some creature torn from the pages of a hundred comic books was coming at her. And it was real—it had just destroyed a heavy, wood table. She didn’t, or wouldn’t, register what had happened to Alice. Instead, Masumi’s mind latched on to a single thought: I have dishes that need to be done. All this needs to stop, right now, so I can return to my apartment and get my life in order.

  Dr. Sterling’s ashen face triggered Masumi’s first wave of terror. Masumi’s knees buckled, and both women fell to the floor. Neither could look up and face what was about to happen.

  When the Crimsional Equisaran Space Marine appeared, they both cowered, still clinging to each other.

  The new figure reached almost to the demon’s monstrous height. Decked in ivory-trimmed, crimson plate armor that was at once neo-Gothic and futuristic, it gazed out from behind a helm and visor with a tall horsehair crest. One hand brandished a bulky cannon, while the other drew a massive energy sword from a sheath on its back. The weapon thrummed and crackled with a pulsating indigo glow.

  The demon turned away from the women and howled, arching its back, limbs flexing.

  Masumi and Dr. Sterling looked up to see the two giant figures launch into each other. The Space Marine’s sword descended in a screaming arc as the demon’s talons shot forward a salvo of poisonous darts. In seconds, the contest was over, the demon’s skull cleaved in two.

  Then the sword plunged deep in the thing’s chest, and pieces of its flesh fell to the floor in a hissing pile of gore.

  Dr. Sterling vomited, and Masumi gagged into her free hand.

  The Space Marine stepped over his fallen foe, perhaps to check that it was fully dead. Then he turned once toward the two women and stared for a moment, as if trying to sort out who they were or why he was here. Then he disappeared in a flash, back to the story that had spawned him.

  The paper clutched in Masumi’s hand sizzled, and she let go as it burned up in a puff of ash and smoke.

  * * *

  “It worked,” Hattie said, wiping the bile from her mouth. Then she thought of Alice and began to walk forward. “Alice …”

  Before she reached the crumpled heap by the pillar, Hattie knew she was dead. Masumi joined her, and they stood over Alice for a few, long seconds. The shock of what lay before them seemed to slow the world down.

  Hattie noted that gore still dotted the far end of the atrium in a trail of black footsteps because, unlike her wards, the demon thing had not disappeared. She couldn’t bear to look at it, though.

  Hattie heard herself thinking, he killed Alice.

  Corbin Lyell had never been able to maintain his media projections before, but with Towns, he seemed to have had a breakthrough. The mere fact the battered, demon thing still existed meant he had progressed further than she ever imagined. And Alice’s death meant that he had done the unthinkable.

  “Why, Corbin?” Hattie mumbled. “Just to spite me?”

  Masumi’s shock turned to hyperventilation as she stood shaking her head, hands to her mouth in a mute scream. Hattie’s unmoving stare didn’t help.

  Masumi stepped away. Still sucking in rapid, shallow breaths, she went to her knees, moaning, before passing out. Hattie stood in place, beginning to comprehend how badly she had misjudged Corbin Lyell. She kept hoping the thing would disappear and that with the nightmare banished, Alice would wake up.

  But the reeking mass remained, along with the havoc it had wrought.

  Hattie eventually sat down beside Alice and began talking to her, to coax her back to life.

  Never mind that Alice’s spine had been shattered and her heart skewered by a broken rib. The pool of vomited blood congealing on the floor should have alerted Hattie to the damage. But she held out hope that this was part of a bleedover event she had never experienced.
She had hoped the collision of worlds would not affect the outcome of this one. If so, then Corbin’s vision proved that hell could be unleashed on earth. What was this new science she hoped to create, when someone could set loose a demon of his own creation?

  * * *

  In the rubble left by the temporary projection, Dr. Sterling called campus police and told them to get an ambulance, but only after the thing finally disappeared.

  She didn’t explain.

  Before the authorities arrived, she and Masumi made a pact of secrecy.

  “What happened to Alice?” Masumi asked.

  “We found her in here. We found this place a wreck. We don’t know.”

  On autopilot, Dr. Sterling collected the documents scattered around the room. She found the documents of Alice’s defeated original ward in a roll, and Masumi’s successful one. Alice’s personal stitched ward had already disappeared.

  Both women began to weep, holding vigil at Alice’s feet, as if to protect her body from scavengers.

  “Thank you,” Masumi said.

  Dr. Sterling took Masumi’s Space Marine ward and removed the rubber band. She grabbed a steno pad and a pen from her bag and began to copy the full stitch that Masumi had identified on the individual pages. Dr. Sterling then handed the precious words to her, then repeated the process and tucked the scrap of paper in her pocket. Dr. Sterling returned the rubber band to the roll of loose-leaf sheets and handed over the powerful document.

  “No. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dr. Sterling and Masumi spent the weeks following the attack speaking to police, and to each other. Neither woman varied her story. They claimed they’d both arrived at the library late and discovered the crime. They provided no other information. Classes were moved to other buildings; the atrium remained off-limits, indefinitely.

  Metal hip-high barriers decorated in yellow crime scene tape blocked the two entrances in the vestibule. Whispers around campus about the murder ranged from a loose psychopathic chemistry student who had dropped out last spring, to rumors of Jersey City drug activity leaking over into Riodola. No one suspected the truth—no one except Bernard Corrigan.

  Dr. Sterling ignored his calls, until she received this email message: “We have additional information about Eliot Brandeis.”

  She’d been recovering in her loft in SoHo since the attack, leaving only to meet detectives for coffee or to run to the grocery store. The dean’s office covered her departmental duties, while she’d given the institute’s few employees paid vacations.

  Her apartment occupied a top floor in a cast-iron building on Prince Street. She kept most of her personal library there, as well as numerous objects of art and literature she’d collected over the years. She leaned toward elaborate, hand-carved furniture from the Indian subcontinent, with a hodgepodge of artwork (mostly from American popular culture) fighting for space with cases filled with books.

  She slept most of the first week, unsure how to handle the fact she had gotten her most loyal student killed. She talked with Masumi every day, astonished at the young woman’s fortitude.

  Hattie was to meet Bernard Corrigan on a Monday afternoon in the second-floor bar of the Soho Grand. A few music-industry types sat on couches, sipping cocktails.

  She had lost weight. She wore sunglasses, even inside, and sat by a tall window overlooking the street. She’d wrapped herself in a dark silk shawl. She did not watch for Corrigan. Instead, she observed the traffic below and wondered what the events meant. She would swear that all she did, she did in the name of knowledge and science. She would swear that she was not guilty of its misuse.

  However, since Alice’s death, all she could think about was justice—Corbin Lyell, and justice.

  The thought caused her to wince. She sipped a glass of ice because each time she pictured Alice, her tongue stuck to the top of her mouth. She tapped the glass with nails that hadn’t been manicured in weeks.

  Her unadorned face revealed the weight of her age. She didn’t care. If a stranger were to assess the situation, listening to her tell her story, they’d think she was disturbed.

  She tried to stop her mental flagellation, even though she believed she deserved to suffer.

  Tears welled, and her breath stuck in her throat. Alice Reynolds had trusted her. Hattie had pretended to know, when all she did was intuit. She was unable to attend the funeral in Indiana, where they had flown Alice’s body. The parents never called. They didn’t know what Alice had been up to (Hattie’s insistence on secrecy another damning factor in her culpability).

  Corrigan finally arrived, looking as he did before, in a fine suit with snappy, well-polished shoes, an officious briefcase.

  He sat opposite her, placing his hands on his knees.

  “A tough couple weeks,” he said.

  She grunted. “You might say that.” She did her best to hide her grief by sitting straighter. “You have information about Eliot?”

  The woman sitting in front of him looked like a shell of what she had been only weeks before. Her attempts to hide her grief did little to convince him she could handle what he had to tell her. He had disturbing photos of Dr. Brandeis in his bag, which he now knew he wouldn’t show her.

  Corrigan pretended to look for a cocktail waitress, as he considered how to proceed.

  At first, he had planned to just tell her the horrible news, flatly, even in her current state. Sure, she had lost a student in a curious slaying, as the detectives were calling it. But she needed to know.

  His own agents had been over the crime scene. The local authorities were surprised to have mysterious military adjutant investigators suddenly interested in a missing student at Riodola University. They had little to go on, other than the destruction seemed inordinate. The girl’s spine had been pulverized with enough force to suggest she had been hit by a car (an impossibility, of course). What actually bothered his investigators were the huge gashes in the tables. One of their quotes: “A Grizzly couldn’t have done this.”

  Then, last week, one of Corrigan’s surveillance teams heard chatter that provided an important lead. They picked up a suspect and learned the location of Dr. Eliot Brandeis.

  “He was killed, Dr. Sterling,” Corrigan said.

  “What?” she asked. She looked as if she were sinking into her chair. “Killed?”

  “They picked him up and probably questioned him. We believe it has to do with Riodola. We believe it has to do with you.”

  Hattie said nothing as he assigned guilt for the awful truth. She tried to shake her head but feared the tears would come in a loud fit. Then they’d have to call an ambulance for the hysterical woman who wouldn’t stop crying in the hotel, all because Eliot was dead, because they killed him, because she allowed him to be involved.

  “… his body was found in an abandoned apartment in the Bronx. They made it look like a drug overdose. We know better. That information will not get out. What did they want to know, Dr. Sterling?”

  But she had already heard enough. The sobs came slowly, only because she fought them. He handed her a cloth napkin.

  “Take your time.”

  Somehow, Hattie calmed herself. She felt like automated flesh instead of a real human being, as if her mourning for Alice diminished what should be felt for Eliot.

  “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know enough to make any arrests. But he was seen last with men associated with a private security firm hired by Hexcom. Your old friends, the Lyells, own it, of course.”

  She knew she couldn’t play coy because she didn’t have the strength to combat any inquiries with grace. She had no patience at this moment to deflect his obvious interest in the N.P.B. and her work.

  “What do you want, Mr. Corrigan?”

  “I want to know what happened to Alice, and I want to know about that apple, and I want to know why Riodola University is suddenly so important to Hexcom. And, most critically, how your new department is suddenly endowed with a cash gift
of fifteen million dollars.”

  “Bleedover is what happened to Alice.” Hattie caught herself, realizing she’d almost told him.

  “Bleedover?”

  She backtracked. “Corbin Lyell and I have been bickering since graduate school. He’s obviously decided my associates are worth removing because he’s insane, and he holds a grudge.” She felt no guilt making the statement. “Alice got in the way.” Hattie steeled herself. “What can I do for you, really?”

  “I’m sorry about your losses. If you ever need to talk, call me. My client is willing to help you pursue justice.”

  “Your client?”

  “For whatever reason, Dr. Sterling, you have become a key element of N.P.B. activity in the area. My larger task of investigating Hexcom keeps leading me back to Riodola. And with the unfortunate activity at the university, I now have another task: the full assessment of Riodola University’s Cultural Studies Department and its chair. My bosses want to know where those anonymous funds came from. Can you tell me? No, I didn’t think so. They want to know who would offer assets that provide such an infusion of capital. These sort of anomalies upset my bosses because they’ve been entrusted to survey any such possible changes to the social order. Yes, that’s what I do, Dr. Sterling: capital and influence. These two elements move the world. Riodola claims an F.G.O. one week and soon after produces enough wealth to make people notice. Well, make my bosses notice, and probably Hexcom’s. Can you clarify any of this for me?”

  Hattie simply chewed her lip. How could she explain that, for her, the conflict started long ago?

  “My old enemy,” she blurted, “Corbin Lyell, always threatened to unleash ‘the minions of hell on earth.’ He actually used those words more than once. At first, I thought he was possibly a creative genius, then merely an eccentric, then a danger. When Corbin and Dreya arrived at our book club, no one knew we would all remain in each other’s lives for decades. I started the group as a first year undergraduate because I wanted to meet friends. I put up postings for a book club in my favorite coffee shop. That’s when it all started.”