by M. C. Norris
***
Something was wrong. Volkov outsmarted him, tricked him into injecting some sort of a poison into his body. The magic juice hadn’t enhanced him in any noticeable way. Rather, it seemed to have crippled him. There were all kinds of voices and noise inside his head, and muddled visual effects that threatened to melt his brain into gray porridge, and bring him howling to his knees.
Mr. Krupin gaped at his own hand through the falling Plum Rains. He was seeing double, but it was far worse than just a duplicate image. Somehow, he was seeing his hand from two entirely different perspectives. The first was his own perspective, but superimposed over his normal view was the alien perspective of someone else, someone distant, who was hitchhiking along in Mr. Krupin’s brain, observing everything through a second set of disembodied eyes. Through this perspective, Krupin saw himself staring at his own hand. When he spun his head in the direction that he half-expected to see a phantom copy of himself hovering, what he saw instead was Jochi, staring back at him, and laughing.
Mr. Krupin collapsed to the deck of Volkov’s submarine. He rolled onto his back Spattering rain bullied his face, and confused his ears. That was the other problem. He was also hearing double. As the drone chopper lifted off into the stormy sky, leaving the three survivors of the Nantong operation afloat on the Yangtze River, Krupin heard two overlapping staccatos of rotor blades pouring into his head from different directions, but there was only one chopper in the sky. It was enough to make a man lose his mind.
The sound of dueling laughter brought him back around. One source of the sound was appropriately distant, emanating from Jochi, while a second source seemed to erupt right out of the middle of his own face. It was a terrible sensation. He wanted more than anything to kill Jochi, if only to end this bad experience, but he was too disoriented to stand, much less to pick a fight with the giant.
Krupin moaned, wincing at the sound of his disembodied and doubled voice. He pushed himself up from the cold steel, and swiveled his mixed-up head away from Jochi’s smirking face. He was going to puke. The only conclusion that he could come to was that he and Jochi had somehow been cerebrally fused by those injections of magic juice, but for whatever reason, Jochi didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from the needle that Krupin had stabbed into his neck. In fact, Jochi seemed fine. Krupin cursed himself for failing to kill that man when he’d had the opportunity. Now, that opportunity might never present itself again. He was worthless in this new condition, and for the first time since he was a child, he presented no danger to anyone.
A pressurized valve on a topside portal emitted a gaseous hiss. After a moment, the manway cover lurched upward with the sound of broken suction, and swung ajar. Krupin lolled his head in the direction of the portal. There, poking up through the portal like a tattooed gopher with silver teeth, peered Volkov. Krupin smiled. A snort of laughter got the better of him. It was a queer situation, after all.
“What’s the matter with him?” Volkov asked. “He doesn’t look right.”
“I told you. Too much data,” Dr. Wu replied, thrusting his thin arm under Krupin’s back. He attempted to lift the limp body from the deck, but he did not possess the strength. “Too much for one human mind.”
“Jochi, bring him in here,” Volkov said.
Jochi lumbered over. He bumped Dr. Wu aside, rolled Krupin facedown, and picked him off the deck by the backside of his belt like a sack of wet barley. Krupin dangled cursing from the giant’s grip, even as Jochi lowered his drooling carcass down into the submarine. Below, a team of Red Brothers outstretched their arms to receive him.
“It didn’t work,” Jochi said, almost smugly, once all three were below deck, and the manway was closed. He pointed a thick finger at Krupin. “He tried to make me his slave.” Jochi smiled. “I ain’t no slave.”
As Volkov stared up at Jochi, the corner of his mouth gave a quiver. Krupin noticed that slight movement, and he knew what it meant, even if Jochi was too stupid to realize that he was tromping over some very thin ice. He’d seen Volkov make that face a dozen times, minutes before someone was being fed in chunks to some snarling animal.
The Red Brothers lifted Krupin by his arms. He wagged his head and emitted a grunt of laughter. He couldn’t help it. This ridiculous mess struck him as being kind of funny. Volkov had failed his own secret mission. He’d underestimated the fight in his best henchman, and as a result, he now stood sulking in his submarine. Whatever it was that he’d been so desperately seeking in Nantong was now something lost inside of his and Jochi’s bodies, and powerful as he was, Volkov couldn’t do a damned thing to get it back.
“Do you feel anything?” Volkov asked, staring into Krupin’s eyes with a pained expression. “Do you feel anything different at all?”
Krupin couldn’t hold back the swollen river of laughter. The levee broke, and it surged up his throat in great bubbling waves. The Red Brothers who handled him wore terrified expressions as Volkov jammed both of his thumbs into Krupin’s windpipe.
“Think this is funny, do you? Yeah? You won’t be laughing when that ugly head of yours is dissolving in a bucket of acid,” Volkov said, cursing in Krupin’s face until it was flecked with spittle, “What’s the matter? Didn’t think about that? No, if you can’t control what you stole from me, then you’re useless to me. Someone give me a blade.” Volkov maintained his burning eye contact with Krupin, while his right hand shot to one side, and sprung open to receive the thing that he’d requested.
Krupin saw his murderer from two perspectives. Volkov’s hateful face filled the first perspective like an enraged demon, but from an alternate angle, he found himself staring down at the back of Volkov’s head, looming over his employer like a juggernaut. Of the two, this was the more preferable option. Krupin focused. He closed his eyes, and abandoned himself wholly to embrace the alien angle, because he had little use for the body of a strangled vegetable when there was a much more powerful body standing by. Krupin’s soul rushed into the giant, and seized hold of the controls.
“What do you have to say for yourself, hmm?” Volkov raised the borrowed blade, and he pressed its gleaming edge into the flesh of his victim’s throat. “What, have you gone to sleep? Decided to take a little nap? Well, I know how to wake you up.” Volkov lowered the point of his dagger to the unconscious Krupin’s crotch.
Lurching forward on new and massive legs, solid as the trunks of twin oaks, Krupin slammed his vises for hands around Volkov’s tattooed neck, and lifted the mobster’s boots straight off the ground. The experience was amazing, and intensely arousing. He wanted to do savage things, bestial things that lurked in the most primal recesses of the mind.
“Who do you think you’re threatening?” he said, in a voice he didn’t even recognize as his own. It was deep and powerful, born on the winds of a massive chest that could’ve exerted enough force to snap Volkov’s neck like a pretzel stick. “I’m here, and I’m there. I’m right in front of you, and I’m behind. I am everywhere.” His laughter was that of a demon.
The Red Brotherhood stood paralyzed in the cloud of black magic that had seemingly settled upon their ship. The hatred between Krupin and Jochi had always been obvious, mutual, a permanent underlayment of the Red Brotherhood’s culture. To see Jochi rush to Krupin’s defense and threaten their leader’s life must’ve looked pretty peculiar to them.
Krupin emitted a great baritone laugh, because it looked so funny to see Volkov hanging helplessly in the air. Strange glottal pops escaped Volkov’s throat. His boots knocked together, as his dancing legs performed a jig of death. The knife fell from his hand, and clattered to the floor of the submarine.
“This is what you always wanted, remember?” Krupin whispered through Jochi’s lips, right into Volkov’s ear. “My only flaw was my Russian heritage, wasn’t it? That was always such a big problem for you. Not anymore. Now, at last, I’m a purebred Mongol—unlike you, you green-eyed son of a Moscow whore.”
“This impossible,” Dr. Wu said
, stammering. “You do this … with no helmet.”
One Brother found the strength to break the bonds of the spell, and the first pistol was drawn from its holster. It was followed by others. Hammers were thumbed back into firing position. Rifle bolts snapped back into their action, as their employer gasped for air, eyes bulging like a snared rabbit. Something trickled warmly from his pant-leg. It spattered and pooled beneath him on the submarine floor.
“Is this the best idea you could all come up with?” Krupin said, through his new puppet’s mouth. “Shooting a bunch of holes in the walls of our submarine?” Their mortified expressions struck him as being a little bit funny. Great hacks of demonic laughter erupted from his throat, as he felt Volkov’s windpipe collapsing beneath his fingers. It felt so good, so exhilarating to squeeze the life from the bully’s body. Despite the years of abuse he’d suffered at the hands of this man, he’d always managed to respect Maxim Volkov, all the while overlooking just how badly he really just wanted to strangle him to death. Now that understood himself better, there was no turning back. The sensation of Volkov’s life oozing through his fingers was too arousing to quit. He wondered, at that moment, if he was strong enough to squeeze Volkov’s head completely off? With a fit of cachinnating laughter, he bared his teeth, and crushed down with all his might.
All bodies upheaved, limbs flailing midair, before crashing back down to the floor. The submarine reeled from a tremendous impact. Crimson lights interior lights flickered, died for an instant, and then blazed back to life. Strewn like a roomful of children’s toys, the Brotherhood collected their weapons, rose uncertainly to their feet, and peered around at the walls and ceiling of their vessel, looking, but mostly listening to the rush of spraying water.
“Where my wife?”
Krupin turned toward the sounds of Dr. Wu’s mewling. The scientist was kneeling beside Volkov’s fallen form, shaking the motionless man by a shoulder. If Volkov was dead, it was interesting how he still remained embedded in the center of others’ pain and misery.
“Please. Where my wife?”
One Brother corrected him with a rifle butt to his temple. Dr. Wu rolled to the floor, and balled into a fetal position. His glasses went spinning across the floor.
Like ten-thousand raking nails on a chalkboard, something outside the submarine in the Yangtze River rasped against the steel hull with a long and sickening caress. The unbelievable length of the passage was as indicative of the size of the unknown object, as the potential danger that it presented them. No one dared voice the common fear, but surely they were all filled with the same dread. They were under attack by one of those things.
Volkov’s body jerked with a spasm. His arms unfolded until he was spread-eagled on the floor, arched and convulsing. The eggplant color of his face was less disturbing than the bloodstained aspect of his eyes. Foam bubbled between his lips, as an awful rattling sound emanated from his crushed throat. No one but Dr. Wu seemed much interested in him, or his deplorable condition. Their collective attention remained focused on whatever river monster was romancing their vessel.
Dr. Wu gazed imploringly at Volkov’s distracted henchmen, but they paid him no mind. “He can’t breathe. Throat … is damage.” He jabbed his fingertips at his own throat in an ambiguous gesture. When no one batted an eye, Dr. Wu removed a pen from his shirt pocket. He popped the endcap loose with his teeth, and withdrew the tube of ink and the little spring. Positioning the tapered end of the sharp plastic tube at the base of Volkov’s windpipe, Dr. Wu humped over the homemade tracheal device, and pressed down with all of his weight. Volkov’s throat tented inward, and the tissue gave with a hollow pop. The whistle of inflowing air through the tube accompanied the rising of Volkov’s chest. The purple color of his face began to wane.
“He breathe.” Dr. Wu smiled, but he knew better than to look to the Brotherhood for any sign of affirmation. He stroked Volkov’s forehead, and patted his tattooed shoulder with an almost paternal tenderness. “You be alright, now. You give me my wife.”
Darkness enveloped the submarine interior, as an incredible blow struck the underside of the bow like an uppercut to the chin. Flying bodies smashed into a far wall astern. The room strobed to the deafening reports of an automatic rifle. Still engulfed in utter blackness, men’s screams joined the squeal of rending metal, spraying water, with an awful dissonance. A new lake of cold water boiled up from a sudden spring. It crept across the floor, sluicing through their tangled forms.
Krupin crawled through the darkness, groping bodies with his huge borrowed hands, until his thick fingers settled upon a familiar face behind a mask of taut wires. He hesitated, with his new hand resting upon his old cheek. It was strange to hear your own voice emanating from somewhere afar, and to see yourself through another set of eyes was frightfully surreal, but the most mind-bending sensation of all was to touch yourself, while being touched by your other self.
“Please! Where my wife?”
Gathering the limp body into his immense arms, he clutched the precious bundle protectively against his broad chest. It was a poignant experience that overwhelmed him with a rather peculiar emotion that he’d never experienced before. It was a tormented and vulnerable feeling that demanded closeness of some kind, but he didn’t know how to process the compulsion to hold and rock himself. His addled mind boiled into red fury, demanding blood, and then, it simmered back down again.
He’d made an art of hating himself, and he put that hatred on display. He glorified the results of all the abuse he’d suffered, ever since he was old enough to start blocking it out. Now, it all came pouring through his mind in a horrific montage, every minute of it. He clung to the body that had endured it all, rocking himself gently as the water rose. Not one of those memories ever included a guardian angel, or a moment of divine intervention. Not a single tender interlude with a loving parent, or a hug from a sibling, or a pat on the shoulder from an understanding friend. Never. Not even once. No one had ever shielded him from the torment he’d learned to channel into violence, forging the sweet child he’d once been into a weapon of blackened metal. Had the world had treated him fairly, he might’ve developed into a decent human being. His life had once held as much promise as that of any other child, but that promise was something broken in a lifelong struggle against indignity and pain.
Krupin rested his cheek upon that wired brow, as terrified shrieks reverberated through the shifting blackness. The water level climbed, yet he’d never felt safer. At last, the motherless child could rest for the first time ever in a loving embrace, and that embrace could’ve only come from himself. Krupin felt his borrowed eyes misting over. Warm tears spilled down the cheeks of both faces. Together, they felt the same cathartic release of so much poison, so much hatred for the living world, and together they cried in the darkness. No harm would come to them, not ever again. This motherless child’s guardian angel had finally arrived, and he’d crush the skulls of anyone who dared raise a finger against him.
The submarine canted, sloshing a wave of floodwater against the leeward wall. Sparks spewed and flitted from a new fissure. Steel collapsed with an awful groan, popping rivets like corn against the walls. Screams arose to whatever gods might hear them, as a new cascade came blasting in with all the force of an opened fire hydrant. It was time to go.
Krupin heaved his former self over one broad shoulder, and plodded up out of the deepening water. He hoped that there might be a larger pocket of air trapped somewhere in the upper chambers of the submarine, a little sanctuary built just big enough for two. The lightless conditions actually helped, by eliminating one of the doubled assaults on his senses. The darkness enabled him to focus on just one of his twin perspectives. It was getting easier. He was learning to exist in two places at once.
Flailing hands clawed at him in the darkness. Shrieks of terror filled both sets of his ears. These doomed and terrified souls, he shoved right out of his way. He’d never suffered much from the effects of fear or panic, like other
men. Hurt, he understood, but not fear. Whatever creature he’d devolved into, after so much suffering, was something mercifully beyond that whole experience.
His free hand met with the steel rungs of a ladder. This was what he’d been searching for. It led up into the officers’ quarters. As he took the first step, he felt a man pushing past him, trying to cut ahead in line. Krupin snatched a fistful of the guy’s topknot, and yanked him back with such force that the man’s scalp ripped loose from his skull. His screeching body toppled back into the drowning pool with a splash.
As Krupin climbed, the submarine crumpled, collapsing inward, as though monstrous coils wrapped around the vessel were constricting. Electricity flashed underwater beneath him. Droves of the damned attempted to follow him skyward. Howling from the pits, they groped at his legs. He felt the desperate masses of reaching arms, and he thrust his boot heels back into their screaming faces. No. This sanctuary was not for them. With the broken body of the motherless child against the breast of his guardian angel, they ascended together, as one, by occasional strobes of light.
Chapter Nine
Luna was a clever little monkey. Yes, she was. Climbing was her new and favorite thing. Scaling the laundry hamper in Nana’s bathroom was her specialty. This advanced skill empowered her with access to almost every nook and cranny throughout her Nana’s apartment. Kitchen cabinets were a wonderland of forbidden treats. Every drawer was a treasure chest waiting to be opened. You never knew what fascinating items might be amongst the jumble of things inside a good drawer, but there was always something of interest. Upon discovery, a new treasure was immediately subjected to taste testing.