by Edward Lee
Lissa was there ...
Too much was happening too fast. A weird pressure seemed to be pushing against her head, almost like hands gripping her scalp.
“Can’t you hear me? Wake up! Wake up!”
Cassie’s vision finally focused. Angelese was pacing back and forth in the room, wringing her hands. “First the static, then the smell, then we’ll begin to hear it.”
“Angelese! What’s wrong? Why are you so high-strung?”
“I’ve been telling you, I’ve been telling you—the Merge! I think it’s happening right now. We have to be ready!”
How do you get ready for something like that? Cassie thought glumly. She dragged herself from the bed to her feet. The pressure around her head increased, and—Did she say something about static?
When Cassie took an erring glance into the mirror, strands of her bright-yellow hair were sticking up. A neon-purple electric arc crackled between her fingers.
“Ooow!”
“And you can smell it too, right?” the pent-up angel asked.
“Would you relax? Jeez, you’re more freaked out about this than I am.” Then Cassie’s nose twitched. A faint but awful smell slowly insinuated itself into the room.
“They’ve already dropped the Killing Plate,” Angelese said. “The Deathwave is already coming.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait. In a minute there should be a—” and that was all Angelese had time to say before the entire building jolted. Then came a deafening sound like a massive waterfall.
“It’s happening,” Angelese whispered. “It’s happening now.” Her eyes were growing luminous in a faint silver light. Her lower lip trembled. “My God, I’ve known this was going to happen for ages. I’ve been preparing for it— for ages! And now that it’s happening, I don’t know what to do, Cassie!”
“Calm down!” Cassie shouted even as the room was changing—merging—around her. The angel’s panic didn’t exactly inspire confidence in Cassie. She didn’t know what to do either.
Then the lights blinked off.
“Oh, that’s just fantastic!” she yelled. Eventually, a dim battery-powered emergency light came on, and Cassie was grateful for that dimness; it was easier to disbelieve what she was seeing. The plain white wall seemed to be shifting—something seemed to be growing over it: part of another wall, but there was a window in the wall.
A dark-orange glow rose into the room as the window itself rose. It was as if this other oddly angled window were being thrust up into the dorm unit from the ground up.
Cassie looked into the window—
—and staggered backward at what she saw. A sign read: MUNICIPAL PULPING STATION NO. 727,368. An obese Troll with wet carbuncles on his face was smack-smack-smacking a gore-smeared meat cleaver into the rib cage of a naked female Imp/Human Hybrid. The cross-bred woman’s banana-yellow eyes hemorrhaged red at the first series of whacks. Her spotted arms and legs flailed on the metal butcher table. When she shrieked—a noise like brakes squealing—the Troll frowned, then quickly jammed a paring knife down into her larynx and jiggled it around until the shriek wore down to a gargle. She was still quivering when the butcher began to remove her innards and feed them into a grinder. Then he snapped on the grinder’s power switch and watched the meat disappear into the chute.
The aproned monster paused. His great ridged forehead creased as if sensing something. Then, with a grunt, he jerked his gaze right at the window, right at Cassie.
Cassie shuddered. “Angelese!”
The Troll was opening the window now, the cleaver in his knuckly fist.
More of the room was metamorphosing around them. The hot stench of rotten meat blew in when the butcher had raised the window all the way. “I’m coming for ya, cutie. Gonna make a meat loaf out’a ya ...”
“I think you better do something,” Angelese said. “Now might be a good time.”
“What do you want me to do? Spit on him? My powers don’t work in the Living World! Only in Hell!”
“Cassie,” Angelese pointed out. “Right now you’re standing in the middle of a Merge between your world and a sector of the Mephistopolis. As far as your powers are concerned, this is Hell.”
Cassie, in the avalanche of her terror, hadn’t even thought of that. She let her fear turn to rage and shot a glare at the Troll. The stout creature howled, lurched backward as if shoved, staggering. In her mind, Cassie pictured two big hands grabbing the Troll’s head. She focused the thought more sharply, thinking, The grinder. Put him in the grinder, and then the Etheric hands hauled the Troll back into the butcher shop and shoved his head into the grinder. The motor’s metallic whine degraded to a sputter for a moment, as the blades bit into its new chore. The Troll convulsed, disappearing inch by inch as the invisible hands fed him into the machine.
“Good,” Angelese said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“Not through there!” Cassie insisted, pointing to the hellish window. She turned to the dorm unit’s door. The door was locked from the outside but she knew she could knock it down simply by projecting a thought. However ...
“Any time now,” Angelese said.
“Who knows what’s on the other side of it—”
“Sure, but we can’t stay here. Don’t you understand anything I’ve told you? The sole purpose of this Merge is to capture you. So use your powers and open that—” The angel’s shoulders slumped. “Too late ...”
Cassie looked at the door again. The gap around the frame seemed to blur—then it disappeared. The door and the frame were now one piece. “What the hell happened?” she asked.
“A Psychic Weld. So you can’t escape. When the Merge peaks, they’ll send a Nectoport in here to get you. Come on, this way!”
The angel was climbing into the butcher’s window. I do NOT want to do this, Cassie thought, but what choice did she have? She climbed into the window, holding her breath against the stench.
“What about you?” she asked, coming up behind. A young Imp paid them no mind as they passed. He was cracking bones on a table, scooping out the marrow. “You’re an angel. What about your powers?”
“Mine are all Masochistilated.”
Cassie frowned. “What?”
“They take too much time to initiate.”
“What about your Nectoport? When we were Dream-Channeling, you had one. Couldn’t we use it to get out of here?”
“It’s too limited a perimeter. We don’t have the power to energize a Nectoport during a Merge, but they do. Just trust me, and do what I say.”
This, too, was not encouraging. Wooo! she thought when her flip-flops touched the edge of something. She looked and saw what she’d almost fallen into a bottomless pit in the floor with a sign that read: DROP ALL ORGANIC WASTE HERE. Great ... Angelese’s hand grabbed her and pulled her away. “This way!”
A wall made of horned skulls set into black mortar stood before them, and in it was another window. Behind them, though, three more Troll butchers were racing after them, all bearing boning knives and cleavers. Chop each other up, Cassie hurled the thought at them. Suddenly the Trolls were skirmishing amongst themselves, sinking blades into each other, cutting chunks out. “This is too easy,” she said. She couldn’t believe how effectively her powers had developed. How hard could it be to get safely away from the clinic when her thoughts could achieve such feats?
“Who are you?” someone shouted when they climbed through the next window. A family of Imps—mother, father, and small son—sat on a couch before an oval, grainy-pictured television. On the screen was what appeared to be a sitcom: giggling children machine-gunning parents at a PTA meeting.
“Sorry to intrude!” Cassie exclaimed.
When Angelese opened the front door to the family’s house, she sighed. They stepped out into the in-patient corridor of the clinic. It was very dark, and much of it had transformed via the Merge, but from here they’d at least be able to find their way out.
“Get down!” Angelese whispered. She pulled Cass
ie behind a desk in front of the med station. They ducked.
“What is it?”
“A Flamma-Trooper ...”
Cassie peeked around and saw it. This particular species of Terrademon was hybridized exclusively for special operations, usually in Extermination Squads. It had three legs but no arms, and had a humanoid head sprouting horns through an asbestos helm. It wore a shiny state-gray uniform whose breastplate was crisscrossed by heavy black straps. On either side, hooked to the straps, were metal tanks, like scuba tanks, and tubes from the tanks led up under the thing’s jaw. The organic igniter in its mouth was what lit the pressurized napalm.
Flamma-Troopers vomited fire.
Its jack-booted third foot kicked down each patient door, then it leaned its head in and belched a crackling orb of fire the size of a beachball. Screams resounded from inside each room.
It’s coming our way, Cassie realized. She shot upright, shouted, “Hey, fireface!”
The Flamma-Trooper glared at her. It adjusted a knob on one of its tanks, then inhaled in preparation for the next heave of flame.
“Get tiny!” Cassie yelled next.
Just as the Trooper would incinerate them, it ... shrank.
“Oh, that’s great!” Angelese celebrated, springing up next to her.
The Flamma-Trooper was now three inches high. Cassie picked up a telephone book off the desk and dropped it—splat ...
A minuscule puff of smoke drifted up from the book.
The act gratified Cassie, but then she looked up at another, more resonant sound—
Ssssssssssss-ONK!
—as a familiar blob of green light suddenly appeared at the end of the hall. Cassie knew it at once: the egression orb of a Nectoport. The green light darkened; the orb floated, growing, then it began to widen forming a fluctuating aperture in mid-air.
When the Egress finally solidified, a dozen Ushers stormed out onto the corridor’s floor, raising axes and spiked bludgeons. Their slug-brown skin shined in slimy sweat. Once in place, they fell silent for a moment, looking at Cassie and Angelese through chisel-slit eyes. Then their fanged mouths all opened at once and they howled, charging.
By now Cassie wasn’t even afraid. Why should she be? She repeated her fun with the Flamma-Trooper, and yelled, “Get tiny, you ugly bastards!” and that was all it took. The Etheric Power behind her command shrank the entire Mutilation Squad down to doll-size. They scampered around on the floor in disarray. Then Cassie and Angelese proceeded to stomp on them all.
“God, this is fun!” Cassie announced, squishing.
“Yeah?” Angelese countered. “See how much fun you have dealing with that ...”
The floor vibrated. A nine-foot-tall Golem trudged toward them, its stout three-fingered hands of clay opening and closing in some mindless anticipation.
“Get tiny!” Cassie shouted.
Nothing happened.
“Shrink, damn you!”
It wasn’t working.
“We’re screwed!” she shouted to the angel.
“Air, fire, earth, and water,” Angelese said. “Only those elements will work against a Golem, because it’s not really a living thing.”
Oh. Cassie shifted through ideas. A Golem’s made of clay. Heat bakes clay, and fire produces heat ...
She closed her eyes and thought solely of heat. A wave of intense, searing heat.
As the Golem walked through the wave, its movements began to retard. It was baking, like a giant clay mannequin in a kiln. When it stopped completely, smoke floated off its features. Then it fell over and shattered like porcelain on the floor.
“Maybe we can get out through this window,” Angelese suggested.
They ducked into the office beside the med station. Cassie was relieved when she looked out the window. The Merge hadn’t progressed much past the clinic’s grounds. Outside she could see the garden and courtyard, and beyond that, the road into town.
“Come on!”
“Wait,” Cassie said. She saw the property locker, yanked it open and rooted around in the small boxes until she found the one with her name.
“What are you doing?” Angelese griped.
“I want my locket. Lissa gave it to me.” Finally! She found her box and tore off the lid.
“Cassie, we’ve got Hell coming down on our asses, and you’re fucking around looking for a locket?”
Cassie’s smirk drew lines in her face. “I can’t believe that angels are allowed to cuss like that.”
In the box was her locket, her watch, and her onyx ring. She scooped them all up, then said, “ “All right, I’m ready— ”
“Too late ...”
More rumbling, like an earthquake. More shards of Hell grew up the walls around them, and outside—
“Holy shit,” Angelese muttered.
Cassie’s eyes were glued to the window. Outside, through ember-like light, fog like green steam floated by, but through it she could see the face of a building. It seemed to be made of lusterless black metal, with gash-like windows. Things barely discernable seemed to scamper back and forth on narrow ledges, and some of the ledges sprouted iron spikes on which severed heads had been planted. The face of the building extended further than she could see, and when she looked up—
It was Cassie’s turn to mutter, “Holy shit.”
The building must’ve spired a mile into the air.
“I can’t believe it,” Angelese said, incredulous. “They Merged the Mephisto Building ...”
“What does this mean?” Cassie asked.
“It means we’re not going out that way,” the angel answered and shoved Cassie away from the window. They ran out of the office, were about to turn back down the hall ...
The phone on the desk was ringing.
They both looked at each other. Given the circumstances, the logical reaction would be to FORGET about the phone, but...
Both Cassie and Angelese got the vibe at the same time.
“I guess you better answer it,” Angelese said.
Cassie picked up the phone, paused a moment, then put it to her ear.
“Hello, Cassie,” greeted the voice at the other end. The simile was impossible but the voice sounded like light. “Do you know who this is?”
“I ... think so.”
“Look at the end of the hall.”
Cassie’s eyes flicked up. Oh, no ... Sadie, the clinic chaperon, quivered with eyes wide as coasters. A thin, pale-white forearm braced across her neck; standing behind the heavyset woman stood a gaunt, waxen figure in a scarlet cloak and hood. Within the hood came suggestions of a face: sunken eyes, skin so sheer she could see veins. But the figure’s mouth was sealed shut by rivets.
“That’s one of my Mutatos,” the voice on the line seemed to sift. “He’s from an imperial class of stewards that starve themselves for centuries to prove their service to me. And they don’t talk, as you can see, so they can’t tell anybody what they see in my abode. I want you to go with him. If you do, he’ll let the woman go. If you don’t, he’ll dig a hole in her head with that tool, and swizzle it around in her brain.”
Now she noticed the flat-metal implement in the Mutato’s bone-thin hand, something like a screwdriver with a large grinding-burr on the end, which he held against Sadie’s temple.
“Whatever he’s telling you,” Angelese advised, “don’t do it. Don’t listen to him.”
“Plus, I’ll guarantee your safety and the safety of your little angelic friend. I just want to talk, that’s all.”
The voice was radiant. It was the most trusting voice she’d ever heard.
“I want to make you a deal,” the caller went on. “If you don’t like the deal, you can go back to your precious Living World and do whatever you want to do.”
“Nnnnnno,” Cassie managed.
“And there’s someone here who wants to talk to you—”
The pause switched. Then another voice came on.
“Cassie? It’s me, it’s Lissa ...”
&nbs
p; “Lissa!”
“Don’t let them put me back in that zoo ...”
“Cassie, hang up,” Angelese said. “We have to get out of here.”
“But it’s my sister!”
“We can’t do anything for her here. Hang up.”
Cassie’s eyes gestured down the hall. “And he’ll kill Sadie if I don’t go talk to him. He said he just wants to talk.”
The Mutato pressed the burr harder against Sadie’s temple. Sadie began to scream.
“Cassie, what’s going on? This is crazy,” another voice said, from behind. Phone still in hand, Cassie turned around.
It was Sadie. Not at the end of the hall but standing behind the desk. Sadie was speechless, then, when she too looked down the hall and saw herself with the Mutato.
“Cassie, it’s a Hex-Clone!” Angelese informed. “Kill it, and kill that thing!”
“Burst,” Cassie whispered, looking at the counterfeit Sadie. The manufactured woman began to swell, then it popped, splattering hexated meat against the wall. After the burst, the Clone’s skin lay on the floor.
“And you,” she said to the Mutato, “stick that thing in your own head.”
It didn’t take long. The stick-like figure quivered in place as the burr ground through the skull and into the brain. He flopped over.
The real Sadie, uncomprehending, ran away in the opposite direction.
“Oh, Cassie,” the voice regretted over the line. “I’m so tired of this. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with people. Now I’m going to have to—”
Angelese took the phone and slammed it down. “Cassie, you’re wasting your time talking to him. I told you before, we’ll find your sister on our terms, not his. Everything he says is a lie.”
Cassie stood dazed. The catastrophic reality of what was going on around her finally got the strange, hypnotic voice out of her head. Yes, she knew who she’d been talking to, and he wasn’t far away. He was in the impossible black skyscraper that had just materialized outside the clinic. The putrid fog was oozing into the hallway now, half-shrouding the new, atrocious features that the Merge was incorporating into the clinic. Past the hall, by what used to be the nurse’s station, was the door to the office wing, partially Merged with a statue of a split-faced demon on which fanged pigeons with worms in place of feathers squatted. But there was enough left intact of the door for them to get through. “There’s our way out,” Cassie said.