I look down at the gun in my hands.
It has served its destined purposes. Now it’s nothing but a tube of metal.
I throw it into the nearest fire.
I dodge around the body and I run.
I run out of the convention hall, out of the lobby, out into the street.
Two blocks down, I’ve calmed enough to let out a stream of curses.
“Why the fuck did I throw away the fucking gun?” I scream, looking down alleys and swerving as I spot moving shapes. “Shit, shit, shit, shit—”
Up ahead, an intersection full of cars and small trucks. I slow enough to approach one, yank open the driver’s seat, throw up a prayer of thanks that no body tumbles out, and reach for the ignition. No keys, goddammit.
Next car, keys, but it’s a stick, goddammit.
Next car, keys, but when I try to start the engine, there’s no sound. The battery’s run down.
Next car, a pale cheek is pressed against the inside of the window. I don’t open the door.
Next car, no keys.
Next car, all the tires are blown.
Just when I’m starting to think running is the best policy, I come upon a late model sedan parked awkwardly on the sidewalk, keys in the ignition. I start the engine and it purrs to life. The gas mileage on this thing must be incredible. I get in and close the door and feel like James Bond.
Now what?
No monsters in sight, and the A/C is already very cool, so I allow myself a minute to think.
Kazuma is dead. And that’s a thing to think about when I have more time to think. Setting it aside.
Ron could be around here somewhere. If she finds me, she’ll want to know where Kazuma is. I’ll tell her we split up.
I need to find Mjolnir. Holy shit, Kazuma tried to blame all this on the superweapon that can save us all. Stupid, shortsighted— Setting it aside.
I’m still not sure where I am, or where I was when I last remember using Mjolnir. I growl and pound my forehead with my fists, but no magical GPS map pops into my brain. I heave a sigh and lean my head against the steering wheel.
When I look up again and glance in the rear-view mirror, there are two giraffes sauntering around the corner, hook-mouths swinging about, tasting the air. They’re following my scent, and it’ll lead them right to the car.
I pull in a deep breath and pray I can remember how to drive. My hand moves automatically to the gear shifter; my right foot moves automatically to the brake. I shift into ‘D’ and carefully roll forward, off the sidewalk. I can see a path ahead through the wrecked cars.
In the rear-view, the giraffes are sniffing toward me. One starts forward eagerly, having spotted the moving car. I really don’t want them to catch up, so I give it a little gas and spurt forward between a jackknifed semi and two crumpled sedans. Once I get around an overturned news van, I’m home-free; empty street stretches in front of me for about a block.
Th-thunk. Well, not completely empty, but it’s hard to dodge all the— th-thunk —bodies.
Just as I hit the gas and start to push past twenty, the giraffes come galloping out behind me. And behind them is a small horde of exes. This kind of development doesn’t even increase my heartrate anymore. I just mutter and step on the gas.
Before I can really begin to lose the monsters, I come upon more cars blocking the road. I have to roll up onto the sidewalk, bouncing and cursing and jouncing and wincing every inch of the way. Tens of needle-critters are surging into my rear-view.
Then I’m on the other side and speeding up again. Not sure how much more of this I can take. And what am I doing, anyway? Driving around randomly until I stumble upon Mjolnir? That only works in video games.
Just as I’m cursing out loud at another roadblock up ahead, I hear a sharp rapping on the passenger window. I tear my eyes from the crashed cars and find Ron running alongside the car, banging on the window with her knuckles, looking back over her shoulder with a rather concerned expression.
I unlock the car and slow just enough for her to wrench open the door and climb inside. She slams the door behind her, and as I lay on the gas, she runs her hands through her hair, dislodging bits of glass. “Where the hell is Kazuma?” she snaps.
“I don’t know,” I answer lamely. “W-we split up. He wanted me to find Mjolnir.”
She presses her hands to her face for a moment.
She knows. She knows what I did. And despite the fact that I feel perfectly justified, guilt chills me.
At last, she sighs. “This has all gone to absolute shit.”
A tension inside me uncoils, and I start to hope I’ll actually get through this without having my soul shredded any further. In fact, maybe she can help me. “Hey, can you remember where we were when we lost Mjolnir?”
“I’m so turned-around and disoriented, I probably couldn’t find my ass with both hands if you wanted. I think it was in a ratty backpack.” She’s annoyed with me, staring out the window as if she’d rather not be here.
The right side of her forehead is bloodied. An unpleasant little shock runs through me, but still I ask, “Are you okay?”
“Took a bump to the head. That’s all.”
That’s what she told me before, when I was talking like a stroke victim.
“The Army guys took worse,” she adds. “If you see a Humvee, drive the other way. Speaking of which . . .”
Shiny black shapes are pouring out of an alley up ahead. “A dancing prancing swarm,” I mumble. A giraffe comes tearing down the edge of them like a combine harvester. “Ooh, and they brought friends.”
She waves a hand dismissively. “Just run them over.”
“Maybe in a Humvee, but in this delicate flower? I wouldn’t use this car to knock over an apple cart, much less a bunch of giraffes and exes!”
She looks at me with disgust, as if she’s just heard the dumbest thing she’ll ever hear in her entire life, and mumbles, “A bunch of whats and whats?”
They’re filling the road ahead; there’s no other way. I have just enough time to shriek and ram the gas pedal, and then we’re slamming through the center of the swarm. Ron leans toward me, away from the window, as legs break it and stick in and wiggle around and miss her by bare inches. We’re surrounded by shadowy black lines like shrieking fans around a limo. All I can hear is the bunk bunk bunk of tendrils punching holes in the body of the car.
Then we’re through, and there’s steam coming from the engine compartment. I press down on the gas, praying, and then notice several lights glowing on the dash. The ones that draw my eye are ‘ABS’, ‘BRAKE (!)’, and ‘STEER (!)’.
She’s noticed them, too. “Uh oh.”
I press on the brake, expecting it to be heavy, impossible to budge — thinking the power brakes are out. But the pedal moves easily.
It just doesn’t do anything.
Somewhere beyond the panic buzzing around my ears, Ron is talking. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and can feel the car accelerating. The steering wheel is stiff under my hands; no power steering.
“Put on your seatbelt,” I whisper.
She goes quiet.
“Put on your seatbelt,” I repeat, raising my voice. “Now.”
I remember asking my high school driving teacher what to do in this exact situation. I remember him being too busy telling someone in the back seat to turn off their goddamn phone and pay attention.
I glance at Ron; she has a terrified glint in her eye. “Does this thing have airbags?” she mumbles, clicking her seatbelt shut.
I look ahead and see a T-intersection; directly in front of us is a brick wall, because of course there is. If I lean hard on the steering wheel, I might be able to turn us in time.
Ron braces a foot against the passenger door and places her boiling-hot hands over mine on the steering wheel. “Say when!” she shouts.
I suck in a deep breath and stare at the looming brick wall, prepared to grip the—
Wait.
I know that wall.
—grip the steering wheel and wrench as hard as I can to the left. Tires squeal, and then we’re at an angle, flying toward the sidewalk on two wheels. I let out a grunt and pull harder, and Ron’s hands nearly crush mine as she adds a fraction of her strength. Her side of the car scrapes the wall with an awful sound, and then we’re flying off down a side street with a median.
She lets out a triumphant crow and collapses back into her seat. “Fuck yeah!”
“I know where Mjolnir is.”
She stops halfway through a fistpump and stares at me, dumbfounded. “Oh! That’s cool, too!”
“The portals are a few blocks behind us, to the south. That’s why there are so many swarms here. They’re still coming through.” Landmarks from the previous night reveal themselves. “Bail on three.”
“Wait, bail as in—”
There’s an intersection up ahead. “One!”
“Jesus!” She unbuckles her seatbelt; I follow suit.
“Two! When you’re out, run down the street to our right! To the east! Three!”
I yank open my door and dive out, curling into a ball. I hit the pavement on my left shoulder and hear it crack ominously, but the pain is distant, abstract. I watch the car continue on down the street, headed for a brick building’s corner, and realize that Ron hasn’t jumped out.
Oh. When we scraped the wall, it must have jammed her door shut.
Wince. She’ll survive, but still. I hope she doesn’t think I did that on purpose.
I get to my wobbly feet and look back the way we came. The swarm is running up against the brick wall we nearly pasted ourselves across, and I don’t want to be standing here when they spread in this direction. I start down the eastern street.
And I stop, because there’s a man in an Army uniform standing about twenty yards away, staring at me.
To my left, the sedan slams into a brick something with a bouncing crunch.
The soldier is holding the backpack gingerly by its unhooked straps, as if he just picked it up to investigate. Through a small rip in the front pocket, I can see Mjolnir’s distinct blue glow.
I’m thirty goddamn seconds too late. A scream of frustration wells up in my chest.
I grit my teeth and force it down.
Okay. I can fix this.
I hurry toward him, clutching my splintered left shoulder, praying I look like a panicked civilian. Once I’m out of sight of the swarm, I call to him, “I need your help!”
He drops the bag, then jumps in surprise at the tiny pulse Mjolnir releases. “Are there hostiles behind you, ma’am?” he calls, pulling an assault rifle up around his back on a strap. “Why weren’t you evacuated?”
I stop ten feet away from him and pretend to pant for breath. “I need, your help. Please.” I look at the backpack. “Oh, thank God, you found it!”
He’s peering over my shoulder for monsters. “What?”
“That bag contains a tool my lab has been perfecting.”
He looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “Lab? A tool? Who do you work for?”
“Government contractor. You’re not cleared to know more, and I have no time to explain. I need that tool in order to stop the swarm. They’ll be here in seconds.”
“Hold on, I don’t know you from Eve. Do you have some kind of lab ID?”
“What part of ‘no time to explain’ did you not hear?” I shriek.
He starts to lift his gun, but then looks past me. His expression changes in an instant, from suspicious annoyance to frightened rage. “Freeze!” he shouts, raising the assault rifle and pointing it over my shoulder. To me, “Get behind me! Now!”
I turn to find that Ron has dug herself out of the sedan’s mangled wreckage and has approached just close enough for the soldier to recognize. Her newly-looted clothes are ripped in places, and there’s a new line of blood oozing down her forehead, but she’s alert enough to stop in place and stare warily at the gun.
I roll the dice: “She’s a test subject. Put your weapon down. I have her under control.”
“Half my squad was killed back there,” the soldier growls, not looking at me. “I know I saw her in the action. If she takes one step closer, I will neutralize her.”
I give Ron as meaningful a look as I can from twenty yards away. “Why don’t you go make sword-hands and hold back the swarm?” I yell. “I got this!”
She stares at me, and there’s something distrustful in her expression. Then she turns and heads back the way we came, hands becoming swords, buying me time. What a team player.
“What lab did you say you were with?” the soldier repeats, slowly lowering the gun and giving me a pointed look.
With Ron acting as bait, we have only precious minutes until the swarm turns the corner. I’m all out of subterfuge. I meet his eyes, still clutching my shoulder, and sigh. “You’re going to give me the backpack, and I’m going to use it to stop this entire mess.”
He turns to face me full-on, and I can’t help but mentally inventory all the ways he could hurt me — grenades, handgun, combat knife, and of course, assault rifle. I notice another sling and trace it up to his shoulder, to a jet-black metal—
“Wait. Is that an M870?”
He quirks an eyebrow. “Uh. Yeah.”
My eyes widen painfully. “It’s like a sign!” I shake my head violently. “Wait. No. Never mind. I don’t like guns anymore. I didn’t like getting shot.”
While I’ve been having contortions inside my own brain, he’s been inventorying me, and he notices the scars running up my hands and arms—
“I don’t like getting shot,” I mumble. I feel so light. My ears are ringing.
He glances at my face, looks into my eyes, and jumps back, raising the rifle. “Get on the ground!” he shouts. “You’re one of those things!”
Everything looks magnified. I can count the skin cells on the top of the man’s tongue as he nervously licks his top lip. I can see his thoughts as clearly as if they’re blaring on a big-screen TV: He’s picturing Ron ripping through his squadmates, the strongest men and women he’s ever known, as if they were helpless, bleating animals.
I can do that. I can easily slot myself into that role, shifting through the air like electricity, striking deep enough to draw thrilling gouts of blood. Part of me wants to reenact it, prove myself—
“Get! On the! Ground!” he shouts, and there’s a white-hot thread of panic in his voice. He’s six-foot, probably 250 pounds, and he’s pointing a gun and screaming at a civilian woman. Out of context, he would look like the bad guy.
Mjolnir. Focus on Mjolnir.
“The object in that backpack increases in mass as it moves. When it comes to a stop, it releases a pulse, the size of which depends on that mass. And that pulse destroys these monsters.”
He stares into my eyes even as he readjusts his grip on the gun. “Assuming that’s the truth!” There’s an uncomfortable amount of hope in his angry voice. “Assuming that’s true, wouldn’t it destroy you, too? And her? Where did you come from? Why are you doing this?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that I’m going to use that stone to fix all this.”
“How?”
I open my mouth to answer, then pause.
Well, shit. How am I going to use it? Run around setting off little pulses until I actually give myself a stroke? Genius.
Panic starts to burn its way up my throat. What if there’s nothing I can do? For the first time since I entered that other world, I’m confronted with the possibility that this might never end.
“Please,” I whisper, looking away, shaken. “Just . . . Look at the stone, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to hurt you. Jesus, I’m not going to kill a soldier. I’m not one of the bad guys. Just look at the fucking stone.” My legs drop out from under me, and I’m sitting on dusty asphalt, shuddering, not sure what to do if this guy won’t give me the fucking key to saving the world and if I can’t figure out what to do with it.
He slowly lo
wers his gun, but keeps it half-ready with his left hand. With his right, he unzips the backpack’s front pocket and gently removes Mjolnir. For a moment we’re both dazzled by its shining beauty; my throat is tight.
I reach out a hand — my right, my human hand, the one I can use to hold the stone—
—its breath-stealing beauty mutates into hideous power. My fingertips disintegrate up to the second knuckle; the needle cells lose cohesion and fall apart, sprinkling the ground.
I wrench my hand away, crying out in shock. There’s no pain, but there’s a horrifying wrongness, the theft of part of my body. I stare at my hand until my fingertips begin to grow back.
“Mother of God . . .” the soldier mumbles, looking from my hand to the stone and back. “You were telling the truth.”
After a few deep breaths, I laugh weakly. “If more people had said that to me in the past week, you and I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“Well,” he muses, and his eyes cloud just a little as he contemplates. “If it works like you say, you could just drop it off a building.”
We fall silent as I register that he just had an idea about how to use Mjolnir. So I go back and process the idea. The results indicate that this would work perfectly. In fact, this solution is so apt, my mouth falls open a little.
“It powers up as it moves, right?” he continues. “So drop it off a building. But not too high. If it gains mass as it moves, you don’t want it to turn into a black hole or something.”
I close my eyes. I should not have been chosen to save the world. I’m terrible at it.
The soldier glances past me and flinches. “She’s coming back.” He’s caught with Mjolnir in his hand, unsure whether to drop it and go for his gun, or try out the stone’s powers.
I hurriedly get to my feet and put myself between distant Ron and the soldier, and reach for the backpack. “She’ll see you give the backpack to me. She won’t want me to use it.”
He looks at me sharply, then carefully hides Mjolnir behind his back, looking over my head at Ron.
“I’ll help you avenge your squadmates and save the city,” I whisper. “I’ll find a way to . . .” I suck in a deep, steadying breath. “Please. Guns don’t stop us, not for long, you know that. If you provoke her, she’ll kill you to save the two of us. But if I go, she’ll follow me.”
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