The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child

by Phillion, Matthew

  King Tears laughed, a deep, sonorous sound.

  “I knew I could bring you around,” he said. “Now I wouldn’t ask a master bargainer deal unprepared. Think it over. You know I have the resources. Tell me what it’s worth to you, and we’ll strike an accord.”

  He finished his drink and smiled his ghastly grin again.

  “I want that creature, Lady Grey. And I’m willing to pay for it.”

  “It almost sounds like you’re asking me to take advantage of your generosity,” Natasha said.

  “To be honest… I’m spending someone else’s currency these days, metaphysically and literally,” King Tears said. “I can afford to be generous on someone else’s tab.”

  He moved to the door and paused as he turned the handle.

  “I’m looking forward to hearing what you want in return,” King Tears said. “If nothing else, I know you always make the most interesting bargains.”

  The magician touched an imaginary hat brim and left, closing the door behind him. Natasha stood very still, letting the magical guards she had over the suite tell her when he was no longer nearby.

  She steadied herself on the arm of the nearest sofa.

  “And I just wanted to retire in peace,” she said. “Damn it.”

  Chapter 14: Amongst the stars

  Two familiar shapes drifted high up over the desert sky, one a streak of blue-white light, the other like a shimmering soap bubble, visible only when the light hit it just right.

  It’s good to be home, Billy thought, but he didn’t feel it in his guts. Dude knew it, too.

  You’re lying to yourself, the alien said.

  So? I lie to myself all the time, Billy thought.

  And in no situation is it ever beneficial, Dude said. But if you must.

  Must is a strong word for it, Billy thought.

  “I love that you’re gone for months, living among other Luminae hosts just like you, and you still can’t help but do the stupid face when you’re talking to Dude in your head,” Emily said.

  “Maybe I was just daydreaming,” Billy said.

  “That was not a daydreaming face. You were moving your lips and kind of drooling.”

  “Did I mention how much I missed you?” Billy said.

  “No,” Emily said. “And I can tell you didn’t.”

  “What?” Billy said, indignant.

  “Oh, don’t get your spandex all twisted up, Billy Case,” Emily said. “Why would you miss us? You were building a space station for galactic heroes. Coming back to Earth would bore my brains out.”

  Billy slowed up and came to a stop mid-air. Emily joined him.

  “It mystifies me that you’re so perceptive,” Billy said.

  “That’s because you’re self-absorbed for real,” Emily said. “I only pretend to be self-absorbed so that people let their guards down so I can analyze them.”

  “I am not self-absorbed,” Billy said.

  You’re self-absorbed, Dude said.

  “Shut up, you,” Billy said.

  “I assume that was directed at the alien,” Emily said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway,” Emily said, pirouetting in her bubble of float, showing off how not-abysmal she’d become at controlling her powers lately. “You can’t wait to go back, can you.”

  “I actually am not looking forward to going back,” Billy said, and meant it. He was so much younger than the other Luminae hosts, and so inexperienced compared to them considering how far they’d traveled and how many different alien cultures they’d encountered, that he felt more than a little lonely among them. They treated him like an equal, but he still felt like the only child at the kiddie table at Thanksgiving.

  He didn’t say all of this to Emily, and of course she picked up on it anyway.

  “You don’t fit in out there, do you,” Emily said.

  Billy folded his arms across his chest.

  “No,” he said. “I mean I’m one of them. They treat me like I’m one of them, but…”

  “But with training wheels?”

  “Sort of,” Billy said. “I mean, I just don’t have their vocabulary yet. Also, some of them are a little afraid of me.”

  “You are less terrifying than our dog,” Emily said. “And he’s ten pounds. Watson is fine, by the way. I think he likes your parents more than you now.”

  “As long as he likes me more than you I’m okay with that. And it’s the time travel thing,” Billy said. “Remember how Dude and I absorbed so much of his energy from the alternate timeline? How we had to split it off?”

  “Yeah. You glowed for like weeks.”

  “I told them about that,” Billy said. “So, some of them think I’m some sort of… like a super-powered Luminae. And others feel like I abandoned one of ours in the future by leaving Dude’s spinoff Luminae in the future with Jessica.”

  “But now that you’re back…”

  Billy sighed. It did feel good to be home. To be among friends—particularly among friends who were his equals and not his superiors. But still, he…

  “I feel really disconnected,” Billy said.

  “That’s because you’re an alien,” Emily said.

  “See you’re teasing me, but that’s kind of how I feel,” Billy said. “I’ve lived amongst the stars for a while. Everything here feels… zoomed in? Maybe? I don’t know. I feel a little bit claustrophobic. And also a little bit agoraphobic, because everything’s so magnified. Earth’s got a lot of information it throws at you, all day, all the time. But mostly I feel… I mean disconnected is the best word I can come up with. Detached.”

  “You didn’t look disconnected sitting with Bedlam earlier.”

  “We were holding hands, for crying out loud, Emily, I swear if you shame me for holding hands…”

  “Relax, captain,” Emily said. “I’m just teasing. I think she’s lonely too. I’m happy the two of you have something, whatever it is.”

  “And it is very much a ‘whatever it is’ right now, Emily,” Billy said.

  “So, you’re not planning a wedding.”

  “We have done exactly not one thing normal together the entire time we’ve known each other,” Billy said. “I’m thinking a few dates might be more appropriate first.”

  “Not doing anything normal together sounds like my dream relationship, honestly,” Emily said, scratching her chin. “Who wants to do normal things?”

  “I just spent a few months on one of Saturn’s moons,” Billy said. “Trust me, normal is underrated.”

  “Which is exactly why you’re going to get me up to that space station, Billy,” Emily said.

  “It’s not that easy. You can’t survive in the vacuum of space. I can’t just float you up there.”

  “Buzzkill,” Emily said.

  “You’re living in a broken spaceship in the middle of a desert with a talking robot and a mad scientist,” Billy said. “I cannot figure out what you have to complain about.”

  “You know I bore easily,” Emily said.

  “True.”

  “And also that I’ve always wanted to go to space.”

  ‘Whinging isn’t going to get a spaceship here for you any faster,” Billy said.

  “Will it make it slower?” Emily said.

  “Probably not,” Billy said.

  “Them I’m going to whinge,” Emily said.

  “See, this? This I missed,” Billy said.

  “Still feeling disconnected?” Emily said.

  “Little bit.”

  “Then I shall whinge until you feel better,” Emily said. “Whinge, whinge, whinge.”

  “So helpful.”

  “This is why I’m your best friend,” she said.

  Chapter 15: A matter of ownership

  Kate sat in front of the not-quite-of-this-world laptop she’d taken from the Tower when she went back to the City without the rest of the team. It wasn’t really a laptop, more like a small portable alien computer masquerading as a laptop, but it had buttons and a screen a
nd she didn’t know what else to call it.

  It also had access to the Tower’s databases and could connect with resources online without appropriate security clearance, the latter of which was always something that Doc had suggested they never mention to anyone working for a government, anywhere, ever.

  Today, though, the information she hunted for online was a matter of public record: building ownership.

  She surfed through public records, building inspector filings with the City, and any references she could find about the building where they’d found the evidence of magical foul play. Titus was out tracking the mutated boy, Kevin, in that disturbing way he always did, by scent. She didn’t understand why the… otherness of Titus worried her so much lately. She felt weirdly judgmental for having the thoughts running through her head. But she knew the reason, really. It was own humanity. She could forget sometimes, keeping up with the super-powered allies and friends she had, about her own fragility, but something about Titus surviving the explosion in space—a powerful realization of how much more than human he was, it made her feel distant. It wasn’t the same as knowing that Jane was invulnerable or Billy could fly. Titus was meat and bone like her. And yet always, always more.

  She shook off the wandering thoughts and returned to the task at hand. The building on the outskirts of town had changed hands several times over the years, always some bland, nebulous business name and description. Mostly packaging or storage. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she started tracking those businesses as well. All of them were defunct, sold off for parts over the course of decades. Strange that none of ever really amounted to anything, she thought. The City has a way of being loyal to its local businesses. If they were part of the pastiche of the City, they would have survived somehow—a square named after the family owners, a random street name, some shopping center the locals refused to call by a new name. But nothing. It was as if the building were inhabited by ghosts.

  So she started looking at what else these companies owned, starting with the most recent and working backwards. Most owned other buildings in the City. More than half had properties they owned across the country. A handful were international.

  But none of the companies that ever owned the derelict building still existed.

  “Oh, come on,” she said out loud.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Titus said, striding into the office looking miserable.

  “No luck, then,” Kate said.

  “Or too much luck,” Titus said. “Kate, something bad is coming. I thought I could track him because—I mean seriously, he’s a tentacle monster, that should be pretty unique to track, right? But the whole City smells like…”

  “Please don’t tell me the City smells like tentacle monsters.”

  “It smells like bad magic,” Titus said.

  Kate gave him a long, dirty look.

  “What,” Titus said.

  “The magic thing. Please don’t turn into a melodramatic would-be wizard.”

  “I don’t plan on it,” Titus said. “But Kate, there’s a pallor hanging over this place. It’s like a fog.”

  Kate rocked back in her chair and brushed the hair back from her eyes.

  “What are you working on?” Titus asked, intrusively looking over her shoulder at the computer.

  “Trying to track down who owns the building we investigated,” Kate said. “I’m getting a lot of nothing.”

  “Lots of companies bought and sold,” Titus said. “That’s sketchy.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Kate said. “But public records are limited and I’m not exactly a hacker here.”

  “There are ways we could get around that,” Titus said.

  “Don’t say magic.”

  “I wasn’t going to say magic.”

  “What, then.”

  “You know who I would ask to do a search for us,” Titus said. “Neal.”

  Kate grimaced. She’d felt guilty around the AI ever since she crashed the Tower, feeling—irrationally, she knew—as if the harm done to the ship was actually harm she’d inflicted on Neal himself. The AI had flat out told her, in his usual cheerful way, that he understood her actions and was simply relieved he’d had time to transfer his consciousness into the mobile robotic unit he now lived in. But still, it bothered Kate to be around him. She felt personally responsible for crippling the ship that had been Neal’s body and home for longer than even Doc could remember.

  “Don’t make that face,” Titus said, picking up on her mood.

  “I’m not making a face.”

  “He forgives you,” Titus said. “More than forgives you—he doesn’t even consider forgiveness a requirement. You know he’s just happy you both didn’t die up there.”

  “I screwed him over, Titus.”

  “Kate, Neal is incapable of lying,” Titus said. “If he hated you, he’d tell you. Well, I mean he’d say it in a really nice way, but he wouldn’t lie.”

  “How do you tell someone you hate her in a really nice way?”

  “Designation: Dancer,” Titus said, in his best Neal impersonation. “I feel a sense of overwhelming resentment and anger toward you for your actions. I do not feel as if this response mechanism will subside.”

  “That was creepy, and if you ever do it again I will break your face,” Kate said.

  “So are we heading out to the desert?” Titus said.

  “Don’t sound so excited,” Kate said.

  “What can I say,” Titus said. “I miss everyone.”

  Kate wrinkled her nose, refusing to acknowledge the flutter she felt in her gut that seemed to maybe, possibly hint she might miss her friends as well.

  “Fine,” Kate said. “But I’m driving.”

  Chapter 16: Through the looking glass all over again

  Jane watched Doc size up an empty space in front of him like an art critic studying a painting. Beyond him, a blank wasteland that had once been a town stretched out, empty and silent. Behind them, Sam Barren hovered around a Department car. He’d tagged along to make it official—it was an entire town that disappeared, after all, and the Department had to be involved—but Sam’s distrust of the mystical made him grumpy.

  We’ve been here before, Jane thought. Doc going off to some other plane of existence and leaving us here without him. Of course, last time we weren’t ready, she thought. We’ve all been through so much more now. He thought he could trust us then, but he knows he can trust us now.

  Still, she didn’t like him running off on his own.

  “You sure I can’t come with you?” Jane said. “I’d feel better if you weren’t going in alone.”

  Doc exhaled. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at Jane.

  “I’d feel better not going in alone myself,” Doc said. “But if there’s one thing I’ve done wrong, Jane, it’s that I never taught any of you how to really stand up against magical threats. None of you are truly ready for this. And that’s my fault.”

  Jane opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, then changed her mind.

  “Titus is learning,” she blurted out.

  “About magic? I know,” Doc said.

  “See, I should have known better than to assume he could keep that from you,” Jane said.

  “His mentor Leto ratted him out,” Doc said. “Professional courtesy among magicians. She thought I should know one of my… I was about to say students, but really, you’re not anymore, are you? Any of you. You’re well past being students. But one of my former students had taken up magic.”

  “In case you wanted to stop him?” Jane said.

  “It’s just good to know what sort of magic is living under the same roof,” Doc said. “Think about it like what chemicals you store under the kitchen sink. It’s good to know you don’t have anything that shouldn’t be mixed together there.”

  “You explain magic so mundanely,” Jane said. “You really could have been a teacher.”

  “Always thought I was one,” Doc said, smiling. “But yeah. I
know. I’m happy he’s doing it. He’s got the right nature for it. Titus has always been a good combination of cautious and curious. Too much of one and you’ll never learn enough about magic to make it worthwhile; too much of the other and you’ll live a very short life.”

  “Why not bring him with you, then?” Jane said. “We could teleport to the City and be back in ten minutes.”

  “Because you’ll need him here, for one,” Doc said. “And because if anything goes wrong, he might be helpful for you to bring me back.”

  “We’ve done this once already, Doc,” Jane said. “If you could not get trapped on another existential plane that would be wonderful.”

  “I thought about that,” Doc said. He smiled broadly and reached into his long coat, pulling out two long knives, each sheathed in ornate leather.

  “I thought you only had one of those,” Jane said, recognizing the weapon immediately. During their first great battle, Doc used one, a planar knife, to cut a hole in reality and disappear, dragging their biggest threat with him—a self-sacrificing move Jane never quite forgave him for. She brought him back later by finding the same planar knife, cutting another hole in reality, and dragging him back through. It feels like a lifetime ago, she thought. Her first and last experience with real magic.

  “Well, I found another one,” Doc said. “Last time I needed to get trapped, so that the Lady couldn’t find her way back either. This time I’m bringing one with me so I can get home easily. I hope.”

  “And the second one is for me,” Jane said.

  “In case I need you to come help,” Doc said. “I hope that isn’t the case, but I’m not taking any chances this time.”

  “And how will we know if you need us to come get you?” Jane said.

  Doc handed one of the knifes to Jane and then pulled out a pair of objects from his pocket, small, round mirrors the size of his palm. He gave Jane one of these as well.

  “Sometimes I feel like you actually live in a Lewis Carroll story,” Jane said.

  “Some days it feels like Lewis Carroll, other days it feels like H.P. Lovecraft,” Doc said. He held his mirror up to his face. “Look at yours.”