The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child

by Phillion, Matthew

  “Everybody knows about the girl, William,” Henry said.

  “This is what I get hanging out with a bunch of fellow Luminae hosts for months,” Billy said. “I’ve lost the ability to be subtle about this.”

  “What’s the problem with the girl?” Henry said. “And by girl I assume you mean that intense young cyborg you’ve been keeping company with.”

  Tell him, Dude said. I’ve never figured out your bizarre human mating rituals. You need to speak to an adult human.

  Dude, I swear, I’m begging you, never say ‘mating rituals’ ever again, Billy thought. Ever.

  “It’s better when you answer him out loud,” Henry said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “When you speak silently it looks like you’ve swallowed your own tongue.”

  “Okay. Fine. There isn’t a problem,” Billy said. “I just worry I’ll screw it up. We barely know each other, and stuff keeps happening to keep us from getting to know each other, and I’m worried I’ll disappoint her.”

  “You will,” Henry said.

  “What?” Billy said.

  “You’ll disappoint her. She’ll disappoint you. It’s how you handle those disappointments, what you do to be better or what you learn about the limits of how much disappointment you can tolerate that will determine whether you make it together or not,” Henry said. “And for crying out loud, you are kids. Don’t put so much pressure on each other. Go to the movies. Have fun.”

  “Oh, gawd,” Emily said, entering the galley dramatically. She wore onesie pajamas in the shape of a videogame anime rodent, complete with an electrical bolt tail. “Did I just hear you giving him relationship advice, Henry?”

  “Where did you get a onesie in the desert?” Henry asked, incredulous.

  “Costume generator,” Emily said.

  “That is such a waste of resources…”

  “Why shouldn’t he give me relationship advice?” Billy said.

  “Because he’s been divorced three times!” Emily said.

  “Hey!” Henry said. “First of all, don’t judge a person’s life by their failed relationships unless you were there when they happened. Secondly, how did you know I was divorced three times?”

  “The internet,” Emily said. “C’mon, Henry, I learned the basics of quantum mechanics online. You think I can’t find the Entertainment Hollywood article about the billionaire superhero’s love life?”

  “Why did you look that up?” Billy said.

  “Are you kidding? I didn’t look it up. My mom watched a lot of entertainment shows when I was little. I knew all about him,” Emily said. “Your second wife was the nicest, by the way. You screwed up big time.”

  “I screwed up a lot,” Henry said. “Which is why my third point is to say: why not let your friend learn from my mistakes so he doesn’t repeat them?”

  “Because it’ll be fun to watch him flounder at love?” Emily said, sticking her tongue out at Billy. “I tease because I love, guys.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Neal’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  “You put Neal back in the ship?” Billy said.

  “No, he’s downloading some stuff—Neal, what’s wrong?” Henry said.

  “Jane is approaching and should be on-site in just a few moments, Designation: Coldwall,” Neal said. “But I’m also picking up anomalous energy readings in the control center.”

  Emily, Billy, and Henry exchanged worried glances took off running—or in Henry’s case, hobbling—toward the control center.

  They got there just in time to see a doorway opening out of thin air, a circular gateway glowing with purple energy. Billy let his energy powers flow to his hands, which began to glow blue-white, ready to strike.

  You asked for a problem you could be helpful with, Dude said.

  Now is not the time for sarcasm, Dude, Billy thought.

  A silhouette appeared in the gateway, tall and slender with short, bobbed hair. The figure stepped through the portal, and Billy and Emily broke into cursing.

  “Not the reception I was hoping for, but I’ve had worse,” the Lady Natasha Grey said, stepping through the portal and letting it close behind her.

  “Why are you here?” Billy said.

  “Where’s your babysitter?” Natasha said, looking around the room in disgust. “There’s so many of you running around and not a single one of you suggested sweeping this place up a bit?”

  “How did you find this place?” Henry asked. We’ve got satellite jammers and…”

  “Magic, sweetheart,” Natasha said. “Now hush. Where’s Silence.”

  “No seriously, why are you here?” Billy asked again, incredulous. Then things got worse.

  Jane chose that moment to come clomping around the corner looking for them.

  “Guys, we need to talk about Doc… why is she here?” Jane said.

  “I keep asking that same question,” Billy said.

  “What do you mean, talk about Doc?” Natasha said, her tone imperious.

  “That’s none of your damned business is what I mean,” Jane said. She looked Billy right in the eyes. “Why is she here?”

  “Why are you looking at me like this is my fault?” Billy said.

  “I swear I’ve seen this in an Abbott and Costello video,” Emily said. “Doc’s not here, Lady. What do you want?”

  Natasha turned her gaze on Emily as if seeing her for the first time.

  “What do you mean, not here?” the Lady said.

  “He’s indisposed, but don’t think that we can’t handle you,” Jane said. “Also, you owe me one, remember?”

  Natasha looked the hodgepodge group and sighed heavily. She walked over to the counter and, without asking permission, took down a cracked mug and poured herself a cup of Henry’s coffee.

  “That’s my coffee,” Henry said softly.

  “Well, I suppose you’ll do,” Natasha said. She leaned against the countertop, and Billy realized, much to his growing surprised, that she looked tired. Tired, and worried.

  “You okay?” he asked. Jane shot him a filthy look, and Emily just went slack-jawed.

  Natasha laughed, a quick bark of a bitter chuckle.

  “Oh, if you only knew,” she said.

  “What do you mean, we’ll do?” Jane said.

  “I came here to ask Doctor Silence for his help,” Natasha said. “Someone he cares about is going to be in grave danger soon, and I can’t intervene.”

  “So what you’re saying is…” Billy said.

  “You need our help,” Emily said. “She needs our help! Oh, this is going to be awesome.”

  “Awesome is not the word I’d go with,” Jane said.

  Natasha shrugged.

  “I’m proud, but I’m not stupid,” Natasha said. “Yes. Yes, you strange little creatures. I need to ask for your help.”

  Chapter 19: Everyone works for the bad guys

  Andrew Keppler had always known the company he worked for was shady. It took a few years as a rising star in the corporate structure to realize he wasn’t just working for a shady business, but rather, a legitimately evil one, as his rank grew and he was able to peel back layer upon layer of what the corporation did. He was promoted again at age twenty-nine and given the privilege of learning that he worked for the Children of the Elder Star, a clandestine organization pulling strings across the world to make bad people even more powerful. They had been around for centuries in some form or another, always working their evil through money and through surrogates, never through direct confrontation. They owned a portion of the world.

  But it’s a good job, Keppler told himself. The pay was great and they treated him better than his last job. I mean, if you want to see evil, Keppler thought, I worked in the insurance industry before this.

  He flew into the City on King Tears’ orders, taking a ride-sharing car, driven by a kid wearing a “We Are Indestructible” tee shirt, out to the old factory building the Children owned through one of their hundreds of shell corporations. The kid looke
d at Keppler oddly when he got out of the car in front of what appeared to be a derelict building, but Keppler gave the kid another twenty bucks as a tip and muttered something about it being old family property. Once the car was out of sight, he went around to a side entrance, a rust-and-green metal door in an alley, and went inside.

  Immediately, his head began to swim. The air felt too thick, the hallway simultaneously too hot and too cold. A smell of incense clung to the air alongside the coppery stink of blood, and other, less organic things. He thought for a moment he might pass out, but then his phone buzzed in his pocket, and the normalcy of that, the physical presence of it, jarred him back into reality. He answered.

  “I take it you arrived safely,” King Tears said on the other line.

  “Yeah, I… what is this place?” Keppler asked. Further down the corridor, he saw what looked like a woman in a business suit walking—no, more like shuffling, he thought—toward him.

  “Did you know your former employers have little hiding places like this all over the world?” King Tears said. “As if trying to micromanage the planet wasn’t enough, they had to get into real estate as well.”

  “We… we own a lot of property,” Keppler said, feeling his stomach twist again. The woman in the business suit grew closer, Keppler got a good look at her face and swore.

  “I see you found one of the occupants,” King Tears said on the other end of the line. “Don’t worry. They won’t hurt you.”

  “That’s—am I looking at a zombie?” Keppler said. It suddenly became an effort to maintain bladder control.

  “Zombie really isn’t the right word, technically, but it’s fine for shorthand. You can call them zombies,” King Tears said.

  “Wait—that’s Janet from Human Resources!” Keppler said.

  “You may not have known this, but Janet from Human Resources was a trained assassin,” King Tears said. “And sadly, excessively loyal to the previous owners.”

  “You turned Janet from Human Resources into a zombie?” Keppler said.

  “I turned most of Human Resources into zombies,” King Tears said. “And accounting, too. It seemed like a waste of perfectly good vessels.”

  “I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” Keppler said.

  “It gets better. Follow Janet, please,” King Tears said.

  On autopilot, Keppler did as he was told. The undead human resources director lead him down to the area that would have, at one point, been the factory floor.

  The walls were covered in what looked like slug-skin. It moved as if the walls themselves breathed. Structures that looked like fleshy eggs jutted up from the floor in different sizes.

  “What are you doing here?” Keppler said, his voice cracking.

  “The Children of the Elder Star lost half their numbers during the Nemesis invasion. I murdered another quarter myself,” King Tears said. “We need reinforcements. So I’m making them.”

  “Making them out of what?” Keppler said. “No, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “You’ll find out anyway,” King Tears. “But it’ll be more fun watching you figure it out.”

  Keppler paused in front of a large vacant space on the factory floor. It had been retrofitted with bars.

  “Um,” Keppler said. “What’s the cage for?”

  “You’re going to love it,” King Tears said. “I’m hunting big game, but if I can find it, this will change everything. There hasn’t been a power like this on Earth in thousands of years.”

  Keppler had no idea what that meant, and his brain wouldn’t allow him to speculate, as if the very act of imagining what King Tears considered “big game” would be too much for him to process.

  “Great. This is fantastic,” Keppler said, putting on a brave front while waves of nausea overwhelmed him. “But why am I here?”

  “Ah, yes,” King Tears said. “I sent you there for a purpose. I understand you’ve commandeered access to certain archives you did not have access to before.”

  “Commandeered is giving me too much credit,” Keppler said. “Last man standing. The keys, digital and literal, fell to me when everyone else got killed.”

  “Wonderful,” King Tears said. “I need you to locate a few things for me the Children kept in storage.”

  “We generally kept only the really dangerous stuff in storage,” Keppler said. “Should I be worried?”

  “My boy, you are about to be on the bow of the ship riding into a new world order,” King Tears said. “Enjoy the show.”

  Chapter 20: The other side of the mirror

  Well, Doc thought, looking at the California town that had been uprooted and transplanted to another reality. At least I found it.

  From his vantage point on the outskirts, he could see rows of single-story homes, streets still paved perfectly, manicured lawns and small, polite trees. At his back, the world became nothing; flat and glittering white, like salt flats, the emptiness expanded off into infinity. The sky had an alien reddish hue, like an eternal, bloody sunset. This place is forever dusk, he thought. The clouds moved in strange patterns, serpentine and seething.

  He had an eerie feeling creeping up the back of his neck that he was being watched. Not much I can do about that, he thought, looking once more back out into the nothingness behind him. There’s nowhere to go but into the town.

  He walked toward the nearest house, on a lovely little suburban road called Poplar Street. Its white vinyl siding had a soft pinkish glow from the permanent sunset. A modest car stood parked in the drive. As he moved closer, he immediately saw something to set his nerves on edge: growing up from the ground, black tendrils gripped the foundation of the house, pulsing like veins. These tubes seemed to pierce the walls of the house, becoming part of them, holding the building in place by force.

  Doc carefully avoided the tendrils peered into the nearest window.

  Inside, a middle-aged man circled the room, his body language pure panic. Waves of confusion and fear wafted off him. On the floor, a woman’s body lay prone. Blood stained the carpet. The man knelt beside her and picked up her hand, holding it to his forehead.

  Doc moved on to the next window. The very same woman lying dead on the floor in the first vignette was very much alive here, standing in her kitchen. Her face seemed small and fretful, like she might have appeared as a child. With her in the kitchen was a caricature of a matronly older woman, with steel-gray hair and a mouth like a grim wound. She towered over the younger woman, shouting at her incoherently like a violently disappointed mother.

  Developing a hypothesis, Doc moved on to another window on the other side of the house. Inside, a young child sat curled up in the center of his bed, his blankets a cowl around his face. It was immediately clear why he had positioned himself so: a monster lurked under the bed, an apelike thing with dense black fur and teeth like needles, eyes red and malignant.

  Doc had seen enough. He backed away from the house and took a deep breath.

  And then Jane spoke behind him.

  “You let us die,” Jane said. Doc turned to find his first student staggering toward him, her body rotting and torn by old wounds. Her eyes were glassy and large, and her usually radiant hair was instead aflame like a torch. “You failed us, Doc. You left us and we all died…”

  Doc muttered a short incantation and opened his left hand. A sword appeared out of nowhere, a gleaming blade like a fairy tale knight might carry, but lighter, brighter, as if free of the physics of the real world.

  And with a quick swipe of that blade, zombie-Jane’s head separated from her shoulders and fell to the ground. The corpse crumbled away like ashes in the wind, and in seconds, it was as if she never existed.

  Because she never did exist, Doc thought. Illusions made of fear and memory, twisted like poison. I’m in a nightmare. Somehow, the Crimson Child had created a pocket reality where everyone’s worst fears held them captive. Doc stared at the empty space where not-Jane had stood a moment before. It’s not a good nightmare, he
thought. The fears are too broad, the illusions too over the top. They’re grotesque. They lack the elegance of the sorts of nightmares that ruin you, at least to Doc’s trained eye, the ones that skirt so close to reality that you don’t know you’re dreaming. Clearly the residents of the nearby house were not able to tell the difference.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” a new voice said, a tiny, melodic sound, sing-songy and cheerful. Doc looked around until he found the source.

  “I knew this was going to be weird, but this is a lot weirder than I expected,” he said, staring up at a fairy in a cotton-pink shift, her wings fluttering like a hummingbird’s. She had a mop of candy-yellow hair and enormous eyes, her body small but proportional, like a doll.

  “You killed one of the illusions. She’s going to know you’re here,” the fairy said.

  “Okay, let’s get something out of the way first,” Doc said. “Are you actually fey, or are you a figment?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” the fairy said.

  “Figment, then,” Doc said. “True fey never pass up a chance to brag about their origins.”

  “I’m not a figment,” the fairy said. “I’m real.”

  “Oh, you’re real,” Doc said. “But you’re what, a conjuring? Where did you come from?”

  “I belong with the girl,” the fairy said. “But she’s not herself. We failed her. We were her protectors, but she’s changed. She’s someone else now.”

  “We,” Doc said. So, the girl conjured defense mechanisms at her age. If you failed her, he thought, responding silently to the fairy’s words, then I failed her even worse. If she could conjure a figment to protect her I should have done more to keep her safe as well. I didn’t know.

  “Does she know you’re here?” Doc said. “Her protectors. Does she know she brought you over as well?”

  The fairy shrugged in a way that was far more reminiscent of Emily’s body language than Doc was comfortable with.

  “I’ll bring you to them,” the fairy said. “We saw you arrive. Saw you open a hole in the world. Can you bring everyone home again?”