“No! No way,” said Dana, shaking her head.
“It got the best response.”
“There’s no way that’s a good idea. Neither of us knows this city well, it’s in chaos, we only have one vehicle, and we’re supposed to split up? No way. Maybe you misunderstood something.”
“I really don’t think so,” said Mat. “You can take the car.”
A mild feeling of nausea started to form, and Mat stopped, holding up a finger again. “I should take the car?” he half-asked. The feeling of nausea continued to build.
“What is it?” asked Dana.
“I think we need to leave right now,” said Mat. The nausea vanished. “Yeah. Right now.”
“Where are we—”
“Anywhere is better than here right now. Follow me as closely as you can. I may change direction suddenly.”
Mat opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, moving at a brisk pace. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the suite they’d been in for their ill-fated interview with the Neverman, its closed door now marked by a standing sign reading “CAUTION: WET FLOOR.” A purplish blotch had seeped out from beneath the door, staining the carpet.
That glance back was enough to set Mat’s stomach roiling again, so he moved swiftly toward the exit sign ahead of him.
“We should take the elevator. We should take the stairs.”
“Which is it?” asked Dana, close on his heels.
“Just follow!” snapped Mat. “Sorry. Just do what I’m doing. Don’t worry about what I say. I’m checking.”
Mat opened the stairwell door and hurried down the steps, taking them two at a time. Dana followed as quickly as she could, her heels clacking loudly in the echoing space.
“The lobby. The basement. The first floor? The lobby. The lobby, sooner,” muttered Mat. He stepped up his pace, using the railing for balance as he leapt down three and four steps at a time. “Hurry!”
Dana raced down the stairs, trying to match his pace without falling and breaking her neck. The exertion was making her injured shoulder burn, and if she tried the jumps he was making in heels, she’d break an ankle. At the next landing, she took her shoes off, kicking them aside. She heard Mat disappearing below her, the spaced-out thuds making it clear that he was taking the half-flights of stairs down in one or two leaps. She began her own jumps down the stairs, hurrying to catch up.
Mat kicked open the door to the lobby and rushed out into the hotel’s carpeted lobby. People rushed about, towing suitcases and luggage racks. No one was behind the front desk, but a whiteboard had been propped up informing customers that due to the mandatory evacuation, all checkouts would be handled electronically at a later date.
Oddly, despite the increased chaos around him, Mat’s sense of sickness and impending disaster faded as the door to the stairs shut behind him. He turned quizzically, only to have the feeling flare as the door came back into his view.
That doesn’t make any sense, thought Mat. I was just in the stairwell. There was no one there except for me and…
“Dana,” Mat said aloud, realizing. He took an involuntary step toward the door just as Dana came into view through the diamond-shaped glass window in the center.
Dana leapt down the last few stairs, her bare feet stinging with the impact. Her heart was beating rapidly, and her shoulder throbbed in time with it. She saw Mat waiting for her on the other side of the door, but as she reached out to push the door open, she froze.
Her hand was covered in blood, running freely from beneath the arm of her jacket. She hadn’t felt it, and still didn’t feel anything wrong. But as she instinctively grabbed her injured arm with her good one, she felt a sharp and stony texture beneath the jacket, like cloth laid over a gravel driveway.
Dana pulled off her suit jacket and stared at her arm in horror. The crystal fragments that had embedded themselves into her shoulder were no longer tiny flecks, but thumbnail-sized lumps sticking jaggedly out of her arm. Her arm itself was swollen and infected, and the blood poured from great rents torn into the skin that widened even as she watched.
Dana realized what was going to happen a split-second before her shoulder erupted with a wet, meaty smack, tearing her arm away from her body. Gem and bone fragments sprayed everywhere accompanied by a bloody mist, and Dana’s severed hand flopped to the ground. Mercifully, a large shard of the gem caught her in the neck, and she lost consciousness before the pain truly registered.
On the other side of the door, Mat heard the splatter hit. He sat there for another second, listening, before picking himself up from his position holding the door shut. He looked around the lobby. Caught up in their own fears and drama, no one else even seemed to have noticed what happened.
Unsure what else to do to mark the area, Mat moved a chair from the cafe area over to block the door. As he moved it, he muttered, “Downtown. Escape. Direct confrontation. Save survivors. Collect. Report. Organize. Fight. Run.”
With his stomach in knots over Dana’s death, though, Mat had little idea what information his augment was giving him. He took deep breaths and tried to calm down, but his mind kept replaying the thick slapping sound Dana’s blood had made against the window. Without any new guidance, Mat retrieved his car and headed west, where the Emissary was laying waste to the city. From there, he would do what he could, and hope for the best.
“Hello, caller, you’re on the air. Who is this?”
“I’m Sheila White,” came the nasally voice. It was the sort of voice that instantly set you on edge, had you primed for an argument. Tamar Wolfe made his living off of argumentative people, though, so this was nothing new. He leaned back, forcing himself into a casual posture to counter his visceral reaction.
“Ms. White. What are your thoughts on this?”
“Well, I’m just a second-grade teacher here in Florida, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it seems to me that the whole reason we have a government is to fix disasters like this.”
“Now, from what I hear, the National Guard is already mobilizing a response. They’re doing what they can, don’t you think?”
“I don’t care if they’re doing what they can,” the caller continued. Tamar gritted his teeth. This woman really did have a special talent for causing irritation. “I care if they’re solving the problem. And from what the news is showing me, they’re not. We’re losing Miami. We’re losing an American city to this thing. It’s just walking all over us.”
“If doing what they can doesn’t solve the problem, then what do you suggest?” Tamar heard the asperity in his own voice, and leaned away from the microphone long enough to take a deep breath, hold it, and slowly release it.
“Get someone who can fix it. If my toilet clogs, I don’t futz around with it, ‘doing my best’ while it leaks all over my tile and ruins the floor below it. I call a plumber who knows what he’s doing.
“This thing’s an Aug-5, isn’t it?” she whined, her voice drilling into Tamar’s head. Despite himself, he found that he was nodding along. “Then get another Aug-5 to fix it. It’s not that hard a concept.”
“It makes sense, Sheila,” said Tamar, ending the call. “Ms. Sheila White, from Tallahassee. Why isn’t the government bringing in another Aug-5? You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Let’s not pretend that we can win this thing by conventional means. We’ve got to have other Aug-5s out there. Where are they? Let’s get them in.
“Listeners, if you’ve got more opinions, call in to the Wolfe’s Den and we’ll get you on the air. While the bureaucrats are sitting around debating how to handle this, let’s put together a real plan and show them how it’s done.”
Across the studio, Tamar saw his assistant taking calls and putting people on hold. He smiled. This ought to do excellent things for his ratings.
Back in Washington D.C., Taunt hung up the phone.
“Acceptable?” she asked Retroactivity, grinning.
“Very much so,” he said.
Replix, with a
wireless headphone in one ear, laughed out loud. “You oughta tune in. They’re eating it up. This is gonna be everywhere. We’ll be down there within the week.”
“Sooner than that,” said Retroactivity. “Get packed. We’re going to be traveling soon.”
Mat drove with the windows down, hoping to catch some sort of warning about what he was driving into. The humid Florida air carried no hint of smoke, which seemed like a good sign. Whatever was going on could only be so destructive.
Ahead of him, three smashed cars glittered in the sun, partially blocking the intersection. He swung wide to avoid them, turning to look as he passed. They had not merely been sideswiped, but crushed by a tremendous force. They’d been flattened on one side as they were pushed out of place, as if they’d been run over by a tank. Additionally, their paint was pitted and corroded, not merely scraped off but eaten away by something caustic.
Mat’s observations were cut short by a sudden, violent bang from beneath the car. The vehicle lurched to the left, and Mat fought with the steering wheel to keep it under control. The noise repeated, and the car shuddered again, beginning to skid. Mat braked hard and brought his car to a stop, then got out to see what had happened.
All four tires were flat, with visible holes like he’d run over jagged metal. Mat looked back to see what he’d run over, expecting to see twisted metal from one of the wrecked cars. There was nothing in the road except for a piece of rope, though, lying loosely across the lane.
Confused, Mat approached the rope to pick it up. As he drew near, he saw that it was studded with the now-familiar purple crystals, turning it from a normal piece of rope into an effective makeshift spike strip.
Mat eyed the scene. The damaged cars had forced him to drive into the lane where the rope had destroyed his tires. Was this just an unfortunate coincidence? Or had it been set up by design?
The sound of breaking glass rang out nearby, followed by a scream. Dropping the rope, Mat ran toward the noise, searching for a weapon as he went.
As he rounded the corner, he came to an abrupt, wide-eyed stop. The street ahead was lined with more smashed cars and the building fronts were damaged as well. Awnings were torn away, signs ripped from their moorings, railings smashed—anything that protruded outward had been damaged or destroyed. None of this, however, was what brought Mat to a halt.
The street gave him a clear view for several blocks ahead. It was what he saw in the distance that arrested his motion, causing him to stop and stare. Among the storefronts, rising up over their roofs reared a monstrous blob, a horror straight out of nightmares. As Mat watched, it slammed into a building, forcing itself in through a top-level window. It disappeared inside briefly, only to extrude itself onto the street through the front door moments later. Although he could not be certain at this distance, Mat thought he saw a human figure caught inside of its mass.
The scream came again, still wordless but somehow with increased urgency. It came from one of the buildings on this block, but Mat could not tell which one.
“Who’s there? Where are you?” he shouted.
“Help!” came the response. It was either a woman or a high-pitched man. Given the amount of fear in the voice, Mat figured it could be either one. The important thing was that it had been clear enough for Mat to pinpoint it as coming from a shop marked “Tony’s Alterations.”
He rushed to the door, which had been smashed in, and shouted inside, “I’m coming to get you!”
“Stay away!” was the shrill response, followed by a door slam, a scratching sound, and a deep rotten gurgle that sounded like someone choking on honey. This was followed by more scratching, accompanied by the cracking sounds of thin wood being torn apart.
Mat tore a metal bar off of the wall, dumping the clothes that had been hanging on it to the ground. He rushed into the back of the shop to find a Neverman tearing his way through a door with his bare hands, grabbing the veneer of the hollowcore door and ripping away chunks to make a hole large enough to climb through.
With its attention focused on the door, the Neverman never saw Mat until he swung the bar at its head, smashing it in the cheek and rocking its head over to the side. It turned, snarling, blackish blood running from its cheek, and Mat could see that there was no conversation to be had here. This was clearly a thing designed only to kill.
The Neverman took a step toward Mat and he lunged at it with the bar, spearing it through the side of the neck. Mat felt the bar skid off of bone, and ichor poured forth, dripping from the bar. The Neverman stumbled to its knees, but bared its teeth as it fell, eyes locked on Mat.
Mat’s augment flared as the Neverman began to distend, and he sprinted for safety down the short hallway. Behind him, he heard a sodden detonation, followed by a short yelp of surprise.
“Are you all right?” called Mat.
“Oh God, thank you! Thank you! Is it safe out there now?”
“Are you hurt in any way?” pressed Mat.
“No! No, just a few scratches. I’m fine!”
Mat grimaced and rubbed his temples. A few scratches might mean that the crystal explosion had tagged whoever was inside through the hole in the door, keeping the horrible propagation going. Or it might be something completely minor, unrelated. Mat himself was certainly scratched up enough from today. There was no way to know without putting the person on edge, though, and Mat didn’t need another panicked victim running around.
“Okay! Are you safe there?”
“Wait, I want to come with you!” The sound of a door opening.
“No! Stay there. I’m going further into this. Someone will come to get you.” Unless you’re infected, in which case you’ll blow up in containment and not be a walking bomb, Mat did not add.
“Okay. Okay. Be careful. Good luck.”
“Thank you,” Mat said. He felt like a heel. As he left the shop, he told himself that there was nothing he could do anyway, and that the shop probably was the safest place right now, but this did nothing to assuage his guilt.
Once outside, Mat realized that now that he knew what the noise was, he could hear the guttural, liquid grunts of the Nevermen all around. They were systematically going through the buildings, smashing their way through rooms. Presumably, they were killing anyone they found in there. Mat’s guilt flared once more at the person he was leaving behind, possibly to die, but he quashed the feeling and headed down the street at a jog.
Mat had no idea what he was doing, but his augment had brought him this far, and he believed it would see him through. He moved toward where he’d last seen the blob, hoping to perhaps discover some weakness, something he could report back about how to stop it. The blob, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Concerned, Mat slowed to a walk, just as the creature flowed out of an alleyway in front of him, its bulk towering above him like an onrushing wave. It was the color of a tongue, only translucent and shot through with purple veins. It loomed thirty feet high or more, and carried the bodies of over a dozen people within it. It had no visible weak spots. It had no definable anatomy at all. It was like nothing Mat had ever seen.
The thing held still for a moment, seeming to regard Mat even as he looked at it. Then its body pulsed and rippled, folding away from itself with a wet, sucking sound and disgorging one of the bodies it held within.
The body it released fell to its hands and knees, and began to rise. Before it could take its feet, however, the blob struck out with a dozen needle-thin hairs, whipping them out to pierce the Neverman’s face, head and neck in several places.
The Neverman looked up, still crouched on the ground, and its eyes met Mat’s.
“Government,” it managed, the words slurping across its tongue. It spat and tried again. “Agent.”
Uncertain what else to do, Mat retreated into rehearsed lines. “Yes, I’m Agent Mat Roche. I’m the director of the Department of Augment Affairs.”
“You are government,” repeated the Neverman. “This is you.”
It gest
ured in a broad sweep with one arm, and behind it, the blob rippled as if to continue the motion.
“You pretended peace and attacked,” continued the Neverman. “And so I have come.”
“You are the Emissary,” said Mat. “Will you continue our negotiations?”
“I will negotiate,” said the Neverman, “from a position of power. You will first see my might. If you cannot control yourself, I will control you.”
Mat glanced at the huge bulk of the Emissary, but despite the apparent threat, it was unmoving.
“We are individuals,” he said. “We do not work in concert as you do. I was talking with your stormcrow, with you, in good faith. I don’t even know what happened.”
“Betrayal,” said the Emissary. “And now, its bitter fruits. This city is mine. In payment.”
“You can’t just take over a city! They have plans in place for this. You’ll be destroyed.”
“I was being destroyed while you spoke peace to me. I do not think I will be destroyed now. You are welcome to try. It will increase my anger, and I will take more in response. In the end, you will beg me to stop.”
“What can I do to convince you to stand down? To give this one more chance?”
“You can stand aside while I absorb this city into myself. Two weeks. If I am unassaulted in that time, we will talk again.”
“That’s impossible,” Mat said.
“Then you must find a way to make it possible. Or I will wipe you all from this planet and bring it into harmony.
“Go now. Convince your others. This is your only pathway to peace.”
“But—” Mat began, but with a moist, tearing sound, the Emissary began to release the other corrupted Nevermen held within itself. Mat’s stomach twisted as the first one began to struggle free, and he turned and fled the way he had come. Stunted urban trees and grass glinted purple as he ran by, illustrating how much the Emissary had already taken.
Mat knew that what he had said was correct: what the Emissary demanded was impossible. But he had to try. He continued to run until he reached his car, haphazardly parked at the edge of the road with its tires shredded. Aside from the crystal-infused rope that had caused the damage, his surroundings largely lacked the tell-tale purple glint of the Emissary’s touch. Mat could hear destruction occurring behind him, and the sounds of sirens and indistinct voices shouting through bullhorns somewhere far ahead, but everything around him was still at the moment.
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