Authors: Lee Doty
Kaspari's attack came in. It made Alex think of a large flyswatter, seen from the perspective of a very small fly.
Subtlety- surprising to find in one so young. Issak didn't try to stop the attack that darkened one of the minor Casts he kept ready. Hopefully he wouldn't need to use the Loom to hack into the global network soon, because now he'd have to spend a few microseconds repowering that Cast first. This was obviously a probing attack, so Issak responded with the equivalent of a large feather pillow in response. He waited to see how Ivo's apprentice responded.
At the last instant, Alex activated his Cast. It was basically a needle within a disposable energy collector. As Issak's flyswatter crashed over it, the energy collector stole some of its power, and used it to drive the needle through the Cast at an angle. Alex's Cast defended him by threading him through Issak's attack after the needle. Along his path through Issak's Cast, Alex left the Weave of Collection. The refined power of Issak's disrupted Cast flowed through the collector, replenishing Alex's energy reserves.
Nice! The incredible thing about watching Ivo's apprentice work was the way he was using no standard Casts. If he was using Templates, Issak couldn't tell. He had been in combat with perhaps a hundred other now-dead Savants, so Issak knew this was not the norm for combat. Usually, combat in the Underworld was done with prepared Casts, like a game of poker, or (shudder) pokemon; you played what was in your hand. Only the oldest and most powerful Savants could modify their Casts during battle. Perhaps only five Savants in the world could actually create in combat. Ivo would be proud.
Another wave of sadness and guilt creted over his mental discipline, almost breaking it. He wanted this kid to kill him in the worst way. He deserved it. Of all the people who had died recently, he deserved it most, but not yet.
Issak reclaimed perhaps half of the power in his ruptured Cast. He'd have normally taken more back, but he was concerned this little prodigy might have the subtlety to attack him through the compromised Cast.
From Ping's perspective, it seemed that the world was straining from the clash of unseen forces. The distortion was subtle- the vibration from a nuclear conflict on the other side of the world. It only affected his peripheral vision and the workings of his inner ear. Blurry and dizzy, he grabbed the collapsed sword off his chest and struggled to his feet. Anne was way ahead of him.
Anne could feel the energies tearing around her like excited Piranhas in a river of beef stew. It was disorienting, buffeting her through sight and sound and skin and bone. Behind Kaspari, Ping was struggling to his feet.
Another surge of power burst over her, Kaspari staggered, and she exploded forward, feeling just a whisper of hope.
Kaspari dodged the tendril of force that lashed out of his own Cast. The kid had actually been able to infiltrate his Cast so deeply that his counterattack came from the energy Issak had reclaimed. The tendril was inside his defenses, but he could still deal with it. He pulled his shields across the distance between Alex's attack and his interface with the Loom. He was again protected, but he wasn't the target. Alex's Cast instead struck at the terminals of three of his major power feeds. The resulting explosion tore down perhaps half of his prepared Casts and scattered nearly all of the Templates he kept ready.
Things were looking worse up in the Overworld, though. As he staggered under Mr. Ahmed's quite unexpected effectiveness, the Cop with Roy's blade was struggling back to his feet and looking assertive. The woman with Dek's power was arcing toward him like a more determined version of lightening. To add insult to injury, the cop standing by Ivo's protégé was hurling a warped pistol fairly accurately at his head. With the eyes of the Loom, Issak could see the Cast around her, guiding her actions, linking mind and body. There was something else in the patterns around her. It was like guide wires for perception, instructing the eye in how and where to look to see her. Fascinating... what could the purpose of those be?
With an effort, he forced his curious mind away from the Forge emanating from the woman's necklace. He needed to focus on the problems at hand. At last he saw how these upstarts had managed to take Shiva down. She'd been the third-ranked Savant in Asado... the veritable cream of the crap.
No more games.
Alex struck again, and another swath of Kaspari's ready Casts went dark. He knew this couldn't last, but that wasn't the plan. Though his Cast was still wreaking havoc just outside Kaspari's interface with the Loom, Alex's focus was now on arming the bomb he was constructing inside the largest remaining power conduit at Kaspari's interface. He knew that Kaspari would evict him within milliseconds, but he hoped the bomb would go off after Kaspari had expanded his shields to again encompass the conduit.
The texture of the Underworld changed. It took a few ticks of the atomic clock for Alex to realize what had changed: his shields were gone. There was an incision through them that he hadn't seen or felt. Through the incision, Kaspari's power had come. Now Alex was completely defenseless. He tried to put the finishing touches on his bomb before the end. He knew it was already too late for him.
Anne left the ground for her final leap, but didn't go the right direction. The disturbances she felt around her resolved into a resonant harmony, like the inside of a very large engine or perhaps a dragon's growl, heard from within its belly.
She moved backwards halfway between floor and ceiling, equidistant from both walls. Unseen forces pressed in on her, locking her limbs in place. She had no other struggle to make, so she satisfied herself with futile resistance to the crushing power of the engine all around her.
Roy's sword came out, but a fraction of a second later Ping took Rae's thrown pistol in the forehead. It didn't knock him down, but it did knock him out- then gravity knocked him down.
Rae never saw Anne's altered flight plan. One instant Anne was racing Rae's pistol toward Kaspari and the next there was a flash of light as Anne slammed into her, knocking her off her feet. They both fell in a heap on the floor a couple of meters back. Anne landed on top.
Kaspari's Cast was all around him. It was moving so fast that even the speed of the Loom couldn't resolve its blur into individual actions. Alex had lost track of the bomb he had been arming. Now he was completely on the defensive, if you could call it that. All his energy and focus was consumed with token resistance to the decimation that Kaspari wrought on his interface to the Loom. Kaspari now had complete control over the Overworld around Alex. This meant that he could turn Alex into any kind of corpse he desired- charcoal corpse, shredded corpse, eaten by weasels corpse... the possibilities were limited only by imagination.
He was in the dark, the power and speed of the Loom lost to him. Then he was in the deeper black of the Overworld.
He opened his eyes and saw Kaspari about two meters away. "Had to try..." he said with a shrug.
"Yeah." Kaspari nodded.
They both looked around at the destruction. Behind Kaspari, Ping lay on the floor. The extended sword was close to his hand. Between Kaspari and Alex, the two Feds stood braced but indecisive before their friends on the gurneys. They both looked like they were really missing their weapons. Elena pulled out her badge. "Federal Agents... freeze?" They all had a good laugh. It was strange how good it felt.
Alex turned to Rae, only to find her gone. He turned and saw one of her legs protruding from under Anne's sprawled form. "Rae!" He shouted, and stretched down into the Loom. As its heat and light enveloped him, he was already organizing a weave to get Anne off of her.
Alex shouted like he'd been burned. He fell to his hands and knees, breathing heavily.
Kaspari wagged a finger at him, shaking his head slightly. But then he rolled his eyes as Alex crawled toward the two women. "Hey!" he shouted. Alex looked back over his shoulder.
"Excuse me," Kaspari said, somewhat annoyed.
With obvious effort, Alex pressed to his feet. He turned to face Kaspari, but his eyes moved again to Rae's protruding foot.
"Fine." Issak said, exasperated. Though he made no external sign of concentration, wiggled no fingers in magical sigils and spoke no rhymes or Latin, several things happened almost at once.
Free, Anne leapt to her feet. She turned with the lithe motion of a hunting panther toward Kaspari.
The blood stopped flowing down Ping's face and the wound on his head closed. His eyes fluttered open. His left hand went to his head and came away red. "More head trauma... figures." he muttered to himself, looking at the blood. His right hand wrapped around his sword. He struggled into a sitting position.
Rae coughed and sat up. "Sorry." Anne said with a small shrug and a self-conscious grin.
Alex took two steps and extended his hands. Rae took them and pulled herself up. "What I miss?" She said, rubbing her head.
"Me taking the beat-down again."
She moved into his arms. "But you won, right?" Then she saw Kaspari over his shoulder and stiffened slightly.
"Does 'beat-down' mean something else to you?" He tried a reassuring smile as she moved back to look into his face.
On her gurney, Hawthorne stirred. Kyle Mendez groaned and shifted in his isolation wrap. Elena turned as his eyes opened. "Hey." He croaked.
She smiled back. Emotion made her voice unreliable, so she didn't use it.
Kyle's eyes widened slightly as he remembered more. "Honey, what are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you." She covered the catch in her voice with a smile.
"So I'm not dead?"
"Not for at least another few minutes," she glanced around quickly, but her eyes returned to him and lingered.
"You know," he said with a dreamy smile, "I heard that angels come to you in the form of those you love most."
"Yeah, that's how we first met." Elena's hand went to his cheek.
"Just to be clear... not dead? I'm pretty sure angels aren't supposed to use even the white lies."
She shook her head and leaned in close. Behind Elena, words floated, hanging briefly in the air before winking out like stars at sunrise. They were the soft sounds of falling rain outside the warm shelter of their reunion.
"Chief?" Miranda turned her head, still keeping an eye on Kaspari.
"Hey, Mira... I just had the weirdest dream."
"Me too, boss." Miranda put a hand on Hawthorne's shoulder, "Me too."
"Whoo... I feel like I've been shot twice and left for dead..."
"Don't be silly boss. We'd never leave you for dead."
"Where's Derry?" Hawthorne asked. Miranda's face darkened.
Anne's stare was unwavering, determined. Kaspari returned an even gaze. All traces of his earlier grin were gone.
There would be no later. If he was going to act, it had to be now. He knew from his experience with Dek that he could sever this woman from the Loom. He knew from harsh experience why he might need to. To give another power is to be responsible for their use of it.
Issak was sure about Ivo's prodigy because Ivo had been sure. He was sure about the policeman who now carried Roy's blade because he trusted Dek. But what about this unlikely heroine who now stood before him? Dek had given her this gift, but the gift had been out of desperation.
Could she be trusted with this power? Would she use it when she needed to? Would she use it well?
***
Awkward.
Beneath the curly wreckage of her first and only permanent, Anne fidgeted in a brown and orange holiday dress that, though it was the largest in the store, was still a size too small. More than usual, she felt fat. Here, surrounded by family, she felt most alone. Here where she should feel most safe, she felt most inadequate.
Around her at the portable table, children older and younger spoke of their interests: acting, music, sports- the rest of her family was talented and engaged in the unknowable dream of life.
Sometimes as she hid in the mechanics of eating, she tried to lose herself in their words like she would in a good book: here's Anne scoring the big goal, here's Anne bouncing lightly on the shoulders of the jubilant team, here's Anne upside down and perfectly poised on the balance beam. She imagined she lived with their courage. She dreamed that she could dream like them, but she was awake and blinking into the morning sunlight of her limitations.
Since this year's gathering was at Aunt Simone's, the kids' table was within earshot of the adult's table. There, up in the big leagues, she could hear her mom badgering Clara, the oldest of the three Kelley girls. Today's topic was the kind and quantity of food on Clara's plate. Mom had stopped badgering Anne about the same thing two years ago when she was six.
She was right in the middle of the warm feeling of gratitude when her mother managed to reach across the five meters separating them, around the corner from the dining room, and punch Anne straight through the heart. "It's too late for her."
In frustration, Clara had said that Anne already had seconds. "It's too late for her.", her mother snapped back.
At first Anne had interpreted the change in her mother's strategy as reverse psychology, or perhaps the tardy but needed onslaught of parental compassion. But now, listening to the familiar stream of fear and warning that poured from mother to sister, Anne had an epiphany. Her mother hadn't changed her tactics- she'd changed her opinion. Anne's mother had given up on her. She would always be fat and useless- she'd always lose life's game.
This realization was a big burden for an eight-year-old to carry, especially since it felt like it had been dropped on her from the tenth floor balcony. At eight years old, her mom already knew it was too late for her.
Around her, the Thanksgiving revelers laughed and talked and ate, but before Anne was a plate of ashes. Fragile hope crumbled and fell, but no tears.
***
His icy-blue eyes hadn't moved. His stare was that of a statue... the statue of a surgeon deciding where to make the first cut.
In the back of her mind, Anne heard Ol' God Fear yammering something about immanent destruction and how she probably deserved it anyway.
Whatever. She had questions... Kaspari better have answers. "How could you?" she said, maintaining her stare. Issak didn't flinch, but Anne thought something subtle changed. Perhaps there was a thawing, a softening of the eyes.
"He trusted you." She said, trying to keep most of the fury out of her voice.
"What do you know of me?" Issak asked in measured tones.
"Enough. He told me about you."
He looked skeptical. "Told you?"
"Through whatever you did to him- however that bound us- we were together in my head. He told me about the devil and your deal with him."
"My deal with the devil." Issak's words were almost inaudible, but in their understatement burned both guilt and frustration.
Ping understood the texture of Kaspari's words. This was familiar territory for him; this was his kind of guilt. Not guilt for inaction, not guilt for selfish deeds- this was guilt for noble but misguided efforts repaid with tragedy. "What were you trying to do?" He asked from behind Kaspari.
Issak disengaged from Anne's stare and turned to the guy with Roy's sword. "Exploring," he paused, his jaw set as if resisting some unseen force, "Under this reality, there is another world, and in that world are the keys to power in this one. I found a way to explore the world below the Underworld, but there was only chaos... and something very old." He gestured expansively, "All this is my fault."
Kaspari had taken the plunge into irrelevant exposition, but Ping wasn't deterred. "What were you trying to do when Dek died?"
"No way back." Kaspari said so quietly that only Anne heard.
"What were you trying to do when Dek died?" Anne asked, fractionally softer than she thought she would.
Issak turned back to Anne, but this time his eyes didn't hold the inquisitor's torch. This time his eyes were semi opaque windows into a very dark place.
"Trying to make it right." He said.
"How?" Alex asked.
"When I came back from underneath, this thing followed me back. I didn't know at first, but it's the thing controlling the meat puppets you fought upstairs. It is the darkness inside the Harms- it's the wave that will cover the earth if I can't stop it."
Kaspari paused. They waited. At last, "It's aligned itself with one of the Clans- a previously minor one called Asado. I believe you've met them on several occasions. Asado thinks they can use their alliance with The Outsider to gain power, but they'll end up on the buffet table sooner or later. Still, Asado's Savants couldn't give it what it really wanted. When I found out, I made a deal with it... It leaves my family alone, and I give it access to the Loom."
"No!" Alex took half a step forward.
Ping held up a finger for Alex to shut up. He gave him a quick 'Right Now' look.
"What it wanted wasn't possible." Kaspari glanced sideways at Alex. "You can't align a beast like that. Even if you tried it on one of its puppets, the Outsider's presence would disrupt the Cast. The Loom is order, but this thing is chaos. You felt it when you touched them."
Alex nodded. Issak glanced at Anne quickly. "I thought I could use Dek's Forge to trap it. I thought that his Forge would bind to the Outsider and encapsulate its distortions enough for me to get a hold of it. I hoped the Forge would hold it long enough for me to force it back to where it came from."
Issak gave a pained smile, "Luckily, I didn't get a chance to try my little plan."
"It surprised you? Turned on you?" Ping prompted when Issak paused again.
"No," Issak said, "Dek did."
They all waited out another pause.
"He surprised me. I was so focused on making sure I managed it carefully, making sure the Outsider didn't catch on... I never saw it coming." He looked to Anne. "Even though I thought I held him tight, even though I'd separated him from his speed and power..."
A smile like fatherly pride spread across his face, sweet and painful. "He took me out and killed a couple of the flesh puppets. He thought he was saving the world when he went out the window of Ivo's penthouse. As it turned out, he only saved me."
"Saved you?" Ping asked.
Kaspari realized he was smiling and it looked like that realization nearly killed him. "It couldn't have worked. My big plan- it never had a chance." He gave a bitter smile. "When Dek disrupted my plans, he saved me."
"Why are you so sure your plan would have failed?" Alex asked.
"Because I know something now that then I didn't:
I'm
the anchor that holds The Outsider in this world. It latched onto me when I was underneath. I brought it back with me. It's the link between us that holds the door between our worlds open."
"So the only thing holding this Outsider in our world is you?" Alex asked.
"For now," Kaspari nodded. "I've tried everything, but I can't break its hold on me... if Dek hadn't escaped, hadn't transferred his gift to you," Kaspari looked at Anne, "then my plan would have failed and it would have discovered my deception. It would have realized that it didn't need my cooperation and it would have taken me."
"You mean it would've killed you?" Anne asked.
"No," Issak said, looking tired, "not yet."
"Why not?" The newly sitting Hawthorne entered the conversation.
"If I'm dead, the tether won't hold. It's nettled into my soul, not my flesh."
"So if anyone offs you, this thing's history?" Elena Mendez said, helping her husband to unsteady feet.
Kaspari nodded. "Maybe."
"Maybe?" Alex said.
"I don't know how powerful this thing has become." Kaspari looked around, "Past some point, it will be so established in this reality that it won't need me. I've got to act fast."
"Act... fastsked.
Kaspari gave her a black look. Confirmation flowed between them. "When you met Dek- when he died, he was trying to save the world."
"So now you're going to do the same thing." Anne said.
Issak set his face. Hard. Finished. He looked at Anne. "I have something of yours." He brought something out of his pocket and walked to her. He held out his hand.
"Does this mean we're going steady?" she said, taking the ring from his hand.
"It was Dek's."
She tried three fingers before she finally found one that would allow the ring around it. She examined the shiny, featureless metal. She could sense the arcs of power that were forged into the ring... she could almost see the shimmering tracings that wound around the band. "What does it do?"
"It's a key." Kaspari held out his other hand. Anne took what she thought looked like a flashlight, or perhaps a stunner.
Anne touched the activating stud on the object with her thumb. The blade rang from the end of the collapsed sword. The blade shimmered with energy only she and the Savants could see. It was beautiful, like lightning stretched into smooth, even arcs. It seemed familiar in her hand, like she'd held it for years. Reluctantly, she looked from the shimmering blade to Kaspari's face. "King of England." She muttered, holding the sword before her.
Kaspari looked confused, but decided not to pursue the issue. "I'm pretty sure he wanted you to have that."
***
They both woke with a start. In his disoriented state, he clawed at the alarm clock. He'd pressed every button his clumsy fingers could find and slammed his fist into the top of the clock twice before he noticed the clock's display. 5:22am- too early.
By the time he realized his mistake, his wife was already out of bed and rushing toward the door. The shrieking that woke them was coming from Scott's room. Sleep vanished like morning mist in the blazing daylight of fear. It sounded like Scott was being eaten alive.
He fought his way out of the covers and rushed around the bed, slamming into a bookshelf, then a dresser in the near dark of the room. He entered the hallway at an uncoordinated sprint. His wife was already at Scott's door, banging on it with her fist and calling to him. He couldn't make out her words among their boy's shrieks.
While her right hand pounded, her left wrestled with the locked knob.
"Move!" he shouted, not slowing from his sprint down the hallway. His wife jumped right and he plowed into the door with his right shoulder.
The flimsy interior door crumpled where his shoulder struck it, but more importantly the lock plate flew off of the doorjamb, leaving a splintered crater. The door swung open into darkness and shifting colored light.
The room's light was off, so darkness largely prevailed, resisted only by a sense lamp Scott had bought when he started hanging out with the wrong kids earlier this year. The lamp had been on a dresser near Scott's bed, but it now lay on its side on the floor. It spilled its shifting patterns of psychedelic light across a wall covered in intricate posters, and part of the ceiling. Behind the lamp, Scott's bed was shrouded in darkness.
He thought he saw movement on the dark bed. Not looking away from the bed, his hand reached for the light switch by the door. As his hand found the switch plate, he heard a slow guttural growl from across the room. As unnerving as it was, it only became more so when he realized that it wasn't a growl... it was a laugh.
He slid his hand up the wall and the lights snapped on. Thankfully, what happened next was so fast that there was room for the mind to be convinced that it was misperception.
Crouched on Scott's bed. Black eyes and wicked grin. Sheets and mattress slashed through by black claws. Staring directly at them with eyes the color of slugs. Blood from broken lips. Hissing roar, part lion, part lizard- then gone. Blur of motion and shattering glass.
His wife screamed, both hands over her mouth. He felt like he'd been punched in the face. The thing that had just smashed out their fifth floor window was wearing Scott's favorite T-Shirt.
Wearing his boy's clothes...
He rushed to the window and thrust his head out into the chill night air. Dawn was still perhaps an hour away, though he could see the first hints of morning in the sky. About fifteen meters down, on the street, he saw the thing in his son's clothes streaking into the darkness with unbelievable speed. There were other sprinters on the street. He counted five- no, seven- all streaking southward, toward downtown.
From this height he couldn't make out many details, but most of the runners seemed to be in sleepwear. Others looked like they were at the end of a hot night out, but all were running faster than traffic usually flowed. As he watched, other sprinters came around corners and from other buildings, joining the lemming run to the south.
He followed their path with his eyes, but didn't see anything special... no strange lights or hovering spaceships, no beckoning devil atop the flaming pit of hell's newest extension campus.
A little over two kilometers to the south, the taller buildings thrust themselves toward the predawn sky. Unnoticed among them was the smaller brown stone structure of Mercy Memorial hospital.
***
"So, if this thing is everywhere you go... you're saying it's here now?" Alex's eyes moved to survey the hallway's few shadows.
"Ah... too correct. Not its power, but its presence." Issak said.
"So, didn't you just spill the beans?" Alex looked around, "Doesn't it know your plans now... wait-
I
don't know your plans now. What were they again?"
Kaspari smiled. "I'm going back, but this time, I'm going to drag that thing with me."
"That's suicide." Anne said.
"That's life." Issak said, returning to his dry butler irony. "Maybe not mine, but it's everyone else's."
"Isn't it going to try to stop you now?" Alex said, still looking around nervously.
"It's got a choice," Kaspari said, "It can try to get more backup from Asado, it can try to stop me in person, so to speak, or it can sit idly by and hope I fail."
"You hear that?" Kaspari shouted to no one in particular, then he lowered his voice again and continued, "None of its options are good. Asado is probably too far away, and if not, their efforts are rather laughable from my point of view. They don't have any time for sneak attacks or backstabbing. If it brings its puppets, it will succeed if it can get close enough in time. However, the closer it gets, the more likely that my Cast will succeed. If it does nothing, I'll probably still succeed."
"No." Anne said, "There's another way."
"Now you sound just like Dek," Kaspari said, "...and what is that other way?"
"I didn't say I knew what it was," Anne snapped, "just that it exists."
"Look, this thing's power is growing. Now it can hold onto hundreds of puppets at a time. When it tried for Ivo, it could control only about fifteen puppets." As he spoke he looked at each person in the group. "I don't think there is a limit for it. After its hold on this world is strong enough, it won't need me anymore, and then we'll have lost our only hope of stopping it. Once its power is great enough, it won't only be the mentally defenseless it will remake... soon it will be able to take anyone, anytime. Then it will start remaking the world."
"What if you're wrong again?" Hawthorne asked, still sitting unsteadily on the edge of her gurney. "What if this is just a trick to get you out of the way?"
Issak nodded. "Power I've got. But against this thing, this is my only weapon. If it fails, I won't be much more use in a fight with it."
"This is a bad plan." Ping shook his head.
Issak continued as if he hadn't heard. "When I'm gone, there's still the problem of Asado... they're already on their way to gaining dominance among the clans. If this happens, the world would be a much darker place. You've already met Shiva... she was a lot sweeter than most of them."
"Shiva?" Ping looked confused.
"Really nice Indian girl; looks a lot younger than she is. Loves platinum, rubies, and the suffering of others."
Rae shivered. "Yeah... we've had the pleasure."
"I didn't see it, but I was close enough to feel her death through the Underworld. I must say, I didn't see how that was possible until you folks tried the same thing on me..." his smile was cold, "She's been ducking me for years now... though even if I'd found her, it wouldn't have been easy."
"Right!" Alex snorted.
"Well, it wouldn't have been trivial." Issak smiled, then turned toward the ER.
"Hey!" Anne yelled, "Where are you going?"
"Deep as I can get." He said without turning back. "It's time... and they'll be coming."
***
The crowd piled out of "We-Oui!", a near-north-side nightclub frequented by the Link set. Some of the runners moved like antelope, others stumbled and fell, but they were all smiling. As much as their various levels of the change allowed, they moved in harmony.
Rodriguez had never seen anything like it before. On other raids, he'd seen the somewhat spooky syncopation of link dancingthis was different. It was like watching the end of a marathon burst from the nightclub's doors. The shock of the human explosion was intensified because the runners seemed to move like low-budget digital extras in a video- all controlled by the same program.
The sprinters were really hauling too. The first and fastest were already out of sight. Others fell by the wayside, lost in convulsions. At first Rodriguez thought the crowd was heading for the van he shared with the other officers and detectives preparing for tonight's vice raid. There was a tense moment as the human wave crashed toward their unmarked van before turning left like a school of fish and heading off down the road.
This spooked him way more than he hoped he showed... O'Flannahan was still being a jerk about the bullet hole in that overpass. The next guy that jumped out and yelled "Boo!" down at the station was going to be paying for it in teeth.
"Don't shoot, Junior!" Malloy O'Flannahan hissed from the back seat as they began to realize they weren't the targets of a drug-crazed riot.
Everyone laughed. Paying in teeth, Rodriguez mused, as he 'ha ha ha'-ed along with his friends. "You notice my weapon's the only one not out, old man?"
The other officers had a self-conscious laugh as they looked down at their pistols and white knuckles. "You can't hold me accountable for my superior reflexes, sonny." Malloy said.
"Hey, at least that 'asthma' is back under control, hey chief?" Rodriguez glanced back to appropriately relish his partner's consternation.
"Yeah, maybe all those inhalers you got in your locker this morning did some good after all?" Ashok from vice said as he jumped out the door and looked toward the fleeing partygoers.
Rodriguez radioed the disturbance to the dispatcher while the others piled out of the van. He hoped that the mass exodus wasn't caused by anything grisly inside. Hopefully, it wasn't another Harm on a killing spree... maybe someone just tipped the crowd off about the raid.
Detective Ashok Brown was really beginning to despise his job. Now it was only the camaraderie of his fellow officers that kept him going... that kept him together.
There was a time when Vice held a certain black charm in his mind. He had to admit, moving like a hidden torpedo through the darkness of the city's party scene seemed a little cool in concept, but now he saw too clearly the sadness and desperation. Vice was about irony- it was the shortcut to joy that led to destruction. Vice was the domain of lost children of all ages, a dark Neverland of warping corruption.
He dropped from the driver's seat of the van and into the familiar streets of the night. The perhaps thirty sprinters were long gone. He'd never seen anyone move like that. Before him were perhaps seven people who looked like they were in the process of not surviving a chemical weapons attack. One man swayed on his feet, hands on his knees as he coughed and wretched. A scantily clad woman in her early twenties screamed incoherently as she used her arms to ward off unseen attackers. Another man seemed to be trying to flee on his hands and knees, but his shaking limbs eventually deserted him and he curled into a fetal position on the sidewalk.
The worst part of the desperate scene was the screaming. It was unhindered by pride, ego, or any other check- it was elemental and unrestrained. These men and women screamed like children alone and in desperate trouble.
Behind him, he heard the van's other doors open and the other officers pile out.
"Do you ever get used to this?" Rodriguez asked from his left side.
"Never... but maybe that's because it's getting worse."
Empathy added speed to his steps as he moved toward the victims of tonight's good time. He wished he could help them, but he knew he couldn't and it made him angry- angry enough to shoot the next dealer he saw. He wanted to reach out and hold these people until the ambulances came. He wanted to tell them it was going to be all right. But since this wasn't his world and things didn't work the way he wanted, he reached for the riot cuffs.
He used two of the riot cuffs to secure the screaming woman's wrists and elbows together. He used another two pairs to bind her knees and ankles together. He hated his job.
Then the screaming stopped so abruptly he thought he'd been deafened. Before he could be reassured by the return of the thousand small sounds of the night, seven voices bellowed out a single word... or maybe just sound, "Gruumen!"
Ashok jumped. The girl whose ankles he was now binding had participated in the shout. He looked up into her face, but was unprepared for what he found there.
Her eyes had gone completely dark, with only a thin rim of white visible around the edges when her eyes shifted to the side. Her fear had evaporated, along with every other sign of humanity. She looked dead but for the fact that she was still moving. Her waxy skin looked like it would crack with every motion as a smile spread across her face. The smile didn't stop when it should, but kept growing, showing seemingly all her clenched teeth, splitting her lips.
"Release me!" She shouted in a voice that sounded like the devil's proctologist.
"Sure." He said, backing away. To his dismay, he noticed that the clear plastic riot cuffs binding her elbows were turning white under the strain of her shaking limbs. This was a feature designed into the cuffs to provide warning before they broke. Of course, nobody was supposed to be able to break these cuffs. They met the more stringent requirements for Harms, but Ashok had a feeling that those standards needed to be upgraded again.
His fascination with the changes in the bone structure of her face finally yielded somewhat to the demands of his experience and his pistol came out. He pointed it at the girl struggling against his riot cuffs. Her black eyes fixed on the gun like a starving man might look at the last cocktail wiener. "Gruumen!" She shrieked in that same grinding voice. The riot cuffs binding her elbows snapped.
Shouts and gunfire erupted around him. From the corner of his eye, Ashok saw Malloy take a step back and Rodriguez claw at his holster. Then the riot cuffs around the black-eyed girl's wrists snapped. Ashok held the trigger down and the pistol jumped repeatedly in his hands.
***
"Have I said enough that this is a bad idea?" Ping said as their party pulled to a halt in the middle of the lowest level of the hospital's parking structure.
"Nope, but we don't have enough time for you to really do that job right." Anne said.
If Kaspari he, he didn't respond. He was talking to Alex. "You've got to keep them away long enough for me to finish. If they make it within three meters or so, they'll shred my Cast and this is all for nothing."
"Sure. Maybe we can buy you a few seconds if they slip on our blood..." Rae's face didn't match her light tone.
Alex nodded, "I won't be able to Cast when they get close and we don't have a working gun between us."
"You haven't seen her work yet, have you?" Kaspari inclined his head toward where Anne and Ping were moving up the ramp. They stopped about twenty meters away and were engaged in some easy pre-death banter.
Alex thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. Kaspari continued, "You ever see Dek or Roy work?" Alex's head kept shaking.
"We've actually got a really good chance, unless we get attacked by an army. Now, pay attention, if this doesn't work, I'm going to need you to kill me."
"Your confidence is contagious." Alex shook his head.
Kaspari looked distracted for a moment, like a particularly troublesome thought had occurred to him. "They're coming... you feel it?"
Alex closed his eyes. He stretched down, then outward from the Loom. Around him, he could see the complexities of a large and intricate Cast that Kaspari was in the process of configuring. It was like nothing he'd seen before in terms of subtlety and sheer ambition. This was his final Cast.