“Everyone was pretty shaken up, I guess,” he added weakly.
Marty huffed out an incredulous laugh and swatted Nate’s shoulder, apparently too excited about the entire ordeal to notice the non-explanation. “Probably because you saved her life, dude!” He wagged his eyebrows. “You know what happens next in the movies, right?”
Nate shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. I promise.”
It wasn’t like that, because I left her crying on the sidewalk and ran away from an active crime scene with about two dozen recording witnesses, he didn’t add. You’ll probably be seeing it on five different social media apps before the sun goes down. Assuming the alien invasion hasn’t started by then.
Shit.
You are being melodramatic again, came the Excalibur’s gruff voice, nearly making him jump out of his skin.
Marty, spreading his hands in a knowing little no judgments here shrug, was apparently too jazzed up on the second-hand savior buzz to notice that one, too.
“Dude,” Nate said, “after what she did with Todd behind Gwen’s back…” He shook his head, feeling suddenly and quite inordinately angry about the whole thing—so much so that Marty actually shrank away, dropping his gaze and adding a pang of guilt to Nate’s abrupt anger.
“Sorry, man,” Marty said quietly, eyes on the bushes. “Did you find out what Gwen wanted last night, by the way?”
“Not really,” Nate said, not wanting to delve into yet another personal failure right that moment. “I still need to text her back. There’s just a lot on my mind after everything.”
“Understandable,” Marty said, bobbing his head. And bless his heart, Nate could see his friend meant it, even knowing as little as he did about the true everything Nate had just been through.
Your tribe coddles you. Do not mistake such fallacy for kindness.
Nate tried to keep the scowl off his face as Marty looked back up to meet his eyes.
“So all that stuff last night, then… No giant park monsters, or anything?”
“Not in the light of day,” Nate said, trying again to force a smile past everything. “Nothing out of the ordinary over there, just like you said.”
The Merlin must have disposed of the thing—the troglodan—sometime in the night. Nate hadn’t stopped to think about it earlier, but it seemed the only explanation. It only then dawned on him that the Merlin must’ve been the one who’d killed the thing too, with whatever had made that flash of blue light.
“I don’t know, man,” Nate added. “I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing last night. All that stuff I told you…” He just shook his head, letting the silence do the talking.
Trusting Marty with the story of the attack last night had been one thing. Nate had been terrified for one, and completely in the dark about what the hell was happening. But after everything he’d seen today…
Somewhere between the mystical jaunt across the universe and the talking sword in his head, it felt like a line had been drawn.
I told you, I am not a sword.
And that pretty much decided that. He couldn’t tell Marty or anyone else about the Excalibur. Not until he could wrap his head around what was happening to him. Maybe not even then.
Luckily, Marty didn’t press the issue. He just shook his head along with Nate, as if chalking the whole series of events up as standard mishaps of college life. “We can’t let you out of our sight for five minutes, can we?”
Nate’s smile fell away as soon as his friend turned for the door.
Inside, Kyle and Zach looked up from the couch as Nate and Marty walked in, their eyes moving as one from the Battle Royale menu, to Marty, to Nate, to the smiling corgi who trotted in on his heels, clicking and clacking and tail-a-wagging.
“About time you two finished your secret snuggle-fest out there.”
“Also, we like, have a dog now?” Zach added. “That’s a thing?”
“For the moment,” Nate said, “assuming you guys are cool with that.”
Zach just patted the couch beside him and quickly lost himself in playing with Copernicus as the corgi hopped up to join him. Kyle, meanwhile, was giving Nate’s battered appearance a closer inspection.
“Nate’s a part-time superhero now,” Marty explained following Kyle’s curious stare. “Yanking corgis off rooftops and tackling busty brunettes out of the paths of speeding cars.”
“Huh?” Kyle said, perking up at the mention of busty brunettes and looking more closely at Copernicus. “Methinks a story there is, here. Pull up some wood, gents, and join us in battle whilst we confer.”
“That’s what she said,” Zach murmured, scratching Copernicus’ flank. “Isn’t it, boy?” Copernicus only craned his head up in delight, hind leg furiously kicking in time with Zach’s scratching.
“I’m in,” Marty said, plucking his controller from the Mother Gaming Shrine drawers and firing up his system. “Nate?”
He wasn’t ready for the cold gut punch of his friend’s expectant look. It was the happiness that did it—Marty’s contented certainty that the day’s tribulations were already behind them, and that there was nothing left to do but to settle in with a few bowls of cereal and a few hours of quality time with friends. Because what could be more important than that?
Nate stared at the dark screen of his own quadrant of the shrine, wishing more than anything that he could simply forget that he’d just been savagely assaulted with an overwhelming answer to that question, and that even now, a strange entity was almost certainly sitting in his head, watching to see what he would do. All he wanted to do was go into the kitchen, pour himself some cereal, and join his friends like everything was well and right in the world. Just another Saturday. Not an alien or a psychotic break in sight.
But how could he?
“Oops,” Kyle was saying somewhere back in the direction of reality. “We have lift-off, ladies and gents.”
“Yo, Nate!” Zach called, cupping his hands around his mouth as if he were shouting a great distance, “you still alive up there?”
If only they could’ve realized how badly their friendly jabs burned at his insides in that moment…
“Oh no,” Zach said, recognizing at least some part of the souring look on Nate’s face.
“Dude, it’s Saturday Squads!” Kyle added. “Come on, just one round.”
Woeful longing took on a bite of bitter anger.
“Sorry guys. I really need to get started on a project.”
“Bullshit,” Kyle said, though he sounded less than certain. “That’s what Sunday night is for.” He looked at the others. “Right?”
“Out-nerded,” Zach agreed, wholeheartedly bobbing his head. “Plus, what was all that about brunettes and speeding cars and stuff? And why are you bleeding?”
“Marty can fill you in on that one,” Nate said, turning for the hallway. “Just give me an hour or two to clean up and get this thing, uh, started.”
Half-hearted boos and affectionately mild insults followed him out of the living room, along with the click-clack of doggy claws on faux wood as Copernicus hopped off the couch to fall in behind him. Nate ignored it all, focusing on the impending safe haven of his bedroom. At least until Kyle said something about alien mind control rays, and his feet paused of their own accord, halted by a thought that was still only half-formed when he turned back to his large roommate, who was watching him with a cautious look, like he was afraid he’d just crossed a line.
“I was just wondering…” Nate explained, not really sure how else to start, “where do you normally read all that alien conspiracy stuff?”
Kyle’s concerned look quickly shifted to one of mock affront. “Well, if by ‘conspiracy stuff,’ you in fact mean ‘factual reporting,’ my go-to is normally this blog called They Walk Among Us. There’s another one called The Truth Is Out There which is pretty good too, but we Walkers don’t really like to talk about that so much.”
“Why the sudden interest?” Marty aske
d, watching him with a pensive frown.
Kyle looked at Marty as if he’d just asked Nate why he thought Emily Atherton was attractive, or why he found Bell’s Pizza to be so delicious. Then, apparently registering that Marty’s question had some validity, he turned and fixed Nate with his own suspicious look. “Yeah, why are you suddenly interested?”
Nate shrugged. “Just came up last night in conversation.”
That earned him three skeptical stares.
“With Gwen,” Nate added, “Not with the Alpha-Sig-Sigs.”
He wasn’t sure that detail actually added any authenticity to the lie, nor was he particularly happy to be lying about something so trivial to begin with. So he shot them a salute, said a quick, “GLHF, boys,” and turned to limp down the hallway before they could press on with the questions.
“Oh, we will,” Zach called after him.
“With a rando fourth!” Kyle yelled.
But Nate was already stepping into his room and closing the door behind him. He lingered there, leaning his forehead against the flimsy white door, allowing himself a few moments just to breathe, releasing the compressed air of all the lies and madness where no one could see.
He’d never been so simultaneously relieved and achingly hollowed to be alone in a room.
I am sad to say you will never be alone for the rest of your life, Nathaniel.
He closed his eyes, pretending for a moment as if he hadn’t heard a thing. Then he turned for his laptop with grim resolve, ready for answers.
Whatever the Penn State IT Department might have to say about Nate’s academic prowess, he had to admit he might’ve been leaving some performance on the table all these years. Celestial abductions and Excalibur-themed auditory hallucinations, it turned out, were great tricks for improving task-oriented focus—even better, he wagered, than those little blue pills he’d seen more than a few of his classmates popping during long coding sessions.
Somehow, staying on topic felt a lot easier when said topic had beamed down from Lady knew where and taken up temporary residence in his own head. Aside from a few sweaty palmed breaks spent scouring social media feeds for damning footage of his Atherton Street heroics—not to mention a few brief hiatuses to check he hadn’t actually developed some kind of super strength, which, according to his uncrushed metal water bottle, he totally hadn’t—he barely even came up for air. The problem, it quickly became clear, wasn’t one of focus, but rather that he was sorely lacking in reliable source materials.
In hindsight, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting.
Much as he would’ve given for the comforting weight of an Excaliburs, Extraterrestrials, and Other Enigmas textbook in his hands, Nate hadn’t found anything that seemed even remotely applicable in what felt like the few thousand alien conspiracy articles he’d read. Nor had there been anything in the extensive bodies of King Arthur mythology, aside from a few low-budget movies set in modern day and one King Arthur comic series that, while apparently based in space, seemed sadly lacking in quick-fix answers for what to do when you’ve been attacked by a giant space ogre and wind up with an Excalibur trapped in your head.
Nate was starting to get the impression it wasn’t exactly a common problem. And the Excalibur in question wasn’t being much help either. The sword-that-wasn’t-a-sword had been almost completely silent since the research had begun. If Nate hadn’t known better—which, on second thought, he really didn’t—it almost seemed as if the thing was pouting.
A rich accusation, coming from the boy who has spent the entire afternoon hiding in his room, avoiding everything from his pathetic roommates to the girl he claims to love.
“I never claimed to…” Nate blew out a huff of hot air and looked out the window, to… darkness? Shit, was it already nighttime?
He pinched his temples, looking down at the sketch of the Merlin he’d been doodling as he read, and trying in futility to rub out the dull headache of hours spent monitor-gazing. “Did you want me on task, here, or not? One minute you’re telling me I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders, and the next you’re gonna criticize me for trying to do something about it?”
Apologies. Clearly, I missed the part where you were doing anything of value here. Do carry on.
“You know what?” Nate picked up his phone and plopped down on the bed beside Copernicus, navigating to his messages. “If you’re gonna be a dick about it, I might as well take care of my own life first.”
He pulled up Gwen’s text, and started typing out a reply before the Excalibur could say otherwise.
Nate: “Sorry I took so long to respond. Turns out my phone had too much to drink at INN last night, but it’s all better now. Can I buy YOU a peace-offering drink to make it up to you?”
“There,” Nate muttered, even as his fingers tuttered with the phone, deleting and retyping the last sentence through a few different variations.
As I was saying…
“Screw you,” Nate muttered, tapping out the sentence one last time and hitting the send button.
All hail the Knight of the Leaky Pocket, Tamer of Corgis and Conqueror of Nervous Butterflies.
Nate dropped his phone on his chest and plopped his head back onto the pillows with a sigh. Beside him, Copernicus rolled over and did much the same. He hadn’t meant to—had meant instead to finally go have that shower and join his friends for some games—but Nate was on the verge of dozing off when his phone buzzed on his chest. He roused back to life with a familiar thrill of excitement. Then he looked at the display, and the excitement bled away, replaced by surprise and curiosity, and a healthy ripple of dread.
It was a DM request from Emily Atherton, short enough that he could read its entirety in the preview line.
Emily: “Can we talk?”
He stared at those three words, mind churning uneasily with the thoughts of what Emily Atherton would want to talk to him about. It was an impressively short list, beginning with a stolen corgi, and ending with what in the holy hell had happened out there today. Nate stared at the phone, unsure how to respond, hesitant to even unlock the device and allow her to see that he’d seen her message. The phone buzzed again.
Emily: “Wanted to say thx for what u did today”
The knot in Nate’s stomach eased a little.
Emily: “And to ask if u kno where my dog is lol”
The knot tightened right back up.
Nate looked over at the corgi on his bed, reflecting that he should probably get food and water for the both of them. Copernicus, as if sensing a change in the air, went paws-up and cocked his head around at an interesting angle to meet Nate’s gaze. The phone buzzed.
Emily: “I’m not mad, btw”
Emily: “Just wanna talk. Hope ur ok.”
Nate let out a relieved breath. No wild demands or accusations. And still no viral catastrophe from all those not-so-helpful helpers earlier today. Maybe everything was actually going to be okay.
Lady be praised, we are safe from the fifty kilogram beauty queen and the army of tweeting college youths.
Nate frowned at an indiscriminate point on the ceiling, wondering if it was worth it to point out that no one his age really tweeted these days.
I implore you to explain to me how that particular detail matters when NONE of these so-called social networks appear to be anything more than an amalgamated planetary feedback loop of self-aggrandizing mental masturbation.
Nate chuckled despite himself. “Well, I guess we don’t disagree on everything after all.” He looked to Copernicus, wondering what he should do about Emily. “Are you doing okay here, little guy?”
Copernicus broke into a panting doggy grin.
“Well LOL, then,” Nate muttered, scratching the corgi behind the ears before unlocking his phone to type out a reply to Emily.
Nate: “No worries about today. Really.”
He paused on the keyboard, teetering on an outright lie, then decided that, with everything else happening, adding two-time willin
g dognapper to the résumé probably wasn’t necessary.
Nate: “Copernicus actually followed me home earlier. Sorry, I was gonna bring him up this afternoon, but I guess the day sorta got away from me after everything.”
Her response was quick.
Emily: “OMG say no more, I’ve been a total wreck all day. Just glad he’s OK.”
A few seconds later, the phone buzzed again.
Emily: “Do u want me to come over?”
He couldn’t help it. Those seven innocent little words, coming from Emily Atherton, stirred an abashed little part of Nate’s imagination that wasn’t ready to be stirred. Stirred it with unexpected vigor, right up until the phone buzzed again.
Emily: “To get him I mean lol ;)”
Nate blinked at the new message, not really sure whether it was in fact cancellation or confirmation of any perceived flirting, and more than a little irritated with himself for caring at all. How many times had she treated him like nerdy pond scum? Was he really going to let himself start salivating the first time he thought she might be fluttering her pretty little eyelids at him? It was pathetic.
Well, I guess we DON’T disagree on everything after all.
“Cute,” Nate muttered, tapping out a reply. “Real nice.”
Nate: “Would you mind if I just bring him by tomorrow? I think we’re both pretty spent.”
A slightly longer delay.
Emily: “Yeah, totally. I kno you 2 are besties anyways. Could u let me kno ur address just in case?”
Nate shared their Irvin Street address, oddly reassured that the tone had returned to normalcy. He arched an eyebrow at the unexpected sweet dreams and additional winky face he got back in return, and was just setting the phone down again when he felt a strange flicker of… something. Something he didn’t understand—kind of like a nervous flutter, but different. At first, he almost thought he’d received another text and that his fried brain had simply crossed wires and misinterpreted the sensation. Then the Excalibur spoke up.
We have a visitor.
Nate tensed, reflexively looking around the room as if maybe he’d somehow missed a troglodan hiding in the closet. Beside him, Copernicus had gone alert, ears at attention, but that might’ve been more because of Nate’s own tension than because the dog had heard anything.
The Eighth Excalibur Page 13
