by Mark Russo
“If you listened to me, you would know. It’s what I told you before they brought us to that church. We need to find it!”
“Okay, okay. I remember. Let’s see if we can find it here.”
We walked the few steps that separated us from the three spires. I don’t know why, but I pulled the necklace from my pocket and wore it.
“Do you know where it should be, James?”
“No, I do not know. Help me look around. It should be around here.”
She nodded and panned left and right.
I searched the area, overturning rocks and moving dirt, as the piece of metal dangled just below my chin. Despite how hard I tried to scratch the ground, I could not even graze the hard soil. I thought having the stone skin effect on my hands would prove very useful right then, so it was the first time I did it intentionally.
Then I heard her screaming again. “It’s here, James. I found it! It’s here!”
The same metal box was now here.
“It’s exactly like the one I saw some time ago. Now we just have to open it.”
“I found two other boxes like this one. Vagras said Valu had hid them on the paths. This must be the Path of Matter, I suppose.”
It was like something in my brain switched on. “I think you are right. This must be it. Valu knew what we would find here all along.”
“Yes, he wanted us to find this.” She pulled the toolkit’s handle and opened it without effort.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to open that thing.”
“Maybe all it needed was a girl’s touch.” Maria removed a small metal cube from the rusty container. “Now look.” She unsheathed her sword and placed the metal cube on the blade. Both levitated as she withdrew her hand.
The sword and the cube rotated at an increasing speed. I could not help but stare at that aerial spectacle. The two metal objects danced in the air so fast I could no longer distinguish one from the other. I stepped backward as the cloud of dust that small tornado was raising hit my nose and mouth.
The whooshing ceased abruptly. Maria’s sword whirled once more, then landed on the ground.
“What now?” I asked, baffled.
“Now, we kick the Great Communion’s ass.”
19
Maria
As soon as I stowed my weapon, I saw the creepy robot popping up among the tall rock spurs.
“You came here to spy on us?” I barked at him.
He stepped closer, appearing somehow different. “Not exactly, Maria. Now that your weapon is ready, we can go.”
James took the floor. “Go where? We came here to fight the Communion.”
“They are no longer in Plane K. I will come with you.” He opened another of his portals, gave us a rapid look and disappeared inside the glimmer fracture in that reality.
“Do we even have a choice?” I asked James, opening my arms.
He shook his hand then grabbed mine, inviting me to follow. And so we did.
The portal’s intense light still blinded me, so I lowered my head. That’s when I found my feet were standing on a dark wooden floor. I lifted my head and saw pastel-colored walls around me of. There were pictures, pieces of furniture, electric sockets, and doors. That was a house. We were back home.
“We will be here for a while. Take a shower, both of you. There are clean clothes in the bedroom on your right.”
Both James and I blabbered something, but no, we did not manage to pronounce a full sentence. James let me go first.
The warmth of the water on my skin was a sensation my brain could not process properly. I was unsure if I should run away or jump from all the happiness. I dressed up. I had no clue if it had been Pavel, but the clothes he picked for me were not that bad, maybe too basic. When I got out, I realized I had left the door to the bathroom open. I had never done that before.
I walked the short corridor to the living room. It was a very nice, modern flat. I’m no expert, but the furniture and appliances looked expensive. The chair I sat in was ergonomic and rapidly adhered to my back. I heard something whirring inside of it.
Pavel stood by an empty fireplace.
“I started feeling hungry. Do you have food in here too?”
“You should not eat yet. You’d better wait for your body to adjust to Plane R again. James and you spent a lot of time there.” His face was the least expressive one I ever saw, but that statement made me almost stand on the chair.
“What? Will there be consequences? Why has nobody ever told me?” I heard steps behind me; it was James, after taking the quickest shower of his life.
“What will happen, Pavel? I was in Plane R already, maybe a day ago,” he asked.
“My actual name is Vaim. When you visited this plane on that day, I prevented you from feeling bad.”
James paced like a caged dog. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing special. Just used one of our artifacts. You do not have to worry, James.”
James approached Pavel—or Vaim, whatever his name was. Before he could talk, a gurgling noise came from his mouth. He bent forward and retched on the floor.
I went by his side; he needed help.
His face was pale. He covered his mouth and staggered toward the bathroom.
“Don’t worry, Maria. This is normal. You guys will be fine again soon.”
That sentence might have triggered it. My head spun so bad I had to lean on the room’s table. I fell to the floor and toppled a chair. A few other objects followed me down, but I didn’t see exactly which ones. My sight blurred, as if I had been drinking all day.
Pavel lifted me, so I sat on the floor.
I was nauseated, my stomach bubbling.
“Take this.” The robot handed me a bucket; he had been ready for what would happen.
I wanted to vomit—needed to—but I just couldn’t. It was all too much. I fell to the floor, my elbow hurt. That’s the last thing I remember.
*****
I opened my eyes. I must have slept forever. My muscles were stiff. I stretched my arms and neck. I was in a small bedroom. Besides a tiny nightstand and my single bed, no other pieces of furniture were there. A large window was on my left. The cracked open shutters let a few rays of light slip in. I stood to see someone had removed my clothes before putting me to bed. Had Pavel done that? I would kill him. I got dressed and left the room. All my muscles were sore, like I hadn’t moved for days. My back was killing me too. When I stepped in the corridor, I heard her voice coming from the kitchen. I quickened my pace as much as I could.
“Look who had a lot of sleep,” she said.
I jumped into her arms. My eyes got soaked. “I thought we walked into yet another trap. You being here gets that out of my mind.” I wriggled from her delightful smell. “Unless this is not you, Emma. Is it you?”
She laughed her ass off. “Of course, it’s me. Let’s have some coffee. Come here.” If that was a clone or any other type of fake version of her, they had created it quite well.
We entered the kitchen, and Pavel was there too. “Happy to see you finally woke up, Maria,” he said.
“So, you guys planned this all along?” I asked them both, not knowing who to look at.
“Not exactly, Maria. Vaim and Valu approached me when I was in Zurich.”
I sat, my legs needing rest already. The next time I looked up, I saw James had joined us. If that was his joyful face, I could not tell.
“You could have just told us. We would come here,” he said to Emma. Maybe he was smiling.
“You know, there’s no coverage in Plane K. Next time, I’ll try it anyhow.”
They laughed.
“Is that coffee ready? I don’t why, but I’m having a very hard time now,” I said.
“You guys have slept for almost two full days. Give your bodies some time.”
James and I remained silent for at least ten seconds, staring at each other.
“Do not make such a big thing out of it, guys. My body r
eacted the same way. It’s just the way returning from that place looks like.” Emma handed me a very tiny mug.
“So, why did you bring us here? And where are we exactly?” our Scottish friend asked.
“We’re in Paris. We are here on a little mission,” Emma said.
I jumped onto my feet and ran by the window. The panes were quite dirty, but what I saw did not match my expectations. “What happened outside?”
The tone of my voice must have been compelling, since James trotted by my side in the blink of an eye and said nothing.
“They’re here, Maria. Their plan changed. They will annihilate us instead.”
“So, how do we stop this? I mean, the building in front of this one is completely ruined.”
“Yes, Maria. They destroy everything that stands in their way. There is still something we can do.”
“Go ahead, Vaim. I’m listening, we all are.”
James, Emma, and I regarded the automaton from the other world.
“The Great Communion uses beacons to control its creatures. Itchlings, Eebs, and that sort of monsters, let’s say. One of those things is here, in Paris. What do we do with it? We tear it down, simple as that.”
I showed both of my thumbs. “Great plan. I’ll play with my brand-new toy.”
Emma gave me a questioning look.
“Yes, Emma, my sword just got upgraded. Now it blows rocks into dust.” I unsheathed it to show it to my friends.
My Swiss friend gave a long squint, as if she had x-ray vision. “Where is the magic in this thing? What does it do?”
“I saw her blowing a rock into little pieces with that,” James commented.
Vaim stood, pointing at my time blade. “Maria’s weapon can do much more than break stones. She will see for herself.” The robot invited us to a table covered in food; croissants, different marmalades and chocolate creams, pancakes, and fruits were up for grabs.
“We got you two sleepyheads some food,” Emma said. “It seems Vaim was programmed to cook too.”
All of us talked at the same time, our voices overlapping.
“I also gave a name to the sword. Aplanadora—it’s Spanish for steamroller. I like to think of it as a steamroller.”
James, with his face already stuffed with food, nodded in approval.
Emma winked at me.
Vaim, who did not need to eat, stood in front of us, like at a job interview, and delivered a well-rehearsed speech. “Guys, as Emma knows already, this place is safe. As soon as we step out the front door, things will be quite different. We want to avoid fighting. We take down the beacon, then we move to our next objective.”
I gobbled a piece of an apple too fast, and it hurt my throat. “Okay, let’s go incognito. But we look like humans. We do not change that very easily.”
“That is where you are very wrong,” the stranger sitting to my left said.
I almost jumped in my chair.
“Let’s say, my skills on the Path of Mind developed a bit,” the old lady said.
It took me a few seconds to realize that person was still Emma, even if her wrinkled face and gray hair would suggest the opposite. “Okay, you can look like a granny. But how do we look like monsters?” I spoke as my mouth was busy chewing all I could lay my hands on.
She smiled at me. “You will see. We can easily pass beneath the radars.”
The next time I looked at her, she was wearing her real face again.
“What does this beacon of yours look like?” James asked.
I almost forgot he was sitting next to me.
“I saw one in Zurich. It looked like a purple chimney. I could not take that one down, unfortunately,” Emma commented.
“What she says, it’s right. It looks like that. We will not take down all of them. Just the most important ones.”
He was so confident, I had to ask him, “Vaim, how do you know all this stuff? It looks like you did it already. Did you fight them before?”
“If you refer to the Communion, yes, I did. Plane R is not the first plane they’ve colonized. I’ve seen this a few other times.”
“I guess it didn’t end well,” I said and bit my blunt tongue.
“It doesn’t matter how it went in the past. This time, we are not alone. You are not alone either, guys.”
We all looked at each other.
For the first time—maybe since we all were silent—I heard the noise of the streets: people screaming, windows shattering, and a muffled explosion.
We didn’t talk about any of that.
20
Emma
The building’s elevator would not work. I was thinking about how the monsters did not attack us there, but it slipped my mind. On that staircase, the street noises became louder. None of us were talking, but I was rather wary something could happen any moment.
Before opening the old wooden main door, Vaim checked on us.
We all confirmed we were ready.
He opened it and revealed what lay beyond the threshold.
The first thing that struck my senses was the sunlight. My eyelids almost immediately shut, and I used my hand as an additional shield. When I had adjusted to all the brightness, I saw everything else. What hit me next, since I was looking in the sun’s direction, was the surrounding buildings—or better, what they left of them. The entire block before me had been demolished. A large pile of debris had taken its place, and a fountain of water sprinkled on its side, maybe from a sliced pipe. The street’s asphalt was cracked, and deep potholes were scattered here and there, like something huge had stomped on it.
My friends remained silent.
A group of itchlings stood in a circle a few meters from us and appeared to be feeding off something,
When we got closer, I realized it was a human body.
James spouted rocks on them, dismembering them on the spot.
“We want to avoid doing this, James. We can’t fight all the enemies we will meet,” Vaim warned him.
James did not reply and looked away.
“So, where is this beacon we have to deal with? Let’s go there directly.” Maria spoke as fast she could, as per her standard.
“I saw it already. It’s around three hundred meters from here,” Vaim said, walking in front of us, as a half robotic shield would.
The rest of the street appeared as if someone had bombed it a few days before; concrete debris lined in two parallel lines at the sides of the road. A few buildings here and there were almost intact. I was about to ask Vaim how that had happened, but I refrained.
A small group of people emerged, running and screaming in that language I always refused to learn, from a narrow street on the side. When they saw us, they shook their arms and became even more agitated than they looked before.
A gigantic creature of black matter without limbs, eyes, or traits that would let me think it was human appeared behind them.
Three doubles sprinted toward the unknown entity.
Vaim tried to say something, but I just ignored him.
Maria jumped in a temporal series, and James did something else, but I didn’t get what.
The creature crept forward, as pulled by an invisible rope.
Our robot friend yelled, but I still ignored him.
When my clones got close to the entity, two black tendrils emerged from it and slapped them. Too bad they were doubles, and that type of attack would not hurt them.
The mysterious creature kept attacking, relentlessly.
I saw Maria jumping much higher than I could expect. She got some new skills, I thought. I didn’t get if the monster ignored her or she was moving too fast, but it didn’t stop her.
Maria unsheathed her time blade. Maybe the sunrays hit it, but it was so shiny I had to protect my eyes, again. The glare disappeared when the blade scuttled in the Plane K inhabitant’s mass.
The monster withdrew all his tentacles and writhed on itself like plastic put too close to the fire. The lump of black matter solidified, cracked,
and broke. A gust of wind crushed it, and a cloud of black dust rose among the demolished buildings.
“Please, do not engage. I told you not to do it.” That was the first time I heard Vaim’s loud voice clearly since we left the apartment.
“We had to help them. That monster would kill them.”
“The Eeb would have killed them, Emma, that is true, but we don’t have any time to waste. We do not want to face the Communion yet. Please listen to me. I know what I am saying.”
I nodded, unwillingly.
We all followed Valu’s pet again.
I looked back instinctively and noticed a small group of people following us. I asked the other guys to wait for them, maybe they just wanted to thank us, and they kind of did.
They dropped to their knees and talked again; I was getting some words here and there.
“What are they saying?” James asked.
“I don’t understand much. I think they are praying. They think we’re anges, angels.” I told them to hide somewhere in English; it would not help.
As the three people kept praying, one of them attempted to kiss my shoes.
“No, don’t do that please,” I begged him.
One of James’s stone worms emerged from the ground.
The small group of people changed their behavior accordingly, running as fast as they could and scattering in different directions.
“James, that was not nice,” Maria argued.
“It was not intentional. I did not want a stone worm now.”
Vaim looked at us. “Guys, please, let’s go.” He raised his voice even more.
We were walking again. At the end of the road lay a big square, one of those where I remembered I would see a specific landmark, but they had destroyed it. The name of the place slipped my mind.
“Are we there yet? You said it would be close,” Maria asked.
“It should be at the other end of the square, but I do not see it yet.”
I didn’t like how that sounded.
Four lines of shades ran to a point in front of us. A tall woman had popped out of thin air. She looked straight into my eyes, cocking her head to the right.
My body became stiff as wood. I could not move; breathing became difficult. I found out my eyes could not move as well.
