by T. S. Mann
Doc had no answer to that. Seconds later, they were at the portal, where Bryce began his final incantation. After making one last mudra, he firmly grasped the door handle and opened the pathway. A gust of wind invaded the dry halls of the Invisible College, and a few leaves floated in and landed on the linoleum floor. On the other side of the portal was an empty commuter parking lot. Bryce wiped sweat from his brow and pointed across the lot to a darkened building on the other side.
“That's Beakman Hall. This is as close as I could get without putting the portal directly inside, and I thought that would probably be a bad idea.”
“Good work,” said Doc. “How are you on juice?”
“I've probably got enough to 'port us directly out if we get into trouble, but that's it. Any word from Electra?”
“No. She's off the grid. Or worse. I have left her a text message briefly outlining the current state of affairs.”
Bryce chuckled. “I’d love to see that message. Not to mention her face when she reads it.”
Doc turned back to his assembled team, each member of which was sporting one or two magical items of varying power levels.
“Alright, let's go. The intrusion team will consist of Mickey, myself, young Ethan here, and Widget, with Bryce taking up the rear.”
Ethan made a face upon learning that he would be part of the group heading straight into the lion's den, but he said nothing.
“Everyone else, fan out and surround the building. Keep your veils and shields buffed as high as possible and keep all communication to a minimum.”
With that, he led the group through the door and into the cool night air. Less than a minute later, Mickey and his five associates had reached the front door of the abandoned dorm. Mickey touched two fingers of his right hand to his tongue, and then gingerly reached out for the door as if he were checking a hot iron.
“I count six wards and three detection spells. And that's it, because there's a high-level veil over the whole interior of the building. I can't see anything inside. Everyone standby. It will take me just a minute to disable all these ….” He stopped suddenly.
“What?” whispered Doc.
Mickey turned back to him with a concerned expression. “Okay, I don't know what just happened, but everything but the veil just collapsed on their own.”
“What does that mean?” asked Ethan nervously.
“Dunno. Could mean she's dead or incapacitated. Could mean that she needs juice for something big and so she leached everything out of her persistent spells. Who knows.”
Mickey turned back to the door. He carefully reached out to the door handle, and when nothing horrible happened, he pulled on it. It opened easily. Mickey looked back at his companions once more and then led them into the dark building.
Once inside, he closed his eyes and willed his arcane senses to grow stronger. From beyond a door down the hall to his left, he heard faint noises. He quickly moved in that direction while reaching into his pocket for the Birmingham Stapler. The door was open and led to a set of stairs leading to the basement.
Mickey descended as fast as he could while still maintaining some semblance of stealth. Once at the bottom, he burst through the door, ready for anything. Anything except, perhaps, for his enemy to already be dead with a knife sticking out of her chest.
Looking around wildly, Mickey saw the two boys, and while they were older, he knew them both instantly. Matt was in some distress and seemed to be having a fit. Luke was holding his brother and staring up in amazement at his father's arrival. Mickey turned and yelled back up the stairs.
“They're in here!”
He rushed forward to where the boys lay, returning the Stapler to his pocket. Dimly, he felt a flash of anger from it, a snarl of frustration that it had not been allowed to kill anyone.
Luke recoiled in a mixture of fear and anger. He still held Matt protectively with one arm, but he raised the other and tightened his hand into a fist. He knew nothing about mudras and incantations, but stress and emotion were excellent substitutes – black lightning of pure chthonic energy danced around his fist, ready to be unleashed at this new intruder wearing his dead father's shape.
Mickey dropped to his knees and held his hands up in as unthreatening a manner as possible. Luke spared a glance behind him as more people came into the room.
“Luke, please, just listen to me. I know this is a big shock to you, but you have to believe me. I really am your father. And I promise you, in about five minutes, I will be able to answer all your questions. But right this second, the fate of all of us, maybe the whole human race, depends on fixing what is wrong with Matt. Now please, just stand down and let us help.”
For a long second, Luke stared, shell-shocked. Finally, he relaxed his hand and let go of Matt. Doc and Widget rushed forward and began examining the other boy, while Mickey pulled Luke off to one side.
“Thank you, Luke. Now, I need to know two things. One, what the hell happened here, and two, what do you already know about … your condition.”
Luke shook his head and suppressed a bitter laugh. “I don't know if I could explain half of what happened to me today, and everything I know I got from a crazy woman.”
“That's okay.” He hesitated. “I can give you a crash course. But I need you to trust me for a second.”
Carefully, Mickey put his hands on either side of his younger son's head. Then, he leaned in until their foreheads touched.
“Contact,” he said.
Luke suddenly stiffened as the two were surrounded in a nimbus of blue light. Instantly, a brief orientation into the general nature of strangeness was downloaded into his head. For Mickey, the experience was even more disorienting, as he downloaded everything that had happened to Luke over the last two days into his own mind while simultaneously scanning the boy's mind for any trace of chaos magic.
The two parted and looked at one another. Luke marveled as the implications of going strange became clear. His father had never died at all. Instead, he had been erased from history and from the minds of his loved ones by the power of magic. The same power that likely erased Luke himself from the memories of his mother and all his friends.
For his part, Mickey fought back the urge to throw up from the sensation of spiders crawling up his throat as he experienced Luke's hours of torture condensed down into just a few seconds. Finally, Luke spoke first, softly but intently.
“Just tell me one thing. When you ... went strange, I guess ... was it in a car wreck while we were heading to the Red Sox Opening Day?”
Mickey blinked, trying to fathom the significance of Luke's question. “No, it was at the office. I had to cancel that trip because of ….”
Before he could finish his explanation, Luke rushed forward and embraced his father tightly.
“I'm so sorry, Dad,” he said in a broken voice.
“For what?” said Mickey in surprise.
“For being such a little punk back then.”
Mickey laughed and hugged back warmly. “You were nine. You were a great kid and you still are.” Then, he looked down into Luke's eyes. “And for what it's worth, I don't like spiders either.”
“Mickey, get over here,” Doc said urgently. “We have a problem.”
He was kneeling with his hands resting on either side of Matt's head. The boy was delirious and seemed to be babbling in the same forgotten tongue he was speaking before. Mickey and Luke knelt next to him across from Widget. Bryce was examining Lindsay's inert body, while Ethan stayed by the door, obviously terrified.
“So talk,” said Mickey. “What's happening?”
“I'm not entirely sure. He's in a fugue state, and I can't figure out what language he's speaking. His thoughts are too disjointed for me to isolate the chaos fragment. But it's growing in his mind at an alarming rate. It will actualize soon if we can't stop it.”
Mickey nodded. “I heard its name in Luke's memories. Itzpapalotl. Something Aztec, right?”
Widget spoke up. She was a n
umenologist, attuned to the Shaman, and deities of all kinds were her specialty.
“Itzpapalotl. The Obsidian Butterfly. The Aztecs called her the queen of the Tzitzimimeh, the Star-Demons who would devour the sun unless propitiated with blood sacrifices.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Luke. “My brother's being possessed by an Aztec goddess?!?”
“No,” she replied professionally, “he's being possessed by a chaos concept representing the necessity of human sacrifice. But chaos concepts can't enter the Infrastructure in their pure form, so they need to sneak in wearing some spiritual form that is already accepted in some way by human beings.”
“So why the hell is a Catholic boy from South Boston so accepting of Aztec mythology?” asked Mickey.
Luke snapped his fingers excitedly. “His term paper! He’d been assigned to write a term paper on Aztec mythology! We were talking about it on the way to the church! Would that do it?”
“Probably,” said Widget. “The violence of the Aztec mythos must have been brought to mind by the violence attending his Insight, and so the chaos fragment latched onto the most psychically disturbing concept to have come up in his research – the legend of Itzpapalotl. And having used the Itzpapalotl identity to insinuate itself into your brother's subconscious, it's rewriting his memories to make him think it’s always been there so that it can actualize itself in the physical world.”
“And then what?” asked Luke. “We all go back to believing that you have to sacrifice people, or else the sun will go out?”
“No,” said his father grimly. “If it actualizes, it means that fact will literally be true. It really will be necessary to regularly sacrifice untold millions of people to ensure that the sun doesn't go out. It will be a fundamental scientific fact in our universe. And as far as most people remember, it will simply have always been true that millions of people have to be brutally executed every year to keep the world from just spontaneously ending.”
He turned to Doc. “What do you need from me?”
Doc shrugged. “A miracle? I am a master psychomancer and Widget is a master numenologist, but the chaos concept is too ingrained into his subconscious for either of us to remove it without getting infected ourselves. We need a master-level luminor to burn out the infection, but we don't have one and we don't have time to get one. So as a backup plan, I would propose that we use a master-level karmatrophian with a direct line to Fate itself to tell us what to do.”
Mickey stared at him. Luke didn't know what the old man was talking about, but he could see that his father was visibly unnerved by the man’s suggestion.
Doc returned Mickey's gaze impassively. “I'm sorry, but it's that or kill him. Your call.”
Mickey slowly rose while Luke looked up at him apprehensively.
“Dad? What is it?”
“It's okay, son. It's just … powerful magic. I have to, well, ask Fate for a ridiculous amount of luck, and I don't know what she's going to want in return.”
He stood up and backed a few feet away. Slowly, he closed his eyes and bowed his head as if concentrating – or perhaps praying. Very softly, just loud enough for Luke to hear, he whispered in frightened reverence: “Show me what to do.”
Then, everyone watching suddenly shuddered as one, as if aware of some inexplicably portentous event had taken place without any of them understanding what it was. Finally, Mickey nodded, as if listening to instructions from on high, before returning to kneel next to Matt’s head and rest his fingers lightly at his son’s temples.
“Okay, here's what has to happen. Widget, tell the person you trust the least that it's okay to betray you.”
Widget looked confused for a moment and then slowly nodded.
“Doc, you need to be ready to apologize.”
Doc looked at him blankly. “For what?”
“No idea. This is Fate talking. You're just gonna have to figure it out for yourself.” He turned to Luke.
“Okay, Luke, in the end, everything’s going to depend on Matt’s brilliant idea, but you’ll have to be the one to ask him what it is. Remember that. But first, we need to wake him up, if only for a second. Your job is to say the only words that can reach him right now.”
Luke looked at his father doubtfully and then moved closer to Matt. He reached out and shook his brother's arm, gently but firmly.
“Matt? Can you hear me?” There was no response. Luke thought for a moment. Then, inspiration struck, and he spoke more urgently.
“Matt? It's Luke. I need help, okay? I … I'm in trouble and I need your help. Remember what you promised Dad! Remember your promise!”
Suddenly, Matt’s eyes opened wide, and he cried out Luke’s name. Instantly, Mickey bent down to touch his own forehead to Matt’s. “Contact,” he said.
Both father and son stiffened as if in great pain. Then, through clenched teeth, Mickey gasped out words that Luke found horribly familiar.
“The vessel is prepared. Enter freely, and of your own will.”
There was a clap of thunder, and suddenly Mickey was flung back against the wall. The other Strangers leapt to their feet, most of them shouting expletives. Doc moved to stand between Luke and Mickey when the boy tried to go to his father’s side, and all three of the Collegians started shaping their strongest hexes. Then, Mickey pulled himself up to his feet and held out an arm to ward them off.
“Wait, it’s okay. All part of the plan,” he said through obvious distress and pain.
“All part of the plan?!?” shouted Bryce. “You invited a chaos fragment directly into your head, you crazy son of a bitch! What the hell kind of plan is that?!?”
“Fate’s plan,” he gasped. “This is just phase one.”
“Well would you kindly share the rest with us before we’re forced to incinerate you?” Doc snapped.
“No time. Gotta shut down before it breaks through. Good luck!”
Then, Mickey raised two fingers to his right temple as if to mime holding a gun before shouting “Von Bulow!” His whole body jerked as if he’d truly shot himself in the head, and then his body dropped to the ground. Luke finally broke past Doc and rushed to his father’s side.
“DAD!” he screamed in horror, but the man did not respond. Luke looked wildly back and forth among the other Strangers.
“What just happened?!? What did he do?!? And what the hell is a Von Bulow?!?”
Doc knelt beside the father and son and put his fingers gently on Mickey’s forehead.
“It’s the name of a famous coma victim. A bit tasteless but still an effective incantation under the circumstances. Your father has just shut down his own mind and placed himself into a vegetative state to prevent the chaos fragment from actualizing.” He grimaced. “For the moment at least. I can still feel it trying to find alternate pathways into his conscious mind.”
Everyone else crowded around the fallen Stranger. Distracted, none of them noticed Matt waking up, at least until he made his presence known.
“Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?!?”
Unfortunately, Matt was denied any immediate answers though Luke promised his brother that he’d tell him everything soon enough. Meanwhile, Doc summoned the rest of his team to the basement. Some of them carefully carried the unconscious Mickey out, while others found a tarp to wrap up Lindsay Forrester’s corpse (but only after Doc cast a few spells on the knife in her chest to prevent it from coming out accidentally). As he was doing so, his cellphone buzzed, and he checked the number.
“Naturally,” he muttered softly. “Too late for all the action. She’ll be most annoyed.”
He tossed the phone to Widget.
“It’s Electra,” he said. “I need to accompany the nephilim’s body just in case. Would you fill her in please?”
Widget nodded and stepped a few feet away to take the call while the others attended to Lindsay.
“This is Widget, Electra. Doc’s ... engaged right now.”
From her tone, Electra was c
learly unhappy.
“I’m not surprised. I get back from hours and hours of negotiating with half the weirdos in Boston – much of it spent in various extradimensional pocket worlds – and find I have a message from the old man that says, and I quote – ‘There’s a chaos fragment inside Matt. He’s fled to rendezvous with nephilim and brother. Apocalypse likely imminent. Call me.’ Anything else I should know right now?”
Widget took a deep breath. “The ... apocalypse has been delayed for the moment. Forrester’s been incapacitated, and the fragment in Matt’s head has been ... relocated.”
There was a beat before the icy response. “Relocated ... where?”
“Into the father’s head just before he put himself into a coma. We’re taking him back to the college to consider our options. But we’re obviously under some serious time constraints here so ....”
Electra interrupted in a clipped and angry voice.
“Just what options do you think you have to prevent the end of the world in the next few hours? Other than the obvious one of killing the person who’s about to cause it?!?”
“Electra ...!”
Widget paused long enough to restrain her own anger. An ethical debate right now would not be helpful to anyone.
“We’re the Invisible College, Electra. We’re not killers. Not unless there’s no other way. We’re taking St. Angel and Forrester back to the college, and we’re going to do what we think is necessary.”
She paused again as she was suddenly reminded of what John Sullivan had said as part of his Fate-working.
“You should probably do the same,” she finally said.
There was no immediate response, but Widget almost believed she could feel the other Stranger’s anger through the phone.
“Don’t worry,” Electra finally answered tersely. “I will.”
Then, she hung up the phone and returned it to a jacket pocket before turning to address the last people she’d ever wanted to speak to prior to receiving Doc’s insane text.
“They have Lindsay, the Sullivan brothers, and their father, and they’re taking them all to the College’s base. Lindsay’s out of action. The boys are clean. But the father....”
