Out of the Woods (The Coalescence Book 1)

by P. S. Power

  “Ah. Okay. So, I’m your son and Denis is your husband? What kind of clothing will we need to wear? Also, the others involved on our team… I don’t know how they fit that way.”

  Denis made a face, seeming displeased, but Burkes laughed. Then smiled.

  “That isn’t bad. Really, we should… Let me make some calls? That… We might have been doing this a bit more seriously than we need to. Go get ready, we leave at noon, regardless.”

  In the end, the mission profile changed by the time they were leaving. Instead of sneaking into place, they simply went to the hotel, got several extra rooms, and took different people with them than had been originally promised. Several of them were homosexual, including Warren from the cooking classes and his boyfriend, who was a trainer there at the base. He was also Infected.

  Georgia, who dressed in a pretty but very different seeming body suit, moved in next to Karen. That they were close friends was clear. They still needed to have protection constantly, so Will found himself doing that, not needing sleep. He also wasn’t going to be easily killed either that night or the next day.

  Instead of hiding in a remote position, they all walked out into the crowd seeking extra rights for people who enjoyed the same sex. That was the real point as far as he could see. That, having gained the rights that anyone else had in their culture, these people wished to use past wrongs as a mechanism to improve their stations.

  That was fine, but they all worked really hard, trying to seem like they were being wronged daily, which might not have been the truth all the time there now. It didn’t matter to Will at all. He just did his job, moving where Agent Burkes told him to go.

  “We have a bit of a dustup on the left hand side. I can’t get a visual on it. Baker, can you get eyes on that?”

  “Moving now.” He just spoke, not needing to touch his ear to make the device work. Denis and Tobin both did that each time. Jason, who was new to him so far, but apparently very fast, spoke then.

  “I can do that? I’m probably not helping over here. You know, I’m…”

  Will stopped, looking at the scene going on in front of him. It wasn’t a nice happening. There was blood already, with Brian Yi dressed in a tight black outfit, an obsidian blade flashing, easily killing people, who didn’t even know to scream or flee yet.

  He had three scars on his cheek. A thing that the Mr. Yi Willum had met didn’t.

  While he ran, moving fast, he spoke loudly.

  “It’s an attack. Um, Brian Yi. Probably from a different reality, though I can’t confirm that yet. He looks different. I’m closing with him now.”

  There was noise, but it was kind of hard to hear suddenly, as Will jumped at the fighting man at close to a hundred and eighty miles per hour. Rather than make contact, the fellow just stepped to the side, not even looking over at Will, slicing a man’s neck open as he danced to the side. It was a clever move, as well. After all, if Willum pursued at full speed, the crowd would die as surely as if their own bodies were the focus of the attacks. Just from him bumping into them.

  There was a roaring behind him anyway, as Jason closed in, slowed by the press of bodies. There weren’t that many people there that day, only about seventy. Everyone was just standing still, not understanding what was happening.

  “Run! Attack! Run!” It sounded a bit confused, but people finally took off, scattering in different directions. People died at the killer’s hands while their fellows escaped. Will got the idea. The bodies were being dropped in front of them, most beyond help, but not all. They could, as a group, either try to save the lives of the dying, or go after the man doing the harm. Preventing more death.

  He went for that second one himself.

  Closing finally, his shield kicked on as Yi moved in to kill him. It didn’t work, but after a few seconds Willum was falling anyway, landing on his side, as the other man did something to him that he simply wasn’t ready for. Jason ran up on him from behind, only to fall in a few moments, bleeding and gasping from the knife in the other man’s hands.

  “Stop! You don’t understand, I’m not here for you. We need your world’s Brian here, to fight me. We need to push him in the right way, or else the world won’t end!” There was a desperate look in his eyes about then, as he glanced up at Will. “I… Wait… You’re the spy. Will Baker? I thought… Holy fudge… Am I in the wrong world?” He glanced around, his face going hard after a moment.

  Will, still being heard by Burkes, laying on the ground, even if his shield shouldn’t have allowed the other man to do that to him, spoke. His voice wry. It was fake, but clearly he’d been recognized by the other fellow.

  Standing up, still being unharmed, Will nodded. Not speaking in case that would give him away too soon. The other man stared at him, then looked at the downed bodies.

  “Gah. I hurt all these people for nothing? I’m so sorry. Can we… Is there any way to help them?” The change from murder machine to a guilty seeming, mainly rational, person was insane.

  Lancaster ran up then, his hands glowing with blue hot flame.

  “Proxy? What the fuck?”

  Will shrugged then, trying not to make things worse.

  “This is Yi from a different world. I think he came to try and do something to our Brian. I’m not up on why that would make any difference, but he got that I’m Will Baker, even with my new face, and spoke about ending all reality, or I took his words to mean that. So… I don’t know, it could be a trick?” He was trying to scan the man in front of him, but didn’t know if anyone else would understand the idea.

  Lancaster nodded.

  “Fuck then. This is just a gay pride thing, more or less. We don’t even have a real police presence here. We’re on the same side, idiot. Now these people are dead. Dying. We need medical over here. Burkes? Get that in. I…” He held his ear, as if listening, but if that was happening, then Willum would have heard it as well. Even if it was a special channel that he was excluded from. His hearing was good enough for that kind of thing.

  So Lancaster at least had the act down as well. He also seemed to think that they couldn’t take out Proxy. Not in a real battle. That practically poured from the man. They had to get past this Brian, who, in a few moments would probably work out that he had to keep fighting. It was there, inside of his brain at the moment, working its way toward the surface of his mind rapidly. His own power letting Brian understand what was needed.

  Willum struggled for a few seconds, then nodded.

  “We need to get out of here then. Yi, can you leave from here?” The other Brian had made his own node to walk through, his power allowing for that kind of thing. Willum was holding open the one that he’d come through, about ten miles away, at the hotel. It wasn’t going to help him just then, so he let that go, as the other man nodded.

  “Sure? I… Let me…” There was a shift to the world then, as it thinned around the other man. It wasn’t totally, but enough for Will to try and tear at, even if he had to use everything he had to do anything of note. That part got the other man to start fighting again, stopping what he was doing. Except that it was almost too late for that. As long as Will could get them both into the void. What he was going to do there, he didn’t know.

  Except that, after he surrounded Brian, who kept trying to fight his way free, pushing and pulling at the very information that made him up, he had an idea. It took a while to get to it, but finally he just let the other man go. Allowing him to dissolve, since he had power enough to escape, but not the focus yet to hold himself together. The whole thing seemed to take a good long while, but when he moved back out, to the place the attack had happened, no one did more than blink at him.

  Lancaster looked around, already bent over Jason, trying to hold his wounds together. Activating a healing amulet that was still around his neck, Will pulled it off and handed it over to the man, who just looked at him funny. Not understanding the magic at all.

  “Press it to his skin. It will hurt, but make him heal faster.”
That worked really well for the speedy fellow, who was actually up on his feet not thirty seconds later. A lot of the people there were mostly dead already, but Lancaster tried the magic on them as well, which worked. He didn’t heal them totally, either, doing just enough to save each one, then moving on to the next.

  A few of them died anyway.

  It was a dismal and gruesome thing, but no one questioned him until there were sirens in the background. The rest of their team had been on the other side of the event, so had gotten the crowd away from the insane killer Proxy that had shown up. Denis got to them about then, his face bleak.

  “That… Talk about screwed up. Can we secure the area? He could be back at any time.”

  Lancaster nodded, with Burkes taking a hissingly deep breath.

  “Crap. We should pull the team here, given that. Is the London group safe? It sounded like this version wanted ours for something. Some kind of trick, probably.”

  The words got him looked at, when Will shook his head slowly.

  “I killed him. It was why I vanished. I knew I couldn’t take him in a fight here, so I did it in the void. He doesn’t exist any longer.” It was all true, even if he wasn’t certain how he’d known so strongly that beating the man had been out of the question. It had felt right, and everyone agreed with him over the idea.

  The Agent in charge looked at him funny then, but nodded.

  “You killed Proxy? A Proxy, at least? That’s hard to do, I bet.”

  It really was, most likely. He wouldn’t have managed it without three thousand years of practice, at a guess.

  “We… Need to check on the crew in England, but this one won’t be back for anyone here. I don’t know what else to do in this location.”

  That, it turned out, was just saving who they could, then, as soon as was possible, instead of waiting to be questioned by the police there, they left. They had a way into the void not ten feet from them, since he’d had to hold it open. The one by the hotel had been lost when he was in the void. It just took too much concentration constantly to hold something like that open for very long inside of reality.

  That was a strange way to think about it, but oddly correct. The void between worlds was inside of it, even while being the definition of outside as well.

  The people that had gone that day, most of them just to march around with the protestors while holding signs, since that was how blending in worked sometimes, were back at the IPB base before anyone could show up to shoot at them for no real reason. Thankfully.

  After all, several of the people, like Denis, Kerry, Tobin and Karen weren’t bullet resistant. They didn’t even have padded armor on to slow the lead bullets used there. After that, as soon as they were all inside the command center, screaming started. It was the upset kind. Mainly coming from Marcia Turner. She did calm herself after a few moments however, instead of berating them for being where an unexpected attack took place. Lancaster was the one to fill her in, which meant Willum had to be there.

  Possibly to help the other man escape from Marcia, if it came up.

  “Baker took him out. At least that’s the report. I have no reason not to believe that. What’s the situation like on the ground at the other location?”

  The words got Cindy to speak, since she was in constant contact with at least one or two of the people there. It was part of her power to do that.

  “I… They seem fine, actually. They just went in and mopped up the cell in question. There was enough proof on hand, where I told them to look for it, so everyone is decently happy with us. They found a rather large bomb, well before it was placed on the train it was destined for. It went smooth, with no injuries or deaths on either side.”

  That was good to hear at least, since the other operation had gone sort of poorly, in the end. Three people had died there that day. The ones whose heads had been nearly cut off. The healing amulets were good, but you still had to have a working brain for them to do their job.

  Marcia nodded at them all, then looked at Lancaster, followed by Burkes.

  “Probably about the best we could manage, given the people involved. We need to work out protocols for this, to help prevent infiltration. If Proxy had just shown up here, he could have done a lot of damage without us even knowing it was happening at first. I’ll set up something from my end, but I want more than one option here.”

  Interestingly, Lydia picked up a piece of paper and waved it, while looking at him. It was small, being about the size of half his own hand. The dark haired girl nodded as soon as he walked over.

  “Phone messages.” She made a silly face at him, but went on almost instantly. “We get new communications between worlds and everyone calls for you. It’s more work to do this than I figured it would be, since Sara doesn’t write yet. She can speak your language however, so she has to come and get me, then translate. Anyway…”

  There was a deep breath taken then, as the first thing was spoken of.

  “Queen Constance of Noram wanted to remind you that, you know, that the wedding is in a few days there. That should be… Well, you need to leave in a few minutes. I don’t know who is being married, but she said you would? Earlier, Taman suggested that you need to check in before making your next rounds. She has a mission for you. That’s all it says. Also, um, Neesa wants to know if you’ll attend the wedding with her? I assumed it was the same wedding. That one… She’s sort of incredible looking, isn’t she?”

  He nodded, then tried to think about what was needed. There would be about half a week before the wedding, at a guess. Constance was aware of the temporal lag however, it seemed, so had tried to get him free in time. Neesa was a good call for that however. She’d been pleasant and he really needed to work on his Ysidril.

  “Right. I need to get to that then, I guess. I should get with Director Turner first.”

  That turned out to be a good call, since he had about two hours of paperwork to fill out before the woman would let him go, even if he did have a mission pending.

  She grinned at him before he left, however. The feeling coming from her was that she was genuinely pleased with him, even as she hid some pretty dark feelings inside of herself. One of her people had killed one of their own. Even if it wasn’t really the case. It was still going to have repercussions for Willum. Except of course that he barely knew the man in question. Not as anyone other than a different world copy of his too attractive Uncle Tor.

  There were no words however, as she let him go outside, to get back home.

  Interestingly, when he walked out, he wasn’t in Soam, even if part of him had planned to go there. His destination had been for home. So, it wasn’t that big of a shock that he came out next to the Bakery in Pine Creek. Rather than leave in haste, he changed his hair and eye color to brown and black, then went inside.

  Countier Second or not, his da was behind the counter, helping one of the local ladies with a basket of bread. She was also getting a small pie, it looked like. Which probably meant that there was a celebration happening soon.

  When she left, his father spoke to him in Home Tongue.

  It was good to finally hear it again.

  “How may I help you today?”

  That got him to smile, recalling that his face was very different now.

  “It’s Da! I was made to look a bit funny, so that people would stop trying to kill me. Timon did the work on it. Aunt Taman thinks it’s a bit overdone, looks wise. It’s still just me though. Will.”

  That got his father to stop, his face worried for a moment. Then he grinned.

  “Well! I talked to Count Lairdgren about you a few weeks ago. He mentioned you were doing some kind of military training and might not be home for a while?”

  It was a lie, but close enough that he decided not to bother anyone with the reality of it all.

  “That’s right. I get a few days off for the wedding however. The… Where I’m training is very far away from here. I don’t know what you’ve been told?” Or what he was allow
ed to mention at all.

  His father blinked very slowly then, his brown eyes dancing a little.

  “Only that it was in a different world? One where time doesn’t flow right? It sounded like a lark, at first, but Tim got in touch about it, so that I knew what to expect. The different face and all. You’re here for dinner tonight? We should see if we can get Diana down. After all, we have one of those fancy far walking boxes just outside the door here.”

  He nodded then.

  “I’ll go and see about that? I need to get with Aunt Taman first. I heard she has a mission for me. I should be around for the meal though, duty permitting? It will be good to finally have some real food again. The people where I’m training are kind, but what they eat would confuse and amaze you.”

  That got a polite chuckle from the man.

  Ducking out, hoping it wouldn’t take long, Will decided to simply call people instead of visiting first. It would take less time. Standing on the focus stone path in front of his childhood home, looking out at the trees that had greeted him nearly every day, until a few months before, he took a deep, pine scented, breath.

  It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but he really missed it. His home, away in the deep woods. Taking a minute he just enjoyed it. Then, not meaning to, he realized that if they, the ones on the side of not losing reality as a whole, couldn’t protect them all, then it would be going away.

  Not really hesitating, he called his aunt then.

  There was a mission he needed to get done. That could be almost anything, he knew. From messages to be passed, to him collecting more candy from his new friends for a party.

  Hopefully it was something fun like that. Except that, if it really were, then he wouldn’t be needed at all. Willum knew that on a level that almost stung.

  Setting it all aside, a thing he was becoming very good at, he started tapping sigils.

  After all, if he was needed, then it might actually be important.