The Anathema tc-2

by Zachary Rawlins

  “Eerie,” he said, trying to calm down enough so that he could remember how to activate the protocol he hadn’t used since October. “Do you happen to know what kind of protocol Edward used to operate? What it does?”

  Eerie pointed at the scar burnt along the grassy hillside.

  “It does that,” she offered, appearing confused, but not at all frightened.

  “That’s very helpful.”

  Edward had looked better. His whole body his hideous wounded, with teeth marks ravaging his arms and neck, and his scalp hanging loosely to the side, connected to his head by a thin strand of tissue. His face had a strange, wet sheen to it, and his color was off; a vile greenish-grey below the surface of his skin that had worked its way into his straw blond hair like mildew. His eyes were uniformly black, twin pools of tar, leering out of a face that wouldn’t cooperate, too rubbery to allow for a normal range of expression. His jaw hung open comically, and his overall posture was slack and clumsy, as if his limbs were unfamiliar.

  “Holy shit. Edward, are you a zombie? Eerie, are there real zombies?”

  “I–I don’t think so, but I’m kind of… well, failing, so…”

  “I think we should run. Because, if he is a zombie, he’ll be really slow, right?”

  “Enough stupidity,” Edward slurred, black goo leaking from his distended jaw. “I’m not a zombie, Alexander Warner.”

  Edward hadn’t talked that much when he was alive, but that was definitely not his voice. It was harsh, vaguely feminine, and had an accent that Alex couldn’t place, and was utterly vile coming from the mouth of corpse. Alex shrunk back a bit, and felt Eerie do the same behind him, but it wasn’t anything that Edward said. It was the voice, grating and harsh and inhuman, something that hit him right in the base of his stomach and made his own throat protest in sympathy. He didn’t remember the Horror’s scream, but he did remember his reaction to it, the instinctual drive to purge and divest from its influence, a reflexive and primal horror. This wasn’t as extreme, but it was a similarly upsetting sensation.

  “I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” Alex said cautiously. “What kind of a thing are you now? Wait. Are you a werewolf? Do people become werewolves when they get bit by — ?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Edward spat, thick black fluid dribbling down his chin and across his chest. “Do I look like a damn Weir?”

  “This is why I don’t ask many questions,” Alex said, urging Eerie away from Edward, edging toward the brush. “What the fuck is that stuff, anyway? Are you filled with like, oil or something?”

  “Just die, kid,” Edward snarled, stretching out his arm, moving with fluidity that belied the awkwardness of his stance. A blue flash left Alex half-blind, and then there was a rapid sequence of loud snapping sounds. He actually saw the lightning arc first into the ground, then stretching toward them. He felt Eerie’s hand on the back of his neck, and he was certain that she said something in her musical voice, but he couldn’t be make out any of the words over the sound of the Black Door opening with a shrieking protest.

  With the sound of ice fracturing, the world gave way. He could feel the tremendous mass of the Ether, pressing against the walls of reality, the delicate balance of forces that underlay the whole of the universe like a skeleton. There was a change in his perceptions that was at once subtle and dizzyingly profound.

  He could see the lightning crawling through the air as if it moved through clear, heavy syrup. Beneath that, there was the underlying electromagnetic disturbance, the rough progression of the energetic waveform. There was no need, Alex realized, for something as crude as the massive vacuum effect he had used before. The Absolute Protocol operated with ludicrous ease, as automatic as lifting his arms or crossing his legs. Alex simply vented the lightning into the Ether discretely, disturbing nothing else, without the fuss and bother of opening anything more than a microscopic breach in the walls of reality. Edward raised his hand a second time and again he felt the nascent gathering of electromagnetic force, but that was even easier to shunt into the Ether before it fully manifested, allowing Alex to get Eerie to the tree line, while Edward was still staring accusatorily at his hand as if he expected it to answer for his protocol’s failure.

  “At some point we need to have a talk about how you did that,” Alex said reassuringly, gently pushing Eerie into the woods. “Right now, though, I need you to find somebody, preferably Miss Aoki or Miss Gallow or someone like that, and bring them back here. Fast. Like, before I die. Please.”

  Eerie nodded seriously and charged off through the brush. Alex turned to find Edward leering at him, as best he could with his distended jaw.

  “I let her go, you know. Makes it easier,” he said, in his sickly, shrill voice. “Without your little girlfriend, you’re as good as dead.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you don’t know how to operate your protocol,” Edward said, putting both arms up, palms to the sky. “Once more with feeling, Alex?”

  He didn’t see the arc this time. He felt it surging through him instead, for a bare instant, hot at the point of contact near the center his chest; and equally as hot, for some reason, in his left foot. There was stabbing, brilliant pain, the whole of his nervous system crying out simultaneously. Then his legs gave way beneath him, and he went crashing helplessly to the ground. He could see a trail of smoke rising from his ruined, partially melted sneaker, and found it strangely hard to look away.

  “I told you,” the thing that used to be Edward croaked. “You should’ve had the girl stick around. She was all that was keeping you alive.”

  Alex managed to roll over, but he couldn’t speak. His chest and diaphragm had seized up, and he was having terrible trouble breathing. He fought off panic and forced himself to inhale slowly, willing his lungs back into service. He managed one shallow, shaky breath, and then another. Edward lifted Alex by a handful of his shirt, pulling him up as if he weighed nothing, while Alex’s arms hung at his sides, numb and unresponsive.

  “I thought you deserved an answer, you ignorant shit. Edward is gone. They brought me his body, and hollowed him out and poured myself inside, like a worm in an apple. Exactly like I’m going to do to you, as soon as you stop breathing. It shouldn’t bother you much. I know it won’t bother your girlfriend.”

  Alex tried to say Eerie’s name, but all he managed was a strange noise. He still counted it as progress. Edward let him drop back to the ground unceremoniously, chuckling.

  “You really haven’t noticed? Do you even know what a Changeling is? That girl is like a cuckoo. A doppelganger.”

  “I have no idea what you just said. A cuckoo? You mean she’s crazy?”

  Alex managed to sit up. He didn’t know why, but he felt that was a moral victory.

  “You really are dumb. You had better take a close look at that girl before you get too excited, boy. You can’t think so much with your balls, or every woman you meet is going to lead you around by them. Of course, you won’t have a chance to use the advice,” Edward gloated.

  “That’s a shame,” Katya opinioned, giving Alex a friendly pat on the back that startled him. “It was such good advice, too.”

  Edward howled and clutched at his face and neck, batting at invisible insects, fending off a private fire.

  “I’ve perforated a number of cerebral arteries, and caused hemorrhaging all through your brain,” Katya said unhappily, as if Edward were a profound disappointment to her. “You really should have the common courtesy to die. What are you, exactly?”

  “This was Edward. He died, but now I think he’s become some sort of lightning-zombie,” Alex explained, gradually picking himself up off the ground.

  “What kind of school is this?” Edward hissed, his face hidden behind his hands. “Don’t they teach you brats anything?”

  Edward raised his hand skyward, but there was no lightning, instead he shrieked again and clutched the arm. It took Alex a moment to work out that the flashes of silver
he kept seeing were a handful of long, thin needles that had run through Edward’s arm in several different places. Alex shuddered when he put it together.

  “Tell me the truth,” Katya said, advancing with a handful of long needles. “Are you a student here? Because I don’t want to get in trouble for killing another student…”

  Alex didn’t bother to try to stand up, even though he thought he might be capable of it. He didn’t think trying to punch Edward would do any good. However, that didn’t mean he was going to sit there and watch Katya fight, either. It wasn’t as easy this time, opening the Black Door, not with Edward’s words buzzing in his head, but he pushed them aside with an effort, and reached for the frost-covered handle in the back of his mind. There was no finesse this time around, no careful siphoning of energies. Instead, he tore blindly at the fabric that separated the world and the Ether, creating breaches all around what used to be Edward, opening him and the world around him to the void. Edward examined the sheen of frost that covered him in disbelief, and then turned his jet eyes to Alex.

  This time, Alex had a perfect view of her protocol in action. Katya didn’t throw the needles. She opened her hand as if she was letting the wind take seeds and the needles were gone, lodged in of Edward as suddenly as they had disappeared. One of them pierced him like a gag shop arrow, running from temple to temple, while the remaining two crossed each other, perforating his chest through the solar plexus. Edward stumbled backwards and coughed wretchedly.

  “Would you mind telling me where you keep your vitals?” Katya asked, circling away while she dug another handful of smaller needles from the lining of her blue surplus coat. “I’m all out of the acupuncture needles, but I still have a whole bunch of sewing needles. If you don’t speak up, I’ll keep on trying till I figure it out.”

  Alex decided he preferred not to watch. This thought was followed by a series of ghastly squishing noises that reinforced his decision to look away. A moment later, Katya made a dissatisfied noise and then the sounds repeated themselves. Alex found, to his relief that the holes he’d torn to the Ether mended quickly enough when the Black Door closed.

  “You are such a baby,” Katya said contemptuously. “I saved you, already. Are you ever going to stand up?”

  “And you are a terrible bodyguard,” Alex countered angrily. “Where were you when the dead guy showed up? He could have killed me, like, three times before you got here!”

  Against all expectation, Katya reddened and turned away.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” she muttered. “I wasn’t really watching all that closely, to be honest.”

  “You were watching us?” Alex asked in disbelief.

  “I already told you,” Katya shouted, “that I wasn’t! I left as soon as you guys starting making out, okay? I didn’t want to watch that shit. I only came back when I saw the flash.”

  Alex levered himself slowly to his feet, inspecting the burn marks on his t-shirt and the melted sole on his shoe grimly.

  “You really suck, you know that?” Alex said, his hands shaking furiously. “Not only did you watch us from the bushes, but then you show up late to bail me out? At least have the decency to save me immediately if you insist on stalking me!”

  Katya swore, crossed her arms, and then looked away.

  “You told me to stay away,” Katya said sternly, staring off in the opposite direction. “Anastasia told me to watch you. Who do you expect me to listen to? You’re right — I suck at this. I don’t know fuck-all about protecting people, but you aren’t exactly making it easy. I didn’t want to watch you make out with your stupid girlfriend. I tried not to intrude.”

  “Don’t think I’m ungrateful for your help. I’m… well, uh, I guess I’m not sure. I guess I’m ungrateful, actually.”

  “Seems that way,” Katya confirmed. “I did save you, you know.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Alex asked, leaning against a nearby tree for support, his legs wobbly and unreliable. “I thought he was when the Weir dragged him off in San Francisco, but then he showed up here…”

  “Oh, he’s dead,” Katya assured him. “Whatever possessed him, it had to use his automatic nervous system, right? And that is full of sewing needles.”

  “Good to know,” Alex said, sickened at the thought.

  “Would have been nice to know about five minutes ago, smart ass. Say, was that you, with the mild chill a minute ago? Was that some sort of attempt to defend yourself? Or were you just sitting there looking pretty?”

  “No,” Alex said slowly. “No, that was me.”

  “Very helpful,” Katya sniffed, tossing her hair. “What a useless protocol. You couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag if they gave you the month lead-up you need to use that thing. No wonder Anastasia thinks you need a babysitter.”

  Alex opened his mouth to reply, probably to say some more things he would end up regretting later. Instead, he found himself standing there with his mouth open, staring. It would have been embarrassing, and possibly have inspired another hostile observation from Katya, but she was doing the same thing. At the other end of the clearing, Rebecca stood, leaning on one of the trees, gasping, panting, and so red in the face that Alex wondered if she was having some sort of attack.

  “Don’t tell me that I ran all this way,” Rebecca wheezed, “for nothing.”

  9

  “Now you’ve got Katya following you around wherever you go?”

  “I guess so,” Alex said, sipping from the bottle, making a face at the taste, and then handing it along to Vivik. “I barely ever see her, but I assume she’s around. I can’t blame her, really. Anastasia told her to do it.”

  “Nothing you can do about that,” Renton said his voice full of sympathy. “She’s probably watching us from the bushes right now.”

  “Look at the bright side,” Li offered, lighting a cigarette. “She could have assigned Renton to follow you around. That would be creepy.”

  They all laughed, and Vivik handed the half-full bottle back to Renton. He took a long pull from it, drinking bad whiskey without even wincing.

  “Shit,” Renton said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’ve got no idea.”

  Everyone laughed again, but this time, it was more tentative and uncomfortable.

  “Speaking of which, Renton,” Vivik chimed in. “Are you going to fail again this year?”

  “Absolutely,” Renton said, nodding.

  “What?” Alex asked, looking from one to the other in confusion.

  “Renton and I are both in the final class,” Li explained mischievously, “but Renton’s already been there for three years. He knows all the material, but he deliberately fails the tests so that he has to repeat, instead of graduating.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I work for Anastasia, remember?” Renton said, clearly annoyed with the question. Alex was surprised; Renton was usually unflappable. “I can’t do much to protect her if I’m not close to her. I won’t leave the Academy until she does.”

  “So, you just fail over and over again?”

  “Yeah,” Renton said, eyes narrowing. “You have a better idea?”

  Li snatched the bottle from his hand, already half-drunk. Alex huddled deeper in the coat he’d thrown over his sweatshirt, rubbing his cold hands together, wishing he owned gloves, wondering if he could convince Eerie to knit him a pair.

  “Man,” Alex complained. “It is fucking freezing out here.”

  They were on the roof of the gym, sitting on plastic chairs that someone had dragged up here years ago. They were pocked marked with cigarette burns, and the one Alex was sitting in had a leg that was shorter than the others so that it rocked whenever he shifted his weight. They weren’t up that high, but the gym building was off by itself, set back from the rest of campus on a little-used path, and Renton assured them that no one came by there late night. By unspoken agreement, they never went back to the dormitory roof after what happened there during Alex’s welcome
party.

  “Drink up,” Li advised, handing over the bottle. “I don’t feel cold at all. Say, Renton, you ever wish the Black Sun would assign you to someone besides Anastasia?”

  Even Alex thought the question was a bad idea, and he was notoriously dense. Renton’s relationship with Anastasia was… intense. It wasn’t a subject that anyone in their right mind would have broached. However, Li was boisterous when he was drunk, as Alex had learned in the last few months, and he liked to ask uncomfortable questions.

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” Renton said reasonably. “She’s the future head of the Black Sun Cartel. Why would I want a different assignment?”

  “You know. Somebody hotter. Maybe somebody who actually has tits,” Li said, stopping to laugh at his own joke. Alex and Vivik didn’t dare make a sound for fear of what might happen, but they also couldn’t look away.

  “I like Anastasia just fine the way she is,” Renton said stiffly.

  “That’s a little weird, man. Doesn’t that make you a pedophile? Even if she isn’t one, she sure looks like a twelve-year old. And you are what, twenty? Twenty-five?”

  “I don’t mean it that way,” Renton said, pursing his lips distastefully.

  “Sure,” Li said, laughing. “Because you have such a reputation for being ‘friends’ with the girls here.”

  “Really? No way.”

  “It’s true,” Vivik nodded, sipping gingerly and then making an even more unhappy face. “Renton gets around.”

  “I do okay,” Renton said, with a grin that was anything but modest.

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t put Anastasia past you,” Li said cheerfully, clearly lacking any sense of self-preservation. “I saw you hit on Margot one time, and that’s definitely… definitely, uh, what’s the word I want here, Vivik?”

  “Probably necrophilia?”

  “Right, that’s it!” Li agreed. “If it had worked, that would have been necrophilia. You like the weird ones.”