by Brett Savory
It was not at all what Marcton expected to hear. “What? You’re sure? Absolutely positive?”
“Positive, man. Didn’t recognize either body. They were both fairly smooshed and all, but their faces were pretty much intact, and I swear neither was Palermo.”
Marcton turned around in the direction of the subway entrance, put his hand over his mouth, turned back, said, “Well, we don’t know what happened inside. If the thing was tossing bodies out of windows, it might have left a few inside, right? We don’t know the body count indoors.”
Everyone nodded.
“So how do we find that out without trying to get inside?” Melvin said. “Rubbernecking from a safe distance is one thing, but no way we’ll be able to get in there. At least not till the cops are gone… But hey,” Melvin continued, “maybe Kendul can get inside. Would the leader of the Hunters have any pull with the city cops?”
“Dunno. Maybe,” Marcton said. “I’m just not particularly looking forward to that conversation, you know?”
“Well, since we don’t know – for sure – if Palermo’s in there, you don’t have to lead off with, ‘Hey, so your old buddy’s dead. Can you help us identify the body?’”
Marcton thought about it. “Yeah, maybe I just ask if he can put me in touch with someone who can get inside. That way, he won’t have to find out through some dumbass cop.”
“There ya go,” Melvin said. “Thinkin’ with your noodle now.”
Marcton smirked. “OK, I’ll make the call. You guys keep quiet in the background. Gonna be hard enough to hear over this wind as it is.”
After calling the warehouse to get Kendul’s cell number (not the quickest task, since the Runners and the Hunters didn’t exactly make a habit of gabbing to each other), he stepped a few feet back from them, dialed, waited. Kendul picked up on the fourth ring.
“Kendul.”
Christ, now that he had him on the line, what would he say? How would he tiptoe around this?
“Yeah, hi, Kendul, it’s Marcton. Listen,” he said, deciding to dispense with pleasantries. “I need access to a building where some crazy shit has gone down. Cops are swarming it, though, so I can’t get inside. I need to find out if one of ours is down. Do you have any connections, anyone you could put me in touch with?”
“Got one guy you can use: Anton Eckel.” Kendul rattled off his number.
“OK, thanks. I’ll–”
The line went dead.
Marcton pulled the phone away from his head, stared at the screen. “Well, shit. Didn’t have to worry about prying questions from that guy.”
One phone call to Eckel and ten minutes later he arrived, flashed his badge around, and strolled into the building. Marcton and his guys watched him go in from a safe vantage point a hundred feet away. Then they walked back to the Hummer through the ever-thickening snow, got in, headed back to the warehouse.
The sun would be coming up in a couple of hours, and Marcton was itching for word so he could proceed accordingly. If Palermo was dead inside, he was going to launch the biggest manhunt the Runners had ever been part of – and they’d been part of plenty over the years.
Well, machinehunt in this case, I guess. Or whatever the hell that thing was.
And he saw exactly where the thing went. He thought he would probably have to bring all the Runners together to explain the situation, though. This was not business as usual; this was beyond business as usual in every respect. They’d need to know exactly what they were up against.
Time was wasting, though – sure, the creature had lumbered into the old tunnels, but it could probably move fast if it wanted to, and could be anywhere by now. But the same way he’d felt Palermo was dead – deep in his gut – he sensed that the thing had retreated to the tunnels because they were a good hiding spot, tough to maneuver, tough to track through. You don’t go into a nice dark hiding spot just to pop out again into the bright sunlight and keep running – not unless you’re a complete idiot (especially not if you’re as tall as a streetlamp), and Marcton knew the creature was anything but that. He sensed a great intelligence in those eyes, in those mannerisms.
He’d told Eckel to call him ASAP with whatever he discovered, but he hadn’t heard a thing and they were almost back to the warehouse. What the fuck was the holdup? Just go in, poke around, see if any of the bodies inside matched the pictures of Palermo that Marcton had asked dispatch at the warehouse to email, then confirm or deny. No reason it should be taking this long. No reason for–
They were just pulling into the driveway of the warehouse when Marcton’s phone rang; he picked it up before it even finished the first ring.
“Yeah.”
“Bodies inside, but none of them Palermo’s.”
Marcton closed his eyes. Relief flooded through him. But then–
“However…”
“However? However what?”
“I did a quick sweep of the surrounding streets, too, and found Palermo’s body next to a tree. Back broken, head pulped.”
“If his head was pulped, how do you know–”
“We go way back, kid. Tattoos matched.”
Silence on Marcton’s end, then:
“Thanks,” he said. Hung up.
Marcton steered the Hummer around the back of the warehouse, cut the lights, cut the engine, said one word: “Dead.”
No one said anything. Just listened to the engine tick as it cooled.
* * *
There were about thirty steps leading down into the subway tunnels. Water-stained, crumbling, and slippery, every one of them.
Milo picked Faye up off the concrete at the mouth of the entrance, started down those steps, twice nearly losing his tentative grasp of how gravity worked. But each time he righted himself before tumbling down the steep steps – a trip which likely would have resulted in them both breaking their necks, or at least an arm or two.
As he got closer to the bottom, his mind wandered momentarily and he found himself wondering why such a clearly dangerous area wouldn’t be cut off from the public. But when he reached the final step, he saw that, sure, you could maybe get drunk and fall down some wet stairs, but that’s as far as you’d roll: a gate with thick bars ran across the actual entrance to the tunnels themselves. Or, rather, used to run across the entrance; nearly every bar had been bent out of shape, as though something massive and incredibly strong had passed straight through this spot – which, of course, it had.
And, he noticed now, as his eyes adjusted, that the stairs had been boarded up at street level, but someone had kicked – or otherwise split – the board in half and thrown it down here.
Milo imagined Henry squeezing his frame through this opening. He must have been on his belly, crawling. No other way he’d’ve fit.
Milo heard the hiss of air again, looked up toward the sound. His eyes had adjusted to a certain extent, but they seemed unable to penetrate deeper than a few feet into the dark.
“Henry?”
The telltale eyes were no longer visible. Maybe his back is turned? Milo thought. Once beyond the bars, the station opened up much wider and could easily have accommodated Henry turning around, even standing up. Partially, anyway. Only inside the tunnel where the subways actually used to run would he be able to properly stand – if he were on the tracks themselves.
A choking sound came from the dark.
“Henry, it’s Milo, where are you? I can’t see you.”
Another choking sound, then something shuffled, scraped along the ground. Milo imagined Henry dragging his arm or leg into a different position along the concrete.
“I can’t see shit in here, Henry. We need light. Can you say anything at all? Are you stuck or something? I hear you moving, so I’m just going to walk in that direction, OK? Don’t make any sudden moves or you’ll flatten me.”
Milo checked on Faye again where she still lay in his arms, made sure she was OK. Her breathing was shallow, and she would need medical attention soon. Or at least some materials
that she could work with herself, with Milo’s help. Her leg wound had stopped bleeding for the most part, but the bullet had lodged in her body and he had no way of knowing how much damage it had done.
Milo set Faye down, said, “I’ll be right back. We’ll get you help soon. I promise.”
He knew she couldn’t hear him, but he felt, perhaps absurdly, that his voice could help her in some way.
“Coming now, Henry. Stay still.”
Milo moved forward, past the bent-to-shit gate, into the darkness proper. It was instantly inky to the point of claustrophobia. This wasn’t just lights-out-in-the-bedroom kind of dark; this was black-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean dark. Abyss dark. What was that word he’d read in old Lovecraft stories?
Stygian. Or at least it seemed that way until his eyes began adjusting.
Now that he’d thought of Lovecraft, though, he had horrible tentacled things in his mind. Imagined their suckered awfulness groping blindly for him, wrapping around his body, squeezing the breath out of him. With these images in his head, when he bumped into Henry’s leg he nearly squealed. He felt along the metal, the alien landscape of his friend’s new body.
What would it feel like on the inside? Milo thought. To be encased in this body with the same mind you had when you were a regular person. Well, a regular person to a certain extent, anyway. As “regular” as any of the Inferne Cutis could be. And did Henry even have his regular mind anymore?
When he reached Henry’s midsection, his hands fell on something warm, slightly damp. He squeezed it gently, trying to figure out what it was.
“Leave her,” Henry said. His voice sounding hewn from stone. He coughed, made the same choking sounds Milo had heard earlier.
The woman groaned, squirmed where she lay cupped in Henry’s palm. The bottom part of her legs hung outside of his hand.
“Is she hurt?”
Henry just breathed.
“Henry?”
More breathing. A slight twitch of one of his legs.
Milo glanced back in the direction of the entrance, saw faint light there, knew he had to get back to Faye. Knew he had to help her. If she died down here it would be his fault; he’d brought her here, so what happened to her now was on him.
What he should have done, he knew, was taken her to the hospital. Even just dropping her off out front, yelling for help, and running away would have been better. But some instinct had taken over. He thought bringing her to Henry was better for her. In some way that would keep her safe. He also knew that gunshot wounds always needed to be reported, which would involve cops, and that road led nowhere good for any of them.
He wondered, then, where Adelina was, whether she would ever come back.
Henry’s breath seemed to quicken then. Milo heard it puffing out of his mouth farther away in the dark.
“You OK, Henry?”
Christ, it’s not going to happen again, is it? He’ll bust up through the fucking street if he doubles in size again. And I’ll be crushed to death.
And then there was the faintest light splitting the black. At first, Milo couldn’t sense where it was coming from; his eyes were unable to process its source. He could tell it was coming from close by, though – maybe underneath Henry? Maybe Henry himself? Some other insane transformation taking place?
He suddenly felt the need to back away, give Henry some space. In case shit gets expansive again, he thought, staggered back a few feet, feeling suddenly exposed, vulnerable.
The light got brighter, and Milo saw where it was shining from: it was the woman in Henry’s hand. The woman herself was glowing. Mostly just the exposed parts of her skin. She wore bikini-style underwear and a tank top, so the light came mostly from her legs, arms, and face.
Milo watched as the light grew in intensity. Henry’s breathing quickened even more, and now the light was sufficient for Milo to see the position in which Henry lay: he was flat out on his belly, nowhere near anything that could have gotten him stuck. Whatever reason he’d stopped – maybe to wait for Milo – he seemed to have done so, then simply found himself unable to move.
The light from the woman’s skin flickered, her eyelids opened slowly; her mouth, too, opened, and she seemed to want to speak.
“Faye,” Henry said, his voice a little clearer than before. Smoother. The battle in his head to keep the new darkness in his mind at bay was taking up nearly all his strength. He knew he was losing, but he also knew that once he gave up he would probably never be able to get himself back. Confusion regarding Faye still distracted him, and it was all he could do to try to maintain a grip on the true situation – or what he felt was the true situation. And even that seemed to be slipping through his fingers now. Everywhere in his mind was uncertainty, an ever-growing alien darkness, and a blinding, oversimplistic need to just try to understand.
“She’s here, Henry,” Milo said. “She’s safe. But I don’t understand what’s happening with–”
The woman’s skin lost some of its glow, then. Whatever internal source had been powering it was fading. Pulling back.
Then the woman slid from Henry’s hand, used her arms to steady herself. Stood up, moved away from Henry several feet.
Then she spoke.
In Adelina’s voice.
* * *
Before Adelina appeared in the woman’s body, she’d been back in her strange Otherland – the alien swirls and occasional lightning storms less a soothing balm than usual. She knew time was short, and the way she received messages in this place – the way she knew what to do and say when she returned to the world – was changing. Before, she was given no insight into the reasoning behind any of the things she was told. The thought would just appear in her mind and, moments later, she would appear near Milo to impart what she could. Why Milo had been chosen in the first place to receive her instructions was still a mystery.
There was certainly something compelling about him, but Adelina could never put her finger on what. She knew only that when she’d first laid eyes on him she felt awkward, but at the same time as though she’d known him for many, many years. Each time she appeared to him, she felt emotionally closer. Maybe it was nothing deeper than the fact that he was able to see her when so many others couldn’t.
Whatever force sent Adelina to Milo in the first place had created the imprint of memories in her mind of a life she’d never had with him. The imprint was such that it didn’t leave true memories – memories that could be accessed and replayed on the screen of her mind – but rather that the residue of the memory remained. These were memories that could never be given direct voice. No one event could be pointed to. The same had been done to Milo.
For a while, in the beginning, she had tried to communicate with whomever had been putting these thoughts into her head. But there was never any answer, no two-way communication. She eventually gave up. But now that she felt things coming to a head – though she had no way of knowing what kind of head was approaching – she felt she needed to try again.
She decided the best way would be to focus on something she could see, like a lightning fork in one of the many storms that raged around her. Once focused, she would close her eyes and try to communicate using the specific imagery still burned into her retinas. At first, it didn’t seem to be working, but then she’d used this process after telling Milo that she would try to let people see him.
This time, when she asked, she felt no response per se, but felt a subtle shift. It was so small as to be no more than a molecular distinction, but enough that she knew someone had heard her, and what she’d requested had come to pass.
Feeling empowered by this discovery, when she’d returned to her Otherland, she tried the same thing again – this time asking that she be allowed to return herself. To let people see her now.
She didn’t know how it would happen, or if it would happen at all, but then she had vanished from her Otherland and appeared in Henry’s hand.
In another woman’s body.
* * *
She sensed Milo’s hesitation in speaking, said, “This woman – the woman whose body I’m in – her name is Margaret Shearman. She is very sad about her husband’s death, but she wants to live. She wants to carry on without him.”
“Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Grief can be debilitating, Milo. Sometimes impossible to overcome. Impossible to see your way through.”
“Are you going to let her go? She’s not yours. I mean, you’re not her. Whatever.”
“She’s got barely any life left, Milo. She’s as good as dead already, and there’s nothing I can do to save her.”
Adelina felt something black and hateful tugging at her psyche, then, trying to yank her back to her Otherland. Some deep part of her understood at that moment that she was being manipulated – that whatever agency she had in this world was due to her own will. And that this other presence was fighting her every step of the way. She didn’t know what it wanted, but she knew it didn’t want to help Faye – didn’t want to help anyone. Not toward any positive end, anyway. She felt shame well up inside her, felt this as strongly now as she’d felt any emotion in her entire life.
“Listen, Milo, I don’t have much time. We’ve all been manipulated. I know that now. I feel something pulling at my thoughts.”
Something hopeless, formless, filled with despair, inhabited her mind, ripped into her thoughts sharply, made her head spin, trying to cut her off, but she carried on. “I think I’ve been a big part of that manipulation, too. I just don’t know why, or to what end. But I think we’ll find out what it all means soon. I’m going to–”
She opened her mouth to continue, but then suddenly crumpled to the ground next to Faye.
“Adelina!” Milo said, crouched beside her. His initial alarm gave way to faint relief, as he realized that she’d just been pulled away from this body, back to wherever she went when she disappeared.
