Stories for Chip

by Nisi Shawl

  In fact, the first thing Clown had asked her when Thea told him she was leaving the Academy for good was whether she intended to take Sakyo with her.

  Certain they’d be grounded for life, Thea and the other students had suited up and rushed in to save Clown from Moloch. Jawal—Heat Boy—had acted as field leader, flying recon and drawing the fire from Moloch’s belly to feed his own flame. Monkey had slipped in to spirit John to safety, and the other kids launched a coordinated attack, pinning Moloch in place with zero point energy, dropping cars on him from a mile up, and frying him with thunderbolts. By the time they were finished, his armor had fused together, and the light inside it had died away.

  Thea remembered looking on from where she rode shotgun in Brass Monkey’s mind as Monkey cradled John’s broken body in her arms. “Give me a sitrep,” John said. “I need a sitrep. Casualties. What are the numbers?”

  “Numbers fine,” Monkey said. “John okay. Everybody okay.”

  “Ruh—Really?”

  ◊

  Simon buzzed Thea in and she jogged up the stairs to his apartment. It was a clean little studio chock full of books and model airplanes. The only bit of mess was the unmade bed.

  The bathroom door was open and Simon stood shirtless before the mirror, brushing his teeth. Thea sat on the bed and watched his shoulders. He turned to say hello, but his mouth was full, so he had to turn away again and spit first. “I should have just driven over to get you.”

  “I wanted to come here,” Thea said. “I’ve only been twice.”

  “Well, sure,” he said. “I just thought—I mean—I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get you into bed.”

  “You’re not trying to get me into bed?”

  Simon opened his mouth and closed it again with a snap. His complexion almost hid his blush.

  “Are we really going to the park?” Thea said.

  Simon just watched her.

  “…Because we don’t have to if you don’t want to. We could just…you know…stay here.”

  ◊

  Thea prayed for three days straight after the Moloch Incident. By the time she emerged from her bedroom suite, she felt she had an answer, but uncertainty burned in the pit of her belly.

  The Incident had taken place on a Wednesday, and by that Friday, John’s god had healed him completely. Still, Dr. Claytor had ordered a weekend of bed rest, so Thea went up to see John in his rooms.

  John’s bedroom smelled of old stone. Though it was fifty stories above the ground, his suite seemed somehow subterranean. John had blacked the bedroom windows to keep out the sun and now he lay shirtless, wearing a pair of his girlfriend’s bug-eye sunglasses. Something about the way his eyes shone through the tint made Thea a little nervous.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, and, without speaking, John reached for her hand, gave it a squeeze. He held it after that, and his touch was cool and dry.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” Thea said. “I saw Monkey holding you, and your heartbeat didn’t sound good.”

  “You steadied me, I think,” he said, almost whispering. “Without you, I might have died.”

  They sat in silence for a space.

  “So what now?” Thea asked. “What about the Program?”

  He made a sound almost like a laugh and coughed hard. “All of you graduated. Passed with flying colors,” he said. “I get choked-up just thinking about it. You—so many could have died.”

  “Clown. John. You’ve been good to me. To all of us.”

  “Aw. Can this—? Can this wait?”

  “No,” Thea said. “Do you know where I’ve been?”

  He didn’t seem to know how to answer.

  “You know what it’s like to have a Calling,” Thea said.

  “Don’t be hasty.”

  Thea looked at him over her shoulder until he looked away.

  “Will you take Sakyo with you?”

  “He wouldn’t go if I tried.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” John said.

  “Don’t—don’t distract me with your Clown bullshit, okay? That’s not fair.” She paused, gathering breath. “Okay. All right. Um. I’m sorry, but—but there’s one other thing. John…” Thea turned her body to look at him fully. “I have to be strong in this. I have to—I don’t—Don’t come to me out there.”

  “Thea.”

  “I mean it. The others are welcome, but not you.”

  Without warning, John began to sob.

  Seeing him weep this way filled her with a mixture of revulsion and guilt. She stared at him for a beat, stunned, and he made no effort to hide his tears. Finally, Thea opened her arms and he crawled to her.

  ◊

  Darkness had crept into the apartment. Situated as it was, it got little light on even the brightest days; night came to it a full half hour before it flooded the rest of the city.

  After screwing like beasts the first time, then making slow quiet love the second, Thea and Simon lay in bed holding hands, staring at the ceiling. From time to time, Thea would close her eyes and watch colored whorls dance on the inside of their lids as she listened to Simon’s breath.

  “I like the way you smell in the dark,” he said.

  “I smell like fucking.”

  “Not that,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I mean the you-smell. The part that’s just you, underneath perfume, even. You smell like good incense and like metal.”

  “I do not,” Thea said, touched in spite of herself.

  “I don’t need to know why you leave the way you do or why you stand me up sometimes. Not as long as you don’t lie to me.”

  “…Okay.”

  “Sometimes I think I’m two men.”

  “Hush,” Thea said. “You’re falling asleep.”

  “Twins in one body—one of stone and one of smoke.”

  “Which are you, then?” Thea said.

  “…Smoke, I think.”

  Without a word, Thea straddled him again and felt him grow in her hand. She fit him inside her and rode.

  ◊

  Sakyo Kemura—Mr. Dark Sky—wasn’t like Simon at all. He was Japanese, with ice-blue eyes, heavy, straight hair, and a swagger that would have looked foolish if it weren’t so thoroughly earned. He didn’t talk a lot, but when he did, what he said was worth hearing. He smoked too much, Thea supposed, and he had a terrible temper that he’d learned, over the years, to aim, like a fire-hose, at those who deserved it most. He lived for situations like the Moloch Incident—always ready to ram a lightning bolt straight up someone’s ass.

  Like all the other Academy students—except for Thea—Sakyo had stayed on at Shuster Academy after finishing the Program. They christened themselves the Next and became a “paranormal incident response team” looking down their noses at quaint notions like crime fighting and secret identities. They rejected old-fashioned body suits in favor of jeans, sneakers, and pictogram T-shirts.

  All of them helped Thea move in to her Seattle apartment, but Sakyo was the only one who came to visit after the house warming. Every month or so, he announced his presence in Seattle with a clattering thunderstorm. He and Thea would go for drinks or dinner, or veg out on her sofa watching music videos or awful movies. He never had much to say about the team.

  But what was there to say? Thea could pick up a newspaper any week for the latest story. One week, they were in Romania, fighting back an army of invading monsters from the fabled realm of Alkonost, and the next, they were on the Plutonian star base, offering aid to alien refugees while Thea ate ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then fought tooth and nail to keep powered freaks from carving up her city.

  The Next seemed beloved the world over, but Seattle was ambivalent at best when it came to Brass Monkey. The headlines said it all: NEXT KIDS RECOVER STOLEN MOON. NEXT BEAT BACK ANCIENT THREAT IN OUTBACK. NEXT BEAT BACK DEEP ONES IN PACIFIC OCEAN. And for Monkey: BRASS MONKEY SAVES SEATTLE? BRASS MONKEY BULLIES FREMONT TROLL.

  Thea envied the Next. She envied thei
r press, their money, their alien technology, but Sakyo’s monthly visits somehow made it bearable.

  …Until recently.

  It was stupid—so, so stupid!—but after the Massacre, Thea had needed someone to deliver her from herself. Until then, she’d considered Brass Monkey and Althea Dayo separate entities, but the Massacre had shown that to be a lie. Thea’s body had become a prison from which she could not escape, and only Sakyo seemed able to unlock it. He began coming around more often—every couple of weeks instead of every month—but he never called or warned Thea when he failed to show, and on those nights, Thea took to the streets as Brass Monkey, patrolling in a snit. God help any criminal foolish enough to cross her path.

  Now, though, it had been three weeks since she’d seen Sakyo, and despite the pleasure she took from Simon’s company, Thea had begun to ache.

  ◊

  Thea started awake and lay still, trying to remember where she was. A profound languor overshadowed her, and she felt pressed into the mattress by an unseen hand. Panic stole along the edges of her mind as she realized she’d left the Mask in its case at home. But she was home. Wasn’t she? All she had to do was roll out of bed and reach down to grab it.

  She remembered coming to Simon’s apartment and what had happened there. Get a hold of yourself, she thought in Monkey’s voice. She had spent four years training with John until she was dangerous even without Brass Monkey’s super strength and invulnerability. She could fight if she needed to—but she didn’t need to. She was safe here.

  Thea’s elbow bumped Simon’s arm as she sat up, trying to straighten out her thoughts. Simon stood naked before the window across the room, craning his neck to watch a bruised sliver of night sky.

  Thea stopped short as she realized that Simon was still fast asleep beside her.

  “Don’t,” both Simons said sleepily.

  “Don’t what?” Thea asked.

  “Don’t…Don’t come near. You…I’m not afraid.”

  “Good,” Thea said, and felt Monkey’s voice mingling with her own. “We mean you no harm.”

  “Dark sky. Dark Sky. Storm coming.”

  Simon-at-the-window whirled on Thea to stare at her with bloodshot eyes. “Get…out!” His voice was low and full of blood. “He’s mine. Mine!”

  ◊

  Thea was already in motion when she opened her eyes. Ket stood staring outside her bedroom door as Thea hit the carpet on her knees and reached for the chest that contained her Mask. She pulled it out, opened it, pressed the Mask against her face. In the old days, the sensation was like thousands of hot needles pushing through her skin, but after so many years, it felt much more natural. Instead of a desertion of her proper body, the transformation felt like shrugging into a familiar suit of clothes. Thea was Thea, as always, but now she was Brass Monkey, too.

  Monkey yanked the window up with her forehands and swung through it, back feet first. In a split second, the weightless sensation of falling gave way to that of running full-tilt, until she crossed Broadway and leaped onto the roof of Bulldog News. From there, she kept to the rooftops, moving with liquid speed.

  ◊

  Monkey smelled blood and shit and burning hair. The lights were off in the apartment, and without thinking, she aimed her body through the window, exploding through the pane in a shower of glass.

  Her skin drew tight over her bones as she took a look around. She tried to distance herself from what she saw, tried to think of this as a crime scene, but her body betrayed her. Brass Monkey fell heavily to her knees.

  Blood. Blood everywhere.

  ◊

  Thea first found the Mask in a crawl space at her uncle Arto’s house after he disappeared. The moment she saw it, she knew it was important. As she pulled it from its wrapping of butcher paper, the sounds of the house receded from her senses. This mask looked a lot like the ones her father made, but Thea couldn’t tell what it was made of. It smelled wooden, but it shone like brass. It hummed and vibrated, singing silently to her. Thea knew immediately that she would keep it and that she would tell no one of her discovery. The thought that the Mask was magic never crossed Thea’s mind, but looking at it caused a physical stirring inside her, much like the one she felt when she watched the boys at school wrestle each other.

  After Rangda the Widow-Witch murdered her family, Thea retrieved the Mask and put it on for the first time. The pain and madness of the transformation blotted out her consciousness and left Brass Monkey incomplete, acting purely on instinct. For months, Monkey prowled the Seattle streets, keeping to the shadows as Thea’s consciousness slowly rebuilt itself.

  At first, Thea had no idea that she could pull the Mask from her face and be a girl again. By the time she did, her whole life was gone, as if blown away by monsoon winds.

  Sometimes, in her bleaker moments, Thea felt that her life was nothing but a series of tragedies. The happy summers spent dancing the Legong in Ubud, the years she’d spent living among friends at the Academy, were insignificant. All that mattered were the bloody crime scenes, the brutal battles. A warrior without a banner, Thea moved from darkness to darkness, treading an ocean of gore.

  ◊

  The stench of Simon’s agony soured the air of the room. He had been torn apart, but not before the skin had been flayed from his body. Shreds of it lay scattered like confetti around the room. Had the process taken hours? Minutes? Seconds? The blood pattern and the way the gore had been distributed told Thea that he’d been conscious, and even on his feet, most of the time. A mess of bloody fingerprints covered the front door where Simon had tried to escape. The bedclothes had been yanked from the bloody mattress and thrown into the far corner of the bedroom.

  You’ve got to stop.

  Monkey ignored the thought.

  Really! Stop!

  Stop what?

  Stop screaming!

  She had to get out of here.

  Rangda!

  No!

  Rangda kill Simon!

  No. Rangda hadn’t done this. Monkey had killed her years ago. Besides, Simon’s remains were spread around the room. Rangda would have…Rangda would have devoured his body and his pain, used them to become him.

  Listen to us, Thea thought. We’re—We’re coming apart! We can’t work a case like this! We—!

  “We need help,” Monkey said aloud.

  ◊

  Monkey didn’t remember leaving the apartment. One moment, she was standing there, surrounded by blood and offal. The next, she was Thea again, standing at a pay phone up the street. She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and realized she was crying. She picked up the receiver and hung it up again. Now that she was Thea again, her purse was with her, and inside was her cell phone. For a long time after she left the Academy, she’d carried a spare comm with her, knowing she’d never use it. Now she wondered what she’d done with the alien gadget. She flipped open her phone and dialed.

  “Next,” said a voice Thea didn’t recognize. “How may I direct your call?”

  It must be a reception AI.

  “This is Althea Dayo. I need Sakyo. I need Dark Sky.”

  “I’m sorry. Dark Sky is currently unavailable. Shall I connect you to our duty operative?”

  “No! Don’t put me through to comm. I need—Give me John. Give me Clown. Please.”

  “One moment, please.”

  A soft click, and then a voice Thea hadn’t heard in years: “Clown.”

  “John! John, it’s Thea. I—! Something happened! There’s been—! It was a murder!”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “You don’t know—!” Thea began, then froze as a hand fell on her shoulder.

  John drew her to himself and held her silently for a beat.

  “It’s awful.” Thea said, speaking into John’s belly. “He—He’s all torn apart.”

  “Who is?”

  “You’re not reading my mind?”

  He pushed her gently away to look her in the eye. “I’m only a man right now
.”

  It was true. John’s face was gaunt, but not supernaturally so. His brown skin bore a healthy sheen, and his glossy black hair had been tied back into a ponytail that fell down his back. Thea almost asked him how he’d gotten here so quickly if he was only a man, but she realized he must mean he was powered down for the time being.

  Thea explained her relationship with Simon and told John what she’d discovered in his apartment.

  “Was it him?”

  “Was—? What?”

  “Was it him? In the apartment. Are you sure?”

  “I smelled him, but…but of course his apartment smells like him. I don’t know. It could be anyone.”

  “I’ll go take a look.”

  “I’ll—I’ll go with you,” Thea said. “John. Wait. I asked you not to come here.”

  “Would you rather I left?”

  “No! No, that’s not what I—!”

  “Then let’s talk about that later.”

  ◊

  The apartment was spotless. No blood, no waste, no sign of struggle. Had they come to the wrong place?

  “I don’t—I don’t understand,” Thea said. “I know what I saw.” She turned to John. Helpless.

  “I believe you,” John said darkly.

  “Am I cracking up? Am I—?”

  “No,” John said. “You’re in shock. There’s a body in the bathroom.”

  Thea covered her mouth with her hands.

  As she stood, trembling, John stepped into the bathroom and carried Simon’s body out into the studio. He lay the corpse on the bed and stood back to examine it in silence. “So,” he said.

  Thea pulled herself together and looked at Simon, trying to see what John saw. At the edge of her hearing, she sensed a slight buzzing, much like the one emitted by the Mask secreted in her satchel.

  “I feel it.”

  “It’s unmistakable: Old magic. Very powerful. Where was he from?”

  “Thailand. He’s Thai.”

  “I don’t think we should involve ourselves. First he was torn apart. Now here he is, whole, but dead, his apartment clean as a whistle. Chances are, tomorrow morning, he’ll wake up, right as rain.” He paused, made a face. “More or less.”