by K. Gorman
The creature perched on the far corner of a building ledge about half a block down.
It was only half visible, the black material it was made from partway absorbing the light from the street so that its glossy surface only reflected the neon pink sign below it in a dimmed, distorted version, but she could tell that it had changed a bit. It had a more upright posture, its broad shoulders sloping back and upward—not like the rounded, lizard-type she’d witnessed crawling up the side of the building the other night, though she recalled that even that one had turned into a more gazelle-like creature. Perhaps they simply changed to suit their intended action? Similar to how the Shadows could morph, albeit in a more limited capacity?
Or maybe this was simply a different creature. She hadn’t gotten a great look at the others she’d seen, considering she’d mostly seen them while either defending on the rooftop or running away in Baik’s Lemoore.
Its scythe-blade, though, was a dead giveaway. As she watched, it retracted it from whatever it had been doing—random vandalism, by the look of the now-lopsided advertising framework next to it—and the blade slipped into the telltale curve alongside its shoulder, long, sharp, and deadly.
Neither Karin nor Marc spoke. They didn’t move, either, some instinct screaming at them to root to the spot. The creature had definitely seen them. Its head was turned right toward them, and she had the clear sensation of when its attention moved onto her. A tingling, not unlike the static of the shift event, but in a softer capacity, prickled her skin.
As she held still, not daring to breathe, the creature made a move. The sensation didn’t disappear when its attention lifted, but its head turned to the left, and it stalked off, the rest of its body moving with an eerie, fluid motion.
They caught one last glance of it, tail whipping out in a movement caught in silhouette against the glow of a Caucasian woman’s face in an advertisement behind it, then it vanished behind the upper ventilation ducting of the building beyond.
A few clicks and scratches echoed back to them, audible under the far-off blare of the advertising drones, and then it was gone.
Marc’s hand found hers. He guided her back. Their steps slow and quiet, her spare hand tensing at every sound, they retreated into the center section of a translucent glass shelter and into the shadowy nook of a storefront. Their gazes never left the roofs.
“I don’t see any others,” she said carefully.
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t around.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She swallowed. Her hand twitched inside his grip. She fought to get her breathing back into its regular pattern, to calm the erratic pulse of her heart. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat. “Do you think they always appear after one of those… events? I mean, since they started appearing.”
She hadn’t seen them with every event, but she couldn’t be everywhere at once. And their appearances did seem frequent.
“Let’s assume yes,” Marc said. “And we should also assume that they’re around all the time. It’s been an hour since the last shift.” He paused. “My question is: why didn’t it attack?”
She swallowed again. Despite the chill in the night air, sweat coated the skin of her nape, making the back of the jacket stick to her neck. “Maybe it didn’t see us?”
“No, it definitely saw us.”
Yeah, he was right, and she knew it. Had sensed as much while it had been here. Had, now that she thought about it, sensed other things, too.
The image of Dr. Ma’s body, torn into and partly mauled, floated to the forefront of her mind.
She shook her head, repressing a shudder. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
They made their way in a vague, North-Easterly direction, Marc suddenly more interested in finding a vehicle now that they knew the creatures were out and about—as their escape from the complex showed, it was much more possible to outrun the things in a vehicle than it was on foot.
They picked up their old jog and sprint combination, this time slowing to a walk ever so often. As Marc led them to the city, he kept his eyes on the vehicles they passed, measuring them up and then dismissing them. He stopped completely when they stumbled across a car lot, his eyes turning into a hungry kind of scheme as he sized up the vehicles, the shop’s windows, and the security they had in place.
As they passed it by and left the vehicles behind, Karin tried not to think about the four days they had to evade things—both people and creatures—before Nomiki arrived. But Marc seemed to know what he was doing. After they passed a few more lots and in-house dealerships, the show vehicles presented on multi-levels of the building with a vehicle elevator at the side promising a hefty space of inter-disc storage for the rest of their stock, they stopped at another car lot, one that occupied the edge of what seemed to be a vehicle-shopping strip and had a dingier, self-made air to its façade.
Unlike the last two places, which had offered only one or two brands of vehicles, all with buffed exteriors and shiny windows, this advertised second and third-hand vehicles at a discount. Except for a few hyped-up display pieces, including a souped-up SUV-styled vehicle that looked similar to Baik’s Lemoore, most vehicles showed some sign of wear, if not in their shiny exteriors, then in their tires and wheel-wells. Marc turned his gaze to a refurbished NMS Husky close to the front of the lot, and the eight-year-old Senschel beside it.
“What, not into stealing something sporty?” she said, making a gesture to the older model Hi-an, which occupied a circular display wheel at the front of the shop and had, along with the Lemoore knock-off, been one of the two clear show pieces of the place.
“It’d draw too much attention,” he said, the serious tone implying he’d taken her question at face value. After a few seconds, he seemed to realize this, and his expression broke. He flashed a quick smile in her direction. “Of course, if you’d prefer a hot, flashy car, I’ll steal it in a heartbeat.”
“I’d prefer a flyer,” she informed him.
“Ah. Too good for the ground, are you?”
“Actually,” she said, taking a few steps forward and squinting into the Husky’s windows. Inside, the black molding of seats and accoutrements gave her an impression of modernity that, even now, seemed alien to her. These weren’t Earth cars. Not from her Earth, anyway. “It’s probably a better idea if you do the driving. The last car I drove ended up launched down a gully.” Nomiki’s idea, not hers. “And it was very basic. Older than dirt. And from the Sol system.” She flashed him a smile. “I’m mostly a public transit girl.”
“You’re mostly a spacefaring girl,” he informed her. “But as far as I know, there are only about thirty cars in space, and all of them are moving a bit too fast for any of us to catch. And twelve of them are being driven by dead people.”
She gaped at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “Rich people can have some funny ideas for funerals.”
“Ooookay.” She shook her head a little, processing that. Then, noticing that his stare had lifted from the car itself to the storefront beyond, which stood not-quite-open by the looks of the drawn shutter across its front door. But the lights inside had a definite bright and welcoming hue about them. “What do you think?”
“I think I could easily coerce that door to open.” He made a gesture. “It’s actually a cheap model. I recognize the motor company.”
“So… shitty security. And a whole bunch of unprotected cars out front.” She narrowed her eyes on the sign, squinting at the hours—and the small note that accompanied it. “Says it’s open twenty-eight hours a day with a security guard in constant care.”
“Well, they’re not here now, and that gate’s too promising.” He stepped forward, taking the blaster out of its holster and flicking its safety off. The subtle whine it made in the air dampened when he turned between the next two cars, putting himself between her and the source. “I say we try it.”
She smiled, following in his wake. “You know, stealing
a car is a very Novan thing to do.”
“Really?” he said. “I thought that was a net stereotype.”
“Nope. That might mean they’ll have more protection, though. I’ve never tried it myself.” She paused. “Well, not on Nova, anyway.”
“I’m shocked,” he said, the tone of his voice and the expression on his face conveying anything but shock as he furrowed his brow down at the locking mechanism for the gate. “You neglected to mention grand theft auto on your resume.”
“Would that have raised my pay grade?” she asked.
“It would have impressed the hell out of Soo-jin. Stand back. It might splash back or ricochet, this close.”
As if following his own command, he retreated three steps, his blaster lifting. He aimed it at the lock, took a few seconds to squint at it, then fired.
The ensuing crack made her flinch. Its echo bounced off the building to their back, sharp and loud, and her flinch turned into a cringe—hells, they were going to need that car after this ruckus. By the way Marc’s mouth pressed into an unhappy thin line, he was having similar thoughts, but he took aim again, this time hitting it with another three shots.
Something clicked. When the smoke and vapor cleared, the bottom of the gate had risen a centimeter off the ground. Parts of its locking mechanism glowed from the heat of the bolts, the metal around it blackened and warped.
Marc picked a spot half a meter away from the still-hot metal and gave the gate a lift. It rattled upwards and slipped into its berth. After a quick glance of the interior door, he engaged the blaster’s safety, flipped it around, and slammed its butt into the glass beneath the handle.
The glass didn’t even crack.
“Shit,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she offered as he flicked the blaster’s safety off again and re-aimed it at the door. “I can pretend I didn’t see that.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
The blaster cracked a moment later, and the glass shattered. They both cocked their heads, listening.
“No alarm?” she suggested.
“Probably silent, which doesn’t matter for us.” He clicked the safety off again, re-holstered the weapon, and stepped inside. Broken glass crunched under his shoes. “I doubt anyone is answering second-hand dealership alarms during the apocalypse.”
“If they are, they’re definitely working above their pay grade.”
She followed him, careful to mince her way through the destroyed door. Pieces of broken glass still clung to its hinges, catching the interior light. Inside, a lobby opened up to their right, a low, curving set of leather benches complementing the dark brown woodwork on the wall. A few pictures hung here and there, reproductions of famous paintings. She did a double-take, recognizing one of the watercolor works from the only art gallery venue she had attended on Nova.
Well, she is super famous.
Marc rounded the edge of the service desk—another curving feature with an off-white surface and a continuation of the wood panel theme beneath. More paintings hung on the wall behind, along with a holo-ad displaying a mix of deals and promotional videos. It had flickered on when they’d entered, apparently unconcerned that they were breaking in.
He leaned in, inspecting the small door that kept him from the back of the counter. When he ducked lower, so doubled-over that he needed to keep a hand on the door itself to leverage his weight, she raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing?”
“It all looks so open and innocuous, so I’m naturally a little suspicious. Some places have a blind security feature that triggers when someone who is not carrying a specific card or not doing a specific thing opens doors like this—but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing here. Not unless they’ve rigged the place with those weird invisible laser things.”
She scrunched her nose and glanced around. “I’m not sure this place would pay for that.”
“Too ghetto, you mean?” He chuckled. “I agree—but this is Nova, so I figured I’d better be safe than sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m behind you on that one. Still, it looks like they were relying more on manpower than anything electronic for this place. Probably cheaper. It seems hard to believe, but I did read an article on wages that—”
“Nope!” Marc said, his voice triumphant as he stretched further over the door and reached for something under the counter. “You’re wrong. They are using electronics. But it doesn’t look like it’s anything that’ll be a problem. Just some kind of box circuit here. Probably rigged to call the police or some other enforcement agency should someone try what we’re trying.”
A small jolt hit her nerves as a new thought rolled into her head. “Shit, do you think Baik’s monitoring the police signals?”
If he were, they needed to hurry up and get out of there.
“No, I imagine he’s more proactive than that.” He gave the small door an experimental joggle, then popped it open. He paused, cocking his head again. “A silent alarm, perhaps?”
“Well, if we aren’t ringing one already with what you did to the door…” She made a gesture that included the scattered pile of broken glass on the floor. It had fissured into tiny bits rather than long shards, making her suspect it wasn’t typical window glass. “Then these guys have the stupidest, most ineffective security system I’ve ever heard about.”
“On some of Tala’s moons, the farmers put their crops into cages with a changebox inside and leave them at the side of the road.”
She frowned. “What’s the cage for, then?”
“To keep the deer from eating them.”
He stepped over to the midpoint of the desk, frowning down at something she couldn’t see. After a moment, and a few button-presses, a holoscreen flickered up in front of him. His frown deepened as he went to work, the screen flicking between windows.
Maybe he’s got some of Cookie’s hacker blood. He’d already gone beyond what she could have done. Apart from her netlink and various flight and navigation systems, her computer prowess was stuck in the last century with her old compound’s geriatric systems.
She wandered back over to the window, taking the time to give the street outside a deeper scan. Light from the lot’s sign shone a harsh white down on the cars, picking up an artificially bright gleam on their curves. Beyond, it was a mix of streetlights, tall, spindly things that rose up and glowed yellow, this particular district taking on a rose-petal formation, advertising, and the soft glow of the blue disc-light above. As she turned her attention upward, she could see that one of the moons had risen, its quarter-full shape distorted into a larger circle in the light-amplifying properties of the disc. With the glow, the whole image had an incandescent, double-exposed feel, the buildings beyond still visible as minimized sticks but hard to look at and focus on.
A series of beeps sounded behind her, and Marc hissed a swear. She half-turned, glancing back, an offer to help on the top of her tongue, but she didn’t voice it.
After a few moments, his frown softened. He didn’t look up, only continued, his fingers moving through holokeys in a series of quiet, arrhythmic thumps against the desk beyond the counter.
She turned back to the window.
Maybe it was the endorphins talking—she was sure their marathon, which had started about four hours ago, had released more than what was sufficient for a runner’s high—but the night outside had a peaceful quality to it. A combination of the city seeming less empty during its night mode and the fact that she’d spent the last few hours getting familiar with its vacant streets, echoing advertisers, and the hushed rustle-step of the mobs of Lost they ran to.
Those were still alarming, but thankfully, they hadn’t been surprised by any in a long while. She wasn’t entirely certain how the runner’s high mechanism worked, but she’d definitely felt some light and pain-free moments during their run, and a sense of euphoria after the first hour that had made a distinct clash with the underlying sense of fear, panic, and anxiety that she was feeling about the
ir escape.
She took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out again. Behind her, the soft thumps of Marc’s fingers on the desk continued.
But, just as she was about to sink into another deep breath and attempt to weed out some of the excess anxiety, the tingling returned to her fingers.
She jerked, eyes widening as it spread quickly. She stumbled back as it raced up to her shoulders and threaded up her skin, the deep breath in turning into a shocked, ragged gasp. “Marc, it’s happening again. The shift. It’s—”
A roar of sound blindsided her. Her vision snapped, speckles of static like a television screen crackling across her mind. Reality wobbled around her. As she tripped and rebalanced, the rest of the world vanished, gone in a single sweep.
When it reappeared again, it was loam, not tile, that greeted her fall.
She stumbled, catching herself on the rough, leaf-littered slope with an awkward pinwheel of her left arm. A tuft of dirt and leaves went skittering down ahead of her, one small stone launching itself off a bump before coming to a rest less than a meter away.
Sol, she thought, bringing her gaze up to search her surroundings. What now?
She stood in a clearing—machine-made, by the looks of it, though most of it had been retaken by tufts of thin, tall grass and a kind of dark-skinned plant that looked like a sibling of Nova’s infamous Ternic. A few scraggly trees, no more than a year or two old, also dotted the clearing, the land at their bases more prone to green growth. Other trees, these much larger and more mature than the skinny ones closer to her, packed together in a dense formation on three sides of her. Her angle on the ones downslope allowed her to see the thick, bushy canopy that stretched down and out from her in a bumpy, wild sea. Above, a sky of gray clouds was visible, plump and growing darker with the promise of rain. Where the slopes of two mountains converged in the distance, the scene had already slipped into a slate-gray blur.
Humidity brushed her face. Already, she could feel her hair curling, stringing up. Sweat began to dampen the back of her shoulders. She turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The side of a boxy, tan-colored building reared into the sky at the top of the slope where the ruts and machine-tread tracks cut especially bold and deep into the rock-filled dirt. Its color, and the climate, reminded her of some of the offices they’d come across in Dr. Sasha’s pocket dimension.
