Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  Isabel laughed, too, but it had a manic edge. “Ryan s-said you loved t-that phrase.”

  “He’s not wrong.” Crystal cut the string and prepared to move over to the other cheek. She didn’t start yet. In her head, she began a countdown as took off her gloves. Five, four, three, two-

  Isabel’s laughter turned to sobs. “Oh God, this is so fucked up.”

  Crystal stepped over and put her hands on Isabel’s shoulders. “I know, love, I know.” She took Isabel in her arms. “You just about had the worst bloody introduction into our world that I’ve ever seen. Let it out.”

  “N-no,” Isabel said, starting to push away. “You should be...Ryan-”

  “Isn’t bleeding any more. He’s fine right now, he’s stable.” Crystal glanced over to Ryan to make sure that was true. Calming Isabel down was important, but Ryan’s life had to come first. The whole world was depending on it. Seeing that he was in no immediate danger, she continued, “Love, he got an ugly injury, but there’s no major blood loss anymore. He’s not going to get an infection, he’s not going to bleed out, and right now he’s too unconscious to be in pain.”

  Crystal held Isabel until the tears were under control.

  “Thanks,” Isabel said.

  “You’re welcome. Are you okay now?” Crystal asked.

  Isabel sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “God, no. I don’t even know what that means right now. But I’m not falling apart. Take care of him.”

  Crystal patted her on the shoulder before getting back to work on Ryan’s cheeks. She hoped Ryan would shapeshift instinctively once he had healed enough because otherwise, he was going to have some brutal scars. It was an ugly sight, the kind of chop-shop surgery that you got when your surgeon wasn’t actually trained.

  Crystal finished the last bit of stitching on Ryan’s cheeks. “There we are. Now just to bandage up that nose and he should be good.”

  Isabel turned around and looked at her brother hesitantly. The end result wasn’t pretty, but he at least looked alive, and the holes in his face were sewn shut. Still, she shuddered and looked away. “Thanks. I mean…for everything. You saved our lives.”

  Crystal shrugged. “You’re very welcome, love. Ryan’s a friend, and you’re family of a friend. Oh, and if Ryan dies everything gets blown up and I’ve wasted the last million years, so I guess I can’t claim it was entirely altruistic.”

  “Fair enough,” Isabel said with a sound that was almost like a laugh. Almost. “Oh, God, my apartment…”

  Yeah, they’re definitely from the same family, Crystal thought as she unwound some gauze for Ryan’s nose. “Well, don’t beat yourself up over it,” she said, “You kind of had some other things on your mind, yeah?”

  “What?” Isabel forced herself to smile. “You think my brother b-bleeding from the face in the bathtub and helicopters shooting missiles at my living room somehow justifies me forgetting about my luggage?”

  “You know what?” Crystal said, laughing, “I suppose when you put it that way, it does seem rather silly.”

  “Well, in my defense, a strange woman did throw me off a balcony.”

  “That absolute bitch!” Crystal exclaimed.

  “So…what happens now?”

  “We wait for Ryan to wake up. I’m not going to risk cauterizing the wounds. It would be excessive right now; that’s really only a battlefield fix. Once he’s up, we find out where he put his doorway so he can hop down into his nanoverse and use the time differential to heal up quickly, and then we rendezvous with some of our friends who are looking for Moloch. After that, love, if I’m honest, we’ll be winging it.”

  “Okay. I appreciate the honesty at least.”

  Isabel still looked unsteady, and Crystal could hardly blame the poor woman. She’d probably been holding on by a thread ever since Ryan vanished and reappeared by the news. Then, when her brother finally returned, everything had gone to hell with alarming alacrity.

  “Now,” Crystal said, “do you think you could be okay for a couple hours?”

  “Alone?” Isabel asked, her voice cracking.

  Crystal winced. “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant at all! I’ll still be here with you. Just...I’ve gotten most of my Hungers taken care of, but if I’m going to fully recharge, I need to get some sleep in.”

  “Oh.” Isabel’s face fell, but then she forced a smile. “I don’t like the idea of being even relatively alone right now. But... I’d feel infinitely better if you were at full strength.” She sat on a chair and pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around her shins. “So, please, do. It’s safe here, right?”

  Crystal nodded. “There isn’t a force between Heaven and Hell that can break into a god’s staging area. I could drop the doorway in the core of the sun, and it wouldn’t even feel warm on this side.”

  “Please don’t,” Isabel said. “Get some sleep. Please.”

  “Wake me up if you need to. For any reason. Ryan would kill me you had some sort of meltdown and I slept through it.”

  Isabel gave her a thumbs up. “I’ll be all right.”

  Crystal nodded and called up a bookshelf. “If you need to take your mind off things…”

  Confident she’d done everything she could, Crystal formed a bed and climbed in. In seconds, she was sound asleep.

  ***

  Ryan’s first conscious thought was Isabel.

  He started reached up, heart pounding. They’re going to kill Isabel, they’re going to kill my sister, I have to get up.

  He could hear someone saying his name, grabbing at his outstretched hands, trying to hold him back…

  His vision cleared. Crystal hovered over him, saying his name repeatedly. “Ryan! Ryan, it’s okay love. I got there in time. She’s fine.”

  That penetrated the fog of pain and fear, and he relaxed. He wanted to ask a question, but Crystal gently put her hand on his mouth. “No, Ryan, don’t. I’ll explain, just…give me a thumbs up to show you understand, yeah?”

  He raised the requested digit, and she relaxed. “You got shot in the face. You’ll be fine, but if you try to speak right now, you’re going to tear open the stitches, okay?”

  Ryan nodded. The motion sent a spiderweb of pain lancing through his head, and an involuntary groan escaped his lips. Crystal winced.

  Isabel stepped into view. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her forehead creased.

  “I asked him a yes or no question, and of course he nodded. My mistake, love.”

  “Well, it’s not your fault he’s a dumbass.” Isabel fixed Ryan with a firm glare that belied the moisture in her eyes. “Don’t nod, dumbass. And don’t glower at me for calling you a dumbass. On top of that, since I’m giving you orders, don’t you dare get shot in front of me again, or I swear to God I’ll put itching powder in your underwear again, okay?”

  Ryan slowly raised his hand to give her a thumbs up, then with even more deliberate care rotated his hand to extend his middle finger. Isabel choked out a laugh, with the edge of a sob, then stuck her tongue out at him.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Isabel said to Crystal. “Unfortunately, he didn’t learn anything.”

  Crystal had watched the entire exchange, and her smile was about as wide as Ryan had ever seen. “Oh yeah,” she said, “You two are definitely siblings. Okay, Ryan, do you feel up to standing up? I want to get you back to your staging area. Thumbs up for yes, down for no, sideways if you’re not sure.”

  Ryan considered for a moment, then held his thumb up.

  “Okay. So here’s the plan. I get you back to your staging area. You’ll heal faster there. Otherwise, you’ll heal at human speed, and you do not want that delay, yeah? You’ll know you’re fully healed when you can reshape your nose. Isabel stays here with me, we go check on Athena and that lot, and you join us when you’re ready. Same way to signal your answer.”

  Ryan held his thumb out to the side.

  “Lemme guess, love. You want your sister to come with you, yeah?”
>
  Ryan gave Crystal a thumbs up.

  “Not a good idea. The fastest way to heal is to stay asleep. That means if Isabel needed anything, including to leave for any reason, she’d have to wake you up to close the door behind her. When you’re healing like that, it’s going to be damn hard to wake you. She could end up trapped without any way of escaping besides causing you further injury.” Crystal bit her lip and looked at Isabel, whose face had gone pale.

  “I think I’ll stay with Crystal if you’ll be okay on your own,” Isabel said in a small voice.

  His eyes wide, Ryan gave a thumbs up.

  ***

  Crystal poked her head out of her doorway to check for any remaining military presence. Law enforcement, including several men in suits, were on location, but no military. Apparently, the army had cleared out and left things to the cops and feds.

  No super-soldiers, she thought. I wonder how they’re going to spin opening fire on an apartment building. She made a mental note to ask Isabel to keep an eye on social media for that. The poor woman clearly had a good head on her shoulders, but was massively out of her depth, just as any other mortal would be. Giving her something to do would help Isabel wrap her head around things.

  And it would be good to know what Isabel could find, because Crystal had questions. Somehow these soldiers had been ready for fighting gods, better than any mortals Crystal had ever encountered. There were two possible answers, neither of which Crystal liked. One was that they had struck a deal with some power, a god or goddess who was working with to take them down. That would be bad, but manageable. It also seemed less likely. Try as she might, Crystal could not come up with a god or goddess who would be dumb enough to give mortals the secrets of ichor. The other, more likely explanation was that the military had captured a god or goddess somehow.

  Later, Crystal. Worry about that later. Let’s get Ryan to his nanoverse.

  Reaching out, she did a modified version of her earlier bending light trick, this time creating a corridor between her doorway and Ryan’s. She let enough light in so they wouldn’t be moving in total darkness. Invisibility was useless against gods, as they’d see the twists that created it, but against mortals, it was damn useful. Since there were plenty of armed men around, discretion seemed prudent.

  “Okay, we’re clear,” she said, poking her head back in.

  Ryan was standing with his arm draped over Isabel’s shoulder, so she could support his weight and make sure he didn’t pass out during the walk. Crystal moved smoothly over and took the other side, and they gently led Ryan down the pathway towards his nanoverse. Crystal could see how hard he was fighting to keep his eyes open.

  Once inside, the staging area created a bed out of the floor. Ryan’s head drooped, and the weight on Crystal’s shoulders increased. “C’ mon, love, you’re almost there.”

  “Mhrnhl,” Ryan said, blinking at the bed. “Bed?”

  “Bed,” Crystal said. “We’re going to help you in.” It took both of them to make sure Ryan just didn’t dive face-first into the pillows without thinking. Once he was actually in the bed, Crystal pulled off his shoes, and Isabel threw the sheet over him.

  “You’re sure he’ll be okay in here?” Isabel asked.

  Crystal squeezed Isabel’s shoulder. “Positive. Now, Ryan, set your doorway to close itself in...sixty seconds.”

  A countdown appeared on one of the screens, and Crystal and Isabel hurried out.

  Back in Crystal’s staging area, Isabel let out a deep breath and then slumped. Crystal moved to support her, putting an arm around the other woman.

  “It’s okay,” Crystal said. “He’ll be fine. And he’ll be back before you know it.”

  Isabel nodded, and Crystal led her over to a couch.

  “I’m just…” Isabel said, groping for the right words, “It’s… I’ve never seen him like that, y’ know? He was in a car accident once and got banged up pretty bad, but that’s it. He was always so nervous about one thing or another, and so he never really did the stupid things guys do, so he didn’t get hurt, rarely got sick…is that because he was going to become a god?”

  “Nope,” Crystal said, settling onto the couch beside her. “He was one of thousands the Curators thought might find the last Nanoverse and kick off the end of the world, but it wasn’t because of anything special about him. They just have gotten really, really good at predicting outcomes over the millennia. Hell, the Curators could have been wrong, it could have been some other random person.”

  “Oh,” Isabel said. “I dunno, I guess with gods being real, I figured prophecy was involved or something.”

  Crystal laughed. “We don’t have any special ability to tell the future. But after hundreds and thousands and thousands of years, you get really bloody good at spotting patterns, love. Some, like the Furies, are so good at it even we call them prophets, so it really seems prophetic to the average bloke who doesn’t have the benefit of that much experience.”

  “Drat,” Isabel ran her hands through her hair. “I normally hate spoilers, but I’d love to know how this whole thing ends. If I’m going to be okay and my brother is and the world is…”

  Crystal patted her arm reassuringly. “Isabel, love. Most gods give up on immortality after ten or twenty thousand years. I don’t know any who stuck around for more than a hundred thousand at most. But I have. You know why?” Isabel shook her head, and Crystal reached under the other woman’s chin to make sure their eyes met. “Because I wanted to make damn sure that everyone would be okay this time around. So I can’t see the future, and I can’t tell you what’s absolutely going to happen, but I can tell you that I didn’t wait around a million years to cock it up now, yeah?”

  Isabel laughed and held Crystal’s gaze for a few moments longer before brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks. So I guess we need to go to Venezuela now?”

  “Oh, we already are. But I want you to stay here when we get there. For all I know, it’s turned into an active war zone.”

  “No problem here.” Isabel leaned back. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not at the moment, but maybe after this. How good are you with a computer?”

  “Pretty good. I’m no leet hacker girl or anything, but I know my way around a search engine and various websites and such.”

  Crystal smiled. “Good. I’m absolute rubbish, and Athena...honestly, I can’t even talk about it. As soon as I can, I’ll take you somewhere with internet access, and you can do some research for us.”

  “All right,” Isabel said. “What do you want me to look for?”

  “See what you can find out about Myrmidon, the government’s spin on the attack on your apartment, any references to Bast after the Canada fight – anything. Right now we’re completely in the dark in regard to those things, and we need to know what’s going on.”

  “I can do that,” Isabel said. “What about while you’re gone?”

  Crystal smiled and pointed to an enormous pile of newspapers in one corner. “I’m a bit behind on the old school research, too.”

  “Who would have thought,” Isabel said, “that even gods needed support staff? I’m on it. Be careful out there.”

  Chapter 14

  The Shadow of Shadu

  “This is pointless,” Horus growled. “We don’t need all four of us to guard this damn portal.”

  Athena rubbed her temples. The worst part of listening to Horus gripe was that he had a point. “Horus, we’ve been over this. If the others return-”