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Post by effinfitz on Apr 5, 2013 23:00:10 GMT -8
Felt weird climbing up. Vertigo, dream step, fell forward through the window and landed in a mass murder mystery.
This should have been the bedroom, Book. Should have been, and wasn't.
I spent my whole childhood here, and even then the space didn't seem this small. Bricked off to maybe half the size, filthy with black feathers that broke like corpuscles under my feet, half-gelatin pinions trying to root them to the spot. They're in the air, slicing through skin, flying into my lungs, leaving a trail of blackened breath and ashen alveoli in their wake. Beady little eyes everywhere, watching. Jealous. Spiteful. Choking.
Breathe, Book. Breathe.
It's alright. We've been here already.
I hoarse-whispered a luminescent sutra I'd once heard from a buzzing hive of castrated honeybees, gave myself some breathing room from the unwanted care of carrion ossifrages. Less than a single null-time cadence, then just like that I stopped and watched the world turn a half-second away from me, pulling its fowl-borne offal shackles off with it. The damn things could still see me, I knew, but nothing touched me but air from yesteryear and the imprint of sunlight it had carried.
So let them stay pissed, Book. Serves them right.
I pretended to study the room some more while I caught my breath, studied brick and mortar swiss cheese under urea-stain graffiti. Dark little holes in a room only lit by loaned sunlight spilling from my tearducts. Wasn't enough to see all the little in. Halogen lamps wouldn't have been bright enough. A whole conspiracy had been plucked and flayed, here; now a mindless sort of madness wore their skins the way a child might play in a junkyard. No clue what it was supposed to be but a million thoughts on what to do with the leftovers. The chalk-gray skeleton circled up on the floor didn't even understand it when I cut through its vertebrae.
It couldn't, really. Not until I opened the door and carried my little circle of time-displaced peace out of the room. Then time had to rush and catch up to reality in that room, dragging my woodcut vandalism with it.
The door shut behind me. There wasn't any reason to stay, but I still needed to catch my breath.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 8, 2013 5:34:45 GMT -8
Lucy came in just as I was reconnecting with Catalina, two coffees in her hands. I had moved quickly as I could -- two minutes for negotiation on the other call, just under ten seconds to redial Morales's number and wait for her to reopen the secure channel. I half-smiled my thanks for the caffeine boost and put the phone back on speaker.
"Little busy, chica!"
Informal, now. Stressed. The background noise was as disturbing as ever, perhaps all the more so from my own brief reprieve. I could still hear the war chiefs, but I couldn't remember if they were further away last time. I cursed, assumed not.
"Help's coming, Morales. How far are you from the safehouse?"
A wet, cracking, tearing noise. One groaning voice suddenly muted. Catalina grunted. Close quarters counter-clockwise slash. Probably at about sixty degrees, no more than a half-meter away. By the number of cracks, she'd just cut through four ribs and a collarbone before getting the blade lodged in a vertebra. One hoped it would pull free cleanly.
"Can't tell, too many!"
More cutting -- it had pulled free, then. Corazon was there, still blasting away in defiance of all laws of ammunition conservation. Each blast preceded a sequence of microdetonations. Exploding flechettes? She wouldn't want to fire those at too close a range, which meant they were still backpedalling. Which meant they still had the space to backpedal. Which meant...
"Catalina, if it's just a frontal assault, withdraw and harass! You just need to delay them long enough for reinforcements!"
"You want me to ask if they'll take a break, chica?"
Spunky, I believe the term was. I didn't take it personally, I was rather upset the first time undead monsters tore me to shreds, too. "Don't use the road. It's longer and your sense of balance is better than theirs. Cut straight through the grass and hope the hills trip them up. Do you have any grenades left?"
"They're too close!"
"Make some room then! Aim low, hit them at the knees. Turn them into obstacles for the others." I sippedm coffee, most out of habit. A crippled zombie would still try to attack, often just swinging its arms wildly at anything in range. Mesmerizing and horrifying, all at once.
"It'd be easier to sprint for the hotel! We can resupply and reinforce there!"
"That' a negative. Supplies are questionable and the motel's not any safer. The best you might hope for is a three way battle, and there's still at least one civilian hiding out in there."
She didn't like my reply, but she didn't argue. Bless her. "Tink! Leapfrog back! Got any mines?"
Lucy followed my example, nervously sipping her coffee while the field agents fought for their lives. The little color she had regained in her absence was already fading. It only occurred to me later that I had narrated everything to Lucy in a soft murmur -- the way she was staring at me should have clued me in soone. I was, in my defense, every bit as worried as she. Still, I'm told I can be rather...cold, at times, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that my dispassionate commentary over the tropical storm outside and the slaughter on the phone had done terrible things to the poor girl's nerves.
Corazon would retreat first, to set up the mines. A sound between a sword being drawn and a flash grenade going off: Morales, channeling anima through her blade. A pulse of the stuff would stun the immediate threat. Give her time to stab -- no, cut low on one side and kick out on another, that would be the crunching noise, like stepping on popcorn. Snapping tendons and broken meniscus. Then retreat. Retreat!
She'd have at three seconds at most. Back up to Corazon's position? No, The zombies weren't fast, but they were more fast than clever. She'd retreat on a different angle, keep them changing directions and off-balance. Give her just enough time and space to launch a grenade from her rifle. A whistle-crack-pop, fragmenting payload. It wouldn't drop any, not enough raw damage from a weapon made to kill creatures more attached to their internal organs and blood supply. But it would pull their attentions one way while she dashed off in another, behind Corazon.
I checked my watch. Waited. Lucy looked at me strangely.
The landline went off! I'd never had the chance to see one in the field, but the raw explosive force would be enough to upset the undead line. Shotgun blasts followed it, Corazon aiming for the stragglers. More explosions. If she were aiming for the hips, they'd be crippling shots. Shattered pelvis, spilt guts. Definite impediment.
Ten shots. Another whistle-crack. Run, Tink.
"Ai, chica! The lobsters are splitting up!"
I perked up, alert again, throwing off my trance. "Details?"
"One's making a show on the road! Hol' on!" Pursuit had caught up with her while she coved for her teammate. Friend. I wondered how it felt to risk each other's lives in the field every day. Distracting, at least -- by the sound her first move was to break a zombie's jaw. Too focused. Back up, Morales.
"Lucy, pull up the GPS on the laptop. The first floor won't be accessible. Find us another way in. Quickly, please." Herman would have secured the doors and windows somehow. He was too experienced to leave his survival to chance. Lucy jumped to it, suddenly feeling the pressure of two lives on her shoulders.
Poor girl.
"Morales, your reinforcements should be holding the road. They're not on your level, but they can buy you a few seconds. Sprint for the house!"
Another flashbang pulse and she was off, leaves crunching beneath her boots. Out of breath. "Other one's in the front yard, chica! Friends are banging on the front door!"
I frowned. Trying to get in? Why?
Lucy turned the laptop towards me, pointed out thoe cellar entrance. I shook my head. "Morales, there's a tree by the northwest corner that comes close to a window. Get up there, that's your entrance!"
"Tink's fighting the lobster!"
"Flechettes won't scratch that thing. Distract it long enough for her to get up there!"
No reply. Lucy looked at me, tense, drumming her fingers against the desk. We waited. A rush of wind over the phone, a ripping noise me shredded cartilage, and a scream like a wounded elephant. "Tink! Up the tree!"
I hoped Corazon listened. Morales would be leading the Draug away from the house -- saving just enough anima to stun him and dash past, one imagines. Focusing everything on survival until then. Six seconds, tops. Climb, Tink. A dry scrape, a gasp, a rumbling shudder. Deflecting a swipe of a claw bigger than she was into the dirt. At her current strength level, she'd be winded. She'd have to recover faster than the Draug --
"Morales?"
-- the Draug bellowed again. Still no answer, damnit. Lucy jumped when my fist pounded the desk, and I didn't, at the time, have the presence of mind to apologize to her. I process information quickly, understand. I was able to feel keenly the guilt of sending at least one agent to her death inn the second between one Draug-call and the next.
I blinked, in unwitting harmony with the staccato cracks of a heavy caliber handgun. Explosive rounds, again. I grinned even as Catalina launched the last of her strength into a blinding charge. Heard the turf tear under her feet, heard her feet take the tree with a leap and running up the sides, down a branch. Heard the hammering treads of the wounded Draug chasing after her. Heard the foliage rustle as she leaped. Heard the Draug roar, so close even I startled.
Make it, Catalina.
A crash, oddly muffled. Gun fire -- two hand cannons. Corazon with .50s, doubtless. The sound of shattering glass and splintering wood, then another roar. Point blank. More gunfire, thirteen shots altogether before the alternating clicks of empty magazines. A creaking...then a more distant crash.
Silence.
"Morales?"
She was out of breath, and then some. Not beaten yet. "Ai, we're here chica. He swung and got his claw stuck in the window. Tink finished him off. He fell."
I closed my eyes, exhaled, thanked God and whatever angels look after careless, stupid administrators. Lucy was smiling, which helped some. "I'm glad you're alright. What's your status? And what of the zombies?"
A few moments passed as they assessed in quiet voices, all Spanish. I let them have it, instead focusing on the still-present moans outside. The dull hammering, barely audible over the wind outside our own window.
"We're okay, a few bruises. The zombies are outside. They're pounding on the walls, chica. They gonna break this place down to get to us?"
Lucy fielded that one, much to my own surprise. "Nuh-uh! Whoever was there last put bricks down around the first floor. Probably, ah, for that exact reason."
I frowned. I stil didn't like the zombies' persistence, in that they were ignoring both my distraction and the sheriff's department down the road. Still, Morales and Corazon were safe for now. Small mercies.
"Ai, smart! Es that there's bricks in this room, too? 'Cause they don't look right." "Bricks?"
"Si! With holes. And little dowel rods. And a lotta feathers."
Lucy and I replied at the same time. A rookery. I smirked, then and let her read off the rest of what she'd found. Messenger ravens. Honestly. I wondered what other modifications Herman had made to the house. I wondered if I trusted the field agents to notice them.
Of course not.
"Morales, do either of you have a camera on hand? It would help if I could see what you were looking at."
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 10, 2013 1:06:06 GMT -8
Breathing in the dark.
Entropy was doing its thing faster than I'd expected. I got to thinking that maybe I'd woken up too soon from the last one, that the reason it was so hard to fill my lungs with enough ballast to keep the walls from spinning was all yesterday's fatigue and not today's worries. A stupid little lie I couldn't quite bring myself to shake. Nan-in's cup of tea, filled past the brim.
I stood there outside my bedroom door longer than I should have. The whole place felt off, a cardboard cutout of the real thing as seen with 3-D glasses. Someone had been here, alright, and it wasn't any Islander. They hated just looking at the place. The wards were meant to make sure of that -- small, meticulous things I'd bled and sweated over on summer nights better spent chasing girls and catching shooting stars.
Someone had messed with them, though. Someone with a lot more care and tact than I'd had as a schoolboy, but none of the resolve. They were already breaking apart, little knots of universal phlogiston unravelling and leaking away into the atmosphere, sending out smoke signals that every Filthbreeder on the Island could scent. The house itself was dead, but I could hear her ghost still whispering to me as I felt her walls followed them in the dark to the staircase.
No need to linger upstairs. I could feel the yes, all sad and hateful. Those wards hadn't been touched, and I could hear the spirits behind them rattling at their cages like inmates in a blackout. Untouched, but failing. The mother with her sadness and madness and sacrifice. The brother with his angry and envy and -- well.
There's a reason I had to lock them all away, Book. There's enough old hate running up and down the tunnels under the Island, cold adrenaline and murderous impulses practically get the Island afloat. I kept two more from adding to it. Maybe not the right choice. Ha to hope someone would forgive me for it.
I took the stairs down two at a time, hearing a hundred fists outside pound the house's walls, CPR heartbeat. Not good, Book.
The wards may have been dying, but there probably wasn't any surer way to wake up what was left of them.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 11, 2013 22:52:31 GMT -8
Of course they had a camera on hand. They were field testers, and no one in their right minds would trust their spoken debriefs. Corazon -- "Tink" -- was carrying a self-propelled drone for that purpose. It also, she assured me, could shoot, bandage, disinfect, and explode. She was less sure about the actual video capabilities. She'd had to jostle things around, of course, to make room for the self destruct.
I returned that I was glad she was keen on keeping our secrets from falling into zombie hands.
"It's on," was all she said. I waited a moment, increasingly dubious, when a soft ping sounded from my laptop. "A remote process is requesting access to your network: ESI_FTBC_DroneRec068.exe. Do you wish to allow this?"
I was a bit surprised. Understandably so, I think. "Is this it?"
Morales answered. Corazon, clearly, had had her fill of management for one night. "It's Tink's, si! Just press the okay button, she swears it won't explode or do anything bad." I did exactly that, only a trifle concerned that explosions were an alternative to "anything bad." In moments a window popped up with a dark,grainy, low-res image. It would change suddenly, with a blurry figure on one side in a certain position suddenly jumping to the opposite side and taking a different stance.
"It's a bit choppy."
"She says it should clear up in a minute. The IFF messes with the framerate because -"
I cut her off. "I understand. Is there something you can focus on that would give it time to adjust? I'd rather not need an airsickness bag for this."
The image changed with slideshow-like abruptness, until I could finally understand that I was looking at the floor. The drone had a light, as well, reflecting off the currents of dust kicked up by the field agents' passage. I turned the laptop towards Lucy, as much to give her something to do as to get her acquainted with the world she'd been so roughly dragged into.
The image improved in erratic leaps of resolution, the unidentifiable black and brown mess quickly becoming a hyper-detailed still of feathers on a hardwood floor. The camera panned slowly, much more smoothly than before. I could see the new brick, spattered with waste and whatever trophies the birds had found interesting. No bodies, though. No beaks, bones, or blood. Curious.
"Tink's saying it should be better now," Catalina said, and I responded that it was indeed an improvement. "It won't look so pretty when we're moving, but not as bad as it was at first."
"I'll adjust, one supposes. Is there any way to turn the audio off? There's a slight lag, and the humming from the drone and the ruckus outside almost drowns you out anyway."
Catalina forwarded my request to Tink, who responded in ind indignant Spanish, echo courtesy of the video. A brief exchange ensued, with Catalina finally giving up with a sigh. "She says it would probably be easiest if you just muted your computer, señorita."
I smirked, chagrined, and adjusted the volume settings on my laptop. Lucy bit her lip to keep from laughing, and I couldn't really blame her after everything else she'd put up with. "Quite. That will do, then. What's that mark by your left boot, Corazon?"
The drone rolled up, stopping when it had the majority of a deep gash in the floorboards under its lens, with Catalina and Felicia to either side of it. Then, at my request, it zoomed. And zoomed again, the whirring of tiny servos like the sound of gnats beneath the steady beat of the undead siege outside. I could still make out bursts of gunfire. The reinforcements were still fighting, then, or others had arrived. Excellent. "Maybe he damaged the floor when he was laying down the bricks?"
I shook my head. The carpet of feathers was thickest here, and I couldn't see a single one that bridged the narrow span. Zooming in to the fullest extent showed that some were even neatly bisected along the same line. "So this came after, probably recently. Older damage would have been covered again by traffic shifting the feathers around. We may be looking for an assailant with a fondness for blades -"
A new noise, louder than all the rest, not far removed from the shrieking of a scrap metal golem when torn apart. Lucy cringed, covered her ears. Morales and Corazon were already charging the door.
Morales kicked the door open while Corazon covered her, and I was again impressed by how practiced they were. More so when Morales echoed my thoughts. Nearly. "Robot?"
The camera drone was focusing on a staircase not far down the hall, bobbing light showing faded but undamaged maudlin wallpaper and dusty family portraits. The noise had come from the stairwell, I thought, perhaps on the first floor.
"Ai, stupid! You didn't hear it walking around, did you?"
Morales admitted she didn't. Not a golem, then, likely. There wouldn't be much room for one anyway, the house wasn't that large. A stationary defender, like a turret?
I asked Lucy to try and find anything Herman may have mentioned about intruder countermeasures. If these were automated defenses, then someone had set them off. Neither our field agents nor the zombies outside would have had a line of sight to whatever had gone off. I extrapolated.
"Morales, Corazon? Herman left under his own power, probably several hours ago. There's someone in the house with you, probably also looking for him. Try and find out what he knows."
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 14, 2013 0:38:00 GMT -8
Ever dove in deep water, Book? Go far enough, long past the waves and the deep muscles that move them, past the crush of gravity eating the breath from your lungs, and you'll get to a point where the light just can't reach anymore. Even if you brought one with you. Shine your flashlight and all you can see is black on more black, swirling around and perfectly still.
You've got no idea what I'm rambling on about, Book, and that's alright. It's the listening what counts.
I had to watch the walls carefully going down the stairs. Keep my eye on all the faces staring back at me. It was hard going, and I tried to use the banister for balance but my hand kept slipping off. I stopped at least once just to try and stare out what was going on. Slap my hand on the railing a couple times and watch it try to grip the wood. But the fingers just wouldn't bend, Book. They'd try, only to lose the signal and stitch the tendons taut a single thought later. Then there I was, not understanding a thing, whipping my whole arm out like mortality was something you could shake off like flies on your overcoat.
It's new every time, Book. No matter how often I write it up. Reckon as it's no different for all my friends and antecedents carrying on outside.
There was something more going on, but I couldn't quite figure out what. Like how a bar fight doesn't look any different than dancing when you're drunk enough, and it never occurs to you that it the level of violence might be a bit abnormal. All I could safely vouch for, Book, was that I was on the stairs, going down, and the faces on the wall were worse than nightmares. I think I might have aimed to tear them down, but the motor process was so far beyond me I may as well have tried to pluck the stars from the sky. Eventually -- maybe simultaneously, it's hard to keep these things straight -- I kept limping down, because something felt wrong about heading back up.
Book, if you've no idea what's going on at this point, then I'm describing it perfectly.
When I got to the first floor foyer I stopped and watched the walls flow upstream for what felt like hours. It was a slow, tepid thing, a venous feed that would cool up and congeal in time. Pool up in the organs and vessels, burn out the last of their energy like red giants with a bucket list. I could see where it was going, where it would go, what it would do -- watching the life breath of the universe is so much a habit now it comes easier than recognizing my mother's face. Make of that what you will. Came in handy that night, though, and Ma Gamble always told her sons to look for the silver lining.
Most of the anima left powering the house was sparking and cracking against the crowd banging on her siding. Mostly harmless, I'd guess, losing the strength for a proper sting. The rest of the immune system was trying to join the fight, like it was the prodigal son making her ill rather than the decades of self loathing he'd left her with.
Or, well, heck. She might have just been a spiteful old beast, but I'd hate to speak ill of the dead.
Either way there was enough spark still left in her to power the old ceiling fan, a frankly amateurish trap I'd been quite proud of some two decades and change ago. And me, with half a neuron to my name, stumbling after the anima trail like it was water in the desert, standing stupidly under it like the dusty o ld blades were going to start spinning and open up the gates of Heaven any minute, to bring health to the stupid.
Standing directly under a trap that I knew is there, Book. If you ever wanted to know any of my deeper, dark secrets, here's one: I'm lower on the evolutionary ladder than your average churchmouse.
The blades did spin, as I knew they would. Made a sound like gates opening, too, but these were the dark and fireblasted kind best left guarded by flaming swords. Those old, dusty fan blades kicked up a cyclone right around me, hot-iron winds circling me like a flock of angry razors. I didn't even notice when I started to bleed, Book. Probably when I tried to shake my arm out, again, as if this were all the fault of my numb , dumb fingers not being able to hold on to the banister earlier.
Looking back, that must have been it.
That's when I saw the sky turn red, a dark and ruddy mess like canned cranberry sauce and boxed wine. I didn't react, Book. I didn't suddenly wake up and regain my strength in a flood of adrenaline and calcium ions. I panicked. Panicked bad.
It was instinct, alright, fight or flight and not knowing which one was which. I ducked into an updraft, felt my skin get flayed not through pain signals but by virtue of an increasingly uncomprehending sense of alien terror. My lips were flapping off in the breeze, I told myself. Lips aren't supposed to do that. Duck and cover and wait to wake up.
And the only thing to cover myself with was getting blown away by the wind, hot rusty splashes of color in a very gray world. So that's what I used, Book. It's my saving grace that I didn't stop to think how to do it, because I never would have remembered. Instead I just coved my head with my hands and pulled the blood over them both like bedcovers.
I can't describe exactly what happened next, not the least because I was too busy counting the floorboards to distract myself from the surreality of the whole situation when perceived through a scared, spastic lens. I do know, from past experience, that my blood carries more metal now than any wind I could have bound with my frail, childhood breaths. Iron-gray erythrocytes probably spiked like blades through the eye of the storm, spinning against the current by way of a honeycombed drill bit. It wasn't a perfect defense, but it was retributive. Lex Talionis.
And weak as I was, Book, you'll be proud to know I still had more life than the ceiling fan.
I'm not sure what happened after. I ran, and I probably kept going down as much out of ease as anything else. Hands that couldn't remember how to hold a banister remembered old secrets in the basement brickwork, old secrets in the walls. My last thought, dying there in my Grandfather's tunnels, was how quiet and dark they were. How suitably mausoleum-like.
I know I thought this, Book, because it's not the first time it's happened. No matter how new it felt at the time.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 15, 2013 22:54:03 GMT -8
I'd seen, prior to this, recordings of police and militaries sweeping through buildings. We're it not for the scenery, I'd daresay that Catalina and Felicia had seen the very same videos. They moved with their heads low, covering each other by leapfrogging down the hallway and stairs, checking every corner. Difficult enough in any situation, I'd been told, all the harder when the only lights were a gently humming drone trailing behind them and the flashlights they waved about in their offhands. I worried about tunnel vision, blind spots induced by the brightness of the flashlights against the total darkness they stepped into on the first floor.
There was a fallen ceiling fan there, embedded in the floor. All three lights converged on it, giving it a ghostly aspect completely at odds with its pedestrian origins.
When we spoke again, it was in soft voices. No one could offer a reason why.
"Is the fan itself at fault or is the ceiling damaged?"
Lights flicked about to the walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the fir engine rd of the fresh brick behind them. Herman had bricked off the entire first floor from the outside, then? Time consuming, but effective. For all the mob outside was rattling the siding, the house was in no danger of being breached without further help from their Draug overseers.
"Ceiling looks okay, chica," Catalina reported back. "Except for the hole in it where the fan was, but Tink thinks it's isolated."
The walls and floor had spiraling furrows leading up -- but I doubted that they would help us find Herman. I shook off the mystery. "Search the first floor for anything like a basement staircase. At his age our missing agent wouldn't have survived a leap out a second story window."
A dining room covered in papers, maps, with thick and heavy furnishings that might have been as old as the house. I wanted dearly to skim those files, I could clearly make out Ægir's logo on the letterhead. But under the circumstances I doubt I could make sense of them in a timely manner.
"Maybe he had a rope?"
The kitchen merited a brief pause from the field agents, all lights trained on the refrigerator like a murderer caught red-handed. The unit's door was torn off, insides filled with half-melted red candles. Wax dripped over the shelving and into a level puddle at the base, as if bleeding. Corazon swore, and even I knew enough Spanish to appreciate her doubts as to Herman's sanity.
"Same problem. He's in his seventies, and if he's ever eaten a bee it's never been recorded. I don't think he'd take a chance on moving cross country when all our reports confirm it's safer underground. At least to a certain depth."
Through a hallway, into a spacious den. Morales played her light warily over the aged furnishing, all cheap things from forty years ago that were never meant to last so long. A striped couch and a faded green card table were most prominent, bookended respectively by a well-preserved house of cards and an old cathode ray television that hadn't aged half so gracefully.
"There was a cellar door just outside..."
Morales swore, suddenly, nearly falling. Corazon, who had been keeping her light still trained on the refrigerator the next room over, only now whirled around, pistol ready. But the assailant had already been vanquished: Morales was cursing indignantly at a pair of dirt-filled flower pot that had been left on the floor.
"Mn, quite. And it leads to a private library. But the house must have a proper basement for its water heater and laundry, yes?"
The agents moved towards the back of the room, finding a short hallway that turned a corner. "Here are the stairs, chica. Where could he have run to in the basement?"
"Tunnels, Morales. The Island's riddled with them. Herman must have found another way to access them."
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 17, 2013 23:56:37 GMT -8
Work with me, Book.
I couldn't tell you how long before I could rightly grip the pen again. Felt like maybe, what, fifteen minutes? Probably less, but time always feels a little sticky after. I didn't bother to get up and. Running right away, this time. Two drops in as many hours only meant my body was past the pushing point, past that hour when the cells are breaking down faster than the hive and put them ack together. Had to rest, much as I hated to. Had to build up reserves again before I went on and started tearing things apart.
So work with me, Book. Tell me what you know. Why are we here?
We woke up a couple hours ago in a cave near the Scar. There'd been a fight, that was certain. And there'd been a suicide. And someone had walked off with your predecessor and the other guy's head. Given the shitty part of town this all happened in, I'm guessing there was only one thief, even it that thief was working as part of a bigger group. Alright.
We talked with the Sheriff, saw the people. Supplies were running dry, and who resupplied? I was supposed to know, I know, and it's a cinch that I wouldn't have let just anyone shack up in the family home unless I thought it was the least bad of all the terrible options. Sheriff told me to go home, she understood how to talk when I get a certain way. Bless her.
There's no way this guy ran a supply operation out of the House. Not just the House. The nearest highway to Agartha was close, but too far to drag that much kit, and heck -- he couldn't have gotten it up to the second floor on his own with the first story sealed. The House could have helped with that, though, couldn't she? Even past dead and dying, she could have whispered a few secrets to that measure.
The House had a lot of secrets, though. Trying to pick and choose was like jumping into a summer squall and dancing past all the rain drops that didn't suit you. He would have had to suffer Grandpa Gamble' scrawl and nightmares, listen to the holes the ghosts hid in at sunrise, followed the rainwater that dripped into the basement when the storms did come.
Tunnels, Book. He found them, I reckon, and I reckon as we're established how welcoming they are after a few hits to the sane-pan.
Grandpa Gamble's secret passages were the Midgard serpents of the architecture world. An overrated, oversized circle jerk so in love with itself that it'd sooner swallow itself whole than come to a meaningful conclusion. It's a spiteful old man's ego tribute to himself, dressed up in old temple masonry and enough wall sconces to blind an all-seeing eye, if they were ever lit. None of the torches had been lit recently, implying he'd found his way blind. Implied a lot about his destination, too.
There were only three places Grandpa Gamble's tunnels could actually take you -- four, counting the House itself. Of course, the whole thing twisted around itself like squid on a merry-go-round, but practice could teach you the ways around. There's an art to mazes, if you're willing to learn it. One fork made the long trip underground to the academy and the archives underneath it. Another led back up Kingsmouth way, though some of those passages we so old the free masonry had collapsed under the weight of disinterest before I'd ever set foot in them. The last path went out to old canals burrowed under the bedrock, finally coming up under the coast at Smuggler's Scar. But there was nothing there now but monsters and the seawater that spawned them.
You should remember the place, Book. You were born there. Next to the dead men under the cliff that led to these selfsame tunnels.
I'm not a strong believer in coincidences, Book. Especially without a way to double check my memory: get enough hole-faced recollections in you and everything starts to sound a little familiar. I get the feeling that I and your predecessor knew that our guy was missing before you were ever born, that we tracked him down this path at least once before.
Had that rock already been bloody, when we woke up?
Time had passed, though, since then. And a supply guy has to have a parent organization. So let's not pretend to be surprised at the footsteps behind us, the sound of a compensator-sized handgun cocking and curved edge cutting the air around her. Just keep cool, Book.
I'm not done resting, yet.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 20, 2013 9:16:18 GMT -8
Dark didn't describe it. I'd hate to be so florid as to call it like a tomb, but the sensation, the tightness in my chest knew no such compunction. It was in my head, I know. Just the -- this is a confidential report, yes? -- just the specters of claustrophobia crowding in on me from the pitch black window of Corazon's remote video signal. Lucy had, at my signal, dimmed the lights in the office just so we wouldn't have to stare at the glare from the recessed wall lamps. It helped the picture. It did little to help me.
Darkness didn't do much for that shut-in feeling.
I took a deep breath, recalled that I'd been in worse enclosures, and found that to be no comfort at all. Instead I picked up my coffee cup, forgotten since Catalina and Felicia's desperate running battle and long since chilled to the below-room-temperature air at which the Rystaads liked their offices. Lucy, without a word of instruction of me, took over overseeing the field agents. Independent initiative, bless her. I was liking her more and more by the minute.
I sipped the coffee without really tasting it, instead enforcing normalcy by emulating the motions. I looked outside, hoping that the vista might relieve some of the pressure, forgetting just how truly terrible the storm was. The street lights and windows of buildings across the way were as sick as sputtering votive candles at vespers, twisted out shape by the driving rain and howling wind hammering against the glass wall I was standing before. Like the sky itself was trying to crush into the room with me.
I closed my eyes, turned away, tried to exhale the tension. "Try to find a happy place," the therapist at Princeton had told me. That was years ago. I still hadn't found one.
"Um, Miss Cameron?"
Lucy again, holding my phone out to me. Another call on the line. I nearly rejected it out of hand: field operation in progress, and I wasn't keen on abandoning the agents altogether. Even briefly. But Lucy had already turned the sound up on the laptop, allowing her to follow their progress even if she couldn't communicate with them directly.
Too, I saw who the caller was. I took it, putting Morales on hold.
"Hey."
I could hear Seanne's laugh on the other end. It clashed terribly with the atmosphere, like balloons at church. "Gee, try not to sound so happy to hear me."
I smiled, or at least half-smiled: an admission of amusement even in the face of a more somber situation. "I am, sorry. Just working late." It was already getting easier to breathe. I chanced a look at the monitor, saw the play of lights following the stained gray concrete of the basement walls. Looking for a hidden door, having to work by touch alone. I was just that dark. I felt for them.
"You're always working late! Don't you know there's a storm warning?"
I quirked an eyebrow, unconsciously adopting mannerisms I used for in-person conversations. "Truly? It wouldn't have anything to do with the storm outside, would it?"
She laughed again. It was a gift of hers: the dry, deadpan humor I'd developed specifically to deflect unwanted amounts of attention didn't even faze her. "It might! Everything okay up there with the new office? You sound a little tense."
I caught something on the screen. So did Corazon, thankfully, since I had no way of bringing it to their attention without hanging up on my CEO. It looked like a steam gauge, and there was a water heater next to it. But even my limited familiarity with household fixtures sensed something off about it. The bloody handprint may have attributed to that. Corazon was already prying away at it with a screwdriver.
"Something's come up, actually, though one hopes we'll resolve it soon. You're home safe, yes?"
The gauge came away from the metal faceplate it was connected to. There was an assemblage of gears inside, though none of it made any sense to me. I could hear Corazon and Morales argue excitedly. I could also hear Morales give a less-than-flattering opinion of my hold music.
Seanne sighed, melodramatic. "Yes, mother. Why aren't you? What's going on up there?"
She was teasing. Also curious, and, though I wouldn't have recognized it a month ago, concerned. Corazon was fiddling with the gears.
"I'll have to fill you in when I know more. I don't suppose I might call you back later?"
She sighed again, more genuinely. My pedantic "don't worry about, I'll take care of it" had been more appreciated during the company's restructuring, before she'd had a chance to find her footing. Now she had, but no one was willing to take her seriously. If I were half as brilliant as I pretended to be I would have apologized and explained better. I wasn't, though, so I didn't. She gave in first, and even I could hear the forced note of cheer.
"Well if you get out and it's not coming down too hard, want to grab some coffee? I got your favorite kind. Boring."
I smiled, then, genuinely. It had been my sole blessing to attract better friends than I deserved, and my singular idiocy to test them constantly by drawing away every time they extended a hand -- just to see if they would reach a little further. If that seems neither appropriate nor sensible, don't fret. It's neither.
I thanked her, just as genuinely, and promised I would call her as soon as I finished. She seemed a bit relieved, thoughts that was perhaps my imagination, and she said her goodbye well enough that I'd rather not repeat it here. Mine was more plain. My favorite kind: boring.
I took Morales off hold. "Ai, chica! Your hold music is --"
"The cream of contemporary Russian composers, yes, thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. What did you find?"
"Secret door, hidden in a load bearing wall. Steam powered, so it was connected to the boiler, but --"
"I'll have to pass on the details, sorry. Not an engineer. But be careful, these tunnels are part of a maze that goes from one end of the island to the other. Do you have some way of marking your trail?"
I could hear them scoff. Lucy tapped the screen, bringing my attention to the arched tunnel they we stepping into. Specifically, to the right-hand wall, where their lights focused briefly to illustrate why they were so dismissive.
"We were just gonna follow the bloodstains. That work for you?"
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 22, 2013 8:18:59 GMT -8
I must have left a trail, whether by intent or accident. Can't remember myself. Don't suppose I mentioned it, Book? No?
The lights were deafening enough that I missed their first words, missed everything but need to shut my eyes so tight that world turned bright black on blood vessel silhouettes. A little better. They were calling my name, and I wondered no they knew it. Things were still a little fuzzy, but I was reasonably sure I hadn't met any Mexican gunslingers on the Island. But then again, I meet a lot of people. They all tend to blend together after a while.
They told me not to move, which was nice of them. I didn't. Neither did they: I could still feel their lights on my face. With me sprawled out in the tunnel like I was they couldn't properly corner me without stepping in close, and either they were nervous Nellies or they knew enough not to do that. Sure, they had guns, but the tunnel wasn't very wide, and anything within five meters was close enough to cut. They must have known that, too.
Three lights shining on my eyelids. Two I could match up with the voices, the breathing, the iron-rust and gun-oil sweatstink on them. The third actually hummed, moved: I could hear it glide by me while my eyes were still closed. A drone, that, I'd seen some of the newer kids sporting them. No one was shooting. I appreciated that.
One addressed me again: "Señor Gamble," she called me, which made me laugh. Told her as I was likely the only one around who'd answer to that, sure, and if they'd be so kind as to shine their lights elsewhere I'd be happy to address them more properly. They didn't say anything back for a second, which I took to mean they were either listening to the voices in their heads or not yet convinced as to my kind and caring nature.
"Looking for something, aren't you? Got this far by following me, but you won't get much further than wandering in circles without my help."
The lights stayed on me. Guns, too, presumably, but I wasn't terribly worried about those yet. The one who spoke last time spoke again. "One of our people is missing. He was staying in the house upstairs, and now we think he came this way. Have you seen him?"
"Maybe. About six foot, skinny, south side of wrinkly?"
Another pause, Book, so they were definitely on another line with someone. Handler, maybe, or just a dispatcher. "That sounds like him, si. Can you take us to where you saw him?"
I shook my head. "I'm not fit to keep up with two young ladies. Death every time. But take those lights off my face and I reckon as we could work something out."
They did, blessedly, and I chanced to open my eyes after a moment. They looked like I felt, Book, and I told them exactly that. Clothes torn and bloody, weapons banged up, as much mud on their boots as in their hair. The talker of the two grimaced. "There's an army outside the house, Señor. Something made them angry."
I nodded, nodded. We'd heard them before, sure, but ignored them on the grounds that someone else was dealing with them. But if these two were he now, then...
"There's a team of mercenaries on them now," she said in answer to my next question. She didn't look terribly convinced herself, which brought up a question of priorities.
Someone took away your predecessor and the Island's access to food, Book, and the trail probably started in the cave at the end of these tunnels. By I'd been following this trail all night, and these two kids were just starting. At the rate things were going, they'd never catch up.
At the same time, the Sheriff and her people weren't up to a large scale shoot out. Not strung out, starving, and sleep deprived as they were. The only mercenaries I knew working on the Island were Phoenicians, and they'd have run as soon as they realized they might not live long enough to spend their profits. They we just normals. And these two, I could hear the buzzing on them. Still quiet and baby like, but more than those mercs could ever dream of. If they'd been torn up this bad...
I sighed, cursed. There wasn't really a decision to even make. Just a river of regret to wet one's face in, wake up call. There was work to be done.
I stood up, probably the easiest job of it as I've had all night, and pulled one of the torches from the wall. "These tunnels lead out to a cave near the shore. He's in there. Careful, though, it's not a safe place even by our standards."
I handed the torch to the speaker. She looked at me like I was crazy, which, Book, you realize I'm well enough used to. I asked if I could borrow their drone.
"Need to take a look at this horde you mentioned, and I'd much prefer to use both hands if it came to it. A floating light would be a great help."
They were both silent for a moment. The silent one pulled out a lighter -- slick chrome job, the kind they sell at cigar stores for ten times the prices of a regular one. Got the torch going and watched the flames. The speaker did too, then nodded. "Ai, si. We'll trade. Thank you, Señor Gamble."
I grinned, waved it off as the drone beeped, whirred, moved to hover around me like a retired mother-in-law. It's always good to be nice to the new ones. Especially when you were about to ask them a favor, like so:
"Do me a favor. If you turn up a Book while you're looking for him, put it to the torch. It's got some personal thoughts in it and I'd hate to think of just anyone reading it."
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 24, 2013 6:48:31 GMT -8
We were all understandably alarmed by the slumped body lying in that dark tunnel, propped up haphazardly against the wall where the bloodstained trail stopped. Not a large figure, about five foot six perhaps, whose build was unknowable underneath the baggy assemblage of clothes and jackets he bundled himself in.
It was a he, at least, the chin stubble attested to that much.
The first worries we shared were, of course, the least charitable. Monster. Even Lucy contributed to the speculation, despite her limited amount of contact with the real thing. But more details came out as Morales and Corazon approached with commendable and uncharacteristic stealth: the bloody broadsword at his side. The beaten steel shield with a graven dragon emblem, hanging from his back.
The Templar cross motif on his hood, and the feverish blue eyes that poked out underneath it when the lights grew too close.
We -- they -- backed off, and he winced and clamped his eyes shut. I gave Morales his name.
"Señor Gamble?"
He laughed.
Allen Gamble was one of the contractors Ægir used for fieldwork, totally unaffiliated with our Sponsors and a native of the Island. At a time when we ourselves were still transitioning from the mundane horrors of our regular existence to the needlessly cryptic and dauntingly supernatural ones of the Secret World, Mr. Gamble had provided a welcome dose of practical experience and level-headed advice, all wrapped in a layer of disarmingly colloquial rusticism. It was for this reason I rarely found myself trusting him: he clearly was not a fool, yet played one so well. I cautioned Morales to stay outside of five meters, but found it unnecessary. She'd already taken that precaution. I added a further instruction, since I strongly doubted field negotiations were part of their skill package.
"Anything you know is safe to share, Morales. It won't help him, and what he knows could very well help us."
He spoke, and I find it as difficult to describe his voice as to do justice to his manner of speech. The former might be likened to the hoarse rattle of a longtime smoker, a comparison I dislike simply because I am myself a smoker and he swears to have never touched the stuff. Too, there were notes of a bubbling phlegmyness at times, like there was a level of fluid in his lungs that his words had to fight to escape, then the back-of-the-throat rasp of a frequent cougher. Mister Gamble, in short, did not present himself as a healthy man. His body suffered from illness, I was inclined to believe. His mind, his actions, seemed equally sick, but I wasn't yet convinced it wasn't a self-inflicted affliction.
"Think this the first as these walls have ever seen two young women walking through them: you look as lost as the newlywed did the day he went birthday shopping for his wife. Care t' share whatcher looking' fer 'fore you turn more circles than a rubber ducky when the drain's pulled?"
Such is conversation with Mr. Gamble. Even Lucy looked up at me, suspicious. I only shook my head in response.
"One of our people is missing. He was staying in the house upstairs, and now we think he came this way. Have you seen him?"
He rattled off a description as vague as it was colloquial, tall and skinny and wrinkled. But their fit Herman better than it fit anyone else I knew to be active on the Island, so I confirmed to Morales that it was likely him.
"That sounds like him, si. Can you take us to where you saw him?"
He shook his head, and in the glare of the lights I thought I maybe saw him grin. It was hard to tell.
"That'd be like a tortoise leading a couple o' hares down a rabbit hole. Lower those lights a little, though, and I recon as we could come to an understanding."
They did, and I only then realized they'd been intentionally blinding him, keeping him on the defensive. It was rather clever, actually. I made a note to remember it. After a moment his blue eyes opened again, still disturbingly bright compared to dour grays that made up everything else about him, and fixed them on Morales and Corazon. Sizing them up?
"Y'all look like you took a roller coaster through a woodchipper t'get here."
Morales explained the horde outside, the mercenary intervention that she seemed none too confident in and I myself suspects had already withdrawn. Gamble must have heard it in her voice, too, because after he had regained his feet he looked back the way they had came. Towards the House.
I wondered if, perhaps, he could see them through all those lays of dirt and concrete and stone. Another ability that came with experience? I couldn't look forward to it: every gift our kind receives seems to come at the cost of sanity, to judge by Mr. Gamble.
Now he was pulling one of the unlit torches from the wall and handing it to Morales, offering it in trade for the drone. An odd deal, made all the more surreal by the way he kept referring to his need to get back outside and pull weeds. I've recorded some of his dialogue he verbatim simply so you might understand the caliber of man Gamble represents. That accomplished, I've no further reason to subject you to the trials of reading it or myself to the efforts of recording it.
It was Corazon who got it all to make sense, simply by lighting the torch. The flames sputtered up, sparked once, then pointed forward. The direction they'd been heading before coming across our contractor. She nodded first, and I understood a moment later what that angle meant. Air.
"Make the deal, Morales."
On screen, in one of the last times I'd see her that night, she nodded. "Ai, si. We'll trade. Thank you, Señor Gamble."
He was already grinning and waving it off, moving back down the tunnel, following his own bloodstains. The drone obediently hovered behind him, letting Lucy watch things from a mildly vertigo-inducing point of view over his shoulder. If Gamble we truly returning to the outdoors then it was a relief. He was far and away, at that point, more experienced than any agent we could field. I doubted if whatever hazards were still milling around Solomon Road could give him much pause.
Corazon and Morales were turned to walk the other way, following the flame, when his voice caught up to them. A closing message.
"Iffen you catch any bound words when you find'em, burn'em! Some secrets ain't worth learnin' fer all the hate they' cause, and a fair lot more are a fair sight worse than that."
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 28, 2013 10:04:25 GMT -8
I had a reasonable notion of what would happen next, Book. Call it a premonition, if you like.
They wouldn't walk too quickly. Even in the dark they looked too tired and tenderized to care past their own sore bruises and the nascent scars birthing under newborn scabs. If they'd never seen me they could have maybe kept running on adrenaline rails and blinders, hurrying forward without realizing they were going in circles. But stopping even for a moment kills that rush, and fatigue's poor substitute for fuel. Relief, too. Same as waking up in a dark tunnel and finding you're alive again, breathing stale air like it was a summer breeze coming off the ocean, and telling yourself that the best thing to do would be to sit and rest.
There was a philosophical point I was going to expound on here, Book, but it left a bad taste in my fingers before I could even figure out what it was. Swine shouldn't go around casting pearls beneath glass Houses and all that. Point is, those two young ladies were dead tired and saw an ending ahead them, close enough that they'd lost all motivation to see it. No more struggle to make the proverbial nature rise, no more chase, just following a torch fire like a trail of ants to a picnic basket.
The handler would be stuck in the office, not bothering them. They'd know what the girls knew, and if they were any good they'd be trying to figure out contingencies and responses and a thousand different solutions to nine hundred ninety nine problems that didn't exist and one they'd never imagine. Not trying judge, Book, and I can't say for sure that stumbling around looking for a sign is any better than trying to guess what all the signs say and bypass the seeing them part. One day I'll look up whether more people get rich through gambling and lotteries or by trying to start their own business empires. Next time I remember, Book. I'll write it down in whatever one of your descendants happens to be riding with me that day.
By now they should be at the grotto where you were born, Book, probably looking over the ledge at the tide scum and blood and twelve thirteenths of a body. There'd be marking up on that ledge, too, but they wouldn't be the sort they could deciphers. Maybe carved right into the cave walls, maybe written in dog-eared journals left open to pages and pictures and paroxysms of thought that were only relevant to eyes that would likely never need to see them again. Things he'd seen out of the corners of his eyes while living in the House. The House had secrets, Book, and when Grandpa Gamble first came to her a century ago he'd brought more still and asked her to hide them all. So she did, with the best cover I've yet seen.
No matter what you looked for in the House, she'd only show you what you least wanted to see. She was a stage magician of regret, the Gamble House: she could pull it out of anything. Brothers knocked on locked doors and saw how they'd stabbed each other in the back. Mothers saw sweat-stained sheets and saw how they'd mistreated their sons. Neighbors saw trash piling up and leaves bowing across the yard and saw how they'd failed each other. It's in our natures to put our failures behind us and move on, Book. The House just didn't happen to cleave very cleanly to anything natural.
That wasn't pearl waxing, Book. That was leading up to the central question: what did he see that hurt so bad he had to cut his blamed head off? That'd be what's in those scribbles he'd have made, night after day after night, long after whatever light he'd brought with him had died of the same fatigue that should have claimed him. Not enough food -- there's never enough unless you can make your own, and the cave was far from fallow farmland. The hunger pangs would have kept him awake. Later the slower, toxic, acidwash feeling of his body digesting itself from the inside out would sharpen his vision, quicken his fingers. It would be the sloppy scratches of the sickly scribner, thick heavy hackjobs, but it wasn't meant to be seen by others. So long as it came out, Book. The septic emesis of the soul.
The girls, and their handler too, they wouldn't understand any of it. Not at first. They'd see how they failed their teammate, maybe, but they wouldn't catch the how or why. They'd circle the body like I did and see something totally different, put together guesses about cabin fever or post-traumatic stress or just the general malaise of the Island. They'd see the bloodstains that I'd left there before and wonder where they'd come from, but conclude that it couldn't have been their guy that made them. They'd wonder what to do with the body, what they could do that might show a spark of rightness when it was too late to matter. But then they'd step outside, breathe the Scar, and know there was no way they could carry him out in one piece.
If they were human they'd at least cover the body and say a few words, make it look as respectable as they could. The birds would do the rest, take back the pound of flesh they were owed with an unwholesome combination of interest and relish. Then they, the girls, would make a beeline for back home and the relative comforts of strained sanity and civilian stresses. They'd probably promise to come back at some point, investigate the House more. See what had happened to their man.
Risk falling into the same trap.
I let that happen once, Book, and I can hear the House laughing about it even now. Never again, Book. For the same reason I can't just let any records of the place walk out with me. The drone's probably recording, and will until the end, catch us taking your words and shoving them so far down that bitch's throat that she chokes on it.
I hate to do this to you, Book, I truly do. It's been an awful night and you've been nothing but loyal through the all of it. But you wouldn't want to live with yourself if it meant someone else dying down in here.
Take it from experience.
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