Chapter 27

  Eric Walker

  Eric was exploring the boundaries of yet another gaping chasm on the surface of his moon when the red-text god messaged him.

  AK: Hi >;)

  “Think I should talk to the Burning God?” he asked Kate through his headset.

  Her voice came back with a faint crackle because something down below interrupted communications and it produced a discernible effect even on the surface if they were near a big hole. A Long Fall, as Jacob called them. “W-well,” she said, “y-you have red te-text too.” Which wasn’t any kind of actual answer, but ok. He could just barely see her over on the other side of the dark abyss, maybe a mile away. Her dress of literal sky was conspicuously bright against the drab ruins of Pyrrhus. They were in the vast brick warren of the ghetto neighborhood part of his city.

  “How’d it go with Isaac?” he asked as he picked a sinuous path through the ruins on the laserbike.

  “It was soooo awkward,” she said. “And w-w-we haven’t ta-t-talked since. B-but I think it’s just b-because he g-got distracted by s-s-ssssomething.”

  She was right about that. Something had Isaac’s full attention at the moment, which was interesting all by itself. Isaac’s reluctance to tell Eric exactly what it was only fueled Eric’s curiosity. Isaac wasn’t the secret-mission type. But he was changing, maybe more than any of them. Eric’s only clue was that Jimothy had been asked to locate someone, and had failed.

  EW: yo

  AK: I’ve been curious, why do you have red text?

  EW: no reason we just like randomly picked our colors for this stupid game

  AK: A game?

  EW: actually i picked red because leah said so

  AK: Who?

  EW: my little sister

  EW: adopted actually

  AK: Adopted? What does that mean?

  EW: means shes not really my sister like biologically

  AK: So...huh?

  EW: actually why the fuck do you care

  AK: !

  AK: You’re right!

  AK: I DON’T care.

  AK: But tell me about this game.

  EW: for fucks sake

  EW: talk to isaac about that hes the one that likes talking about games

  AK: I will.

  EW: well you got your answer now

  EW: happy?

  AK: I’m ALWAYS happy.

  AK: ^_^

  AK: Look, see?

  AK: It’s me, smiling!

  AK: I’m going to kill you all ^_^

  EW: still on that?

  EW: didnt your princess tell you to lay off or whatever?

  AK: She was never MY princess.

  AK: I’m from the Shogunate.

  AK: And I was a clan heir :)

  EW: good for you

  EW: we done here?

  AK: You gonna bond your angel to something?

  EW: what

  AK: What, you need me to speak slower?

  AK: Are

  AK: You

  AK: Going

  AK: To

  EW: shut the fuck up

  AK: Ha ha! You sound like Jeronimy

  EW: dont compare me to that guy

  EW: i am chill as you can see

  EW: whereas he is like some fucking rabid lunatic

  EW: just nonstop pitching a goddam fit

  EW: and what would i bond my angel to anyway?

  AK: Well apparently you can bond it to pretty much anything.

  AK: Everyone here besides me bonded their angels to themselves, but that was a last resort sort of thing.

  EW: they bonded to their own angels?

  EW: sounds weird man

  AK: Not much choice.

  AK: I didn’t ‘cause my angel was dead.

  EW: woah they can die?

  AK: Of course they can die!

  EW: i mean it doesnt seem real easy

  EW: to kill em

  AK: It’s not.

  AK: My angel was slain by a legendary beast!

  EW: sounds badass

  AK: Got that right!

  EW: oh i get it

  EW: so thats what you guys mean when you say that youre like animals

  EW: like youre a snake

  AK: Well, not really.

  AK: The animals thing happens when we fall.

  EW: fall?

  AK: From the sky. Like stars!

  AK: We don’t do that gross ‘birthing’ thing like animals.

  AK: Or like you.

  EW: it is pretty gross not gonna lie

  AK: Fiora said humans have this larval stage where they’re just useless for a few years.

  EW: true

  AK: But we daimon are functional as soon as we fall!

  AK: We can think and move and use our arda and even learn to talk.

  AK: Though we still start out tiny and weak.

  EW: what does this have to do with the animals

  AK: I’m getting there! Tash, I thought you were supposed to be ‘chill’

  AK: Pretty much the first thing any newfallen does is bond to some creature.

  AK: They gain some of the traits of that creature. Like if you fall in the ocean you probably bond to a fish or something, and then you get gills.

  AK: Hopefully.

  AK: And usually the type of creature we bonded to will see us as one of them and take care of us.

  AK: Lots of newfallen don’t survive, of course. Infernus is a rough place!

  EW: so you bonded to a snake

  AK: A viper!

  AK: A speckled highland pacer, to be specific ;)

  EW: so you just fuckin lived with snakes as a kid?

  AK: Yep!

  EW: damn thats hardcore

  AK: Hells yeah!

  AK: Until I got taken in by the clan.

  EW: so you were already bonded to animals or whatever

  EW: and then you all bonded again to your angels

  AK: All but me!

  AK: ‘Cause mine died.

  AK: Jeronimy too.

  EW: what about him?

  AK: His angel got bonded to Black.

  EW: what you mean good ol fucking killed-my-best-friend abe?

  AK: That’s the one.

  EW: huh

  EW: as fascinating as all this useless information is

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  EW: also as weirdly informative as youre being for someone who wants to fucking kill us

  EW: i gotta go

  AK: Hey, you’re all right.

  AK: Not like that really short human.

  AK: Not sorry about what’s going to happen to her by the way >;)

  Eric cut the connection. He had found something interesting. “Kate, get over here and take a look at this,” he said into his headset.

  “R-r-roger!”

  He had rolled the laserbike into a broad square plaza lined with skeletal, angular trees. There in the middle, among the dusty stone benches and dry cracked dirt, something glowed atop a squat stone pedestal. It shone with a dull reddish light. And it looked…

  He got closer, inching the laserbike through the dust, trusting it to alert him if that thing was radioactive or some shit. There were no alerts, no alarms. When he neared the pedestal, he could easily make out the shape of the thing upon it. It was an ‘S’ shape, but a very specific ‘S’ shape with a line through it and two dots on either side. It was the size of both of his hands together, made of some silvery material that seemed to flow as though liquid while the dal segno kept its shape. It pulsed with a slow, red light.

  Kate began to say something else, but a wave of vertigo crashed over him. Disoriented, his cheek smarting as though slapped, he fell to the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard. Everything faded to black; something shook him…

  A pale freckled face, topped with carrot-red hair. Such a face didn’t seem as though it was meant to be badass. And yet…

  “McFinn?” Eric blinked, groggy, head swimming. His cheek hurt, he slowly realized, because he had been slapped. “Wha…?”

  “Wake up, Mr. Walker,” said McFinn, his voice a low whisper. “And keep it down.” End cape it dune. That fucking accent. But Eric could read his tone of voice well enough. Things were serious here.

  He propped himself up on his elbows and tried to order his thoughts. He and McFinn and Heidi were between a plaster wall and a white counter. Heidi lay nearby with the red welt of a slap mark on her face, still fast asleep. McFinn shook her quietly to no effect.

  “What’s…the problem?” said Eric, making sure to cape it dune.

  “He found us,” said McFinn. He gave up on Heidi with a look of vexation. “Got some backup, too.” Then, muttering to himself, “Where’d they come from, he wondered? If he only knew…”

  Eric noticed something he had missed before: that McFinn lacked two fingers on his left hand. The wound looked odd; the finger stumps were not smooth or rounded, but jagged like broken glass. And it was bleeding. “Who?” he asked.

  “October Industries,” said McFinn. He crouched up, peeked over the countertop. “Ezekiel.”

  “Aren’t you like some fuckin Lex Luthor or some shit? Can’t you just blow them away?”

  McFinn glanced down at him, annoyed. “Lex Luthor is selfish. He uses his intellect only to—”

  “Come on man, forget about Lex Luthor! What’s all this?” Eric waved a hand at McFinn’s belt, arm bracers, heavy boots, staff, and cross-chest bandolier of what looked like little black cassette tapes. Maybe Kate had been exaggerating, but she had implied more than once that her uncle, just in his regular everyday getup, was loaded up with firepower equivalent to a busload of special forces operatives. Of course, it was all future techno shit several decades ahead of the rest of the world.

  McFinn ticked off numbers on his fingers. “I’d like to conserve resources, I am only vaguely aware of their capabilities, I have two teenagers to take care of, one of them unconscious, and finally, Mr. Walker,” (this was the thumb), “engaging hostiles is not priority. We need to get Earthside.”

  “Fine, sure. Where do we go?”

  McFinn smirked, and damn he had an annoying smirk. “Wrong question, Walker.”

  He made ready to leave, but a thought struck Eric. “Wait,” he said. “You been wandering around here?”

  McFinn nodded, impatient.

  “Seen a library?” asked Eric.

  “Library? Yes. Of a sort.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It was…flooded. Wet. We’ve no time for reading, Mr. Walker.”

  Eric whipped out his phone. It actually felt a little weird to use a phone again after talking on a headset all this time. They were all there in CHIME: eight mysterious contacts with garbled names and nonsense symbols for their phone numbers. “I might be able to get us some backup,” he said. “Let’s go, I can type on the way.”

  McFinn shouldered Heidi and crept along the counter until they were out in the open. It looked like the foyer of some fancy new-age art gallery. Non-representational paintings on glaringly bright walls, architect on hallucinogens, etc. Eric didn’t see anyone else, the people McFinn was worried about. But he kept a lookout as he followed the mad scientist. He knew what he was looking for: orange and grey.

  And speaking of colors, which of the gods might be willing to come help? He had a feeling the burning god would love a fight, but also that she wouldn’t discriminate as to who exactly she fought. The frozen god also seemed like a stone-cold badass, but he doubted she would come to help. Who else? Orange god: no. Green god: definitely not.

  What about the boss god? The absolute unit whose outline loomed over the rest in Jim’s mural. Eric hadn’t spoken to him much, but he seemed friendly. Worth a shot.

  EW: yo

  EW: thunder guy

  RA: AHA!

  RA: WELL HELLO THERE, HERO OF TIME!

  EW: yeah hey listen

  EW: im in the museum with heidi and this other human

  EW: we might need some help

  RA: THE MUSEUM?

  RA: WE ARE ALSO IN THE MUSEUM

  EW: yeah i know

  “Oh,” said McFinn. Eric, looking down at his phone, didn’t see whatever McFinn saw, but he sure as hell felt the force that flung him sideways and skidded him twenty feet across the shiny white tile. He barely kept hold of his phone. Something exploded nearby. Heat bathed Eric along one side; an invisible fist punched the breath from his lungs.

  Then, before he could even get his bearings, the ground dropped out from beneath him. A hand closed on his arm. “Hang on,” said McFinn.

  They fell into more of the same: weird art, high white walls, skylights and goofy-ass chandeliers. McFinn’s grip tightened on Eric’s arm as they swung down to ground level in a graceful swoop. McFinn hit the ground running, still with Heidi on his shoulder. He ducked around several corners, dropped a flat silver oval from his belt, and dragged Eric down a long dark hallway flickering with lights on the walls. They stopped a minute later, crouched in a room full of sculptures, their backs to a huge iron fish.

  “The good news,” McFinn whispered, “is that…” He paused. Then he left the sentence unfinished. He must have begun it on the assumption that he would think of something worth saying along the way. He gave Eric a look. “How’s your backup plan coming?”

  RA: WHERE ARE YOU, ERIC WALKER?

  RA: AND WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

  EW: being chased by bad guys

  EW: in some art gallery

  RA: BAD GUYS?

  EW: october industries, you know em?

  RA: I AM AFRAID NOT

  EW: well theyre trying to kill us

  EW: so any help would be just fine

  RA: I WILL SEE WHAT I CAN DO

  RA: BUT AS YOU ARE NO DOUBT AWARE, NAVIGATION IN THIS PLACE CAN PROVE VEXING

  “Maybe,” said Eric. “They have to find us first.”

  “Then we shouldn’t count on it,” McFinn replied.

  “Hello again, Riley McFinn,” said an unfamiliar voice. It came from the far side of the room. McFinn swore under his breath. Then he replied.

  “Ezekiel Starlight. That was a close one.”

  “It’s nothing personal, I guess,” said the other voice, closer now. “I’d just as soon not destroy a mind like yours. I bet she’d like you. If you weren’t obstructing us.”

  “Nothing personal? What is it, then?” McFinn was stalling for time. He handed Heidi to Eric as he spoke, then fiddled with some of the devices on his belt.

  “It’s about what we want,” Ezekiel replied. “What we all want.” The way he said ‘all’ hinted that he was not alone.

  “So tell me then,” said McFinn. “I’m curious. What do you all want? Why go to all this trouble?” McFinn took one of the cassette tapes from his chest, pushed two invisible buttons on its matte black surface. Green lights blinked on and shuttled around the edges.

  “We want the Museum, I guess. And you should too, McFinn. You should be on our side.”

  “The Museum?” McFinn handed the rectangle to Eric and pointed at the wall opposite, which was plain, barren, white. Eric looked from the glowing box, to the wall, to McFinn. He shrugged.

  “What we want is to not be characters anymore,” said Ezekiel Starlight. “We do not want to be pawns in an unending chain of creators and their creations. We wish to break free. To become masterless. To be like God, if you will permit such a dramatic turn of phrase. Not in power, or in knowledge, but in freedom. I guess that my name is written some place where it cannot be erased. And yours is no different. I want to burn those books. I want to choose my own name.” He paused, and when McFinn did not respond at once, he added, “Consider, McFinn. How much agency do you truly think you have? You could help us, I guess. What do you think?”

  McFinn was silent for a moment. He stared at the blank wall. Eric feared that he was actually considering Ezekiel’s offer. But then he barked a laugh. “Wrong question, Starlight,” he said. “The truth of your words is irrelevant. It’s impossible.” McFinn mimed throwing the black rectangle at the wall, then made an explosion with one hand.

  Ezekiel audibly sighed. “You occupy a precarious position atop the precipice of my patience, I guess.”

  McFinn removed an object from his belt and hooked it onto Eric’s ear. It clamped down almost painfully. Then he nodded at Eric and leaped from the cover of their statue. He at once became the nucleus of a brilliant maelstrom. Flashes and bizarre humming, mixed with actual gunfire, filled the room as McFinn whisked away in a blue hum. One statue exploded behind him; another melted. The floor trembled; the air became rank with acrid smoke.

  Eric chucked the black rectangle at the blank wall ahead of him and braced for an impact. He turned his body to shield Heidi, but there was no explosion. When he looked, a ragged hole had simply appeared, opening onto another exhibit. The edges were not burned, broken, or melted. A piece of the wall was just, simply, gone.

  Eric heaved Heidi over his shoulder, charged through the gap. He did not forget to speed himself up, stretching a difference of hundreds of bpms between his own heartbeat and those of everyone else in the room, McFinn and OI.

  The other side was a blank hallway, dim and white. Left, right, ahead. He chose a random direction and ran. McFinn could find him later; for now, he only had to get away. And he had no angel, no sword, no Jacob, no goon squad from Orpheus, no laserbike. Just the ability to alter the flow of time, and a damn heavy teenage girl over his shoulder.

  Someone wandered into his path, wearing an orange and gray backpack with otherwise ordinary street clothes. She was black, had dreadlocks, and surprised by his sudden appearance. She raised an arm with some mechanical augmentation attached; it fed into her backpack like some overly complicated leafblower. She was still raising that thing to aim it at Eric when he slowed her down. Her heartbeat: fucking larghissimo. He staggered past, and she was still barely turning to look when he rounded the next corner.

  He couldn’t run. Way too fucking slow with Heidi. He had to hide. This thought occurred to him as he passed a painting that occupied almost the entire wall to his right. It depicted a foggy, moonlit riverbank—blurry, impressionist. And he noticed, as he paused to consider his options, that he felt mist seeping out from that picture, along with a cool breeze.

  He knew at once that it was possible, because of course it fucking was, so he didn’t stop to think about it. He heaved Heidi into the painting and climbed in after her.

  The scent of wet grass and the mud of the river surrounded him. A distant quavering violin played a chill song. He felt strange; this was because his body and clothes had been rendered into bleary brush strokes. His hands were wet from the cool dew on the grass. Despite the urgency, the danger, he had to flex his hands, watch his impressionist fingers close, feel the cool paint. He fought down a wave of panic.

  Behind him, a huge rectangular window showed the art gallery. If he had been quicker, maybe he could have pulled Heidi behind a painted bush and hid. But he had hesitated, and so the agents from October Industries had time to reach the painting and take a look around—three of them now.

  He didn’t move. He was part of the painting, even though he was right out in the middle of it, just standing there. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

  But they did. One of them locked eyes with Eric. Eric stretched out the guy’s moment of confusion for long enough—just long enough—to jump out of the painting, grab the handgun from the middle guy’s hip holster, and…

  …hesitate. Because he couldn’t just shoot and kill three people. They were almost standing still compared to his tempo; they were swimming in honey. It would have been easy. But he couldn’t.

  He shot their gear instead, put a few slow bullets into those weird boxy backpacks that each of them wore looking like they were all set to bust some ghosts.

  Time snapped back as he dove into the painting, picked up Heidi, and hauled her along the foggy riverbank.

  Something bright crackled through the night. Eric saw it rendered in the air above him in a zig-zag series of heavy streaks of blue paint. Then it swept down and drove into him from the side, a sizzling hot whip of heat and force. He grunted, went numb, thought: The fuck is that?!

  He barely managed to keep his grip on the imaginary metronome, muscling it to an almost-standstill. Heidi drifted in the air, tumbling down the slope in slow motion. Eric aimed some random shots behind him; bullets left the gun at jogging-speed. They were just little blobs of brassy paint.

  Something exploded nearby as he plucked Heidi from the air. He watched the light swell, grainy and textured because it was a shockwave and a slow-moving painting at the same time. He tried to run, pulling Heidi’s dead weight, but he couldn’t outpace the explosion. It caught him, carried him, burned his back and made him lose his grip on both Heidi and the tempo.

  Maybe the problem, he thought, was that he had no music here. No headphones. It was a hundred times easier to do the time shit with music on.

  He snapped back into real time, heartbeat hammering. They had climbed into the painting after him; he heard their approach. He coughed. He tried to think. He had a gun. He could slow time. What would Heidi do? Well, she wouldn’t be in this mess because she would have just killed them already without hesitating.

  Fuck.

  He slowed it again, getting tired. Tired already? Well, he needed music for this. He slowed them down, the three OI agents; he pulled their heartbeats to a relative stop, and it was like hauling back three ropes at a time in a game of tug-of-war. He emerged from the bushes, in which every leaf was a single smear of dim bluish paint. There they were, the three OI goons. No Heidi in sight. Not on the riverbank, not on the path. She could be in the bushes somewhere. She could be in the fucking river. Could she drown? In a painting?

  He paused. He couldn’t hold those three for long. He didn’t have time. But he couldn’t just leave Heidi. Would they find her? Would they kill her?

  “Fuck,” he said. He aimed the gun carefully at the leg of the nearest OI agent and pulled the trigger.

  click

  The gun, a vague grayish stroke of paint in his vague blobby painted hand, was empty. He dropped it.

  They were speeding up again, turning to look at him. He had shot their gear; the backpack on one guy crawled with lines of electricity. But they still looked ready to throw down.

  He knew what Heidi would say, if she were somehow here watching this. Just run. One of us dead is better than both. And besides, these bodies were basically spares, right?

  He turned and fled out of the painting, stumbled awkwardly into the art gallery. There were more OI agents out there. But there were also more paintings. And on his own, he could be pretty damn quick.

  Later, when he had lost them, he traced his way back to the original painting and searched for Heidi. He didn’t find her.