WnW 4.26

Seeing Alek again made all the resentment and anger I’d felt when he had abandoned us to the Arachknights come rushing back. I struggled to rise, baring my teeth as I pushed against his weight.

He slammed me back down, his expression a reflection of my own. “You’ve gotten lazy, cyka. I saw through that disguise in an instant. You don’t even look like him.”

“F-fuck you, Alek,” I coughed, feeling his grip tighten around my windpipe.

“So who is talking right now, is this Helen? Or is this whichever poor sap she got to be the body for her mask?”

“What?”

Alek tightened his grip, the tendons popping in his knuckles. “Tell me. I want to speak with her.”

My vision was getting hazy. Antlers erupted from my neck, spiking into Alek’s hand. Instead of releasing me, he lifted me up and slammed me down again.

Not good.

“Cyka blyat that stings.” Alek’s warm blood dripped onto my neck and the heat under my skin immediately lapped it up. He examined the spikes that had punctured through his hand. “I don’t know a Cast with this power. Fucking porcupine. What is Helen planning?”

“Helen has nothing to do with this,” I said.

“Helen has everything to do with this,” he replied fervently.

Enough. I let the fire out and started to assimilate Alek’s hand. He reacted quickly and yanked his hand away. Bits of flesh ripped, leaving strange tendril-like wounds on the back of his fingers.

Alek stared in shock at his hand. “A Wolf?”

I sucked in a full breath and picked myself off the ground. “Oh, we are not doing this again. You know me. Stop pretending.”

He shook his head and backed away a step.

I looked at him in disbelief. “Seriously? Are you an amnesiac?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Maybe that will jog your memory?” I said, pointing at his hand. “I did something similar to Spike when we last met, but I really wanted to do it to you.”

Alek frowned. “Spike?” he asked. “But I…” Something shifted in his expression. He had just realized something. “Oh.”

“There we go,” I said bitterly. “Not that I care, but are you betraying Sullivan? Trying your luck with the Jiezhi instead? I could understand you throwing me to the wolves, but the people in Sullivan’s Ring that you’ve known for so much longer? Are we all just expendable to you?”

Alek said nothing for a moment. Just when I thought he might signal the attention of the other Jiezhi, he spoke, “You physically Shaped your face to look like Zǐruì. So… you’re not working for Helen.”

“Me?” I asked incredulously. “Helen’s been fucking with me since day one of joining the Rings.”

Alek started to pace back and forth. He tapped his hand against his leg with nervous energy. Suddenly my conversation with the Goblin came to mind. A Wolf without his Witch will descend into madness. 

“Were you telling the truth about not knowing where she is?” I asked in a softer voice.

“I have no idea,” Alek said, his voice growing hoarse.

I clasped my hands together. “Then please, work with me. We can figure this out together. But it starts with stopping the Jiezhi from starting a war. I don’t know how, but it’s all connected. Helen is manipulating the Rings into doing something. She’s been distributing Dice which means she’s working with Organ.”

Alek halted his pacing. His face flickered with fear. “I… I can’t risk telling you anything. Helen is smart. Way smarter than I am. She would pull this double mindfuck shit on me… She’s going to do worse.”

I glanced nervously towards the printers. More and more of them were whirring to life. The voices of the Jiezhi were getting closer.

“Listen. Everyone in this fucking city is being used by Organ. The Jiezhi and Fedyaevs think they’ll have a sweeping victory. The other Rings will believe it too and turn to desperate measures to retaliate. Organ wants a bloodbath and I’ve been promised immunity if I help them. I can’t risk losing that.”

“The Fedyaevs?” I asked, dumbfounded. That was the other Ring with ties to a much larger criminal organization: The Fedyaev Empire, a Russian-based syndicate. “What do you mean immunity? From what?”

“The coming storm. I may be the only one left after the dust has settled.” He put his hands on his head. “I want so badly to talk to Helen. But that’s what she wants. So I have to resist.”

I thought about what it meant for two giant crime organizations to combine their resources on one middling city, with all the guns they could want at their disposal. “The Fedyaev and the Jiezhi are going to wipe out the other Rings.”

Alek laughed bitterly. “They’re going to try.”

“I don’t get it. Why is Organ doing this?”

Alek shook his head emphatically. “Don’t know and don’t care. I just want out.”

My anger towards the man burned away my remaining sympathy for him. He only ever was thinking about himself.

A spiteful thought crossed my mind. Why not? I let my armour spill out of my skin, wrapping around my body. 

Alek fell back into a defensive stance at the sound of cracking branches of bone.

“Thanks for the info,” I said, tensing my muscles while building a Locust Leg. “Helen sends her regards.”

Alek looked lost for a moment. Then every muscle in his face seemed to contract at once. He leapt at me, fingers reaching out to seize my flesh and tear it apart.

But I was ready. I seized his wrists and spun with the force of his approach. Then I brought my Shaped leg up to his chest.

“Careful with the merchandise!” I crowed before releasing the Locust Leg. Alek was sent careening into the machine, smashing into it and sending pieces of plastic and metal flying everywhere.

The force of the kick flipped me onto my back and I scrambled back to my feet to Shape my legs once more. My eyes found the skylight above. There’s my escape hatch. Glancing toward Alek, I saw him clumsily trying to rise from the wreckage, slipping on a round loose component. More pressure. I layered on chitin and improved the lattice of bone support around the Shape. Alek roared as he got to his feet and spotted me. Members of the Jiezhi were approaching us. A bullet cracked across the concrete beside me. A little more. Alek lunged towards me, murder in his eyes. Now.

I flew towards the skylight. Funnily enough this wasn’t my first time crashing through one. And with my preparation, my armour didn’t break as the window did. Shards of glass flew into the night air, sparkling in the moonlight. Bullets chased me out through the window, but I’d already landed on the roof and readied my Shape again. This time, I aimed for the building across the road. A few long moments of building pressure, with the distressed shouting of the Jiezhi below me and I was ready. I launched into a high arc over the road. The city’s skyline rose to meet me, with the looming shadow of the ‘sill’ just behind it, crowned by the moon. I laughed as wind whistled pleasingly through the slits in my armour.

Then I landed on the roof of the building. I crashed down, skidding and rolling to a stop, bits of bone breaking loose. I could feel Nell’s excitement mingle with my own. That was cathartic.

I made my way down to ground level, keeping a watchful eye on the Jiezhi’s meeting point. The shouts of alarm were echoing across the construction site. The crows were no longer roosting in the one building and instead filled the sky with a tapestry of moving shadows.

Suddenly, I realized that my phone was buzzing in my pocket and probably had been for some time.

I answered it. “I’m out. Let’s get going, the Jiezhi know we’re here now.”

Graham’s voice responded. “Good work, but be careful, Nick.”

It was hard to hear him over the noise of the crows and the wind whipping across the packed dirt roads.

“Why?”

“The Crowman woke up while we were distracted. He escaped.”

My blood ran cold. I passed around the side of the massive treads of a crane. Tens of beady black eyes watched me from atop it.

“How did he escape?!”

“He jumped. We looked for him, but he’s gone.”

I went quiet.

“Nick?” Graham called out through the speaker. “Are you still there?”

A single crow had landed in front of me, wings flared to the sides. It craned its neck, contorting itself like it was trying to vomit something up. And then it did. A single word, mangled by inhuman vocal cords but unmistakable.

“Niick-ck.”

It was time to go. 

I absorbed my armour back into my body and turned around.

A man was walking towards me, dragging his broken leg behind him. He used a plank of wood as a crutch. Crows flapped at his shoulders, talons digging into his flesh, as if trying to lift his burden by even a fraction of a pound. 

The Crowman saw me and stopped, in utter disbelief at what he was seeing.

I, his doppelganger, stared back at him.

His hand crept seemingly instinctually up to touch his own face. There was a moment of silence before he screamed, raw and unfiltered.

The black-feathered birds descended on him at the sound, as if desperate to silence it. They pecked at his face and he joined them, digging his fingernails into his own flesh. The last thing I saw before his head was entirely obscured by flapping wings and sharp claws was a single eye, full to the brim with vengeance, like it could see nothing else.

I turned and ran. The crows flew with me, sounding out my name with their newly found voices.

Niiiiick-ck-ck. Ck-niiick.

Eventually, the sound of the murder faded out and I could finally breathe easy. Within the hour, I managed to rendezvous with the rest of the crew.

“Good work, Nick,” Graham said, meeting my eyes momentarily, before looking away in discomfort. “Sullivan is impressed with our work. We’ve bought ourselves some time and Sullivan will make good use of it to communicate with the other Rings about our common enemy. We can rest easy for a few days.”

Nell pulsed with concern. “Is everything okay?” she asked me.

“Yeah,” I said even though my heart was still pounding. “It’s nothing.”

She frowned, detecting my obvious lie.

I breathed in and let the tension flow out of my shoulders. “The only thing you need to worry about is the borrowing limit of the next library we go to.”

She smiled. “Let me fix your face first. AJ almost crapped himself when he saw you running towards us.”

“Did not!”