Nothing is more torture than feeling like, despite everything that had happened between then and now, I was back at the beginning. Isolated in an empty room. There weren’t even windows this time. Nick was gone, I noticed the absence of him from the moment I had woken from a drug-induced slumber.
It had all happened so fast. I had only had a moment after waking up to respond. A man had taken a bite out of Nick’s arm and before I could retaliate, I’d been seized from behind.
Frustrated tears welled up. How could I have let this happen? I was supposed to be better. I had to be better, if I wanted to hold on to my new life. I shook my head. Don’t despair. Nick was alright, even though she couldn’t sense it, she knew.
He was likely on a witch hunt, hot on the trail. That brought a fragment of a smile back to me. Okay, so there’s hope still. Then I need to do my part.
I focused on my mind’s eye, the sensation that could not be categorized in any biology book, and felt the sparks of life around her, big and small. A garden for her to tend. I resisted the urge to reach out and Shape with wild abandon. No, I needed to be smart. So I sat and waited.
It was hell. Like I’d been ripped out of time and dragged back to the worst years of my life. The walls felt like they were squeezing down on my skull, threatening to crack it like a walnut. I returned to my old self, a flower, just existing, waiting for some unknown thing in the future, unable to make it happen myself. It was so heavy, the thick blanket of circular thoughts and bad memories.
It was likely that I would see her again before too long.
“Nell?”
I bolted to my feet, heart pounding. The old me was gone.
“Nick?” I called out, feeling how scratchy my throat felt.
“Nell?”
His voice was coming from just outside the door.
I pressed my hands against it. “Nick! I’m here! I can’t feel you.”
“Nell?” The cadence was the same as the others.
My hands dropped to my sides. Somehow it felt raw and numb at the same time.
“Nell?”
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed at the door.
A voice cackled and played the recording a few more times in rapid succession, cutting off the voice before it could finish each time.
Then the door swung open. I was about to lunge at the person but I halted when I saw who was on the other side.
They were human to my sixth sense, but to my eyes they were smooth, featureless and tall, so tall that they had to stoop to get through the door frame. I backed up. Their entire body was covered in a gray metallic fluid that shone with fractal patterns in the meagre light. The fluid shifted visibly as the human did. I had seen them before. This was her Wolf, her Phage to use their terms.
I knew it was pointless, but anger drove me to try and Shape them, to pick them apart like an insect. But my grip slipped off of them. They were resistant. Just as the Goblin had been. It was like every time I started to get a good hold, they would shift subtly, throwing me off.
“Did I strike a nerve?” a voice behind the metal being said mockingly. “You didn’t seriously think he had come to save you?”
The owner of the voice stepped out from behind their bodyguard. This wasn’t her. It was the woman that had been sitting across from us on the subway. Brown hair. A nose ring. She had a birth mark, purple skin that covered her chin and right cheek. They had an air of confidence about them. I would have thought they looked cool, like Kay and Bailey, if not for the sadistic grin they were wearing.
“Fuck. You,” I whispered.
“You should be grateful you’re even alive,” she said, standing rigidly still. “You were so annoying to catch. If it were up to me, I would’ve offed you in a second.”
I raised my chin. “You aren’t getting out of this,” I said. “Whatever it is you want, you won’t succeed. That’s my promise.”
“Oh? Does the little Witch think she can stop me? That’s cute.”
“You’ve made a terrible mistake.”
She snorted. “Please. You aren’t special. You can’t Shape me.” She stepped forward and the metallic being took a step between us. “And I know I won’t lose in a fistfight.”
“I know who you are, Helen,” I said evenly. “Now you’ve made the mistake of showing me what you look like. Your powers don’t work on me. Nick and I will hunt you down.”
“You’re never going to see him again,” Helen spat. Then her expression turned gleeful again, “Why don’t I show you what we’re working on?”
She strode away and the Wolf moved to the side, raising an arm as they tilted their blank slate of a head towards me, as if to say after you.
I reluctantly stepped out of the room and into a bare apartment. There was a fridge in the otherwise empty kitchen, with its doors hanging ajar. In the living room, a couch was covered in holes that seemed to have been made by mice that I could currently sense hunkered down inside the walls.
We exited out the front door and I craned my neck upward. This was the inner courtyard of an apartment complex and I could see what lay above the four walls of stacked apartments, facing each other in a square. The edge of a cliff towered overhead, blocking out the evening sunlight. We were deep in the Oldtown, up near the face of the cliff that was the Sill.
Then with a cold chill, I felt it. My eyes lowered to the courtyard below.
No. Not again.
My breath hitched. Bile rose in my throat. It looked different from mine, but the purpose was unmistakable. A pillar made of three distorted humans. They were stretched like taffy to several times their regular height. Their legs split into many roots, entrenching into the dirt of the plaza garden. From the heads of the humans grew strange silvery discs, like satellite dishes.
It was a new Tree.
Other small pieces of technology were grafted onto the tree’s foliage, creating straight, spiky branches that looked more like antennae, made from equal parts flesh and metal. There were wires that trailed off from the Tree to generators set up around the plaza.
Standing beneath the Tree was her. Hate bubbled up in my throat, pure and distilled. She still wore those stupid pajamas along with her apathetic piercing cold gaze. I tried to pluck her limbs from her body like petals off a dandelion. The frustration that welled up inside me when I found no purchase was overwhelming.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite the reaction O-3. Your emotion is getting the better of you. You should know that an Ortum cannot influence other Ortums. It’s quite the interesting mechanism. Like how a computer user cannot change another user without admin privilege. Perhaps we are not the administrators, but that leads to the question: Who is?”
She gestured to the Tree. “As you can see, we’ve made excellent progress on this one. With luck we will find answers sooner than we thought.”
Besides her, her Wolf, and Helen, there was one other person here. Sitting cross-legged beneath the Tree was a young boy. He stared at me with empty eyes and Nell felt revulsion. He was just like I had been. I longed to take him and pull him out of this hell, but he too could not be grasped. A Witch. An Ortum.
I pushed my emotions back down and faced her down with clear eyes. “Is that the purpose of the Tree? To search for a higher power?”
“I would consider it as more of a bridge.” She noticed me looking at the boy. “Ortum-7 is quite powerful. Had I been examining the data less closely, I would have said that he will produce greater results than you, O-3.”
I glared at her then made eye contact with the boy. “That’s not who I am. And that isn’t who you are either.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really care what you want to call yourself. It’s easiest to use sequential naming when running tests.”
“You’ve run through a lot of Witches since I left.”
“Yes. It’s been unfortunate that none of the Ortums have lived up to your results. The boy is strong, but I’ve noticed that males get weaker results from the Beacon than females. An intriguing and yet unexplained data point.”
I could taste the animosity dripping from my mouth. “That’s all people are to you. Data points. Interesting results. Objects.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t have time to engage in a discussion on moral relativism with you.”
“Fuck you. I’m done with this. I’m going to tear your entire plan down.”
She examined me with curiosity. “I’m taken aback by how talkative you are now. I didn’t expect such a shift from just gaining a Phage.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“We both know that’s not true. I raised you. I watched you develop your abilities from an early childhood. I’m practically your mother.”
Those words stung deep in my heart. “I’m going to tear this Tree to pieces,” I growled.
“Please do.”
I paused.
“The moment you Shape the Beacon it will begin transmitting your emotion. That’s why I brought you here. We need your special touch to kickstart the Beacon into action.”
The full implications of that sunk in.
“Why are you doing this? You’ll sink the whole city into madness.”
“I’m aware,” she responded, perfectly apathetic.
“And if I refuse?”
“You’ll be taken away. Likely, you will end up being used as a bargaining chip with one of the patrons of Organ, who will bring you to a scientist inferior to myself, to be dissected or experimented upon. The Sillwood plan will continue, only slower.”
And I will never see Nick again. I couldn’t think of a worse fate. But I didn’t lose hope. How could I? I had met so many people who stayed strong against their own nightmarish realities. I knew that everyone had the strength to fight back.
An idea sprung to mind and I let myself smile. “Once I activate the Beacon, Nick will know where I am. He’ll come.”
Helen laughed cruelly. “What can one Wolf going to do against us? He’ll be torn to shreds.”
“He’s beat you before,” I taunted.
For the first time in the conversation, her face showed anger. “A catastrophic failure of my subordinates to deal with things logically and efficiently. It will not happen again.”
“We’ll see,” I said. Time to act. Before these bastards can prepare.
I reached out and Shaped the Beacon.
From the moment I brushed against the Tree’s form, it felt like my emotions were ripped out of me by force. Once again, the emotion that was strongest, burning at the front of my mind, was anger. A hateful, bitter anger that poured out endlessly and indiscriminately. The Tree shifted, growing silver leaves and green limbs. It stretched towards the sky, reaching for the unknown. And then it let loose the first pulse.
I could feel my animosity washing over Sillwood. It was awful, people would die, but a part of me just didn’t care.
—
Nick
I stepped out of the car and ran towards the University. People were shouting and screaming inside.
Then an invisible wave slammed into me, bringing me to my knees. Anger flooded my senses, turning the sky red. In an instant, Nell was beating against my head, practically shouting in my ears. Antlers erupted from my back, twisting to and fro in the air.
Then silence, the whole city losing their voice, reeling at the Tree’s introduction.
There. My head snapped towards the source, towards the sill of Sillwood.
“Nell,” I whispered. “I’ll be there soon.”