I walked towards the apartment entrance alone. Every step felt final, punctuated by the waves of anger that screamed out every window of the looming grey brick tower. The orbs in the sky were like the eyes of a giant, hungrily leaning ever closer.
The whole world felt alive, but not in the natural sense, not like lying in a meadow and feeling the wind and grass all move in harmony. This was like being elbow deep in a person’s flesh. Everything strained to breathe, like the motion was just withheld from my sight, hoping I wouldn’t see the movement. The redness of the sky bled into every surface and when I paid attention to this, the colours slid away like they weren’t really there. Scents crept past my senses and left just the notion of something foul rotting nearby. The worst part was that I felt like I was a part of this scene. I had been exposed to the Tree for too long. Every nerve had been washed by the waves until it was raw.
My hand settled on the doorknob. I stared at it. This close to Nell and I still couldn’t feel her directly, only through the Tree. It wasn’t the same as our connection, it didn’t feel personal. Or maybe it felt so personal that I couldn’t properly address it without talking to her face to face.
My breathing settled and I tightened my grip on the doorknob. Determination found me without much effort on my own part. Nothing would be solved by standing here. This had to be done.
The door swung open easily, like my arrival was expected. The hallway on the other side, painted a dull red, lain bare like a throat. Air rushed to pass through the newly opened entrance, bringing a familiar awful scent. I could smell the Tree.
My armour twitched as I strode forward, responding to my heightened emotion. Normally I held the Shape, but this time I let my grip loosen on the form. The result was the same breaking of branches sound that usually signaled the formation of my armour, but this time it crackled endlessly, punctuated with every step I took.
Wickerman? I could be the Wickerman. A bogeyman who wouldn’t die. A constant thorn in the side of Organ. I let anger, my anger not the Tree’s, flow through my whole body, into my armour, letting it emanate as a response to the Tree. Perhaps they would feel it and shiver.
The end of the hallway came as I was quietly burning inside.
I entered an open space filled with ten or so people I did not recognize. They stared at me intently.
When no one spoke, I took the time to examine my surroundings. I avoided looking at the most striking entity in the room, the thing that I could feel pumping emotion into every corner of this space and instead my eyes roamed upwards. The interior of the building was an open grassy courtyard, surrounded on all sides by balcony style hallways leading to each apartment. The walls and balcony railings were covered in long scratches of missing paint. The unbroken windows that remained were clouded with dust. Vines grew along supporting pillars, reaching towards the open roof. Perhaps when the Old Town was still occupied there had been a glass roof to keep the elements at bay, but now there were only metal beams criss-crossing over the vermillion sky.
Finally, I looked at the Tree. The previous version of the Beacon at Cathrow had been a mess of transplanted limbs, fused together like grafts on a tree. This one was more ordered but no less horrifying. The trunk had once been human, perhaps several melded together, the ridges of ribs stood out in relief on the trunk. Vestigial hands hung like withered leaves. Where the head should be, branches grew out, multiplying and twisting together with shiny new silver antennae. Wires supported these grafted antennae and broadcasting dishes, although no interfaces to work them were apparent. Actual leaves sprung from veins that ran along the dishes surface and had taken on this metallic appearance, while wires were green and mossy. An unholy merger that seemed to indicate the Tree’s ability to broadcast human emotion.
While it didn’t move like the last Tree had, it was undoubtedly alive. It pulsed like a beating heart and I could faintly hear a noise akin to the whine of a thousand mosquitos emanating from it.
I scanned everywhere again, more frantically this time. No sign of Nell.
And so my attention moved coldly back to the people in the room. They weren’t anything unusual. Most wore casual clothing while a few had business attire on. Their expressions were an identical neutral as they stood around the Tree.
My voice felt hollow, “Organ, I presume?”
Two of them spoke at once, discordant in the tempo of their speech, “A piece of it.”
Another offered a false smile before speaking alone, “You will have to forgive the theatrics. A necessary countermeasure.”
“Why?” I asked bitterly. “Why cause this much suffering?”
Three others spoke, their sentences overlapping at different points, making them difficult to understand, “We work against time. Humanity nears a breaking point, a crescendo reaching its finale. Knowledge of what’s to come is vital as it will let us Shape the coming new world in a way that favors us. The suffering now is important so that extinction is not in our collective future.”
“It’s indiscriminate!” I shouted. “An entire city razed to the ground. What knowledge could you possibly gain from that?!”
Their expressions remained impassive. “Even a single glimpse beyond the veil is worth a thousand cities. Your response proves that you have no understanding of how important our work is.”
I let my head loll back, looking to the open ceiling and the cliff above. I imagined the rocks coming crashing down on all of our heads. “You’re right. I don’t understand. And I don’t care to. You’re all going to suffer here like we did. Goals unfulfilled.”
Irritation showed on each face, all in the same way despite how varied human expressions could be. A tell, I realized. I understood the nature of what was happening.
They spoke in unison now, their voices amplifying from the perfect harmony. “I hope you understand that we can pull you apart like a child pulls legs off an insect.”
My breathing hitched, but they didn’t capitalize on the threat. “You can’t,” I wagered. “Nell is protecting me.”
“Nell is preoccupied with the Beacon. She can’t lift a finger, let alone Shape anything else.”
“You’re lying. Stalling for time.”
A ripple of shrugs. “I’ve accounted for this scenario. I’m aware of the presence of H.E.S.P. agents. A conflict will only heighten the Beacon’s power. You aren’t doing anything here but throwing yourself onto the fire.”
“You won’t get the outcome you want!” I fed my courage with brave words. “I take it that the Witch who raised Nell is here? I met you back at Cathrow.”
One of the people turned slightly and in that moment, every person became her. The Witch who Nell hated with all her heart. The one she wanted dead.
A grim smile tightened my lips as my heart quickened. “You’re going to die,” I declared. “My Witch demands it.”
Her spectacled face tilted, unbothered by my threat, she looked more curious than anything. “Do you know why that is?” she asked. When I didn’t respond she continued, “Do you think it’s because I isolated her? Took away her freedom? She didn’t want to be free. Do you think it’s because she disagrees with my methods? She never cared for any of that. Do you think it’s because I made her hurt people? No. She hates me because I’m the only one who really knows her. I was there at her genesis, when she first awoke to her powers as a Witch. And she would do anything to erase that fact.”
The sound of footsteps came from the floors above. Movement flitted across a window in an apartment. Of course they had prepared for an attack. But I wasn’t alone.
One cue, the standoff broke to the sound of windows on the exterior of the building all across the apartment complex shattering. Silenced gunfire pattered out, followed by shouts of alarm. Bursts of light flashed from behind closed blinds. A Ring with some sort of Shape was thrown through a window, landing on the half-wall overlooking the courtyard, face bloodied.
At that moment, I was seized by a Witch’s power. Invisible fingers pinned me to the spot and began to sift through my internals. I gasped as I felt organs being squeezed to the point that it felt like they could pop. They were Shaping me, but I was prepared for this. I fought back, asserting not just my armour but my entire body’s Shape. The Witch sought purchase and found that progress was slow. But it was still progress. Tendons creaked. My fingernails began to peel back as they focused on my extremities.
Two flashbangs landed in the grass in front of me and the Witch’s influence withdrew as the people in the courtyard fell back to the far walls, some taking cover behind the Tree.
I Shaped Locust Legs and leaped away, up to the first balcony. A man with Ring tattoos and dull green claws was there to greet me with swiping slashes. I ignored the attack and leaned in close to cup his neck. Claws bit into my armour but didn’t reach skin. I hauled him down and past me, slamming his neck onto the railing so he was forced to look down at the courtyard. The flashbangs went off, blanching the walls white for a moment and I let the man collapse, writhing as he held clawed hands to his face.
Seeing motion in a darkened apartment through the open door, I stepped inside.
My blood ran cold. A soldier stood barely visible in the darkness. They had their gun trained on Nell. Her face was plastered with her sweaty hair, her big eyes wide with fear. She saw me and mouthed help.
I had the soldier pinned against the wall before I could remember even moving. My branches pierced their arm.
“Idiot,” I hissed, the Tree pounding against my head, tempting me to hurt them further. “That’s who we’re here for! That’s my Witch!”
The soldier’s eyes darted between me and Nell. Their eyes behind the mask were screwed up in pain. “No,” they gasped.
“Yes-” I started. Then the thought I’d been ignoring in the heat of the moment became a whole lot louder. Something cold slid into a gap in my armour and into my side. I released the soldier, twisting as the knife slid out and then in again. Nell was stabbing me with a gleeful look on her face.
I seized her wrist. She pulled free, wrenching the knife out again with strength I didn’t realize she had. As the knife plunged down again, I reached out and caught her wrist. Little discrepancies finally started to show themselves. This wasn’t the frame of Nell. The bicep was too large. The height wasn’t quite right. I pulled flesh, the fragments of memory coming fast and the glimpses I received confirmed it. I shut my eyes and attacked, ripping into the man with spiny branches, dosing him several times with datura. He spun away and fell to his knees, twitching.
Turning back, I saw that the soldier was nursing their bleeding arm. My lips were dry. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“Continue the mission,” they responded coldly.
I nodded, turning to the window the soldier had breached through. I paused, foot on the windowsill. “Don’t trust anyone without a mask,” I said, “including me.”
“Of course.”
That split second moment where I believed I’d been betrayed had my heart aching. Why haven’t you shown yourself to me?
I swung out, grasping the outer edge of the window, catching the points of my armored feet into the gaps in the brick exterior of the building. A lattice of bone Shaped upwards through the brick and the vines creeping up the side of the building, weaving into a solid climbing wall, with protrusions to hold onto. I climbed up to the third floor window. This one was unbroken. I tested it and found it was unlatched. Quietly, I slid it open and found the barrel of a gun pointed at me.
“Come inside slowly,” a gruff voice whispered from the dark room.
I nodded. The gun followed me as I lifted myself into the room. The masks of three H.E.S.P. soldiers faced me in the dark. One of them was on his knees, head in his hands. The bodies of two Ring members lay on the floor. Leaning against the wall was a woman I didn’t recognize. She grinned knowingly at me when I met her eyes which made a chill run down my back.
“Friendly?” I asked the soldiers, indicating the woman.
They nodded. “Your friend,” one said. “He was with us the whole time, no possibility of being a fake. You were right about the presence of the Witch who influences face recognition.”
The soldier who was kneeling punched the floor and said, “Fuck! That’s so fucked up.”
“Hostile took the face of a deceased family member,” the first soldier explained. “Although to me it looked like my ex. Didn’t have a problem shooting that one.”
I swallowed, deciding not to mention how badly I’d just been fooled. “Her power pulls faces from our minds, she can even make them say things that only the real person would know, but she isn’t omniscient. This seems more like scattershot psychological warfare.”
It was difficult to look him in the eyes, even though I knew now that the woman was Zola. Gunshots sounded from the floor above us. I spoke after they stopped, “It’s going to be extremely difficult to find Nell with this going on. She might be restrained somewhere, I’m not sure. We need to take out Helen. Find a mask, Zola, it helps deal with Helen’s power.”
I left out the more direct method I had of determining identity. The woman showed no acknowledgement on her face but moved to look in some of the nearby cupboards.
The soldier motioned at the door to the interior balcony. “They have guns pointed at us from the other side of this floor. Maybe more in the rooms adjacent. We’re going to give up this floor for now and regroup on a lower one.”
I shook my head. “I can handle it. I just need some cover.”
The soldier reached to his belt and withdrew two canisters that were painted black. “Smoke grenades. Pull the pin and place it in a spot. You need to wait for the smoke to fill up the space before you move. Don’t breathe it in.”
Nodding, I took one of the grenades. “Put one at the door as a decoy. I’ll go through the window.”
The soldier obeyed and I swung out the window once again. The night sky was getting brighter. Dawn was coming. And with it, several tons of rock raining down on our heads.
I perched on the sill outside of the window next door. Peering in, I saw no movement, so I made my way inside and to the door. After waiting a few seconds, shots sounded out nearby. I swung open the door and moved crouched into the hallway so that I was hidden behind the half-wall of the balcony. Bullets whizzed into the cloud of smoke that expanded from the door to my left. I moved right, turning the corner and moving down the hall.
A gun clicked. I whirled to face the source. One of the windows had been shattered and a tattooed face loomed out from the darkness, holding a shotgun. I stayed very still.
“Which Ring are you?” he asked.
I strained to see an identifying tattoo, but the ones on his face were familiar yet not what I was looking for. That made me pause. Why was his face familiar? His name drifted into my conscious thoughts from the memories I had stolen from another.
“Jonas,” I spoke aloud. “It’s me.”
The man flinched. “Wha… Who are you?”
I realized whose memories they were. The person who had become the Crushing Spider.
“It’s me, Kaelin.”
The man blinked, then shook his head. “No… You took that drug they gave you. You disappeared.”
I touched my helmet slowly, as if realizing it for the first time. “I changed, Jonas. But it’s still me.” I readied myself to act the moment the gun left my head.
Jonas hesitated, the barrel of the gun wavering. “This is all so fucked, man. My head hurts so bad. This ain’t worth the money.”
“You’re right. You should get out of here.”
His brow furrowed. “And leave my Ring to fend for itself?” Suspicion crept into his expression. “The old you would have talked me down from this. You loved the Ghost Ring more than anyone.”
I raised my hands. “The Ghost Ring made me like this. They’re the reason the city is in chaos.”
“Fuck the city!” Jonas spat. “It can burn to ashes.”
I made a gamble and extended my hand shakily past the gun. “Help me.”
Instinctively, the man took my hand. The hollow spur on my wrist injected him with Datura. I pumped fear through the connection.
“Sorry,” I murmured. Then I Shaped my helmet, giving myself curving antlers and the skull of a monstrous grim reaper, woven out of many small branches. He struggled, breathless, dropping the gun as I eased it out of his grip. Then I shouted at him, “Run!”
I shoved him and he ran out of the room. He sprinted wildly towards the stairs, swearing and shouting nonsense.
The gunmen paused their fire to watch him. I remained hidden below the half-wall. When he reached the stairs, H.E.S.P. sprung out from hiding, taking him down with a close quarters restraint. The gunshots refocused on the stairs and the soldiers retreated, dragging the fear-riddled man with them behind cover.
I crept closer to the gunmen.
“Nick!”
It was Helen. I heard her voice from all around me.
“I have Nell. Do what I say and she won’t get hurt!”
I blocked it out. I was close now. Peering around the turn in the hallway, I saw the four enemies pausing to reload. They all had Nell’s face, except for one who had Helen’s.
You don’t have her. I had to trust that. There was no way I could trust my eyes.
Helen kept talking, changing tactics, “Sounds like Nell has some juicy secrets she never told you.” She laughed, high and cruel. “And of course it goes both ways! I’ve used your face before, Nick. This is what I do, so I can tell when someone has a mask they’ve used for so long they’ve forgotten what their true feelings are.”
I stood and quickly braced my leg against the wall and faced the gunmen. There was a loud crack as I released the mechanism in my leg and the hallways smeared with speed. Then I was among them. They twisted to face me, fumbling with their guns. Arcing bone caught each of them, piercing whatever exposed flesh was available. I felt the hallucinogenic fluid rush through the bone and into them. A mix of datura and some small part of my own body, carrying memories of my choice. I always chose ones laden with fear.
They reacted violently, swinging at me in a panic. I caught one arm and threw the person into his friend. A machete caught me in the shoulder and I backhanded the owner, feeling a lurch as I saw Nell’s eyes squeeze shut in pain. The Tree pulsed and branches pushed the man I’d just struck over the edge of the balcony. I struggled to pull the bone back into a more usable form. The man screamed as he pitched over the side and fell, only stopping his cry when he hit the ground.
H.E.S.P. followed through. I saw them sweep towards me, even taking out Ring thugs on other floors who dared peek over the balcony.
I heard the-Witch-Nell-hated speak from the courtyard.
“Your Ring is failing.”
A H.E.S.P. agent aimed over the railing at the courtyard. He was thrown back like he’d been hit by a truck, unable to catch himself as both his arms dislocated at the elbows.
I risked a glance over the edge. Every face was Helen’s, using the same face she had when dealing with Sullivan in his den. They were looking up at me. Her blond hair was still styled perfectly. She grinned sadistically at me.
“Hi, Nick. It’s funny how much Nell talked about you. You guys trust each other so blindly it’s pathetic. Neither of you is being honest. You don’t need to say anything, I know I’m right!”
I ducked back into cover as more Rings returned fire from higher floors.
“I didn’t want to do this…” she said. “But I suppose it’s time to kick things up a notch.”
A wave pulsed through the apartments and caught me off guard. My head spun and I tasted bile on my tongue. That one felt different.
When Helen spoke next, I could hear the reverberations from all around me. She was speaking with every face she possibly could. Her entire range. I could even hear her voice from outside of the building, speaking in overly sultry tones.
“Alek, dear.”
Shit, shit, shit. I began running towards the stairs.
“I know you’ve been trying very hard to find me. So here I am. The tall apartment tower below the cliff. I’ve made sure you can feel me properly through the Beacon now. A Wolf named Nick is here. And I have a gift. The one of you who brings me his head will receive my love once more. So come. All of you.”
The sound of Aleks crying out echoed across the Old Town. The rumble of hundreds of footsteps grew louder like boulders rapidly rolling down the Sill. They were coming. A hundred Aleks, each one with the destructive force of a Wolf, ready to tear me apart in the name of love.