I lifted a leg out of the water and kicked the glass. It barely made a sound.
The alarm pounded in my ears as air was sucked noisily out through the vent by the Aberrant on the other side. I tapped my headset, but dull static was the only response. The signal wasn’t penetrating all this concrete underground.
I pulsed Nell my concern and she pulsed back reassurance, but I could tell underneath that there was an undercurrent of worry. She was too far to physically come help.
I breathed in and it was difficult to know if the air was getting thinner or if it was just my anxiety. Bad memories started to surface, making my hands shake.
Being trapped, my dad holding my hand.
I shook the water off of my hands and waded around in a circle, looking for an out.
The lurch of being dragged into an undertow, being held there, unable to swim back up.
I shook my head. I’d never been to the ocean. How did I know what that felt like?
Antlers lanced out at my command, breaking across the surface of the window. I tried again, weaving bone together tightly into a spiral lance, then using Locust Legs to add some extra oomph to the strike. The spear broke on impact, pieces flicking past my face. Nothing, not even a scratch on the glass. It must have been reinforced. The only thing that accomplished was jarring my shoulder.
It was definitely harder to breathe now. Sucking in felt like I was playing tug of war with a rope made of air, pulling against the greedy Aberrant on the other side of the glass. I was losing badly.
If I could just reach it, I could assimilate it. Crackling branches rammed against the vent above the glass. The bones broke, but I created a small gap between the slits. Then with more care, I navigated a thick branch up to the vent. I concentrated hard on creating mass exactly where I needed it, weaving antlers through the gap in the vent and into the Windbag’s room.
Sweat stung my eyes as I kept them wide, watching the branch extend further into the room. A quarter of the distance, then halfway… It broke, leaving me starting back at the vent.
“Fuck!” I shouted, before regretting it a split second after. My chest hurt as I pulled in another breath. My head was starting to swim from the effort.
Nell was trying to Shape the Windbag, but her efforts were weak. Leaves and flowers bloomed shriveled and small, barely changing the exterior features of the Aberrant. She’d always had trouble with inhuman physiologies and she wasn’t adept at changing humans in the first place.
She switched her efforts, instead extending a single barky growth outward, towards the vent, shortening the distance I had to reach. I tried again. The lights in the room seemed to flicker, distracting me as I shakily grew a bone branch out, reaching for Nell’s. I didn’t even make it a quarter of the distance before it snapped. Too thin.
My throat hurt.
It was too much. My heart beat so slowly, yet I wanted to scream. Trapped. Alone. Bad memories crowding out my thoughts.
In a terrifying moment, I realized that the memories weren’t mine.
Something moved in the water behind me, brushing against my leg.
Just a visceral memory, I told myself. I ignored it, trying to push everything that clouded my mind away. Focus. The branch extended again. Reaching out like a drowning hand. Bits kept breaking off as it stretched towards Nell.
Antler intertwined with wood. The bridge was completed. But then it broke again, taking a part of Nell’s branch with it.
The water was bubbling, frothing in the vacuum. A hallucination?
Nell was doing something to my body. I could feel her panic as my vision narrowed. I tried to yell and nothing happened. Whatever she was doing, it was keeping me conscious. Blood dripped from my nose as the room seemed to flicker madly and the water danced at my fingertips.
I watched a drop of blood hit the water, creating a dark stain. A shadow spread from the stain, growing larger, coming closer. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, drowning out the alarm, as a figure rose from the water.
I knew them, yet I could not recall their name. Their eyes bulged, their mouth agape like mine should be, gasping for air.
Should be.
I clawed at my mouth, realizing that fibers had blocked it shut. How long had it been since I’d taken a breath? The ghost watched me, as if bearing witness to my imminent crossing to the other side.
Soon my arms were too weak to even lift. A strange film had descended over my eyes.
A second figure rose up. Then a third. People that should have been strangers, but weren’t. A scar across an eyebrow. Lobes pierced with ruby earrings. People I knew. People I had consumed, coming back up for air like I was regurgitating stolen memories.
There were more of them under the water.
This can’t be real.
There was no air to transmit any sound, yet I heard the figures speaking to me inside my head, while they died alongside me.
What was the plan?
To assimilate the Windbag.
No. The true plan. The whole plan. For this whole life thing.
The figures pressed in close until their features mushed together, sliding around my sight disconnected from their original faces.
I don’t know. Help people. Help Nell. Absorb Aberrants, so that I could remember them for who they were.
She’s so lonely, even with you beside her. Her anger scares her. Keeps her to herself. You’re just as bad. Absorbing memories. Bad.
I thought it was working?
No.
I don’t understand.
The problem is you’re not remembering. Memories aren’t something you can just hold onto for someone else. They’re pieces of Self. You’re stuffing everyone deep inside, because otherwise you don’t remember, you Become. That’s hardly fair, is it? To you. To us.
What should I do then?
Everything turned black.
Why would you ask that of the dead?
The door slid open.
Air flooded into the room. Warm hands grasped my cold shoulders, hauling me out of the water. My mouth was freed and I breathed in. It hurt and I spluttered and coughed, hurting more. My vision came back in pieces, like broken glass from a cracked pane being fit back into place.
Neve watched me with concern. She was saying something, but I couldn’t understand it, so I just shook my head. She repeated it, gripping me tightly. Again and again until I understood.
“Help Daria. Please!”
“I can’t.”
It felt like I was going crazy. Anger, fear, panic. They raged against the sides of my head, turning my thoughts to slurry. I struggled weakly to try and get away from her. Before-
I realized it had already happened. Neve’s hand was bloody, the skin had been stripped away in places, some of the muscle too. Yet she gripped me with fierce, desperate strength.
And I felt her love for Daria, driving her. Now, driving me.
I lurched to my feet, wiping the blood from my nose. The spectres were gone for now. A delayed reckoning. I took one last look at the Windbag, seeing that a hole had burst across its hide and the thing was deflated, its withered skin in tatters around it.
“Which way?” I asked.
Neve pointed towards the open corridor, where I’d last seen Daria. I hauled myself through the water.
Blood streaked the walls.
Each step was difficult, my legs pushing through the weight of the water. But perhaps it was helping me stay upright on my unsteady legs.
Neve followed behind me, down the hall, down another and into an open room.
Seth stood at the far end, his hand on a computer console that was just above the water level. He held the briefcase in the other.
The Aberrant stood in the center of the room, a frankenstein of crayon scrawlings and shaky penlines, drawn from the recesses of my brain. Every twitch seemed to make it bigger, leaving a smear on the air that lingered, masking its true shape. Daria hung from its grip, bloodied and beaten.
Neve choked back a sob.
Seth’s eyes flicked to me for a moment before returning to the water around him, scanning it for something.
A second later, something emerged from the water in the corner of the room. It was the Fisherman. He began spewing black liquid from his mouth, a small amount of it turning to smoke.
The Aberrant moved like a dream, stretching across space as if it was tearing reality to reach the Fisherman. It still held Daria at its side, dragging her through the water. She was limp. Unconscious.
The Fisherman disappeared below the surface a second before the Aberrant struck, its limb painting a mark across the air before spraying water on impact. Then it stood still once more. A Painter, waiting for the right moment to mark its canvas.
A speaker on the wall crackled to life. Chase’s voice came out of it, “It looks like our standoff might get broken. Still feeling confident, Seth?”
Seth glanced at me again. “I hardly recognize him. I doubt he has the strength left to finish what Daria could not. And the Witch is weak. Her speciality is sensation heightening. It’s hardly a threat. Not when she affects everyone equally.”
“Let her go,” Neve’s voice quivered.
Seth stared down his nose at her. “You’re not a frontline combatant. You may be a Witch but you’re so much weaker than the others I’ve encountered. You don’t have the power to make demands.”
The Fisherman emerged in a different corner, spewing smog. The Painter reacted in an instant. It reached across the room, striking with a weighty limb that shook the walls. Blood clouded the water. But only a dead fish floated to the surface.
I stayed still, too scared that any movement into the room would draw its ire.
Chase chuckled on the intercom. “Seth, I view you like I view this Aberrant. Powerful, yes. But mindless. Controlled by someone else. You have no desire of your own.”
“You would have me work for you instead,” Seth retorted. “That’s hardly a compelling point, especially from someone hiding away.”
“It is not? You misunderstand. If anything, I would rather clash than work together. But even allying with me would be compelling if it was what you wanted. Not someone else’s dream. I want to clash with you. I don’t want to fight a structure, an organization. There’s no personality, no flavour. I want to see some passion.”
Seth shook his head. “Reason will prevail. There’s no reason for me to listen to you. I’m the one in control here. In moments, the tunnel will be drained and I will walk out of here with the weapon.”
“Back to the true doers. Tell me, Seth. Did they promise you a say in the new world they want to create? A share in the power? Don’t tell me you are so lacking in want that you would gladly lie down and be a stepping stone for their results?”
“I-”
“SHUT UP!” Neve screamed. Her power flooded the room.
Suddenly I could hear the hum of the pump that was moving water through the pipes in the walls. I could see the hairs on Seth’s chin. I could taste the concrete and the blood and the smoke. The air hurt on my skin, the sensation was so strong. Everything came to a halt as everyone in the room experienced it simultaneously.
“Ah.”
I winced and covered my ears at Chase’s voice.
“The equilibrium has tipped.”
“Shut up,” Neve said, quieter. She looked like she was working up the nerve to face down the Painter.
“You’ll want to hear this, I think. You may be wondering how this Aberrant is under Seth’s command, hm? I figured it out. It’s been modified by Organ, implanted with a device that alters its behaviour. Somewhere in the walls of this facility is a mini-Beacon. Not powerful enough to be felt unless you have the matching receiver. The Beacon is attached to a host that must be somehow compelled to protect Seth. Through that Beacon, the Aberrant receives a signal to act in Seth’s interests.”
I watched the Aberrant straighten, releasing Daria from its grip. She stirred, opening an eye as she drifted on the water.
“And what you have done, Neve, is interfere with that signal. It’s too weak to stand up to a Witch like that. But what I suspect is that it won’t be programmed to listen to you in quite the same way.”
Everyone stayed very still. The Aberrant swayed, painting the space in murky blackness. By unspoken understanding we were quiet. Whoever acted next could be chosen as its target.