Chapter Ten: A Bat?

  The world was a wondrous and beautiful thing to behold, and yet it left him wondering why the buildings of such an advanced people were so ugly. For what purpose were the streets coated in filth? Why did the strange boxes littering the sidewalks reek of piss?

  And why were the people so firmly in control of their rulers? Humanity had never been like this. Their free spirits and refusal to be chained had made authoritarianism impossible in human nations. There was only so much they would endure before they simply killed you—and they would not stop until your ideas were gone, or your population was.

  His skin began to hiss faintly, thin steam drifting from his fingertips as the sun barely crested the horizon and the first rays of indirect light touched him.

  A childish thought struck him.

  I could simply step into the sun. Pacts already made… nothing says I cannot simply win.

  He smirked, turning his back on the sphere of metaphysical pain and fire, retreating instead into the hideout Andrew had led him to.

  He watched the boys finish their plans, packing away notes, wondering not for the first time why any of this was necessary. The effort they were expending to sneak him into the “school system” felt juvenile. He could simply tell them whatever they wished to hear and make them believe everything was fine.

  But to Kain’s annoyance and, surprisingly, Axle’s as well; Andrew remained firm. Kain was to rely on altering people’s perceptions as little as possible.

  That insistence took on new weight when Axle took a picture of him for an I.D.

  The photo showed him as he truly was: glowing red-and-black eyes, dark veins beneath deathly pale skin, blood-red hair framing a face shaped by predation. Axle said he would speak to his person and, see whether it would be more effective to doctor the image to match Kain’s altered appearance, or if it would be better to convince others that his looks were the result of a class-based physiological mutation.

  But they could not decide, not yet; not without the class advancing to level one and initializing.

  Andrew hauled his bag over his shoulder and rubbed at the eyeholes of his mask for some inexplicable reason. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s head home.”

  After one brief and frustrating explanation of how he did not goddamn sparkle and would be incinerated by direct sunlight later, Andrew departed heading home to, as he put it, prepare a place to store me.

  Kainen closed his eyes. The darkness was welcome, even if it did little to dull his awareness of his surroundings.

  Andrew was a problem. A curiosity.

  Perhaps a mistake.

  Originally, Kain had not intended to secure the boy’s assistance. He had recognized almost immediately that something was wrong; that his compulsions were not functioning properly. Even before he had tested them, he knew. Still, he reasoned they must be doing something, as the boy continued to follow his intent.

  That was when he shifted tactics.

  He stopped trying to interrogate and control Andrew and instead hammered at his subconscious with mana-charged psi carried through pheromones. He impressed trustworthiness, restraint, and the absence of predatory intent into the boy again and again. With every word, he reinforced the life-debt Andrew owed him, overwhelming the more receptive parts of his mind with a single, persistent understanding.

  Clawed, blade-like keratin dug painfully at the corners of his eyes as he rubbed them like a cultist searching for purity; despite the absence of true fatigue.

  The problem remained.

  Andrew was nothing like he had expected.

  Humans who looked similar to him in age were well into adulthood—jaded, guarded, and careful. More often than not, they sought to extract as much as possible while offering little in return, unless you were one of them.

  Which was why Kain had never expected Andrew to take the debt so seriously.

  He had assumed the boy would attempt to buy his way out of it; offer silence in exchange for distance. Not bring him home. Not hide him. Not feed him. And certainly not begin planning how to help him infiltrate human society.

  Stories had been passed from mother to daughter, daughter to sons, sons to bands—warnings carried across generations. Stories of what happened when you took evil into your home and nurtured a serpent at your bosom.

  Burning blonde hair flashed through his mind’s eye. Bubbling gelatin slumped in hollowed sockets rimmed with blackened bone instead of charcoal makeup. He had seen what humans did to those who flaunted the rules of nature.

  So why hadn’t Andrew taken the many outs Kain had offered him?

  Problems Kain could make disappear. Threads he could cut cleanly. Ways to end the boy’s involvement entirely; outs Andrew denied again and again, choosing instead the harder, more ethical path. One that forced him deeper. One that entangled his own kin in a web he could no longer escape.

  A bell tolled loud and deep inside his skull.

  The flashback struck like a hammer. Black spots devoured his vision. The air in his lungs burned as if it were pure carcinogen. Then the tolling stopped. A violent hiss crawled from his left ear to his right, and his vision cleared; only to refill with something new.

  [Authority Usurped: Manipulation]

  This screen was different from the others.

  Gone was the bloody aesthetic. Gone were the fangs alone. This time they were preceded by the coiled body of a flaming serpent. Venomous green energy vibrated along its fangs. A soft burn bloomed in his shoulder.

  Two tiny pinpricks he hadn’t noticed before expanded, the flesh filling in like scar tissue a mortal might bear; marks that mimicked a snakebite.

  Fury ignited in his mind.

  This human trinket. This disgusting construct of power… Had dared to mark his pure and perfected form.

  For the first time, he reconsidered whether it had been short-sighted to dismiss the system that governed this world so casually.

  He opened his panel; agitation cutting through him like a hot scalpel.

  New additions sat silently in the top-left corner of the aether-glass. A small circle bearing a pair of fangs dripping red energy. Beside it, a flaming serpent’s head, jaws parted mid-strike. And finally; a stone throne of obsidian, jagged fangs forming its backrest, a golden smith’s hammer resting upon it, its reverse edge honed into a wicked spike.

  He stared at the icons for a long while, doing as Andrew had instructed and, willing an explanation.

  Nothing happened.

  He changed tactics, attempting instead to tap them.

  His hand passed through the illusions without resistance.

  Then the blaring sound erupted from the black square Andrew had left behind so he could “google” information and begin learning English.

  With vastly more experience, wisdom, and nearly a century of decorum behind him, Kain resisted the urge to kill the infernal device, as he had done with the timekeeper.

  Instead, he pressed a claw into the glass and slid it aside, faintly scratching the surface. The green symbol lit, and silence fell.

  Kain allowed himself a small, vindictive satisfaction at the torment of the demon box.

  He seated himself, pleased with his newfound technological prowess.

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  Then the device began making demands of him.

  “Hello? Andrew, you gonna say anything?”

  “I swear to everything you hold dear, I will tell on you if this is some elaborate plan to lure me back to that ridiculous hideout.”

  Kain looked around for a moment, peering beneath the sliding door into the hideout, still seeing beams of sunlight peeking through.

  “You are beaten, you disincorporated fiend. Take your pathetic mewling and your wish for salvation into the hells with you, where you may experience endless torment, as you have no doubt given these poor creatures.”

  Mizu winced as the connection degraded, the voice on the other end breaking into harsh, echoing hisses; distorted and utterly inhuman. As for what the voice was actually saying, she had no idea. She tapped an icon on her phone, languages scrolling rapidly down a list as the voice continued, but even the translator soon gave up, finding nothing even remotely similar to match his words.

  “Who the hell is this? Where’s Andy?”

  “You have the gall to continue? Born in a pit of shame you must be… Cease your existence at once!”

  “You better actually be in trouble, Andrew!”

  The screen flickered, numbers flashing a few times before it went completely black.

  “I knew you weren’t a match for me, blackguard,” he said, placing the noisy picture box face-down on the end of a table before diving into his soul-scape. His intent was to thicken and heal the meridians between his spiritual core and the core of his psi affinity, a content somewhat arrogant; grin painting his features as he sought to turn his technological victories into magical ones.

  Mizu’s fingers flashed across her phone, pulling up a contact: a young boy with a scarred lip and toxic green hair locked in a headlock by a taller, older girl with the same vivid pigment. The name scrolled across the screen as she debated just how concerned she was about Andrew. Unlike Axle, he wasn’t prone to causing problems… but trouble had a way of finding him anyway. With his luck, she half-expected an intruder or spawn to attack him soon or hell, maybe even a spawn nest.

  She scoffed at the thought before pocketing the phone, deciding she didn’t need the assistance of Dipshit (Do Not Pick Up). No, she had a better idea. His far superior half.

  She pulled her phone out again, rolling her eyes at her mounting annoyance over her incessant habit of pocketing it the instant she didn’t have something to do with her phone. She thumbed the call button.

  Several miles away, five long acrylic claws wrapped around an old rotor phone connected to the network, lifting the overly engineered contraption as Missy; Axle’s sister picked up.

  “Why hey there, Hun. What can I do for you? Let me guess… more work on behalf of Andrew?”

  She spoke in her usual rapid-fire southern drawl, words tumbling out as if she wanted to say them all before anyone else got a turn, despite the paradoxically slow twang of her accent.

  “Work for Andrew? What do you mean by that? I just tried to call him, but all I got was this garbled, messed-up connection and some… guy, I think, speaking some sort of foreign language.”

  The other end of the line went silent for a long moment while Missy decided how she wanted to reply.

  “I think it would be better if you got in touch with Andrew yourself. But Axle’s asked me for… a lot of suspect help on his behalf. It involves some guy whose class has seriously messed him up so… That might be the one you spoke to. Still, you really need to talk to Andrew, and tell me what you hear. I’d like to know what Axle’s getting dragged into. I don’t want another meth-lab carnival incident.”

  Part of Mizu winced internally at the reminder, while another part fought a smile at the same memory. Then a darker thought occurred to her.

  “You don’t think that guy’s dangerous, do you? Like… he couldn’t be threatening Andrew or your brother, right?”

  Missy barked out a quick and very impolite laugh.

  “Oh, he’s dangerous, alright. Your class doesn’t stitch that many predatory alterations onto you if you’re friendly and don’t bite. But no, I doubt it, extremely. And I don’t think it’s any kind of mind effect either. Keep in mind who we’re talking about: a jester with fool skills and traits, and an anarchist. Those are two of the hardest classes to tie down, restrain, manipulate, or control; physically or mentally. They’re danger magnets, sure, but they’re like eels covered in oil when it comes to the trouble they bring.”

  Mizu let out a tense breath, a knot of tension she hadn’t even noticed slipping from her shoulders. Missy had always had that effect on her; it was like she knew exactly what to say, and what people weren’t saying when they asked their questions.

  As much as Axle infuriated her, and she genuinely wouldn’t have minded if the Ceazars put him up for adoption or hard manual labor; she loved Missy like her own sister. Honestly, in her opinion, Missy was completely wasted on Axle.

  “So…” Mizu said at last, steering back to the real reason she’d called, “I’m guessing Andrew is with Axle?”

  “Bingo!” Missy replied, clearly taking pleasure in the sudden silence on the other end of the line as the realization sank in. Mizu would, in fact, have to call Dipshit (Do Not Pick Up).

  “Alright now, don’t be a stranger,” Missy added quickly before hanging up.

  Mizu debated. Fought with herself. Considered; really considered, whether Andrew was worth the mental toll of crossing that bridge and interacting with that troll in human skin.

  Then an idea came to her. Actually, her original idea resurfaced, the one she’d had before good sense told her to call Missy.

  He’s probably just at that weird den he made with Axle and Kevin. I can drop by first, and if he’s not there, then and only then— I’ll… ask his mom.

  Finally, with a plan made, she did nothing.

  She stared off into space for a bit. Then procrastinated.

  A vague, seamless sense of wrongness brushed at her subconscious whenever she thought about going to the hideout, though she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Her mind kept distracting itself, finding excuses not to get up and go. Still, the nascent terror effect of the dungeon lord was far too immature to truly dissuade her or even make her feel real fear.

  It wasn’t fear so much as a deep foreboding, one that delayed her long enough for her to log into Andrew’s email and ping his phone’s location.

  Unsurprisingly, it was at his stupid, illegal shack that was definitely going to get him fined the millisecond the poor family Axle kept terrorizing into not using the bathroom figured out why they kept climbing up there.

  But eventually, she swallowed the strange sense of warning and forced herself up. She laced her white sneakers, then grabbed a purple hoodie from the closet and pulled it over her slender frame, letting the bulky fabric swallow her in warmth and borrowed size. She could have sworn she hadn’t been this skinny even last year. Ironically, ever since she’d gained her class; despite being healthier than she’d ever been, she barely exercised her body at all. Her passions and interests had consumed her completely once her skills activated.

  One foot after the other, she left the house, walking straight toward the maw of an awful creature one who, at this very moment, was settling into his new environment for a singularly sinister purpose: thirty hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  Mizu’s paranoia spiked the closer she got to Andrew’s lair. The strange pressure she’d felt earlier continued to rise, stirring long-dormant survival instincts and dredging up half-forgotten facts about combat and survival classes. Yet she couldn’t identify the source of the fear. She could only feel it.

  Deep in her subconscious, the primeval animal that lurked within all humans sensed it; the sensation of being on a track, railroaded down a path where every step forward led closer to some unnamed, inevitable darkness.

  Her feet traced shadow-veins buried deep within the earth, dormant since the dawn of time. They, too, began to stir, creeping closer to the surface, drawn toward the overlord of dread. Slowly, inexorably, they edged nearer to awakening. They needed only one thing.

  A master willing to take the plunge.

  She stopped in front of one of the small businesses that blocked access to the Mickey Mouse dumbass’s house, considering how she was actually going to get up there. Last time, Andrew had helped her climb.

  Her eyes scanned the sheer brickscape, the rickety plastic pipes, the loose gutters hanging by half-pulled screws. She mapped footholds in her mind, plotted angles and grip points. Every time she did, the image of herself falling at the worst possible moment flashed unbidden across her thoughts, and her fear of heights surged back to life, killing the plan before it could take shape.

  Her hands slipped into the pocket of her purple hoodie, fingers closing around a sealed test tube.

  She didn’t want to use it.

  Okay… Understatement of the century. She hated this serum. It felt awful, its side effects were vicious, and it wore off far too fast. She’d wanted to save it as a last resort, just in case something was wrong. If she used it now, she’d be on a strict time limit to check whatever was inside.

  But if she didn’t use it.

  She’d never get in at all.

  “Fuuuuck me!” she groaned, dragging the vial of caustic-looking, bright orange liquid from her pocket. She flicked the stopper free and it hissed instantly, the air reacting as a steaming vapor spilled out while the vial began heating in her hand.

  She downed it before it could get hot enough to burn her on the way down.

  The uncomfortably warm liquid coated her vocal cords before sliding into her stomach—and reacting. Nausea hit her hard as the contents vaporized inside her, half of it bursting back out through her nose and mouth as orange steam while amber tears streamed from her eyes.

  Mizu’s eyes bulged. Veins flared, complex spider webs of red crawling across her sclera. Then the fear subsided, drowned beneath an overwhelming need to move.

  Explosive energy flooded her muscles. Bones creaked as her body hunched under the strain, muscles snapping into hypertension and curling tight. Without realizing she’d even jumped, she launched into the air, clearing the building.

  Then she saw the concrete rushing up beneath her.

  She had overshot the roof.

  Terror slammed into her, memories flashing through her mind’s eye; a park, height, sickness, her stomach flipping violently. Before the memory could finish, reality did.

  She hit the floor hard.

  The massive overcharge forced her muscles to harden like steel, energy sheathing them on impact. Air was violently ripped from her lungs, her body heaving, but that was all the fall could take from her.

  She was already moving.

  Mizu threw herself to her feet, her physique responding to thought almost faster than she could form it. In a blur she shoved the rickety door open; hinges swinging smoothly, far sturdier than the rest of the structure.

  No shit they’re superior. They’re my fucking hinges.

  The door slid open like a fat man on buttered tiles before swinging shut behind her.

  Andrew’s rampant kleptomania aside, everything looked normal. Dark but normal.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket, thumbing the call button on her phone as the suffocating darkness pressed back against her, stalling her in place; even as the serum screamed for motion.

  Then light finally brushed her senses.

  A black pane of glass on the far side of the shack lit up and began to ring atop a table. Pale blue light spilled across the room, but most of it was blocked by something standing directly between her and the phone.

  Slowly, adrenaline and terror crawling up her spine, Mizu lifted her gaze.

  First, she saw the hair; long, perfectly straight, red, nearly brushing the ground.

  Her eyes climbed higher.

  An impossibly thin torso. Long limbs. Arms crossed over its chest. Toes wrapped around a beam, claws sunk deep into the wood, holding it in place as it hung upside down.

  Like a giant bat.

  Or a profoundly unwell person who had committed way too hard to the aesthetic.

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