Sorry for the delay, had an exam last week and I underestimated how that would impact my writing. Updates will resume normal schedule.
Apprentice
All three Endbringers moved as one.
Leviathan moved slowly at first, cutting down out of the Arctic circle. Then as if he had received some kind of signal, the hole he made in my senses abruptly stretched and an almost physical backlash lashed across my mind. I gritted my teeth through it, watching the waterborne creature just stop being a distinct hole and became more like a streak of displaced aether. A missile shot through the ocean in my head so fast it left behind a vacuum. The points of contact, the very edges. He burned through it and the ocean ignited where it touched him.
At the third pulse from Leviathan, in a southern corner of the world, the hole Behemoth made in the world contracted, becoming a pinprick. At the very next, he erupted. A black hole screamed into existence, close enough that I could feel the ocean shudder moments before the tidal wave drowned everything else out. It was an instant of silence and stillness. I was blinded, and vaguely aware of the rune in my hands burning my fingers. The moment passed, and Behemoth was still moving north as a massive, empty shape.
The Simurgh sang.
I couldn't hear her. Just the faint impression of a probing voice that radiated out from her like searching tendrils. They caressed every mind they came across. I felt an almost morbid kind of amusement. Comparatively, the few hundred thousand people in Brockton Bay were not that many. I could see more, easily. The tendrils slid right past me, not even hesitating, treating me as if I was empty space. She can't see me, I realized. Hadn't Costa-Brown been talking about glitching precognition when she brought up the image of the Simurgh? Perhaps she could see more, if she wanted to, but detail came at the expense of scope. She was searching Brockton Bay.
In the house, my Dad stopped, back straight and tense as he looked around for the sound he wasn't hearing with his ears. So were the neighbors. Lights began to turn on within homes as people woke and got out of bed.
"Taylor?" Dad called from the door.
I slowly exhaled, a half-convinced that if I made a sound, she'd know. They were looking for me. All three of them were.
"You hear that?"
I swallowed carefully. My mouth was dry. "Yeah," I whispered, not even daring to reach out for his mind. "I hear it."
The distinctive wail of the Endbringer alarms started blaring. The last of the stillness shattered as I felt the emotions of over two hundred thousand people swell in fear and panic. "No," Dad breathed and I felt him grab onto my shoulder. "We have to – "
"Wait," I said.
"Wait?" He repeated. "Taylor, this is – "
"I know exactly what this is," I cut him off again. I was lying. She might still find me. She might decide to flush me out. She might be waiting for the other two. Whatever was going to happen, would, and I was not going to sit it out in an underground bunker when I was the reason behind this in the first place. Coordinate, Search and Rescue, Fight, whatever Costa-Brown wanted me to do, even if it was just to be the bait to draw the Endbringers away from the city.
My mess, my fault.
"What is it,
exactly?" Dad asked, softer.
I shook my head. "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
I looked at him and when he saw the look on my face, his own shifted. I was aware that I was starting to hyperventilate. I reached for his hand on my shoulder clumsily. "I'd rather not."
"…Okay," he said eventually and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. "Okay."
A minute passed, then two. I was getting lightheaded, unable to even force myself to do more than take shallow gasps of air. My chest hurt, a cold fist was clamped around my lungs and heart. I couldn't feel my hands.
Above us, the Simurgh stopped singing. She let the very last of the ripples wash through Brockton Bay, before taking off across the Atlantic. Relief…there wasn't a word strong enough to describe what I felt just then. I sagged, sucking in air so fast I started to choke. I dropped my rune. The crystal was brittle, shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces on our sidewalk as I tried to convince my body that I wasn't dying.
"Whoa, take it easy. Just breathe." Dad rubbed my back and I hid my burned hands from him.
"I'm fine," I lied. "False alarm." The sirens petered out reluctantly, several sections of the city stopping, then starting up again. My head was still pulsing painfully and I could already feel my eyes burn with stubborn tears. I tried to blink them away. If he heard me sobbing, he would try to cheer me up, make himself useful. He'd see my hands and he would ask questions I didn't want to answer right now.
I could see that just as clearly as I could see Dad was overcompensating, making up for lost time and deathly afraid for me. Convincing him to just go away right now wasn't going to be quick or easy.
I counted out three of my heartbeats as I got my coughing under control. My voice was still rough as I asked, "Get the phone?"
"Sure," Dad jumped up, eager to do something. He turned around, and just as he registered that the phone hadn't even been ringing, Dad's PRT-issue cellphone started going off from the kitchen. He gave me a short, sideways glance, before darting into the house after it.
He came out, lips tight and eyes sharp. He handed me the phone, and I forced myself to take it as nonchalantly as possible, using his shadow to hide the burns on the underside of my fingers. "Should have looked at the satellite images first," I said as mildly as I could manage. My voice still trembled.
To her credit, Director Piggot didn't hesitate. "Where?"
With my sixth sense, I watched the Endbringers move. Leviathan from the northeast, Behemoth from the southwest and the Simurgh cutting an almost straight line across the Atlantic Ocean. A triangle. There was a lot of land in between them, from the islands of the Philippines and Japan to Great Britain, but I felt a cold certainty that I knew where they were going.
To the man whose fate I had changed. India. New Delhi.
The Simurgh wouldn't find me there either. None of them would. So what then? Would they attack?
Yes.
I could remember clearly the board with the newspaper clippings in the room with Number Man. Since the Simurgh, fear and terror was not their goal. Only results. The Endbringers were not human. They had no emotions. No panic, no anger, no fear here. This wasn't an emotional reaction. There had to be a purpose. The Simurgh suspected I was the cause, that was why she searched Brockton Bay first. Or…no, if she thought it was me with any certainty she would have descended, right?
No. I had reached from here to India. If she couldn't see me to make sure she neutralized the threat I posed, then all she would be doing is telling everyone that I was important enough to go after. Brockton Bay being quarantined wouldn't actually stop me from screwing up her plans.
Quarantine. That was it.
Behemoth had attacked Lyon, France twice. The second attack a couple of months after the Simurgh had surfaced. The only repeat on record. So far. The city of New Delhi, at least a part of it could be quarantined. That would offer no safety. Behemoth could always attack later, months, years. However long it took.
And until she allowed herself to be driven away, the Simurgh could sit in the sky above the city, reaching into people's heads for as long as she needed to. To shift the pieces around. To set the game back up. The walls would go up, and the man I freed would be imprisoned.
"India, New Delhi."
I could hear the woman suck air in through her teeth because she wouldn't allow herself to sigh in relief, not yet, and could almost feel the sharp nod. "Thank you, stay available."
I didn't volunteer information. They would check it, cross reference with other Thinkers. Contact would be made with the Indian government, that then had to disseminate the warning to the correct location because the PRT didn't have a phone line to every major city on the planet. The Protectorate, the Triumvirate, the PRT would be on high alert, but standing by until they got the green light.
I was still untested. I couldn't blame them. If I told them all three Endbringers were involved, they would rush. Make mistakes. Deploy before they were ready. Against one, with advanced warning, morale would be higher than it would be if they knew Behemoth and Leviathan would be there as well.
Better this way.
I hung up and handed my father the phone. As he reached out to take it, our eyes met, and I broke my 'don't think hard at people' rule.
I am already inside, going to bed.
The ocean felt like sandpaper against the inside of my skull. I crafted the scene, mapping out the inside of my house and seeing a phantom of myself tiredly slump up the stairs. I heard my father's footsteps follow the fiction inside, forgetting all about me out on the front porch. The light turned off and the front door closed.
Night, Dad. I thought towards him.
"Night!" He called up the stairs from the kitchen.
I clenched my hands with a soft hiss. I had just bought myself some time.
I hesitated. The memory of Vernasse's visions of warning was strong. The memory of teeth scraping the barriers of my mind was stronger. I stared down at where shards of my rune glittered in the moonlight. I didn't have my safeguard anymore.
Coward, I thought. I pushed past it, and opened my mind a crack. My headache bloomed behind my eyes as I impatiently shifted through the threads of possible futures. Quarantine; that meant only the Simurgh would be visible with the other two on standby.
I discarded visions of all three tearing the Indian peninsula apart, refusing to consider it. They still left a cold pit in my stomach that grew with every bleak future I saw.
Think more, feel less.
New Delhi was farther from here than Los Angeles. I had a point of reference, but the distance…I tried anyway.
The Simurgh is coming.
The aftershocks of Behemoth and Leviathan obliterated the message almost immediately, as if I had tossed a letter written on paper into a storm of razors. I didn't even have to really think about it to know what the problem was, it just bubbled up to the forefront of my mind.
Power. I needed more of it. I was just getting used to the idea that I was already exceptionally strong. Now I was too weak?
Compared to the Endbringers, yes. Think. Was there any way I could - ? Open myself up more, yes, but now I found myself thinking. The ocean flowed through me. The more open I was, the more that went through and the stronger my abilities were. Ocean. It was like water; how do you get more water from a faucet? Widen the pipe, or increase the pressure.
Yes. I knew how to do that. I'd done it before.
I dropped my barriers and reached right into that storm of razors. The whispers started. A foul smell, like carrion, wafted on the air as I began to pull on the ocean just as much as it was pushing on me. I felt that prickling, tight heat pool in my stomach before I shifted something, changed, corrected how I was doing it and the heat dispersed throughout my body, bone deep. The object in my chest began to glow. What was my limit? How much could I take?
I heard one of the whispers then, crystal clear.
Keep going and find out.
I ignored it. Leviathan was already slowing down, nearing the Indian Ocean. Behemoth would get there next, unhindered by the Earth's mantle but in no rush. Simurgh had reached Germany and slowed down. Cautious.
She knew. It felt like a punch to the gut. Abruptly, I was out of air. She was a precog. She couldn't see me. She could see everyone else. She could see the future changing. Leviathan, Behemoth, would she call them? If she was pressured, if she was pushed by stiffer resistance than expected, maybe. What would push those futures out of reach?
Me. Call her back to Brockton Bay? Expose myself?
Yes. No. The Simurgh would get there last.
Good.
I didn't bother with the words this time. In hindsight, expecting everyone to understand English was stupid of me. I used images instead. Concepts. Intent and direction. I needed a medium. Sound. The Simurgh had done it that way, I thought. I could too.
I opened my mouth, and screamed the warning across the world.
New Delhi woke.
lovin this fic by the way!
