An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 4.06
The longest corridor I'd used up until now had taken me across Brockton Bay. This one ended hundreds of miles away, but it didn't feel like it took any longer to reach the end. Instead, I felt the difference in my bones. My teeth ached in my jaw, the cold seeping into their roots. Breathing felt like licking a coin.
The deeper I went into the Other Place, the less the rules of nature applied. Or maybe the other way around. To travel that distance in just a few moments, I had to go deeper into the coldness. How far down did it go? What lay at the bottom of the Other Place? Something inside me wanted to find out, to sink far from the light and see it all for myself. It was the sort of thought I'd never have had if Phobia weren't chained – but it was my thought, nonetheless.
And then I crawled out of a mirror into a bathroom in Boston, dropping down from above the sinks. The consequences of my travel hit me all at once, and I barely made it into a stall and shed the Other Place before I threw up. There was blood in my vomit, from my cracked and bleeding lips – and worse than blood, there was powdered rust. It was like gritty sand coating the inside of my mouth. Ow. Ow. Once I could stand again, I washed my mouth out as best I could and staggered back into the cubicle, clutching my stomach.
My body really didn't like the depths of the Other Place. Who knew what would have happened if I'd made that journey carried by an angel? A short-distance hop was hellish enough.
God. And I was going to have to go back to Brockton Bay today.
I cleaned up after myself as best I could, and sat on the closed lid until the cramps in my gut had diminished to a dull ache. I even had to change out of my cop disguise. It didn't look too convincing covered in vomit. If I went this far again, I had to remember that going through a corridor meant I'd also have to come back. My body could only take so much.
By the time I'd recovered, "Luke" was long gone from the McDonalds. That didn't matter. I'd tracked him here all the way from Brockton Bay. I could track him inside Boston. As I glanced over the couple sitting where he'd been, I felt suddenly ravenously hungry. Lunch had only been a couple of hours ago, and I felt too ill to manage much solid food. A Coke and fries would have to do. At least it'd get my blood sugar up.
The sky outside was leaden, and the pavements were slick with rain. I could hear a helicopter buzzing overhead. It wouldn't normally have registered, but the city was missing the constant noise of cars. There was grass growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk and a burned out shell of a truck across the street. A pack of kids were swarming over each other on a vandalised basketball park.
I hadn't been to Boston in years. I vaguely remembered how it had looked when I was a kid. Things had changed, big time, starting with the towering concrete wall that marked the edge of the containment zone. This was a zombie city now, dead but still staggering around. Good place to hide out, really, if you didn't mind the yellow radiation warning signs hung up on the taped-off buildings. This area was one of the cleaner bits, but even the parts of the city that hadn't been irradiated by the Behemoth's attack on MIT had rad-counters displayed prominently on signposts and signs telling you not to drink standing water.
When I sank down into the chill, the Other Place was burned, too. It was still burning, somewhere out of sight. Flaking skeletal buildings loomed over streets choked with grey ash. Plumes of acrid, plastic-smelling smoke filled the sky. The dull red sun of my nightmare world barely shone through the haze. I could see the glow of flames down in the drains. Nothing was going to be floating down there.
This wasn't my Other Place, I thought, while I waited for Sniffer to track him down again. It wasn't Kirsty's, either. I swallowed, tasting the acrid smoke. I didn't like what I could taste in it. It scraped against my thoughts, wriggling almost like an Idea. I didn't like the implications of that at all – but I knew in my gut that they were right.
The Behemoth had done this. Its thoughts, its feelings were scorched here. It had burned its presence into the world with such force that the human misery of a rotting husk of a city barely had an impact. I could feel the rage, the hatred, the sheer contempt that had burned Boston's reflection to the ground. Just for a moment I felt like I was touching the mind of a god – or maybe a demon. Even years later, the Behemoth's presence could be felt.
When Sniffer returned, I was grateful for the distraction. Matsuda Ryo was nearby, in a park. I walked there, wrapping my coat around myself tightly. God. If an Endbringer showed up in Brockton Bay… if that happened, I'd just have to grab Dad and get out of the city through a corridor. I couldn't fight something like that, and I didn't want to be anywhere near this kind of hate in person.
The park was testament to those thoughts. I didn't need the Other Place to tell me what had happened here. All the buildings down one side of the square were blackened husks, and the road was blocked by twisted metal shapes that had once been armoured vehicles. Half the grassy area was cordoned off, and it was scattered with the charred, moss-covered remnants of trees. My hand went to my mouth. The army must have tried to make a stand here. The Behemoth hadn't cared. It just melted or burned everything in its path. Buildings, soldiers, tanks, capes – it found them all equally flimsy.
Matsuda Ryo was sitting on a bench reading, wrapped up warm. In fact, his clothes were far too warm for the mild weather. He was wearing a dull green bobble hat that covered his hair, and had a scarf up over his mouth. I was warm in my coat after the walk, so he must have been sweating under all that, though it was covering too much of his face to see for sure. There was a large hiking backpack sitting next to him. I wondered where he'd got all that stuff. If they'd had spare cash at home, they wouldn't have been living like that.
I was glad I'd swapped out of my police disguise. That wasn't an outfit someone on the run would have reacted well to. And a gas mask probably wasn't best for talking to someone. Instead, I had a cherub fetch me a scarf to wrap around my mouth. With my mirrored shades to cover my eyes and a hood to hide my hair, I didn't think there was any chance of him recognising me from school.
He was drenched in black-red oil in the Other Place. I wasn't sure what he looked like under it, because it had clotted and solidified, obscuring his features. I could smell his guilt, even over the hateful smoke. And there, drifting over his shoulders were fine arm-like tendrils of blue light that seemed to banish the horror of this ash-choked park.
It was him, he was the killer, and he was a parahuman for sure. I had my hard confirmation. It probably wasn't admissible in a court of law, but I wasn't looking for that.
Plucking up my courage, I sent an Idea to crawl into his ear and whisper I was trustworthy. I let that take effect and then walked over and sat down next to him. He glared at me. "Go away," he said. His accent was strong, but his English was good. Well, I guess he did go to school. "There're lots of free benches. Go sit somewhere else."
Behind my mirrored glasses I screwed my eyes shut, plucking up the courage for what I was about to do. They were almost as good as a mask. It was just much more comfortable when people couldn't see my eyes. "I want to talk to you," I said.
"I don't want to talk to you."
"Matsuda," I said. "I said I wanted to talk to you."
He froze up. "That's not my name," he said. He was obviously lying. I didn't even need the Other Place to tell. All the hair on the back of my neck rose, and I could feel my scars pulse.
"It is. Matsuda Ryo, right?"
The trash on the ground in front of me started to shake. The air was cold – cold enough that I could see my breath. "I'm not your enemy," I said quickly, hoping desperately that my creature had primed him properly. "I promise, I'm not. I'm a freelance hero. I'm not with the government and I'm not working for the Protectorate. I… I just wanted to find out the facts here. Because I'm pretty sure they're covering up something!"
"Like I believe that!" Despite that, though, he did seem to relax slightly. Not much. But slightly. The litter stopped dancing and the air lost its bitter chill.
"Keep it down," I said. "I don't want attention any more than you do. I'm… I'm like a detective, okay? You remember a few months back there were those raids on sweatshops down near the Docks, right? Those happened because of me." It felt good to say this, to finally admit it to someone. "I was the one who tracked down the people running that place. That's what I do! I track down people and… and try to make things right, okay?"
His eyes flicked from left to right. "Okay. Okay. So say I believe you when you say you're not with the government, so what? You'll just send them after me!" He was like a cornered dog, I thought. And like a cornered dog, he'd probably bite me if he thought he had to. He could kill. I knew that much.
"I won't! I promise, I won't!" I tried to sound soothing and calm, which wasn't easy. "I'm here because I want to know why you did it – and why the government is after you!"
"I know they're—"
I leaned forwards, ignoring the churning in my stomach. "They're probably going to find you," I said. "They've got parahumans. Someone is going to see you. But I can help." I rummaged in a pocket, pulling out a bundle of notes. "Look, here's a hundred bucks. You're going to need it. You should get somewhere safe. I'll give you an hour or so. Time to calm down and think. Then can we talk?"
He snatched the money from me. "I'll think about it. You promise you're not going to tell anyone?"
"I promise," I said, getting up. "I'll be in touch." I beat a hasty retreat, wrapping myself in Isolation as soon as I broke line of sight. I didn't want him to know that I could hide from others. It might be a trump card later.
Still, that could have gone worse. I rubbed my gloved hands together, then pulled the gloves off and huffed on them. I had an idea of his power, at least. He seemed to have some kind of control over cold. As I put my gloves back on, I noticed the handprint on my sleeve, drawn in frost. It had four fingers and two thumbs, one on each side.
If I was a different kind of superhero I'd probably have made a joke about guys hands always being cold and clammy, but I didn't exactly have experience in that area. Besides, I was too busy trying not to think of how exactly he'd torn that skinhead apart. The mental image of what happened if you froze someone solid and then dropped them was a little too close to mind for my personal comfort.
Happy thoughts, I thought to myself. Try to think happy thoughts. It was harder than it sounded, so instead I just imagined winding a barbed wire chain around Phobia's neck. It was much more effective.
With my fear leashed – but still there, like a muzzled guard dog – I tailed him, keeping safely back. He left the park, which would have been a sensible move if I really had been working for the government. I was notably taller than him, even though he was a boy, so I had no problem keeping up. Sometimes long legs were an advantage.
There were enough abandoned buildings in Boston that he'd found a place to hide out. He'd picked an abandoned guesthouse near the waterfront, named 'The Gull'. Billboards on the other side of the road showed a voluptuous blonde in a bikini suggestively playing with red balloons, but the paint was flaking and the colours had faded. There were bright halogen lights set up over on the next street, blazing over a building that was in the middle of being demolished, and they shone through the holes in the walls.
He ducked in past the yellow tape which sealed off the contaminated building. I paused there. There was no point going in now. I'd said I'd meet him in an hour. Exhaling Watcher Doll unseen, I imagined chaining its camera-eye to my mirrored glasses, link by link. "Keep an eye on him," I ordered. A moment later, its view was projected on the glass of my left eye. I'd got the idea from this tinkerfab gadget they'd shown off on a crime show, and it translated pretty well.
Matsuda was sneaking up through peeling corridors to slump down in a long-abandoned guest room. I could hear him muttering to himself in Japanese, but I had no idea what he was saying.
He didn't look like he was going anywhere, so I headed off to make my preparations and give him time to think. I kept well away from the MIT containment zone. There were tinkertech drones and weapons system mounted there, and at least half of them were looking inwards. I wasn't prepared to risk that any of the systems there were like the bird-woman.
At the fifty minute mark, I headed back. Matsuda Ryo hadn't really moved at all. He was just lying there. I had been worried he was going to make a run for it. I could just find him again, but if he'd decided to run he might get violent if I tried to approach him again. If that happened… well, I'd probably just call the cops. I didn't want to fight him, but I had to know the truth.
And God, what was I going to say about his dad? Nothing, I decided. I'd just pretend I didn't know. It would be easiest for both of us.
"Matsuda Ryo," I called out from just inside the front door. "I know you're in here. I want to talk to you."
In my left eye, I watched him jolt upright. "Go away!" he shouted down. I heard the voice twice – once from upstairs, once from my glasses. "Just keep away! Don't follow me!"
"My power is finding people," I said, which was true insofar as that was certainly a thing my power did. "I know you're here. I just want to talk."
I watched him hold his head in his hands. He looked like a trapped rat. "If you promise to just talk, and tell no one else I'm here…" he eventually decided.
"I promise," I called up.
"Then, fine. But not for too long."
I didn't plan for it to be 'too long'. I had to be home fairly soon, anyway. It was late afternoon by now.
The old building creaked and groaned as I made my way up the stairs. It was cooler in here than it was outside. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls like old scabs, and there was blue-black damp around the skirting boards. All the air smelt of rot and mould. I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was already in the Other Place.
The temperature was even colder in his room. Was it because he'd been in here a while? Did his power constantly freeze the area? There were sparkling frost-handprints all over the walls, and when I peeked into the smoke-choked Other Place I saw six beautiful, skeletal blue limbs sprouting from his back, idly tracing their fingers over the walls.
I forced myself to focus on him, not the beautiful blue arms. They were something to watch out for. Calling on my powers, I looked for his anger and fear, drawing them out into a burning figure that looked a bit like Phobia. I chained it in the corner. That should make him more sensible, I thought to myself smugly.
"Thank you for seeing me," I said.
Hunched up on the old damp couch, he shrugged. "No problem," he said, sounding calmer. "You promised not to tell anyone, right?" His narrowed eyes stared at me from between his wool hat and the scarf covering his mouth. He was calmer, but he was still wound tight.
"I promise," I said. And it was a promise, at least for now. I might change my mind later, but only if he turned out to be someone who was too dangerous to be left free.
"So what do you want?"
"Just like I said, I want to ask you some questions. I want to know the truth about what happened. I want to hear your side of the story – not what the reports say."
He pursed his lips. In front of my eyes, a can of Sprite floated over to him, frost forming on the surface. He broke the seal with a hiss, and didn't offer me one. So he had telekinetic powers, linked to his cold effect. I guessed that was his unseen hands, lifting things. "Fine," he said eventually, after taking a sip. "I'll do it for two hundred bucks."
I had the cash, even if I didn't really want to hand it over. "Sure," I said, tossing it in front of him. He picked it up without moving, the frost-covered dollar bills floating over to him. I sat down, perched on an old broken-down bed that had lost its mattress and covers. Retrieving my notebook from my pocket, I fished out a pen and started a new page. "You don't mind if I take notes, do you?" I asked, even as my Idea whispered the same words to him.
He grunted. "Sure."
"Sure you mind, or sure you don't mind?" I checked.
"Don't mind."
"Okay." I wrote his name at the top. I tried not to smile to myself. He almost certainly had no idea we were the same age. For once, being a beanpole was useful. He also had no idea that I'd squirmed another Idea into his skull, to whisper that he wanted to tell the truth and that telling me might help him. "So," I began, "Matsuda."
"You know that's my family name?" he said, face twisted with contempt.
Crap. "I was trying to be polite," I lied. "But if you prefer Ryo, well, fine. I guess my first question is… what happened on the third? On Tuesday. Or did things start before then?"
He was hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees. He wasn't looking at me anymore, just staring into empty space. "Things were going bad," he said, so softly I had to strain to listen. "I was tired. So tired. My father had come home from work at three in the morning. I had woken up. I hadn't been able to get back to sleep."
"Was this normal?" I asked.
He cracked his knuckles, glaring at me. I wasn't sure what he'd have been like if I hadn't been using my powers on him, but I was very glad that I had. "Yes," he said. "Not enough sleep in a tiny cramped room I have to share with my father. Him working night shifts so I got woken up when he came in. That's not good, right? I was feeling like shit all the time. And then on top of that there were those assholes at school."
"Bullies?" I said, voice slightly higher than perhaps I intended.
"Yeah, bullies. Why are you surprised? I'm a 'fucking poc'. I'm a 'fucking jap'." His accent was thickening, perhaps out of anger. I shrank back. "You Americans sure are a so welcoming bunch of assholes. So they'd go after me. They'd hit me in the corridors. They'd steal my homework. I'd have to give them my lunch vouchers or they'd beat me up, and when I did they'd slap me. Not on my face. Just on the arms and back and places where it wouldn't leave a bruise. So every day I hated going to fucking Winslow. Every day just sucked. Ever since I started."
My pencil hung uselessly over my notepad. I hadn't been writing, just listening. I scribbled BULLIES down. "I know how you feel," I said, my heart going out to him.
"What would you know about that?" he spat at me.
The words took my breath away. The sheer hate there – but didn't he see? No, of course he didn't see, but he would see! If I just explained! We really weren't that different!
But I didn't say anything. I knew I'd regret it if I said something. I also knew I'd regret it if I didn't say anything. Maybe I should have chosen the other path – but I didn't.
"Well?" he demanded.
"Continue, please," I said, pretending to make notes.
He stared at me for a long while. "So I went in on Tuesday. I was falling asleep on the bus. That's why I was last off. That meant they got me alone in one of the locker rooms. One of them filmed them slapping me. She was laughing all the time. My head hurt and all I could hear was her laughter. And then they got bored and I just… I couldn't face it."
I wasn't sure what prompted the idea, but there was a horrible creeping suspicion that crawled into my head. "Which locker room?" I asked. "Um… was there any CCTV?"
"No. It was the one near the bathrooms on the second floor."
… shit. My eyes went wide. That was… that was the same locker room I'd been in. What the hell did that mean?
His eyes were unfocussed again, staring at something I couldn't see. "And… I went to the bathroom," he said. "And… I just locked myself in there. My head hurt more and more and then I blacked out. When I opened my eyes everything was frozen. Like, all the water in the bowl, and there was ice all over the walls." He shook his head. "I haven't been warm since then," he said softly.
I waited for him to say something else, but he was clamming up. "So?" I prompted. "What then?"
That seemed to snap him out of the introspection, and he hunched his shoulders defensively. "I went to get the fuck out of that shitty place, of course," he snapped. "I was freaking the fuck out, 'cause I… oh, come on, you already know what my power does. I don't even know what to call it."
"Cryo-telekinesis," I said carefully. It wasn't like I knew either how he'd be formally classified.
"Sure. Whatever." One of his unseen icy hands lifted his drink for him and he sipped from it. "Do you know what it's like suddenly having more hands than you had before and knowing how to use them but not knowing how you know?"
"No." That wasn't a problem I'd ever had. Must be nice, having a power which tells you everything you can do with it.
"Hah. Lucky you. I had to look to remember what hands other people could see. I just had to get out of there!" He took a deep breath, as somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed. Ryo glared at me until the noise went away. "Only," he said, letting out a slow breath, "that asshole decided to start something! Everything would've been good if he hadn't been there! Fuck him!"
I checked my notes. "And this was… Justin?" I tried. He looked hesitant, so I set another Idea wriggling into his mind to ease him up.
"Yeah," he said sullenly. "He's one of them. The fucking W8ing 4s."
"Waiting Force? Or Waiting Fours?" I checked.
He shrugged. "Dunno. They write it with numbers, though. An 8 and a 4."
Illiterates as well as skinheads. Just when I thought my expectations couldn't get any lower. I thought of something number related. "A question," I said, turning over a page in my notebook and writing something down. "Does this mean anything to you?"
I showed him what I'd written.
S I X
"What, six?" he asked.
"Yes."
"… it's a number? Or does it stand for something?"
"You haven't seen it around, written like this?"
"… are you really asking me if I've seen the fucking number six written down? Yeah, sure. All over the place. It's six. It comes between five and seven." He snorted. "Seen them a bunch too," he added, contempt in his voice.
I was relieved. If he didn't know anything about S-I-X, then I doubted the grey men would be interested in him when they found him. I was sure they had to be linked to it somehow. And that meant there was something I could do to help him.
"I want names," I said. "I want to know who the bullies were so I can track them down."
He seemed to like that, and broke out into a diatribe. One of the names in his list of complaints caught my attention.
I frowned. "'Tash?" I asked. "Blonde girl? Wears her hair short at the sides?" She was one of the ones I'd seen in the skinhead locker room. One of the ones blaming the Japanese. One of the ones who'd been in the group who had known the victim.
Shit, if I'd known that, it would have been so much easier to find Ryo. I should have thought to look for people that the dead skinhead was bullying! TASH I wrote in my notepad. Then I underlined it twice, and added two exclamation marks. I'd checked her and she hadn't killed anyone, but there were a lot of things you could do to someone without killing them.
I was proof of that.
"Yes, her. She films things."
"Is she the leader?"
He huffed. "How would I know? I don't talk to them. I try to keep away from them."
I resisted the urge to sigh. "Do they do what she says?"
"Yeah."
So at the least she was the organiser. "So… going back a bit, you ran into Justin," I continued.
"Yeah."
"And you were trying to get out of the school."
"Yeah."
"And I bet he went for you. After all, he was a bully. He didn't need a reason. He just did it because he wanted to. And of course you just defended yourself – and of course because your powers were still new, you hit harder than you meant to. It's not like you meant to kill him." It all made sense. "He went after you. It's not like you would have done it otherwise."
And then things went wrong.
"What the fuck kind of bullshit is that?" Ryo asked, eyes narrowing. "Are you making fun of me?"
"I… what?" That didn't make any sense.
"He had it coming." His knuckles were pale as he squeezed his soda can. "I don't need stupid 'oh, it's not like you meant to kill him' junk. You sound like one of the fucking teachers going on and on about how you shouldn't fight back and all that crap."
"You… I…" I was literally lost for words.
"This time, I didn't lose. It's good enough for me."
"But of course you didn't mean to—" I began, before I was interrupted.
"Fuck Winslow. I'm never going back there, and I'm glad he's dead! I'm free of that place and the cops can go fuck themselves too." He squared his shoulders, his puffy jacket bunching up around him. "If they come after me, I'll… I'll kill them too!" He let out a slow breath through clenched teeth. "It's not my fault he's dead. It's his own fault. That's what you get for starting shit with me!"
This was all unravelling. I glanced into the Other Place, and saw his anger and fear had gotten free, burrowing back into him like a burning swarm. Crap, crap, did he suddenly get angry because his anger got free? Or did a surge of anger break its bonds, and suddenly it all slammed home? Either way, I wasn't keeping him calm anymore. "I'm sure they are—" I started.
"There you are with the fucking teacher-speech. Stop. That."
"Okay. Okay. I'll stop. I'll stop." This was getting out of my control. I had to leave.
"I am not going back!"
"I am not trying to make you go back!" I tried to persuade him. "But shouldn't you—" and I trailed off. Did he really have anything to go back to? His dad was dead. He was a runaway criminal. He'd killed someone.
"My father knows I'm not coming back! I told him that!"
"Your father," I said. Oh. Oh crap.
"Yeah, that's I said." Some of my uncertainty must have shown on my face even through the glasses and the scarf, because he squared up his shoulders, and took a step towards me. "Got something you want to say?"
What was I meant to say? Sorry to tell you I walked in and found his corpse? I'd been trying to avoid thinking about what I'd seen! Maybe I should have thought about it more, and then I'd have had a cover story ready. "Um," I said. "Nothing."
"What're you planning?!"
"Really, nothing," I said, trying desperately to change the topic. "Sure, I'll see what I can do about—"
Ryo leaned forwards, lips peeling back to reveal his teeth. "What. Are. You. Planning?" He was getting so angry and this entire situation was beyond my control. I had to get out of here. "You're hiding something!"
"I'll be in touch," I said, and rose to leave.
Unseen icy hands grabbed me and yanked me to the ground. Cold fear lanced through my stomach. Or maybe it wasn't fear. Maybe it was his power, reaching through my body. I looked down. There was frost forming on the front of my coat. I could feel it on my back too.
"No," he said. "You're not leaving."
"I'm on your side!" I blurted out, trying not to show fear and failing.
"I don't know that!" he shouted, pacing up and down. His expression was all twisted up. I had the nasty feeling that he'd just decided to grab me on the spur of the moment, and now everything was happening all at once. He wasn't in control of the situation any more than I was. "You could be just about to go to the cops!"
I had to talk him down. I had to. Before he psyched himself up to… to actually do something. "I promise I won't call the cops," I said, breathing my words out along with an unseen Idea. "You have my word. I'm j-just a h-hero. I don't work for anyone."
The cold feeling moved up through my body, until it settled firmly around my throat. The Idea hadn't worked – or else he just didn't want to think it. I could feel each icy finger – six of them! – wrapped around my neck. I wanted to sink into the Other Place, see what I could do, but this close I was sure I couldn't avoid looking at his powers. I couldn't afford to bliss out here. I was going to have to do this blind, but that made everything so much harder. Then the hand tightened so I could barely breathe. That really really didn't help matters!
I felt the freezing hands lift me up, my feet dangling free. I couldn't help but kick a bit. Then he dumped me back down on the tattered sofa, none too gently. My whole body burned with cold, and my vision blurred as my eyes started to water from the pain. "You aren't going anywhere," he growled. "I am not going to jail! I don't trust you! And… and I don't… I…" His brown eyes were wild, and he was barely coherent.
"I don't … I'm not sending you to—" I began.
Ryo slammed his fist into the wall, knocking loose old plaster. "Liar. You said you'd done things for the cops before. You went and found a sweatshop! That means you know people there! You work with them! You'll want to bring in a murderer." His voice dripped with bitterness.
Goddamnit, Taylor, this is what happens when you brag about actually helping people. No good deed ever goes unpunished. "I don't think you're a bad person!" I said, words pouring out through the pain of his freezing powers. I could taste the Other Place on my lips, but it wasn't something as well-formed as a creature I'd imagined up. It was like that raw terror that had shown up in the alleyway that I hadn't ever done again. "You're not a bad person. I don't think you're a bad person and you don't think you're a bad person so please, please don't hurt me!"
That at least seemed to work, and one by one most of the hands relaxed and released me. He didn't let go entirely, though. There was still one icy hand at my throat. If it wasn't for that burning, painful cold I'd have been entirely unaware that he had unseen hands wrapped around my body.
Jesus. I silently prayed in my head. Please don't let me die here. If Kirsty was right and I really was doing things for God, now would be a really good time for some divine intervention. Those fingers around my neck were so cold and I could feel them moving in and out of my flesh. Sometimes they'd be inside my skin. He'd torn the arms off the skinhead at school. What could he do to my throat? To my head?
And then I managed to pull myself together enough to choke Phobia, and my brain finally started working. I had a way out of here. An angel could carry me. I'd just need a distraction and I could make a run for it. Something like a cover of smoke or…
I exhaled an unseen cherub. "Flashbang," I subvocalised, putting my hands behind my back. I felt the solid weight of the grenade I'd 'borrowed' from the cops drop down into my palms. I'd read the manual time and time again, but I'd never actually done this before in real life. Pull the pin. Let the handle go. Then one-to-one-and-a-half seconds later, it goes off.
If you hold on to it for too long, you might lose your fingers.
"Why did you come here!" he shouted at me, pacing up and down. "Why! Why! If you had just left me alone, I wouldn't have to do anything! I don't want to hurt you!"
"I don't want you to hurt me," I said, painfully aware of the icy cold around my throat. It hurt. It was burning me.
"Shut up! I… I… I don't want to hurt you, do you get it? But you're here!"
I understood too well. He was trying to psyche himself up. He wasn't as tough or as willing to kill as he'd pretended. He didn't want to hurt me, but he was trying to persuade himself that the only way to escape was if I was dead.
Pull the pin. Let go of the handle. It'll go off less than two seconds later.
I could already hear the hiss of the angel in my mind's eye. It wanted me to let it out. As I exhaled, I sunk into the Other Place. The six-fingered beauty was so close to me. It was wrapped around my throat. The icy brilliance was out of place, and I almost wanted to give in. But for the first time, I felt something else as I stared at that wonderful glow, wrapped around my throat. I stared at it and felt…
… hungry.
In my clumsy gloves, I pulled the pin, gripping the handle tight. It took more effort than I thought to pull it out, but I managed it. "Angel," I whispered. I let go of the flashbang. "Move me."
Barbed wire hands closed around my shoulders. And then there was the timeless sensory deprivation of the Other Place. No eyes, no tongue, no ears; only the exposed nerves of my own mind.
I appeared at the foot of the stairs, staggered, and managed to catch myself on the rotting banisters before I collapsed. And then there was a thunderclap upstairs. It felt more like someone was punching me in the ears, and I wasn't even in the same room as it.
"Isolation," I spat out, the butterflies pouring out of my mouth. He couldn't find me now. No, he couldn't. I staggered down the corridor, leaning against the wall. My ears were ringing and my entire body ached and my neck was just a solid block of pins and needles. It hurt like it did when you held an ice cube for too long. There was warm blood trickling down my leg, and I wasn't sure if that was because of my power or his.
I tried to focus on another angel, but things hurt too much. I just had to get out of here. Leaning on the ashen wall of the Other Place, I limped down the hallway. Not far to go.
And then I got to the window and it registered that this wasn't street level.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I forced out. Swearing helped me focus. Angel. Yes. Angel.
All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I heard footsteps on the stairs. The ash-covered wood creaked under Ryo's weight. He was moving like he couldn't see, blindly grasping for the grey walls to support himself. His hat was off, and his hair hung loose dripping black oil. He wasn't even really holding himself upright – at least, not with his physical body. One of the beautiful glowing limbs sprouting from his back was holding him upright. The other five were blindly groping around.
Frost patterns formed wherever they touched. But I could see their wonderful blue light and I could hear the click of their nails as they scraped along surfaces, brushing through the ash of the Behemoth's hate. God, had he snapped because of the lingering influence of that thing? Clasping my hands over my mouth, I tried not to breathe too loudly.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The hands were coming closer. He was stumbling along, swearing and cursing in Japanese. One hand knocked over a pile of overturned mouldy books.
Biting my lip, I ducked low and tried to ease my way around him. The hands were groping blindly, but my luck would run out if I stayed there and I certainly didn't think Isolation could protect me if he actually touched me. Back against the wall, I slid along the rotting wallpaper, every painful move reminding me of the freezer burns he'd already inflicted just by touching me.
My breath was a fluttering insect's wings, each gasp forced out through my gloves. If he hadn't been mostly deaf from the flashbang, he'd have heard me for sure. He was four yards away. Three. Two. And I eased my way through an open doorway, and nearly fell through a hole in the floorboards. Half the floor was missing in this room. The floorboards had given way over the years that this guesthouse had been abandoned. There was a way down, though, where the floor tilted down onto a couch.
And then a freezing cold hand touched me on the arm.
I screamed, leapt away perilously close to the edge – and not a moment too soon, because three beautiful hands tore away a chunk of mouldy drywall as big as my torso and threw it. It smashed into a glassless window on the opposite wall, tearing out the rotting frame. And then another hand came through, and another. They had too many joints, five or six per arm so they moved more like snakes than like any kind of human arm. Scrape, scrape, scrape. The nails dragged their way along the rotten ash-choked floorboards and punched holes in the walls. I scrambled away backwards, just trying to avoid their painful touch.
"Angel," I gasped, trying to force the Other Place out into shape. But I couldn't focus and everything hurt too much and I was bleeding and why wouldn't my mind focus on angels I had to imagine the angel and it wasn't working. "Angel! Fuck it, angel!" I exhaled a wavering black form which started to take a rusty shape, only to come apart in a cloud of mist that dissipated into the air.
He was peering around through tear-filled eyes, blinking constantly. "You're in here!" he shouted. "I know it! You…" one of his hands lunged out, punching a hole in the exterior wall barely an arm's length from my head. "I'll get you! I'll fucking kill you! You've got some… some cloaking tech or something, but I can feel! You! Are! Here!" Every word was accentuated with another blow.
The idiot was going to bring the building down on both of us! And I was trapped! I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out!
One gasped breath held. I wanted to hurt him. Another breath held. I wanted him to suffer. A third breath, so my lungs felt like they were bursting. How dare he try to kill me when I'd been trying to help him!
The floorboards creaked under his weight.
And then I opened my mouth and the Other Place surged out from my eyes, pouring into reality. The paint flaked off the walls as the air itself took the shape of tentacles of barbed wire. Ryo's eyes widened; he could see it too. He lunged for the oncoming tide with his unseen limbs, but he might as well have tried to stab the ocean with a knife for all the good it did. Everything vile and unpleasant and unhappy, every bad memory and nasty thought surged out of me, taking form in a wave of withering horrors. There were angels in there and cherubs and squirming Ideas and flapping butterflies and a thousand other half-imagined impressions.
One thread of the Other Place coiled around his throat, and he screamed. That was a bad move, because other one took the chance to force itself down his throat. Nose, eyes, ears – the Other Place washed into him, drowning him in its filth and horror.
Ryo collapsed down to his knees, shaking with constant tremors. He could see the Other Place, too. He was staring at his hands –dripping with red-black murder-oil – and making faint whimpering noises. Blood oozed from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears. His body didn't like the Other Place.
I wasn't angry. I didn't hate him. I wasn't scared. I couldn't be. Everything about me that could have done that had forced its way into him. My mind was clear –dreadfully, terrifyingly clear, free of everything that held me back – and I knew what I needed to do. What I needed to say.
"I wasn't going to hurt you," I said, feeling only mild sadness at the sight. "I was going to help you escape. Maybe even go back to Japan. I think I can do that," no, I knew I could do it, in this tranquil state, "and there's nothing left for you in America."
He didn't reply. His eyes were rolled back in his head. The beautiful light of his powers were coated in the raw stuff of my nightmares, blood and rot and nails. It was as if they'd been painted with the inside of the locker. And the locker kept everything it took. The beauty was already dissolving, falling apart, tarnished by what I was. What I could do.
"But it's too late for that now," I continued, in the same sad tone. I felt so different. Was the real me the blackness and filth coating Ryo, squirming and oozing and writhing around the beauty of his unseen limbs? Each word I spoke came out accompanied by more monstrosities, oozing down his throat and crawling into his ears.
He screamed then, a short, gasped noise. I watched with mild curiosity as the hand of one of his phantom limbs dissolved in the Other Place like sugar in water. The blue glow shone for a moment in the dimness, before twisting and inverting and becoming dirty ice.
"Make him sleep," I breathed, Cry Baby crawling out of my mouth with the words. It whinnied, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He was in enough pain that I think his body was glad to obey. He looked like he was out of it.
I didn't want to hurt him, and now he wasn't a threat to me. With a momentary regret, I inhaled, and all the filth and nastiness and rot of the Other Place sunk back into my mind, where it had come from.
And I was filled with bliss. Ecstasy burned behind my eyes. I'd once thought nothing was as good as watching the power of a parahuman, but now I could taste it with my brain and the previous pleasure paled in comparison. As I looked down at his prone form, he twitched. The stumps of his not-so-beautiful blue limbs were curled up around him, in pain. But I hardly had room in me to care. After doing something like that, I'd expect my power to make me suffer for it. After all, it been way bigger than an angel.
But no. There was no room for pain in my mind – not with this elation flooding me.
He was lying there, bleeding from the eyes and ears and mouth. I smiled gently as I looked down at his prone form. There was smoke in the air; not the smoke of the Other Place. Oops. I guessed that the flashbang had probably set the place on fire. It was sort of a grenade after all.
I had to stifle giggles at that thought. Some little bit of me realised that was bad, but everything just felt too good to worry. Well, I'd have to save him. I wasn't going to let him get hurt. But he couldn't wander around free. He was too dangerous. I'd just been trying to help him. I'd get him medical help and make sure the PPD knew where he was.
I felt like I was walking on air as I dragged Ryo to a nearby open store and fed the owner the Idea to call the police. And when I tore the corridor in the McDonalds bathroom back open and crawled through it back to Brockton Bay, it didn't hurt at all.
"You're in a good mood," my dad remarked as he served up dinner. I'd made it back in time. Pretty good for a round trip to Boston.
I had to focus to even hear him. My mind was still floating up among the clouds. "Yep," I said cheerfully.
"Is… did something nice happen?"
"Not really," I lied. "I'm just feeling good for once. I found a really good bookstore down in the… err, down near Little Tokyo."
"Mmm." Dad didn't seem to buy it for some reason. I don't know why. Shouldn't he have been happy that I was in a good mood?
That night I checked myself in the mirror. My scars were red and puffy and inflamed, but apart from that I looked fine. The icy touch of his hands had hurt like hell at the time, but it must have been like holding a can from the fridge for too long. Painful, but not doing any long term damage. I laughed to myself. I'd been really scared!
And when I went to bed, I slept like a baby.
