An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 2.05
It was warming up a little, but I still stuffed my hands in my pockets as soon as I got outside. A bit of me wanted to go back into the warm, but I didn't listen to it. Even if I could feel the cold biting at the sensitive flesh of my hands even through the gloves. I needed warmer gloves to wear over the top of the protective latex. The tips of my fingers, where my nails were regrowing, ached.
No, of course I didn't go and pin to a wall my desire to go inside. That would be silly. Hmm. It would have probably have looked like me swaddled in a pile of blankets and thick clothes, with a pair of glowing eyes inside the shadows of its hood. Something to remember, I supposed.
I set off at a brisk walk. The ice from the morning was melting, but it was still slick and I really didn't want to end up on my ass. I'd just walk around the block a few times, I decided, and get the lay of the land before I went off any further. I'd been trapped in a psychiatric hospital for too long and a normal hospital even before that. I needed some fresh air, but maybe I'd go poke my head back into the union offices and see if Dad was done after my walk.
I saw a few gangers along the way, on the other side of the street. It was easy to tell. I didn't know how it was in other cities, but in Brockton Bay criminals of all kinds wore masks. If Hollywood wasn't lying to me, they did it elsewhere, too. I bet the 1980s PR people who went and got the whole parahuman 'caped crusader' thing going when they were busy showing off the 'Supermen' to the Russians didn't think that would happen. First the government parahumans dressed up as superheroes for PR, then the vigilantes and terrorists copied them, then criminals with powers started being 'supervillains' to try to 'legitimise' their actions. It was disgusting. Why didn't the government just stop them when they'd started? In the end, it had wound up that people holding up the local 7-11 threw on a Halloween mask over their balaclava.
Or, in the case of the people over the street, they all wore white masks and cheap suits. I thought that meant they were in the White Lion Association, but I wasn't sure. It made sense they were, though. I mean, white masks, White Lion. I thought they were based further south, though – in and around Old Chinatown. Well, it wasn't like I had any great insight into the criminal underworld. Either way, I stayed clear of them.
For all my talk of fresh air, the air wasn't too clean. I could smell cars, smoke, and just a hint of sewer over the top of the ever-present sea salt tang. I paused at the lights, watching the cars pass. I almost choked on a cloud of fumes leaking from some oil-dripping old clanker, but managed to settle for a coughing fit. That was one thing I definitely hadn't missed.
There was a discarded newspaper in the gutter, its pages flapping in the wind. I stooped and picked it up. It was soggy and the bottom half of the front page was ruined, but the headline of-
LEVIATHAN ATTACKS DUBAI
-was all too clear. I guess it had come in too late yesterday to make the morning paper, so it was headlines today. The black-and-white picture of a ruined city was bleeding ink onto my gloves. I looked around and found a trash can to dump it, wiped my hands against the pavement, and headed on, heading towards the ocean at the junction.
I could hear music from up ahead – organ music, I realised. It was coming from an old redbrick factory which had a neon cross on top of the chimney. It had been whitewashed – probably when it had been converted to being a church – but the mix of industrial grime and ocean salt so distinct to the docks had worked its way into the crevices. The paint higher up the façade was cracked, though it had been touched up close to the ground. There was a street preacher standing outside with a placard, and the congregation heading into the church tried their best to ignore him. He didn't take too well to that.
"God is dead!" called out the street preacher. His eyes were wild and his greying beard was wispy. His teeth were rotten – he looked like a meth addict. "He died alone, because we did not love him! The Soviets with their blasphemies and their lack of faith tried to kill him, unleashing the Legion upon him. With their wicked science and sinful amorality, they tried to bind Satan himself at a place called Tunguska! They failed, and were cursed! But seeing the sins of his creation, who spurned his love and the sacrifice of his Only Son, the Lord God let himself fall into the dark waters, and is no more!"
THE END IS NIGH!
HEB 12:22-24
WILL NEVER COME TO BE!
read his sign.
"The Book of Revelations is invalidated by the sins of man!" he called out. "There will be no Rapture! The Endbringers are the false gods, the demons of the Egyptians and the Babylonians and other wicked peoples. The burning Lion, the shifty Leopard, and the lying she-Wolf! They are lesser than the Lord and if we had not sinned, he would have kept them chained as before, but now he is dead they have returned to seek their revenge! They have burned Heaven and now turn their eyes on the world!"
I crossed the street to get away from his mad-eyed, spittle-spraying rant. Just talking about those
things was morbid as hell. The people heading into the church weren't so lucky, and as each passed he would turn to scream at them. I adjusted my glasses, and noticed that there was someone at one of the windows in the church, staring out at him and talking on the phone. Calling the police, perhaps.
I flickered my vision to the Other Place, and peered over the top of my glasses. The church was now a gothic monstrosity, leering gargoyles glowering down at the world from atop rusty iron crosses. It looked like it belonged in some ancient city somewhere in Europe. There was a smog of – I sniffed – fear, worry, concern, something I couldn't quite pin down about it, and it clung to the people heading in.
But were they worried because they were going to church, or were they going to church because they were worried? I wasn't sure. We used to go every week when Mum was still alive, but when she died Dad basically fell apart, and we just… drifted away. I sighed. Some certainty would be nice in my life. Maybe I should head in, see why all those people were gathering.
But then I'd have to walk past the crazy preacher. When I saw him in the Other Place, I really,
really didn't want to get anywhere close to him. His flesh pulsed and flowed, never staying constant. Mouths budded from it, shouting curses and nonsense words – do you know the word for that is 'glossolalia'? That was something I'd found out from a book I'd borrowed from Leah. Looking at him, I knew what his problem was. It was a worse version of what Emily at the hospital had.
"She told me!" he ranted and raved, over the babbling of the mouths on his body, "that ninety nine knights of the air ride super high-tech jet fighters! But does the army kill the Endbringers? No! People, innocents, loved ones die, their lives thrown away because we can't kill those wicked gods! Only faith can stop them!"
Of course, Emily was on medication, and it wasn't too easy to tell she had problems in normal conversation. If she was prone to strange leaps of logic and saying things without thinking, maybe that was just how she was normally. This guy, though – I sighed, and thrust my hands into my pockets. He wasn't right in the head. He looked like he'd been taking drugs from those meth-addict teeth, but his problems went deeper than that. What had gone wrong for him, I wondered. The way he talked suggested he had some kind of education, but who knew?
I walked on by, and hated myself a little bit for it. I could see there was something wrong with him, but I did nothing. Could I do something? Maybe. I didn't know everything my powers could do. But even if I could fix him, by – I don't know – pulling out a construct that represented his addiction, what then? It'd get free in a few hours, when the construct collapsed.
And what if I did it wrong? What would happen then? I could barely manage to chain Madame Secret, and she was part of me. The idea of mucking up with a crazy street guy's meth addiction made me feel like I was holding broken glass in my bare hands. What if it got into
me?
No, I wasn't good enough to do anything. But that didn't mean I liked knowing that he was ill, and doing nothing about it. I wished I'd never looked at him in the Other Place.
I'd gone a bit off track, and should probably head back to the diner or the union offices. Well, I wasn't going to head back the same way. I didn't want to have to walk by the crazy street preacher again. I doubted the cops would pick him up. Sure, they'd grab him if he was doing it over in Nobility Hill, but this was the docks. Even if they did take him in, there'd probably be complaining letters in the paper about how they should have been spending their time combating gang violence.
… honestly, those letters would be right.
I didn't leave the Other Place. Hands in my pockets, I strode down filthy streets, beneath the shadow of rusty insect-cranes, and past monsters of all descriptions. At first I tried to guess what that meant about each person I saw, but quickly I stopped wondering. It was just getting me down. That, and the irregular stains of red-black death-marks on the sidewalks and the road.
God. Why did I have this power? It gave me the ability to see how rotten the world was, how everything was rusty and filthy and horrible. And yet I kept on using it. Maybe it was because I already knew how bad the world was, how people could be monsters beneath a pretty surface. Why couldn't I have had something which let me heal people? Something which would let me make the things
better, not just see how broken they were?
I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and dug in my pockets, fishing out the candy bar I'd got from the diner. I stared numbly at the packet, and the twisted text which now declared 'GlUttONy FeELs GoOd', and giggled weakly. Or maybe I was just feeling mopey because it was the first day I'd spent out of a psychiatric hospital, I spent all my time staring into a twisted hell-dimension, my dad was busy dealing with one of his friends being shot, and top of everything else, it was that time of the month. Maybe I had a good reason to be feeling a bit blue.
I bit into the candy and felt a bit better. Gluttony did feel good. God, I hate you, Other Place, for being so cynical and yet accurate. And that was more chocolate, which meant I really should try to jog to burn off some of the calories from this and… and my attempts at a jog slowed and then stopped after only a hundred yards.
One building drew my eye. An old, heavy squat structure probably dating back to the early 1900s, longer than it was wide, with small high-set windows completely opaque from decades of grime. It was set back from the road, in front of a mostly empty parking lot behind a well-maintained chain fence. There were spikes on top of the fence and regular 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' and 'Beware of the Dog' signs.
The dog was being walked around the parking lot by a security guard in a day-glo jacket. It was not a friendly dog. And the security guard wasn't much of a looker, either.
Of course, that was what it looked like in the real world, when I checked it. That wasn't what had caught my attention.
In the Other Place, it was a looming structure of human misery. The walls were fleshy, and almost seemed to throb. No, I corrected myself, they were visibly pulsing. The ivy growing up one side of the building appeared to be veins. Compared to the greyness and the decay and passive despair of the rest of the area around it, it was active in its dreadfulness.
It looked as bad as that shanty town I'd seen the day before. Maybe worse. I hadn't seen the shanty town up close. What was that building anyway? A warehouse? A leftover dockside factory built by some old industrialist so he could get things straight to the ships with as little delay as possible? Maybe it was now some slum housing – though it looked kind of dead for a place people lived.
There was a dark black-red stain in the middle of the parking lot, just short of one of the slightly dirty white vans. I squinted. The stain looked like it was smoking slightly, though it was hard to tell in the misery-fog.
I knew what that meant. Someone had died there. And my eyes drifted over to the warehouse door. More stains. The wind shifted and the misery-sick-hate-depression stench blew over towards me. I gagged, and tasted bile.
There was something horribly, horribly wrong about that place. I had to do
something. I didn't know what, but I couldn't just leave this alone. Unless… well, maybe it was an old stain in the Other Place? A forgotten tragedy, nothing to do with the building's current use?
No, I told myself. I didn't know how I knew, but the reek was far too
fresh for it to be anything other than recent. I nervously twisted my hands together, and winced at the pain from my fingers. What to do, what to do? I couldn't just call the police right now. What proof did I have? Nothing that wouldn't have them either thinking I was crazy, or a parahuman. Hell, I didn't even know what was going on in there for sure. Maybe it was… like, a place where they cut up people and turned them into dog food.
Nah. There was no way that could be true. That's the kind of thing which only happened in trashy horror movies, right?
I wished I could believe that. When the wind in Other Place blew the smell of that building at me, I could have accepted almost anything about it.
Perching on a bollard on the other side of the street, I exhaled two of the dolls that I'd used to spy on Dad earlier today. "Go, listen," I told one of them. "Find out what's inside."
The one which stayed with me opened its mouth. There was a rhythmic noise coming from inside the building. It was some kind of machinery – no, scratch that, quite a lot of machines all making the same noise. Some kind of motor, I thought. It was muffled, though. I tried to make it go inside, but it seemed to bounce off the walls. That was what happened when I tried to send one of my constructs outside sensory range without something to anchor it to, or something it was tracking.
I frowned, and brought out the barbed wire angel with a camera for a face. I sent it to follow the security guard around. If he went inside, I could get a look. But I'd need to find a better place. I wanted to see inside with my own eyes. I paced around the building, keeping my eyes open. There were a few other buildings, old warehouses and the like, on the same block. None of them looked like that in the Other Place. They were just bleak, decaying concrete and brick structures. Whatever was wrong, it was something to do with that building.
One of the warehouses had an old fire escape running up the outside, up to the roof. I looked around. No one was watching me. And checking in the real world, the fire escape looked in good condition. I deliberated for a moment, and then started to climb the stairs.
My heart was pounding. In the cold air, each breath seemed to ache. I could feel my nerves on fire with adrenaline. I was technically trespassing here. I was already rehearsing my story in my head, 'Oh no, I just wanted to see what everything looked like from up here'. It wasn't even technically a lie. I was trying to get a better view of the place. At least I was giving my thighs a workout.
I clearly wasn't the first person to climb this fire escape. There were old discarded beer bottles around a soot-blackened metal barrel, as well as some graffiti tags and – my nose wrinkled – what looked like enough cigarette butts to give you lung cancer all in one go. Charming. The graffiti wasn't all in English. Chinese or Japanese, I wasn't really able to tell the difference. It was all French to me… or rather, Chinese or Japanese, which was the problem.
I squinted as I tried to see in through the windows of the building in the normal world. Damn it, I had the feeling that my eyesight might be getting slightly worse. I might need new glasses. I hadn't noticed it until I contrasted it to my perfect vision in the Other Place – which was really strange when I thought about it. Because I was short sighted, and that meant my eyes focussed the light wrong, and that meant that, somehow, in the Other Place my eyes were working properly. Did that mean I wasn't using light to see or… what?
But that was just my mind trying to distract itself. The high up windows had been boarded up from the inside. I couldn't see in from up here. And the gap between this roof and the other building was far, far too far for me to jump. I wasn't stupid enough to even think about it – not seriously, at least. I sighed. I should probably stop wishing that I was Alexandria.
Funny, really. Before I got my powers, I could have ended up with any set of powers possible. Well, theoretically. But the point was, I
could have been the next Alexandria, even if it was really unlikely. Though not
totally impossible, right – after all, they were already calling Glory Girl the next Alexandria, and she lived in Brockton Bay.
Now? No way. I had my powers. That die had been cast, and come up horrible.
However, what I could see from up here was a bit where the fence around the warehouse wasn't quite flush against the wall. I thought I might be able to squeeze in. I wouldn't have a chance if I hadn't been a beanpole, but I thought I might fit. So it was a calf-aching climb down the fire escape again, and then I had to hold my breath and squeeze through the gap, nearly losing the buttons on my coat along the way. I was now up against the side of the suspicious building. I hoped the guard didn't patrol here, but at least I was out of the open. I ducked up to a pair of dumpsters, and thought to look inside.
I found lots of fabric. It looked like offcuttings from… from something. I wasn't sure. They came in lots of colours, though. Why would they have a dumpster full of fabric offcuttings in a place so horrible? I wasn't just imagining it, was I?
I checked the Other Place and immediately regretted it. This close to the flesh-building, the smell was indescribable. I meant that literally, too, because it had things in it like grief and exhaustion which never really came in smell form. They just got into my brain through my nostrils.
Right. I put my palms flat against the wall, and concentrated. Sniffer, long limbs, big camera eyes, big nose. I took a deep breath in reality, and released it in the Other Place. I was going to force Sniffer through this wall, whether she liked it or not. I was going to see what was on the other side. I was going to see everything there.
Things went wrong almost immediately. She didn't form. Not like I wanted to. Crimson butterflies forced their way out of my mouth, briefly coalescing into a half-shape of pale flesh before disintegrating again and again. I focused, and pushed harder. There was a sudden sense of pressure which gave way, and my vision turned black.
And I saw… everything.
the walls, padding fastened to the inside to mute the noise
narrow, cramped
no colour, no light, only a sense of shape like the knowledge of where my hand was when it was behind my back, but covering everything in the area
those two, chained by love
those two, chained together by hate
everyone is connected
all these people
all these sewing machines
men walking up and down
batons and guns
old violence in the floor
people died here
he hates her
misery
hopelessness
tiredness
contempt
apathy
I collapsed to my knees, panting. I had a splitting migraine, and I could taste copper. My throat was burning, like I'd just breathed in smoke from a bonfire. I'd bitten my lower lip, I realised. Shit.
What… what had just happened? I'd just been trying to see what was going inside and then my senses had gone strange. Had I just seen through Sniffer's eyes? Was that how she-it saw the world? Well, 'saw'. It wasn't sight. I couldn't tell you what colour any of the clothes the people had been working on had been – yes, they had been clothes – but I could tell you their shape. I could tell you how everything had been connected together, tied together by iron chains – the thicker the closer – and everyone in there was trapped by it. And the faint machine noise I'd heard had been sewing machines.
Oh. I knew what this was. You heard about this sometimes; illegal sweatshops. In the old days, they used to make clothes overseas where you didn't have to pay people as much. Nowadays, they bought the people to the US, from war torn or Endbringer-wrecked places.
Coughing, spluttering, I pulled myself to my feet. These weren't nice people. This wasn't a nice place. And they were totally fine with keeping people in conditions which… which make the Other Place like
this and…
"What's this noise?"
Shit. Shit shit shit. There was the security guard with his dog at the end of the alley. Oh fuck, I'd been coughing and making noise and of course he'd come to see what was going on. No. No no no.
"You!"
Shit. He'd seen me.
"Hey!" he called at me, and I jumped back. "Stop right there!"
I ran.
