Nolrai
weak to fangs
- Location
- Porltand
That's Taylor's opinion, but she's not very objective.
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
3.10
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 3.10
In the end, all the planning I'd done for this weekend was worth nothing. I woke up at about 3am on Saturday morning, and just about managed to stumble through to the bathroom on shaking foal-like legs before I threw up everything in my stomach. I spent the entire weekend in bed with a fever, being fed liquids and ibuprofen by Dad. And vomiting. Yeah, I got a lot of that done, until I was only throwing up bile – which really hurts, incidentally. Even when the fever went down I couldn't stand on my own. "Weak as a kitten", Dad said.
It was Tuesday before I had the courage to use my powers again. I was scared of what I'd see, but the nagging curiosity and boredom managed to overcome my fear. I couldn't even enjoy being away from school. I just couldn't lie there, too weak to even hold up a book, any longer. I had things to do. I had to do things. I had to know what had happened down at that apartment near Chinatown.
Of course, they'd cleaned it up by then. The feds and their grey men were gone, replaced by construction workers who were just fixing the place. Watcher Doll couldn't find anything interesting, so I fell back on more conventional means of investigation. I managed to totter downstairs, pausing for a breather half way down the stairs, and dug through the papers in the recycling bin.
I found a page 7 half-page story in Sunday's Bay Times about a raid on a black market factory near Chinatown, which had been making illegal tinkertech drugs. Monday's paper had some people writing in to talk about how illegal immigrants were bringing in crime and how they needed to crack down on them and how the West Coast states were pushing them over to the east and how we needed internal border controls to stop the illegals flooding this way, etc etc.
It made me think. I'd found something which might have been drugs – the bag labelled Killfast. Which meant that they were covering up the truth, using the truth. How many other news stories were lying without lying?
I had time to think about that as I slowly and laboriously stumbled back up the stairs, one step at a time. I flopped back on my bed, and drifted into an uncomfortable doze. As I slept, I was chased through endless corridors by a three-headed monster that sometimes seemed to be three girls instead. I waded through old blood as they crawled over the ceiling, laughing at me. The cold was like the Other Place, a metal surface sapping heat at a touch.
When I woke, all I could think was that I'd had enough. It was getting dark outside – just another sign my sleep cycles were ruined – and that meant another sleepless night ahead. Maybe I could force my nightmares onto Cry Baby, so it'd have them instead of me. I couldn't let dreams ruin everything.
It was Thursday by the time I was really recovered, and Dad was still reluctant to let me out of the house. He wanted me to just take the last two days off, to make sure I was better. It should have been tempting, but I just wanted to be out of the house, even if that meant going to school.
Even school was better than lying there, being stalked by nightmares which didn't particularly care if I was asleep or awake. Nightmares of the locker. Nightmares of the Other Place. Nightmares of what I'd seen down by the docks. Nightmares of being chased by black-clad crow-women who wouldn't stop and wouldn't give up, no matter how far I ran. My subconscious had a lot of time to fill, and a lot of things to fill it with.
Stupid powers. God. I'd never pushed them like that before. How many tunnels had my angels torn open, one after the other? Normally just one left me feeling queasy and cold. Part of me felt I had to work on improving my distance, so I wouldn't need to use so many. Most of me never ever wanted to feel the bone-deep cold of those corridors again.
That wasn't really an option, though. I knew I'd need them. I had a lead on that strange S IX writing, after all. I'd seen it before. The funny thing was that the cherubs couldn't find Kirsty.
No, wait, the other word. Not funny. Weird. Because I knew what she looked like and I knew her name. That was normally enough for a cherub to find her. And even if it failed one time, usually if I tried again after a few hours I'd manage it. I knew she had a TV in her room, so Watcher Doll should have been able to find her and it couldn't, either.
I'd like to think it was just a question of 'wrong address'. Maybe she just wasn't in the psych hospital anymore? I didn't think so, though. My cherubs had found Lew Chong, and I'd had no idea where he was. They'd found my mother's flute, and that wasn't even a person. So either I had a wrong name somehow, or something freaky was going on.
I thought about it all through school on Thursday. I knew what I had to do. I just didn't want to do it. I was scared. It hurt to admit it, but it was true. People had died in that apartment building – trained soldiers or cops. I was just a teenage girl. A somewhat sickly teenage girl, who wasn't even in very good shape.
I wished there was someone I could talk to. Someone who understood what I saw. But who could I talk to? Dad? Tell him that I saw things that were literally out of nightmares even when I was awake, and that I'd been lying to him about… well, everything? Leave an anonymous tip-off as Panopticon? To who? With what proof?
In… in movies and stuff, superheroes always had some magically trustworthy friend who would keep their secret, and be there for them to lean on, and maybe help out with the legwork. But those kinds of people didn't exist in real life. I wish they did, so much. I'd wished that even before I got my powers, but people just aren't that reliable. I didn't have anyone close enough to share my secrets, and even if I did, what if they turned on me? The closest things I had to friends were a girl I sat next to sometimes, and girls I'd met in a literal asylum.
I made the call.
"Hi, you've reached Sam's phone! I'm not here right now, so-"
I patiently waited for the bleep, a little relieved I'd only have to talk to an answerphone.
"Hi, Sam. It's Taylor. Um… are you still going to see Leah this weekend? Because if you are, is the offer of a ride there still open?"
Saturday dawned bright and sunny. The bad weather from last weekend had cleared entirely, and the sky was a deep azure scattered with wispy high altitude clouds. It was even warm enough for t-shirts. I didn't wear one, of course, but I could have, if I'd wanted.
Nature had no sense of the dramatic, I grumbled to myself. Here I was, headed to a mental health unit to investigate a lead on a mass murder, and now the weather chose to improve? Despite the climate's refusal to work with the pathetic fallacy, I found myself in the back of an expensive and nearly silent electric car, peacefully listening to Sam chatter away as their chauffeur drove us out of town.
Yes, Sam had a chauffeur. That just about said it all, didn't it? I was half-surprised they didn't have one of those smart cars that drove themselves.
"… and I've been talking all the time and I haven't asked you a thing about you! I'm so sorry! I just get a bit talky when I'm nervous! How've you been?"
"So basically, I spent all last weekend throwing up, and got wiped out for most of this week," I said. "Guess it must have been flu or some stomach bug. 'Least Dad didn't get it too, so it's probably not catching."
"Poor you," Sam said, sitting to my right. She was wearing boyish trousers and a zipped-up brown leather jacket, which left her pixyish with her short hair. She was distracted and fretting, for whatever reason. I didn't even need my powers to see it – and when I had checked in the Other Place, she was literally blurred with nervous energy. Her pill-chains seemed to be holding, though. Slightly weaker than last time, but still strong.
"Pretty much," I said. "So, yeah. That was my last week."
She sighed. "Well, I can't exactly beat that at misery poker," she said drily. "Yeah, my last week was pretty meh, you know? School was school, the English Lit essay I've got is being a pain in the ass – seriously, is there anyone who likes Shakespeare literally anywhere?"
I sort of didn't mind him. Well, that much. Mostly now that I'd moved classes. English with Mr Singh was pretty good, really.
"Also, it's totally unfair on Lady Macbeth," Sam added, mock-pouting.
"Please tell me if you identify with her, and I'll make sure I never turn my back on you when you have a knife," I said drily.
"See! Slander! She didn't even stab anyone!"
I snorted. "Heh. Fair enough. I'll just make sure I don't get between you and... like, being declared homecoming queen."
She laughed, though it sounded a bit bitter. "Yeah, I think you're safe there," she said. "So, yeah. Got to force myself to finish that stupid essay before Dad gets back from his stupid trip with his friends to Quiet Lake."
"Quiet Lake?"
"Boring-ass town up in the mountains. It's quiet. There's a lake. They were literally the most inventive people ever in the old days when naming places. Like this place. Brockton Bay. Which to say, it's a town by a brook by a bay. Genius."
I knew that already, of course.
"And Dad's a fitness fanatic and goes off cycling and canoeing and stuff with his friends. When I was younger he used to drag me along. Boring. So boring. And…" her phone rang, "… urgh, hold on a mo."
I leant against the window as Sam talked to her mother. Apparently she'd promised to call her as soon as she was there, and Sam was very patiently explaining that no, she hadn't forgotten and the reason she hadn't called was that she wasn't there yet. In front my eyes, the depot stores and the out-of-town malls built along the highway whizzed by. Forested hills loomed behind them, forming a natural valley which led down into the bay. And also trapped the fog and led to miserable weather. Thanks a lot, hills.
Once again, my thoughts drifted to what I was about to do. And who I was going to see.
A mysterious girl in a mental hospital. I'd seen markings on her that had freaked me out before I'd seen them copied in a murder scene. A scene thhe government had brought out the iron fist to investigate. She was in a place I really didn't want to return to. I'd have to be – hah! – crazy to go there myself.
And yet…
… there was that damn phrase again. Well, why didn't I just tell the PPD? It would be the sensible thing to do. The SIX SIX SIX I'd seen down by the Bay had been at a murder scene. Kirsty might be a dangerous parahuman, a psycho who broke out of hospital to kill people! The crazy girl turning out to secretly be a murderer wouldn't exactly be hard to believe. It happened all the time in books.
When it came down to it, though… I didn't know for sure. I couldn't just set the government on her without any proof – and even if I tried, all I could tell them was 'in my crazy visions, she had crazy writing on her'. Either they'd ignore it, or worse, they'd send in all the cops and soldiers and grey men and freaky crow-woman agents straight to the psych hospital. Or even worse, straight to me.
I couldn't risk being wrong again. I'd be directing people who might shoot first and ask questions later to a girl whose only 'crime' had been that she wasn't quite right in the head. What if those markings didn't come from inside her? What if she'd been attacked by whoever had attacked the building, and those were like mental scars? I knew I wasn't perfect at interpreting the Other Place. Who knew what I was missing?
I couldn't be responsible for setting the police on an innocent person. Since I couldn't send a doll, I'd need to check her out in person. Even though I really, really didn't want to. But when it came down to it, my 'I didn't want to' didn't hold up when someone's life was on the line, so I just had to grit my teeth, nail my fears to the ceiling and woman up.
We pulled off the freeway and started heading into the woods, following the narrower roads that wound their way to the hospital. I stared out the window at the old tall evergreen trees, feeling so much better than the last time I'd made this visit. It wasn't hard. Last time I'd just been feeling sick and scared and nervous. It was such a relief knowing I could just leave any time. I smiled to myself. In summer, the Maine fogs would make these woods a nightmare to drive through. Classic horror country. I'd need to see if there were any local myths about headless horsemen or witches.
Of course, when we arrived I was reminded that this wasn't a place you'd use words like 'gothic, 'looming' or 'raven-haunted' to describe. Edgar Allen Poe hadn't been around to write melodramatic poetry about it. The chauffeur parked the car while Sam and I headed inside. The familiar flowery scent with a hint of antiseptic spray hit my nose. Yes. I was back.
The experience was different as a visitor, rather than an in-patient. Everything was much more relaxed, and since Leah wasn't viewed as a self-harm risk we only got an orderly asking if we were carrying any contraband.
"Oh! Hi, Sam! And Taylor too! Isn't that nice?" It was Hannah, the woman who'd been responsible for looking after me when I'd been a resident here. "Leah will be so happy you're here. She's been really looking forwards to this all week," she said to Sam, before turning to me. "And you're a nice surprise, too. She's been a little down recently. It's the boredom, I'm afraid. It gets to people."
Hannah hadn't changed. The Other Place told me that she was still a shrivelled-up corpse, tired and heartbroken and old. And despite that – I sighed to myself – she'd been more helpful and more caring than most of the school. That might have been her job, but it was the teachers' job to keep students safe, and look how that turned out.
Sam smiled back at her. "Well, I brought the books she asked for."
"That'll be good. I've never seen someone read like she does," Hannah said, shaking her head. "She doesn't have the energy to do much else."
Sam frowned. "She told me she was eating better," she said, shoulders hunching.
"Slightly better, but… the damage is there. And she's been doing this to herself for too long, so," Hannah spread her hands helplessly, "she has a long recovery ahead of her. She's lucky she has you as a friend, Sam – but it's not fair on you when you have your own challenges ahead of you."
Sam quickly began to reassure her that it wasn't a problem at all, and Hannah just smiled, tiredly. "Anyway, come on," she said, leading us through familiar corridors. There was a smell there that hadn't been there before. It was smoky and acrid, like burning electronics, but with odd hints of perfume and ozone.
"Do you smell that?" I asked Sam.
"Smell what?"
"Smells like… a fire," I said without thinking.
She sniffed. "Not really – but I can't really smell much at the moment. I'm all clogged up."
Hannah sniffed the air. "It's probably just because you got out of the cold or something," she observed.
Inwardly, I cursed. I shouldn't have mentioned that – the smell didn't seem to exist outside of the Other Place. "Yeah, that makes sense. Probably just a heater."
It wasn't lunchtime yet, so people were just using the canteen to sit around. A group of too-thin girls about my age were sitting around a table in one corner, so we took one on the opposite end. The butterfly painted on the wall still drifted over its surface in the Other Place, giving out watery, multi-coloured light.
"Sam! Taylor!" Leah called out, looking up from a book. She really was too thin, I thought to myself. It was even more obvious than the last time I saw her, because Sam and I were dressed in outside clothes while she wore the uniform pyjamas and slippers. The cotton clothes hung off her frame, and her head was too large for her neck. She was the same in the Other Place, just taken it to extremes.
It… it couldn't be good that her real world form was so much like her appearance in my personal hellscape. The same was true for me, but I looked almost normal even in the Other Place. She looked so thin and unhealthy that it was the other way around, like the monstrousness of the Other Place was creeping in. I wanted to do something to help, but I was scared of making things worse. I didn't have the fine control to help someone who was already fragile. It would be easy to make her feel hungry, but would that actually help her? Especially when I wasn't around all the time to reinforce it.
I forced myself to smile. "Hey," I said.
"Leah," Sam exhaled, rushing in for a hug. Yes, I noted – Leah's arms were stick-like. "I've missed you!"
"Missed you too!"
"I got you the books you wanted? And how are you? Have you been eating properly? You should, you know!" Sam started churning out a relentless torrent of questions and talk about people I didn't know, barely letting Leah get a word in edgewise. It was intensely embarrassing to sit through. And yes, I did feel a bit jealous, if I had to admit it. Once, Emma would have been like that for me. Once.
"I just need to go to the bathroom," I said after a while, when Sam paused for a breath. "You'll still be here?"
"Yeah, yeah. So, uh… oh yes, I was talking with your older sister and she said…"
I made my way to the bathroom, relieved myself, and then checked myself in the mirror. Well, really I was plucking up the courage for what I was about to do. I wasn't great at talking to people, but I needed to pump Hannah for whatever information I could get about Kirsty so I wasn't going in blind. That meant I needed an excuse for why I was going to talk to her.
What could I possibly talk to her about? Well, me, of course. Great.
Awkwardly, I knocked at her beige door.
"Come in," Hannah said.
Her office looked tidier than last time I'd seen it. There was a new glowing cube paperweight, which gave out light in a reassuring sunlight-colour. She'd replaced one of her filing cabinets, too.
"H-hi," I said, and wished I hadn't stammered.
"Oh, hi Taylor," she said. "Is there a problem? Is everything all right?"
"Um," I began. "I… um…"
Dammit. I took a breath, and exhaled Phobia. Her whimpers didn't touch me. It seemed to be getting easier the more I practiced. And with her out of the way, things were clearer. Hannah wouldn't talk to me about Kirsty normally, so I'd have to ease my way in. I sent a piping worm of Sympathy to whistle into her ears. The little thing made of sea-corroded silver sang to her.
"I wanted to just ask… could you recommend any books on dealing with social anxiety?" I said confidently, using my cover story. "I just thought you might know."
She flashed a smile at me, tucking a lock of her brown hair back. "Oh, sure thing. You can sit," she said, pulling out a printout from a pile on her desk. She came around to my side of the desk. "It's a common enough issue that I just made something for it," she said, with a self-effacing shrug. "How's it been? Since you got out of here, I mean? Have things been better in school?"
I bit my lip. "It's been a bit better," I said, in the clarity I had when Phobia wasn't free. "I mean, I sort of talk to more people than I did. It's still not easy, but things worked out after they moved me so I wasn't in the same classes as any of the bullies."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
"And… um…" she looked slightly wary. "I'm just asking this to be sure, for your own safety. Have you been having any suicidal thoughts?"
I shook my head. "No." I smiled weakly. "Even when I got a stomach bug last weekend and was up all night throwing up until it hurt," I added. "I only felt like I was going to die. I didn't want to."
"Ouch. You're over that?"
"Feeling better, yes. It wiped me out for a few days, but I'm over it now." I shrugged. "Not sure if it was food poisoning or just some bug, but… bleargh."
"That sounds painful," she agreed. "And… uh, the nightmares?"
"Only every few nights," I said. I didn't say I wasn't sleeping to avoid them. She'd have just misunderstood what I was doing. "I try not to use any sleeping pills unless I have to." I shuddered. "I read about the side effects."
"So some improvement. That's good. Just keep track of them, and tell someone if they're getting in the way of having a normal life."
Normal life. Hah. What about my life was normal?
Hannah leaned forwards slightly. "So, have you made any new friends?" she asked.
I considered the question. There were a few people from my new classes who were safe enough. I could sit next to them and know they wouldn't cause trouble, and they'd talk to me a bit. Lucy was probably the closest because we were doing a project together thing, but there were others, like Mark in Biology and Taym in Math. "I get on with some of the new people," I said, carefully. "I'm not sure if they're close enough to count as friends." I paused deliberately. "That's why I thought to ask about this."
"That's a good idea," she agreed. She looked me in the eye. "It's very easy for people to get into the habit of avoiding problems. People try to avoid getting into the position where the thing they're scared or worried about comes up. But this means we never challenge our fears. We just let them control us. I was really scared of dogs when I was younger. I still don't like them, but I used to cross the road to avoid someone who was walking their dog in the street. It took me a long time to force myself to realise that not every dog I saw was a barely controlled animal that might go for me."
"Mmm hmm."
"Running from your problems is so easy, but it doesn't make them go away," she added.
Well, that was all very well, but that wasn't what I was here for. It didn't even help me start asking about Kirsty. I cleared my throat, pretending to be nervous. I couldn't just bring her up out of nowhere – Hannah had to be willing to help, and that meant she couldn't see anything odd about what I was doing. I needed an idea... no, I needed an Idea. Some kind of little construct that could get into her head. She wanted to talk to me about Kirsty. She needed to. Something that could squirm right into her brain, even more intimately than Sympathy. A little pale grey centipede like the ones which got on my window in cold weather, maybe.
I exhaled, and it took shape sitting on Hannah's collar. It was a filthy little thing, fleshy and grey but smeared with the red rust of the Other Place. I watched as it crawled over the grey skin of Hannah's Other form, and winced a little bit as it wriggled into her ear.
"Everything's okay," she said, obviously misunderstanding my shiver. She was frowning at me, and looked a little confused.
"Actually, I was wondering a little bit about Kirsty," I said, dropping back into normalcy. "I never did get her full name."
"Kirsty?" Hannah asked blankly. Her lips were slightly parted, and she looked enthusiastic… but somehow confused as well?
What? No no no, this wasn't what should be happening. "The Kirsty in this ward? The one who was here with me?" I prompted. She still looked blank, so I breathed out a flock of CRT cherubs, holding TVs in their hands. 'Trust Taylor. Talk to her. Tell her the truth', they sung in static-filled radio broadcasts. It grated at my teeth.
She blinked. "Yes. Yes. Sorry, Kirsty. Yes, I don't think you really spent any time around her. Why are you wondering?"
That was further proof something weird was going on, because I couldn't see any parahuman powers in use. There were no bright tendril in Hannah's head stopping her from remembering Kirsty, but it was her job to be responsible for the people in this section. I couldn't believe she didn't remember her. "What's her full name?" I asked.
She frowned, clearly wracking her brain. Her brain with my Idea in it. "I don't… I don't know it off the top of my head," she said slowly. "She's always been just 'Kirsty' to me."
"So she's new?" I asked. She was the one perched on the desk and I was sitting in the comfy chair, but it felt like I was the one in charge here.
"N-no," Hannah said, a quaver in her voice. "She's been here as long as I've been here. Four years. It's just… she's quiet."
I swallowed. "So… she must have been twelve or so when she was put in here," I said, dull horror in my voice. A quarter of your life in this place. God. How horrible. What must have happened to her if she'd been committed here so young – and with no improvement?
"I suppose so," Hannah said vaguely.
"You sound confused."
"Well… I… no, yes. I must be mixing her up with someone else. Yes, she must have been very young when she was sent here. She doesn't respond well when I talk to her, but I try to help."
I folded my hands on my lap. "That's good. I just feel so sorry for her," I said. I did feel sorry for her. But I also had to make her feel that this conversation was a little bit normal. I paused. "What was her full name again? So I can be polite?"
"Oh, right." Hannah looked lost. "I'm sure I have it around here somewhere." She began to rummage through paperwork. "Yes, it's in here somewhere." She smiled at me as she went to check the filing cabinet. "I keep on losing things, you know. I went and tided the place up recently and still things go missing."
I doubted that was true – not like this, at least. The way her mind seemed to skip over thoughts of Kirsty reminded me of Isolation. Not quite the same, because I couldn't see any butterflies, but… similar.
"Ah, yes, here's her file," Hannah said. "The ink's faded quite a bit, but… Oldan? Oldham? Or maybe that's an 'I', so that might be Oidan. I'm so sorry, I haven't had my 11am coffee yet. I've been trying to cut down because I've been drinking enough that I've been getting heart palpitations. But thank you for getting me to look at this – if the ink's fading like this, I'll need a new copy. I'll make a note of it," she said, casting around for a pen. She gave me a vague smile. "So I hope what I said about social anxiety helps?"
I wasn't going to get much more from her, obviously. She just didn't seem to be able to think about Kirsty for too long. "You've certainly given me a lot to think about," I said. "Thank you very much." I shook her hand. "Thank you for the sheet of books. I'll see if any of them are in my local library."
She stopped looking for a pen, and put the file back in the cabinet. "That's a good idea," she said. "Some of them are a bit pricy. I'm glad I could be of help."..
"You were," I said. I said my goodbyes, and stepped out, sinking into the Other Place. "Cherub," I said. "Bring me that file."
The little broken china doll vanished and reappeared, Kirsty's file in hand. I checked it was hers, and then tucked it up my jumper, taking it off to the bathroom to read in peace.
And it was an interesting read. It wasn't just something messing with Hannah's mind – the ink genuinely was faded, as if it was really old, or someone had left it out in the sun. It was even handwritten rather than printed out, and not in biro. I could barely make out her name. It was probably 'Kirsty Grace Oldham', although whoever had written this had seemed confused themselves – it had been crossed out and rewritten a few times, even on this formal document. Date of birth, date of admission – I didn't know. The pen had leaked over them with an awfully convenient ink blot which left them totally illegible. Next of kin – 'NONE'. That said all sorts of things, none of them nice.
I flicked through. It wasn't just Hannah who'd been updating this file. Far from it. There were notes in at least four different hands on the rear page. None of them had written very much, but there were a few dates and… I frowned. '99? She'd been in here for over a decade? Maybe I'd been underestimating her age? She could be a short, baby-faced twenty, I guessed. Those horrible scars made it really hard to tell. I guess I'd just assumed she was the same age as the other girls in the ward.
As for symptoms? There wasn't much detail here – some mentions of 'social phobias' and 'schizophrenia' and 'nightmares', but nothing which told me what happened to her. Notably, someone had written in red pen 'this patient is not violent' which at least indicated that she wasn't killing people – well, unless everyone just forgot that she'd done it.
How was she doing that trick? It didn't seem quite as strong as Isolation, but I couldn't detect it, and it must have made documents fade too.
I had a cherub carry the document back, and then washed my hands again. They felt… sooty. Maybe I was just reacting to the smell of smoke in the Other Place, but my hands felt gritty and icky.
"Sorry about that," I told Sam and Leah when I got back. "I just had to ask Hannah something after I got out of the bathroom."
"Huh? Oh, sure," Sam said. That actually hurt. She probably hadn't even really noticed I was missing. Not really. Leah certainly hadn't, because she was in her own personal happy place sorting through the rucksack of new books Sam had brought her.
"Did I miss anything?" I tried.
"Not really. You don't go to Arcadia so…" Sam shrugged, "wouldn't really mean anything to you."
"Fair enough," I said. It made sense, after all. It wasn't like I wanted to be here in the first place. I just needed a ride here to find Kirsty.
"So, what have you been up to, Taylor?" Leah asked me, with a smile. "Come on. You've got to have been having more fun than me here. All I get is them bitching at me to eat more and catch-up work sent to me."
I coughed. "Nothing really special," I blatantly lied. "They moved around all my classes to get away from the bullies, so… uh, that's working out okay. Otherwise… um, I don't really have many friends or get up to much exiting." It wasn't like I could talk about being a cape who was trying to track down criminals. An idea hit me. "I got some new books. Have you read any of James Brandon's stuff?"
Leah tilted her head, coiling a lock of hair around her finger as she thought. "He did that series about… like, those people in New York, right?"
"Yeah. New book from him."
"Ah." Leah frowned. "I didn't like his stuff much," she said critically. "It was all maudlin and confused 'using long words' for 'good writing'. And it was just transparent how certain things were designed to pull right at the heartstrings. Like, come on. What do you think I am, twelve? That kind of writing's really obvious and I find that detracts, yeah? I mean, come on. Just try respecting your audience a little!"
… I quite liked his books. "Yes," I lied. "Pretty much what I thought."
"I should have the latest Trael – Ina Trael, have you read her stuff? – book around here. Now that's better."
"What genre?" I asked.
"Well, this one is urban fantasy. Although-"
Above us, the lights in the canteen dimmed and started to hum.
"Another brownout?" Sam said, disgust in her tone. "Honestly, what're they playing at?"
"They're daily here," Leah said morosely. "They always seem to happen when there's something good on TV. Or when I'm trying to read."
"Wow? Daily? They're not anywhere near as bad back home."
"I don't remember any brownouts when I was here," I contributed. Of course Sam got better power. I didn't say anything. Everyone knew rich areas and businesses got preferential power flow.
Leah nodded. "Yeah, they started after the fire in the kitchens. They've been getting worse. I think the cables must've got damaged or something or there's a problem with some… like, fuses or something. And I guess this place is out of town and doesn't get as much power from the grid anyway," she suggested.
All at once, all the televisions in the room and the radio and the announcer system turned on. The sound of static crackled through the cafeteria. I waited for an announcement, but nothing happened.
"That's weird," Leah said uncomfortably.
"Must've tripped a fuse or something," Sam said confidently.
Yes. It was weird. And all the hair was standing up on the back of my neck so I didn't think Sam was right. I only felt like this with my scars aching and cold shivers running up and down my limbs when there was some kind of power being used.
I sunk into the Other Place and-
Oh.
I was surrounded by soft, lavender mist, thick enough that I could barely see Sam's burned-and-frozen silhouette or Leah's bobble-headed maw. Other shapes drifted behind them, totally obscured by the mists. The smell of ozone and burning electrics and perfume was stronger now, too.
I'd seen this mist before, just once, on the first morning I'd been here. I'd almost forgotten about it. That had been when I was just getting used to playing around with the Other Place, and I'd seen so many strange new things that it just seemed like background weirdness. Back then, I hadn't even known how to do things with the Other Place. I didn't have the tools I had now.
"Not this time," I breathed. The Other Place was mine! It was ugly, yes, but it was honest. It showed me things as they really were, even when I didn't want to see them. No one got to hide things in it from me! I drew in a breath through gritted teeth, and held it. I thought of tearing and shredding, and the sordid truths that my powers revealed to me. When I finally released it, a storm front of stinking blackness howled into the soft mist and blew it away.
I was surrounded. Not by people, by the things which had been hiding in the lavender fog. They looked like angels, at first glance. Beautiful, winged stone statues, like you might see in a church. Then I looked closer and I could see that they were fire-blackened, and the stone was more like an insect's shell. It covered what was underneath, as long as they stayed still.
They all turned their heads towards me, and I shuddered as I saw the bloody, fresh meat at the joints, hidden under their sooty exterior.
The Other Place smouldered all around me. It wasn't mist, I realised. It was smoke. Perfumed lavender smoke. That was what the smell was. The reflection of the world wasn't ablaze right now, but it had been recently… and it could be again at any moment. Cinders were scattered like glowing glitter on the sooty walls, and I could see reflected firelight down the corridor leading to the bathrooms. Around me, though, the fires were smothered by the cold dark water that lay on the ground and the damp crawling on the walls.
The burned angels tried to keep away from that wetness. Away from me. They formed a half-circle around me, turning ruined, burned faces to follow me.
And then the static on the televisions resolved into a winged figure, a blackened golden mask covering its face. Blood dripped from its mouth. It started to talk to me.
"She's waiting for you," said the masked angel on the screens.
"She's been waiting for you a very long time," sang the announcement system in the same voice.
"Come find her", they chorused.
The angels moved aside, forming an honour guard. Sooty hands clasped stone swords. Chipped marble wings were folded back.
I turned my head back to the familiar monsters sitting next to me. Leah's wide open eyeless mouth stared back. "What is it?" she asked, voice oozing hunger. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
I laughed, a little too high and shrill. "I'll go find someone, see if they know when the power is coming back on." I looked around at the angels, "Why don't you go find somewhere by the windows? I… I get headaches when the light goes like this, so… uh, I need natural light and I need to find someone and… yeah, just be a moment." I had to get away from them.
Suspicious fires? And now fire-blackened angels. Not a coincidence. If Kirsty was causing the fires, then I had to get her angels away from people.
"… are you all right?" Sam said. "You sound a bit…"
I let out a long slow breath, which split into two Ideas. "I'm fine," I insisted as the many-legged Ideas squirmed into their heads.
"Well, if you're sure…"
Wow. This really was handy. Why hadn't I tried this before? It was just a logical expansion of the way I could make people feel what I wanted them to, really.
The perfumed smoke mixed with familiar damp rot and blood as I hurried off, and together the scents filled my nostrils as I moved through decaying corridors. I was scared – Phobia had wormed free. Right now, I felt like I needed some fear. Charred angels flanked me, keeping pace. It made me feel like a prisoner being marched to the electric chair. As a precaution, I exhaled out not one, but two angels. It'd hurt to actually use them, but it was better to have them now than risk not having them if I had to run away.
That made the other angels retreat. I didn't think the burned angels liked my barbed-wire angels.
Why were they both angels, anyway? I'd made up the barbed-wire angels because… well, they were a more powerful version of my cherubs. I hadn't planned them. They'd just happened.
Dark water squelched under my feet. The walls smouldered. Smoke fled from me and my angels. And one by one, as I wasn't looking at them, the other angels vanished. Soon, only two were left, standing on either side of a door.
I knocked.
There was no response. I took a breath, and left the Other Place. Maybe if I couldn't see her angels, they wouldn't be able to hurt me. Hah. No. Didn't work that way with mine. But I just needed to see things properly.
I knocked again. Still no response.
After a decent pause, I eased the door open, flanked by my unseen barbed-wire angels. She was in her room, lying on the bed in the pyjamas everyone here wore. I'd have thought she was asleep if her eyes hadn't been open. Her breathing was soft and shallow.
"Hello?" I tried.
She didn't answer. I took a closer look, trying to familiarise myself with her. Messy, short-cut mousy brown hair. Plump, and a bit below average height. She was a bit older than me if I had to guess, but she had a round babyish face that meant maybe I was over-correcting for it. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes watery, reddened and bloodshot. She didn't look at me.
Then there were her scars. The scars on her face were different from mine. Mine were self-inflicted, shallow cuts from my fingernails which had got infected. They'd healed quite well, and I could cover up the obvious red marks on my face with makeup. Her scars were much deeper and much… much more vicious. They had to have been done with a knife or glass or something sharp, and they were too straight to be anything other than deliberate.
It almost looked like someone had been trying to draw something. Or write something. I shivered.
I stepped inside fully and took a look around, easing the door shut behind me. I didn't want anyone overhearing what we might say in here.
I'd never visited Kirsty's room when I'd been here. I hadn't interacted with her at all. If I had, I'd have understood one of the things that had puzzled me in the early days.
She'd decorated all the walls. Greens and browns and yellows stretched half-way up the walls, each brush stroke clearly meant to be a blade of grass. There were animals and insects, too, done childishly – like the blob of red and black that was clearly meant to be a ladybug. Above the green there was sky blue and fluffy white clouds – and above that, on the ceiling, there were angels. Celestial choirs stared down on anyone who entered the room, with blobby eyes and crudely enthusiastic wings.
Inside this room in a psychiatric hospital, she'd painted what the Sistine Chapel would have looked like if Michelangelo had possessed the art skills of a small child. She must have been the one who'd painted the butterflies in the canteen. They looked just the same. I guessed that somehow her weird power meant no one had noticed what she'd done to her room.
Could they even see the painting in the canteen?
I gritted my teeth and sunk into the Other Place. The room lit up with surreal, mad firelight over which the pictures floated like holograms. It wasn't the serene, beautiful flame of other parahumans. It was something broken and raw and untamed, something that would burn me if I got too close. Or perhaps I'd extinguish it, because even as I watched the rot and rust of the Other Place sunk in, extinguishing the fire and flaking paint away from the walls to expose the bare concrete rimmed with soot. The fire didn't retreat all the way, though. I was the intruder here.
This wasn't my Other Place.
Kirsty sat up then, swinging her legs off the bed. She looked at me, and her eyes went to one barbed wire angel, and then the other. Her eyes didn't stay on me for too long. She kept on looking and then flinching away. The blood on her chest oozed S IX S IX S IX through her hospital pyjamas. I stared back at her, aware that my own wounds on my limbs and face were oozing blood.
She was the only other person I'd seen who looked almost human in the Other Place. Human, but… marred. Scarred. Hurt.
"Hello?" I tried again. I stood surrounded by decay and dampness. She sat amidst fire and soot. "Kirsty?" The perfumed smoke burned at my throat. I could barely smell the rot of the Other Place, for perhaps the first time ever.
Her breath sped up, catching in her throat. She looked away, her hands tightening around the side of her bed and her knuckles whitening.
I wasn't sure what to say. Or to do. She could see my angels, so I couldn't use Sympathy on her. I hadn't realised how much I'd come to rely on my powers in circumstances like these. Just talking to people.
"I like what you've done with the walls," I tried. "Did you paint them yourself?"
She caught my eye for a moment, and nodded mutely. I waited for a response, but there was none.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
She nodded.
"You do?" I asked, surprised. "So… so you know about the S-I-X thing I found? How do you-"
She flinched, violently, at the mention of S-I-X. All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as she cowered, and there was a sudden crackle of electricity. The television made a sound like a malfunctioning generator, then gave out a loud bang and a blinding flash. The smell of smoke overcame the lavender, and I blinked tears from my eyes. Had something come out of the CRT? I hadn't seen it, and perhaps that was a good thing. But I still wanted to know.
"Wh- what was that?" I asked, voice tight. My own barbed wire angels had moved in front of me, without any orders, to block whatever it was. I dropped back into reality for a moment, and the room stank of ozone. More worryingly, there was a hole in the tv-screen.
Like something had really clawed its way out. In the real world.
Kirsty shook her head violently. She was trembling. Scared.
"I found something," I told her. "In… in Brockton Bay. Down near the docks. Just south of Chinatown. It was all over the walls of…" I paused. She had to know what the Other Place was, right? She saw it. "The S-I-X thing, the six thing was all over the walls there in the other world. The one I can see. The one you can see. I can see it on you. What's the link?"
She refused to meet my eyes now. She just huddled up into a ball, covering her face with her legs. I could feel the tension rise in the air, building up like a pressure inside my head. It felt hot. Like the fires that surrounded her.
Mysterious fires. Blackouts. Power surges. And no one remembered her. How long had it been since someone had really tried to talk to her? Could she even control her power? Some parahumans couldn't. Was that why they'd put her in a mental hospital? Before they'd forgotten about her, just like everyone seemed to. Everyone apart from me.
Above me, the lights flickered and died. Not a brownout; a full blackout. This time I already had my eyes half-closed, and was prepared for the flash-and-bang from the bulb overhead – and the sense of motion, of something escaping.
The window shattered, too. The burning Other Place around me grew hotter and hotter – and in the real world, things were getting unpleasantly warm despite the fact it was cool outside.
"Kirsty," I said quickly. "You need to get under control! Or you'll hurt someone!"
Her eyes flickered to me. I could see the guilt in her gaze. I could taste it, the thick oily scent in the Other Place. Guilt – and fear.
I had to know what she was scared of, but if she wouldn't tell me, I couldn't… no. I knew what I could do to find out. I didn't want to, but I knew how I could see her fears.
I exhaled Phobia in a short, smoky cough. She wailed at me, clutching her ragged red robe with claw-like hands, her mask-face locked in a permanent expression of terror. I could feel the first tremblings of panic in my stomach. This wasn't going to work. It was all going to go-
"No," I hissed at her. "Down." Chains lashed out from my barked out words, and I gritted my teeth as I literally forced my fears down. I wasn't going to let her control me. I was going to control her. I couldn't let her win.
I trussed Phobia up in iron chains and left her to squirm on the floor. You work for me, I thought at her. Do what the cherubs do. Do what Sniffer did. Show me how you see. Show me her fear.
Phobia stared at me, lit by the flames around her.
And then-
I fell apart again. My soul spilt out and burned the world. I couldn't hold myself together. I couldn't keep it in because it all wells up and then I pray but the praying has to be done and when I can't pray enough it happens again and everything burns because burning is the only way to stop the knives. Sin must be punished. The wicked are consumed by the light. Except the light is too bright for the world and the angels come and the angels are not men but it's my job to guide them and I'm not strong enough because I'm not whole. I am broken because I'm not strong enough. Heaven's light surrounds me and I am not worthy of it. I can't fail him. Not like my mother failed him, by being possessed by one of the demons. She is lost and I can still see her face and her filed teeth and she has the knife and-
-it hit me until I twisted away from Phobia's gaze. Blinking, I staggered and started to mouth the words of the Lord's Prayer. I… no! Those weren't my thoughts! I shook my head, trying to remember that… my mother hadn't ever held a knife like that and…
Okay. I ignored the smoke and took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I had to remember that wasn't me. I could still taste her memories, filled with smoke and blood. But I was me. I was sure of it. My identity crisis was pushed aside by a sudden awareness of how hot it had become in here. The skin on my face felt taut. I blinked, trying to wet my stinging eyeballs. Kirsty lost control when she got too scared, I knew that. I'd nearly lost control just from feeling how scared she was. She had to be calmed down, and I didn't know what to say.
"Draw it off!" I snapped at Phobia, choking in the smoke. It felt like my hands were too close to an oven. "Eat the fear!"
Phobia whimpered at me, a soft wet toungeless sound. She clawed at her mask, crying blood. Her chains rattled and clanked. She didn't want to do it.
"Do it!" I demanded, layering on more chains. "Obey!" I whirled on my two barbed wire angels. "Make her do it!" I yelled at them. One angel grabbed Phobia by the wrist, blood oozing where its clawed hands punctured her skin. It squeezed, slowly. The other wrapped both hands around Phobia's neck and dragged her face closer to Kirsty.
The construct screamed out, as her resistance broke. She inhaled, something crackling from behind her rictus. I could feel the air grow thin as she bloated like a tick. Kirsty began to cough and splutter, fire and blood and pain welling up from her mouth like smoke, drawn into Phobia. As they did, the fires around me died down. The walls all around us were black, and flecked with embers. The paintings were smeared with soot, but something about their watery beauty remained. It wasn't the same bliss that the powers of parahumans gave me, but at least it was better than the fire. I wasn't trying to breathe in an oven.
Eventually Phobia collapsed, fat and bloated and only held up by the unyielding hands of my barbed-wire angels. She was whimpering wordlessly, but I ignored that. I was more interested in Kirsty.
The other girl looked at me, and whispered something softly. A tiny wisp of light escaped the broken television set, shaped like a little four-winged fairy – or maybe a tiny angel. And when I checked in reality, I could see it there. It glowed like a nightlight, hanging over us in this dark room. She couldn't hold my gaze for any period of time, flinching away yet invariably coming back with her watery green eyes.
"How?" I asked. I'd never seen one of my constructs in the normal world. They seemed to be creatures of the Other Place.
"I knew you'd c-come back," Kirsty said. My accent makes it clear that I'm a local, but she sounded like she was from the Vermont area and her voice was soft and croaky from lack of use. "H-he told me that I would f-find other people who could see h-heaven. He told me that I'd m-meet other p-people like me, when the grey men t-t-took me here. The world averts its eyes because I b-burn too brightly from where he laid his hands on me. And he gave me eyes that saw heaven's light so that I might witness your angels." She stared me, the sides of her mouth turning up fractionally. There was an expectant look on her eyes.
I blinked. "What… uh, excuse me?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure where this was going. "Who?"
She smiled at me fully, wincing slightly from the pain of the facial movement.
"God."
Chapter 3.10
In the end, all the planning I'd done for this weekend was worth nothing. I woke up at about 3am on Saturday morning, and just about managed to stumble through to the bathroom on shaking foal-like legs before I threw up everything in my stomach. I spent the entire weekend in bed with a fever, being fed liquids and ibuprofen by Dad. And vomiting. Yeah, I got a lot of that done, until I was only throwing up bile – which really hurts, incidentally. Even when the fever went down I couldn't stand on my own. "Weak as a kitten", Dad said.
It was Tuesday before I had the courage to use my powers again. I was scared of what I'd see, but the nagging curiosity and boredom managed to overcome my fear. I couldn't even enjoy being away from school. I just couldn't lie there, too weak to even hold up a book, any longer. I had things to do. I had to do things. I had to know what had happened down at that apartment near Chinatown.
Of course, they'd cleaned it up by then. The feds and their grey men were gone, replaced by construction workers who were just fixing the place. Watcher Doll couldn't find anything interesting, so I fell back on more conventional means of investigation. I managed to totter downstairs, pausing for a breather half way down the stairs, and dug through the papers in the recycling bin.
I found a page 7 half-page story in Sunday's Bay Times about a raid on a black market factory near Chinatown, which had been making illegal tinkertech drugs. Monday's paper had some people writing in to talk about how illegal immigrants were bringing in crime and how they needed to crack down on them and how the West Coast states were pushing them over to the east and how we needed internal border controls to stop the illegals flooding this way, etc etc.
It made me think. I'd found something which might have been drugs – the bag labelled Killfast. Which meant that they were covering up the truth, using the truth. How many other news stories were lying without lying?
I had time to think about that as I slowly and laboriously stumbled back up the stairs, one step at a time. I flopped back on my bed, and drifted into an uncomfortable doze. As I slept, I was chased through endless corridors by a three-headed monster that sometimes seemed to be three girls instead. I waded through old blood as they crawled over the ceiling, laughing at me. The cold was like the Other Place, a metal surface sapping heat at a touch.
When I woke, all I could think was that I'd had enough. It was getting dark outside – just another sign my sleep cycles were ruined – and that meant another sleepless night ahead. Maybe I could force my nightmares onto Cry Baby, so it'd have them instead of me. I couldn't let dreams ruin everything.
It was Thursday by the time I was really recovered, and Dad was still reluctant to let me out of the house. He wanted me to just take the last two days off, to make sure I was better. It should have been tempting, but I just wanted to be out of the house, even if that meant going to school.
Even school was better than lying there, being stalked by nightmares which didn't particularly care if I was asleep or awake. Nightmares of the locker. Nightmares of the Other Place. Nightmares of what I'd seen down by the docks. Nightmares of being chased by black-clad crow-women who wouldn't stop and wouldn't give up, no matter how far I ran. My subconscious had a lot of time to fill, and a lot of things to fill it with.
Stupid powers. God. I'd never pushed them like that before. How many tunnels had my angels torn open, one after the other? Normally just one left me feeling queasy and cold. Part of me felt I had to work on improving my distance, so I wouldn't need to use so many. Most of me never ever wanted to feel the bone-deep cold of those corridors again.
That wasn't really an option, though. I knew I'd need them. I had a lead on that strange S IX writing, after all. I'd seen it before. The funny thing was that the cherubs couldn't find Kirsty.
No, wait, the other word. Not funny. Weird. Because I knew what she looked like and I knew her name. That was normally enough for a cherub to find her. And even if it failed one time, usually if I tried again after a few hours I'd manage it. I knew she had a TV in her room, so Watcher Doll should have been able to find her and it couldn't, either.
I'd like to think it was just a question of 'wrong address'. Maybe she just wasn't in the psych hospital anymore? I didn't think so, though. My cherubs had found Lew Chong, and I'd had no idea where he was. They'd found my mother's flute, and that wasn't even a person. So either I had a wrong name somehow, or something freaky was going on.
I thought about it all through school on Thursday. I knew what I had to do. I just didn't want to do it. I was scared. It hurt to admit it, but it was true. People had died in that apartment building – trained soldiers or cops. I was just a teenage girl. A somewhat sickly teenage girl, who wasn't even in very good shape.
I wished there was someone I could talk to. Someone who understood what I saw. But who could I talk to? Dad? Tell him that I saw things that were literally out of nightmares even when I was awake, and that I'd been lying to him about… well, everything? Leave an anonymous tip-off as Panopticon? To who? With what proof?
In… in movies and stuff, superheroes always had some magically trustworthy friend who would keep their secret, and be there for them to lean on, and maybe help out with the legwork. But those kinds of people didn't exist in real life. I wish they did, so much. I'd wished that even before I got my powers, but people just aren't that reliable. I didn't have anyone close enough to share my secrets, and even if I did, what if they turned on me? The closest things I had to friends were a girl I sat next to sometimes, and girls I'd met in a literal asylum.
I made the call.
"Hi, you've reached Sam's phone! I'm not here right now, so-"
I patiently waited for the bleep, a little relieved I'd only have to talk to an answerphone.
"Hi, Sam. It's Taylor. Um… are you still going to see Leah this weekend? Because if you are, is the offer of a ride there still open?"
Saturday dawned bright and sunny. The bad weather from last weekend had cleared entirely, and the sky was a deep azure scattered with wispy high altitude clouds. It was even warm enough for t-shirts. I didn't wear one, of course, but I could have, if I'd wanted.
Nature had no sense of the dramatic, I grumbled to myself. Here I was, headed to a mental health unit to investigate a lead on a mass murder, and now the weather chose to improve? Despite the climate's refusal to work with the pathetic fallacy, I found myself in the back of an expensive and nearly silent electric car, peacefully listening to Sam chatter away as their chauffeur drove us out of town.
Yes, Sam had a chauffeur. That just about said it all, didn't it? I was half-surprised they didn't have one of those smart cars that drove themselves.
"… and I've been talking all the time and I haven't asked you a thing about you! I'm so sorry! I just get a bit talky when I'm nervous! How've you been?"
"So basically, I spent all last weekend throwing up, and got wiped out for most of this week," I said. "Guess it must have been flu or some stomach bug. 'Least Dad didn't get it too, so it's probably not catching."
"Poor you," Sam said, sitting to my right. She was wearing boyish trousers and a zipped-up brown leather jacket, which left her pixyish with her short hair. She was distracted and fretting, for whatever reason. I didn't even need my powers to see it – and when I had checked in the Other Place, she was literally blurred with nervous energy. Her pill-chains seemed to be holding, though. Slightly weaker than last time, but still strong.
"Pretty much," I said. "So, yeah. That was my last week."
She sighed. "Well, I can't exactly beat that at misery poker," she said drily. "Yeah, my last week was pretty meh, you know? School was school, the English Lit essay I've got is being a pain in the ass – seriously, is there anyone who likes Shakespeare literally anywhere?"
I sort of didn't mind him. Well, that much. Mostly now that I'd moved classes. English with Mr Singh was pretty good, really.
"Also, it's totally unfair on Lady Macbeth," Sam added, mock-pouting.
"Please tell me if you identify with her, and I'll make sure I never turn my back on you when you have a knife," I said drily.
"See! Slander! She didn't even stab anyone!"
I snorted. "Heh. Fair enough. I'll just make sure I don't get between you and... like, being declared homecoming queen."
She laughed, though it sounded a bit bitter. "Yeah, I think you're safe there," she said. "So, yeah. Got to force myself to finish that stupid essay before Dad gets back from his stupid trip with his friends to Quiet Lake."
"Quiet Lake?"
"Boring-ass town up in the mountains. It's quiet. There's a lake. They were literally the most inventive people ever in the old days when naming places. Like this place. Brockton Bay. Which to say, it's a town by a brook by a bay. Genius."
I knew that already, of course.
"And Dad's a fitness fanatic and goes off cycling and canoeing and stuff with his friends. When I was younger he used to drag me along. Boring. So boring. And…" her phone rang, "… urgh, hold on a mo."
I leant against the window as Sam talked to her mother. Apparently she'd promised to call her as soon as she was there, and Sam was very patiently explaining that no, she hadn't forgotten and the reason she hadn't called was that she wasn't there yet. In front my eyes, the depot stores and the out-of-town malls built along the highway whizzed by. Forested hills loomed behind them, forming a natural valley which led down into the bay. And also trapped the fog and led to miserable weather. Thanks a lot, hills.
Once again, my thoughts drifted to what I was about to do. And who I was going to see.
A mysterious girl in a mental hospital. I'd seen markings on her that had freaked me out before I'd seen them copied in a murder scene. A scene thhe government had brought out the iron fist to investigate. She was in a place I really didn't want to return to. I'd have to be – hah! – crazy to go there myself.
And yet…
… there was that damn phrase again. Well, why didn't I just tell the PPD? It would be the sensible thing to do. The SIX SIX SIX I'd seen down by the Bay had been at a murder scene. Kirsty might be a dangerous parahuman, a psycho who broke out of hospital to kill people! The crazy girl turning out to secretly be a murderer wouldn't exactly be hard to believe. It happened all the time in books.
When it came down to it, though… I didn't know for sure. I couldn't just set the government on her without any proof – and even if I tried, all I could tell them was 'in my crazy visions, she had crazy writing on her'. Either they'd ignore it, or worse, they'd send in all the cops and soldiers and grey men and freaky crow-woman agents straight to the psych hospital. Or even worse, straight to me.
I couldn't risk being wrong again. I'd be directing people who might shoot first and ask questions later to a girl whose only 'crime' had been that she wasn't quite right in the head. What if those markings didn't come from inside her? What if she'd been attacked by whoever had attacked the building, and those were like mental scars? I knew I wasn't perfect at interpreting the Other Place. Who knew what I was missing?
I couldn't be responsible for setting the police on an innocent person. Since I couldn't send a doll, I'd need to check her out in person. Even though I really, really didn't want to. But when it came down to it, my 'I didn't want to' didn't hold up when someone's life was on the line, so I just had to grit my teeth, nail my fears to the ceiling and woman up.
We pulled off the freeway and started heading into the woods, following the narrower roads that wound their way to the hospital. I stared out the window at the old tall evergreen trees, feeling so much better than the last time I'd made this visit. It wasn't hard. Last time I'd just been feeling sick and scared and nervous. It was such a relief knowing I could just leave any time. I smiled to myself. In summer, the Maine fogs would make these woods a nightmare to drive through. Classic horror country. I'd need to see if there were any local myths about headless horsemen or witches.
Of course, when we arrived I was reminded that this wasn't a place you'd use words like 'gothic, 'looming' or 'raven-haunted' to describe. Edgar Allen Poe hadn't been around to write melodramatic poetry about it. The chauffeur parked the car while Sam and I headed inside. The familiar flowery scent with a hint of antiseptic spray hit my nose. Yes. I was back.
The experience was different as a visitor, rather than an in-patient. Everything was much more relaxed, and since Leah wasn't viewed as a self-harm risk we only got an orderly asking if we were carrying any contraband.
"Oh! Hi, Sam! And Taylor too! Isn't that nice?" It was Hannah, the woman who'd been responsible for looking after me when I'd been a resident here. "Leah will be so happy you're here. She's been really looking forwards to this all week," she said to Sam, before turning to me. "And you're a nice surprise, too. She's been a little down recently. It's the boredom, I'm afraid. It gets to people."
Hannah hadn't changed. The Other Place told me that she was still a shrivelled-up corpse, tired and heartbroken and old. And despite that – I sighed to myself – she'd been more helpful and more caring than most of the school. That might have been her job, but it was the teachers' job to keep students safe, and look how that turned out.
Sam smiled back at her. "Well, I brought the books she asked for."
"That'll be good. I've never seen someone read like she does," Hannah said, shaking her head. "She doesn't have the energy to do much else."
Sam frowned. "She told me she was eating better," she said, shoulders hunching.
"Slightly better, but… the damage is there. And she's been doing this to herself for too long, so," Hannah spread her hands helplessly, "she has a long recovery ahead of her. She's lucky she has you as a friend, Sam – but it's not fair on you when you have your own challenges ahead of you."
Sam quickly began to reassure her that it wasn't a problem at all, and Hannah just smiled, tiredly. "Anyway, come on," she said, leading us through familiar corridors. There was a smell there that hadn't been there before. It was smoky and acrid, like burning electronics, but with odd hints of perfume and ozone.
"Do you smell that?" I asked Sam.
"Smell what?"
"Smells like… a fire," I said without thinking.
She sniffed. "Not really – but I can't really smell much at the moment. I'm all clogged up."
Hannah sniffed the air. "It's probably just because you got out of the cold or something," she observed.
Inwardly, I cursed. I shouldn't have mentioned that – the smell didn't seem to exist outside of the Other Place. "Yeah, that makes sense. Probably just a heater."
It wasn't lunchtime yet, so people were just using the canteen to sit around. A group of too-thin girls about my age were sitting around a table in one corner, so we took one on the opposite end. The butterfly painted on the wall still drifted over its surface in the Other Place, giving out watery, multi-coloured light.
"Sam! Taylor!" Leah called out, looking up from a book. She really was too thin, I thought to myself. It was even more obvious than the last time I saw her, because Sam and I were dressed in outside clothes while she wore the uniform pyjamas and slippers. The cotton clothes hung off her frame, and her head was too large for her neck. She was the same in the Other Place, just taken it to extremes.
It… it couldn't be good that her real world form was so much like her appearance in my personal hellscape. The same was true for me, but I looked almost normal even in the Other Place. She looked so thin and unhealthy that it was the other way around, like the monstrousness of the Other Place was creeping in. I wanted to do something to help, but I was scared of making things worse. I didn't have the fine control to help someone who was already fragile. It would be easy to make her feel hungry, but would that actually help her? Especially when I wasn't around all the time to reinforce it.
I forced myself to smile. "Hey," I said.
"Leah," Sam exhaled, rushing in for a hug. Yes, I noted – Leah's arms were stick-like. "I've missed you!"
"Missed you too!"
"I got you the books you wanted? And how are you? Have you been eating properly? You should, you know!" Sam started churning out a relentless torrent of questions and talk about people I didn't know, barely letting Leah get a word in edgewise. It was intensely embarrassing to sit through. And yes, I did feel a bit jealous, if I had to admit it. Once, Emma would have been like that for me. Once.
"I just need to go to the bathroom," I said after a while, when Sam paused for a breath. "You'll still be here?"
"Yeah, yeah. So, uh… oh yes, I was talking with your older sister and she said…"
I made my way to the bathroom, relieved myself, and then checked myself in the mirror. Well, really I was plucking up the courage for what I was about to do. I wasn't great at talking to people, but I needed to pump Hannah for whatever information I could get about Kirsty so I wasn't going in blind. That meant I needed an excuse for why I was going to talk to her.
What could I possibly talk to her about? Well, me, of course. Great.
Awkwardly, I knocked at her beige door.
"Come in," Hannah said.
Her office looked tidier than last time I'd seen it. There was a new glowing cube paperweight, which gave out light in a reassuring sunlight-colour. She'd replaced one of her filing cabinets, too.
"H-hi," I said, and wished I hadn't stammered.
"Oh, hi Taylor," she said. "Is there a problem? Is everything all right?"
"Um," I began. "I… um…"
Dammit. I took a breath, and exhaled Phobia. Her whimpers didn't touch me. It seemed to be getting easier the more I practiced. And with her out of the way, things were clearer. Hannah wouldn't talk to me about Kirsty normally, so I'd have to ease my way in. I sent a piping worm of Sympathy to whistle into her ears. The little thing made of sea-corroded silver sang to her.
"I wanted to just ask… could you recommend any books on dealing with social anxiety?" I said confidently, using my cover story. "I just thought you might know."
She flashed a smile at me, tucking a lock of her brown hair back. "Oh, sure thing. You can sit," she said, pulling out a printout from a pile on her desk. She came around to my side of the desk. "It's a common enough issue that I just made something for it," she said, with a self-effacing shrug. "How's it been? Since you got out of here, I mean? Have things been better in school?"
I bit my lip. "It's been a bit better," I said, in the clarity I had when Phobia wasn't free. "I mean, I sort of talk to more people than I did. It's still not easy, but things worked out after they moved me so I wasn't in the same classes as any of the bullies."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
"And… um…" she looked slightly wary. "I'm just asking this to be sure, for your own safety. Have you been having any suicidal thoughts?"
I shook my head. "No." I smiled weakly. "Even when I got a stomach bug last weekend and was up all night throwing up until it hurt," I added. "I only felt like I was going to die. I didn't want to."
"Ouch. You're over that?"
"Feeling better, yes. It wiped me out for a few days, but I'm over it now." I shrugged. "Not sure if it was food poisoning or just some bug, but… bleargh."
"That sounds painful," she agreed. "And… uh, the nightmares?"
"Only every few nights," I said. I didn't say I wasn't sleeping to avoid them. She'd have just misunderstood what I was doing. "I try not to use any sleeping pills unless I have to." I shuddered. "I read about the side effects."
"So some improvement. That's good. Just keep track of them, and tell someone if they're getting in the way of having a normal life."
Normal life. Hah. What about my life was normal?
Hannah leaned forwards slightly. "So, have you made any new friends?" she asked.
I considered the question. There were a few people from my new classes who were safe enough. I could sit next to them and know they wouldn't cause trouble, and they'd talk to me a bit. Lucy was probably the closest because we were doing a project together thing, but there were others, like Mark in Biology and Taym in Math. "I get on with some of the new people," I said, carefully. "I'm not sure if they're close enough to count as friends." I paused deliberately. "That's why I thought to ask about this."
"That's a good idea," she agreed. She looked me in the eye. "It's very easy for people to get into the habit of avoiding problems. People try to avoid getting into the position where the thing they're scared or worried about comes up. But this means we never challenge our fears. We just let them control us. I was really scared of dogs when I was younger. I still don't like them, but I used to cross the road to avoid someone who was walking their dog in the street. It took me a long time to force myself to realise that not every dog I saw was a barely controlled animal that might go for me."
"Mmm hmm."
"Running from your problems is so easy, but it doesn't make them go away," she added.
Well, that was all very well, but that wasn't what I was here for. It didn't even help me start asking about Kirsty. I cleared my throat, pretending to be nervous. I couldn't just bring her up out of nowhere – Hannah had to be willing to help, and that meant she couldn't see anything odd about what I was doing. I needed an idea... no, I needed an Idea. Some kind of little construct that could get into her head. She wanted to talk to me about Kirsty. She needed to. Something that could squirm right into her brain, even more intimately than Sympathy. A little pale grey centipede like the ones which got on my window in cold weather, maybe.
I exhaled, and it took shape sitting on Hannah's collar. It was a filthy little thing, fleshy and grey but smeared with the red rust of the Other Place. I watched as it crawled over the grey skin of Hannah's Other form, and winced a little bit as it wriggled into her ear.
"Everything's okay," she said, obviously misunderstanding my shiver. She was frowning at me, and looked a little confused.
"Actually, I was wondering a little bit about Kirsty," I said, dropping back into normalcy. "I never did get her full name."
"Kirsty?" Hannah asked blankly. Her lips were slightly parted, and she looked enthusiastic… but somehow confused as well?
What? No no no, this wasn't what should be happening. "The Kirsty in this ward? The one who was here with me?" I prompted. She still looked blank, so I breathed out a flock of CRT cherubs, holding TVs in their hands. 'Trust Taylor. Talk to her. Tell her the truth', they sung in static-filled radio broadcasts. It grated at my teeth.
She blinked. "Yes. Yes. Sorry, Kirsty. Yes, I don't think you really spent any time around her. Why are you wondering?"
That was further proof something weird was going on, because I couldn't see any parahuman powers in use. There were no bright tendril in Hannah's head stopping her from remembering Kirsty, but it was her job to be responsible for the people in this section. I couldn't believe she didn't remember her. "What's her full name?" I asked.
She frowned, clearly wracking her brain. Her brain with my Idea in it. "I don't… I don't know it off the top of my head," she said slowly. "She's always been just 'Kirsty' to me."
"So she's new?" I asked. She was the one perched on the desk and I was sitting in the comfy chair, but it felt like I was the one in charge here.
"N-no," Hannah said, a quaver in her voice. "She's been here as long as I've been here. Four years. It's just… she's quiet."
I swallowed. "So… she must have been twelve or so when she was put in here," I said, dull horror in my voice. A quarter of your life in this place. God. How horrible. What must have happened to her if she'd been committed here so young – and with no improvement?
"I suppose so," Hannah said vaguely.
"You sound confused."
"Well… I… no, yes. I must be mixing her up with someone else. Yes, she must have been very young when she was sent here. She doesn't respond well when I talk to her, but I try to help."
I folded my hands on my lap. "That's good. I just feel so sorry for her," I said. I did feel sorry for her. But I also had to make her feel that this conversation was a little bit normal. I paused. "What was her full name again? So I can be polite?"
"Oh, right." Hannah looked lost. "I'm sure I have it around here somewhere." She began to rummage through paperwork. "Yes, it's in here somewhere." She smiled at me as she went to check the filing cabinet. "I keep on losing things, you know. I went and tided the place up recently and still things go missing."
I doubted that was true – not like this, at least. The way her mind seemed to skip over thoughts of Kirsty reminded me of Isolation. Not quite the same, because I couldn't see any butterflies, but… similar.
"Ah, yes, here's her file," Hannah said. "The ink's faded quite a bit, but… Oldan? Oldham? Or maybe that's an 'I', so that might be Oidan. I'm so sorry, I haven't had my 11am coffee yet. I've been trying to cut down because I've been drinking enough that I've been getting heart palpitations. But thank you for getting me to look at this – if the ink's fading like this, I'll need a new copy. I'll make a note of it," she said, casting around for a pen. She gave me a vague smile. "So I hope what I said about social anxiety helps?"
I wasn't going to get much more from her, obviously. She just didn't seem to be able to think about Kirsty for too long. "You've certainly given me a lot to think about," I said. "Thank you very much." I shook her hand. "Thank you for the sheet of books. I'll see if any of them are in my local library."
She stopped looking for a pen, and put the file back in the cabinet. "That's a good idea," she said. "Some of them are a bit pricy. I'm glad I could be of help."..
"You were," I said. I said my goodbyes, and stepped out, sinking into the Other Place. "Cherub," I said. "Bring me that file."
The little broken china doll vanished and reappeared, Kirsty's file in hand. I checked it was hers, and then tucked it up my jumper, taking it off to the bathroom to read in peace.
And it was an interesting read. It wasn't just something messing with Hannah's mind – the ink genuinely was faded, as if it was really old, or someone had left it out in the sun. It was even handwritten rather than printed out, and not in biro. I could barely make out her name. It was probably 'Kirsty Grace Oldham', although whoever had written this had seemed confused themselves – it had been crossed out and rewritten a few times, even on this formal document. Date of birth, date of admission – I didn't know. The pen had leaked over them with an awfully convenient ink blot which left them totally illegible. Next of kin – 'NONE'. That said all sorts of things, none of them nice.
I flicked through. It wasn't just Hannah who'd been updating this file. Far from it. There were notes in at least four different hands on the rear page. None of them had written very much, but there were a few dates and… I frowned. '99? She'd been in here for over a decade? Maybe I'd been underestimating her age? She could be a short, baby-faced twenty, I guessed. Those horrible scars made it really hard to tell. I guess I'd just assumed she was the same age as the other girls in the ward.
As for symptoms? There wasn't much detail here – some mentions of 'social phobias' and 'schizophrenia' and 'nightmares', but nothing which told me what happened to her. Notably, someone had written in red pen 'this patient is not violent' which at least indicated that she wasn't killing people – well, unless everyone just forgot that she'd done it.
How was she doing that trick? It didn't seem quite as strong as Isolation, but I couldn't detect it, and it must have made documents fade too.
I had a cherub carry the document back, and then washed my hands again. They felt… sooty. Maybe I was just reacting to the smell of smoke in the Other Place, but my hands felt gritty and icky.
"Sorry about that," I told Sam and Leah when I got back. "I just had to ask Hannah something after I got out of the bathroom."
"Huh? Oh, sure," Sam said. That actually hurt. She probably hadn't even really noticed I was missing. Not really. Leah certainly hadn't, because she was in her own personal happy place sorting through the rucksack of new books Sam had brought her.
"Did I miss anything?" I tried.
"Not really. You don't go to Arcadia so…" Sam shrugged, "wouldn't really mean anything to you."
"Fair enough," I said. It made sense, after all. It wasn't like I wanted to be here in the first place. I just needed a ride here to find Kirsty.
"So, what have you been up to, Taylor?" Leah asked me, with a smile. "Come on. You've got to have been having more fun than me here. All I get is them bitching at me to eat more and catch-up work sent to me."
I coughed. "Nothing really special," I blatantly lied. "They moved around all my classes to get away from the bullies, so… uh, that's working out okay. Otherwise… um, I don't really have many friends or get up to much exiting." It wasn't like I could talk about being a cape who was trying to track down criminals. An idea hit me. "I got some new books. Have you read any of James Brandon's stuff?"
Leah tilted her head, coiling a lock of hair around her finger as she thought. "He did that series about… like, those people in New York, right?"
"Yeah. New book from him."
"Ah." Leah frowned. "I didn't like his stuff much," she said critically. "It was all maudlin and confused 'using long words' for 'good writing'. And it was just transparent how certain things were designed to pull right at the heartstrings. Like, come on. What do you think I am, twelve? That kind of writing's really obvious and I find that detracts, yeah? I mean, come on. Just try respecting your audience a little!"
… I quite liked his books. "Yes," I lied. "Pretty much what I thought."
"I should have the latest Trael – Ina Trael, have you read her stuff? – book around here. Now that's better."
"What genre?" I asked.
"Well, this one is urban fantasy. Although-"
Above us, the lights in the canteen dimmed and started to hum.
"Another brownout?" Sam said, disgust in her tone. "Honestly, what're they playing at?"
"They're daily here," Leah said morosely. "They always seem to happen when there's something good on TV. Or when I'm trying to read."
"Wow? Daily? They're not anywhere near as bad back home."
"I don't remember any brownouts when I was here," I contributed. Of course Sam got better power. I didn't say anything. Everyone knew rich areas and businesses got preferential power flow.
Leah nodded. "Yeah, they started after the fire in the kitchens. They've been getting worse. I think the cables must've got damaged or something or there's a problem with some… like, fuses or something. And I guess this place is out of town and doesn't get as much power from the grid anyway," she suggested.
All at once, all the televisions in the room and the radio and the announcer system turned on. The sound of static crackled through the cafeteria. I waited for an announcement, but nothing happened.
"That's weird," Leah said uncomfortably.
"Must've tripped a fuse or something," Sam said confidently.
Yes. It was weird. And all the hair was standing up on the back of my neck so I didn't think Sam was right. I only felt like this with my scars aching and cold shivers running up and down my limbs when there was some kind of power being used.
I sunk into the Other Place and-
Oh.
I was surrounded by soft, lavender mist, thick enough that I could barely see Sam's burned-and-frozen silhouette or Leah's bobble-headed maw. Other shapes drifted behind them, totally obscured by the mists. The smell of ozone and burning electrics and perfume was stronger now, too.
I'd seen this mist before, just once, on the first morning I'd been here. I'd almost forgotten about it. That had been when I was just getting used to playing around with the Other Place, and I'd seen so many strange new things that it just seemed like background weirdness. Back then, I hadn't even known how to do things with the Other Place. I didn't have the tools I had now.
"Not this time," I breathed. The Other Place was mine! It was ugly, yes, but it was honest. It showed me things as they really were, even when I didn't want to see them. No one got to hide things in it from me! I drew in a breath through gritted teeth, and held it. I thought of tearing and shredding, and the sordid truths that my powers revealed to me. When I finally released it, a storm front of stinking blackness howled into the soft mist and blew it away.
I was surrounded. Not by people, by the things which had been hiding in the lavender fog. They looked like angels, at first glance. Beautiful, winged stone statues, like you might see in a church. Then I looked closer and I could see that they were fire-blackened, and the stone was more like an insect's shell. It covered what was underneath, as long as they stayed still.
They all turned their heads towards me, and I shuddered as I saw the bloody, fresh meat at the joints, hidden under their sooty exterior.
The Other Place smouldered all around me. It wasn't mist, I realised. It was smoke. Perfumed lavender smoke. That was what the smell was. The reflection of the world wasn't ablaze right now, but it had been recently… and it could be again at any moment. Cinders were scattered like glowing glitter on the sooty walls, and I could see reflected firelight down the corridor leading to the bathrooms. Around me, though, the fires were smothered by the cold dark water that lay on the ground and the damp crawling on the walls.
The burned angels tried to keep away from that wetness. Away from me. They formed a half-circle around me, turning ruined, burned faces to follow me.
And then the static on the televisions resolved into a winged figure, a blackened golden mask covering its face. Blood dripped from its mouth. It started to talk to me.
"She's waiting for you," said the masked angel on the screens.
"She's been waiting for you a very long time," sang the announcement system in the same voice.
"Come find her", they chorused.
The angels moved aside, forming an honour guard. Sooty hands clasped stone swords. Chipped marble wings were folded back.
I turned my head back to the familiar monsters sitting next to me. Leah's wide open eyeless mouth stared back. "What is it?" she asked, voice oozing hunger. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
I laughed, a little too high and shrill. "I'll go find someone, see if they know when the power is coming back on." I looked around at the angels, "Why don't you go find somewhere by the windows? I… I get headaches when the light goes like this, so… uh, I need natural light and I need to find someone and… yeah, just be a moment." I had to get away from them.
Suspicious fires? And now fire-blackened angels. Not a coincidence. If Kirsty was causing the fires, then I had to get her angels away from people.
"… are you all right?" Sam said. "You sound a bit…"
I let out a long slow breath, which split into two Ideas. "I'm fine," I insisted as the many-legged Ideas squirmed into their heads.
"Well, if you're sure…"
Wow. This really was handy. Why hadn't I tried this before? It was just a logical expansion of the way I could make people feel what I wanted them to, really.
The perfumed smoke mixed with familiar damp rot and blood as I hurried off, and together the scents filled my nostrils as I moved through decaying corridors. I was scared – Phobia had wormed free. Right now, I felt like I needed some fear. Charred angels flanked me, keeping pace. It made me feel like a prisoner being marched to the electric chair. As a precaution, I exhaled out not one, but two angels. It'd hurt to actually use them, but it was better to have them now than risk not having them if I had to run away.
That made the other angels retreat. I didn't think the burned angels liked my barbed-wire angels.
Why were they both angels, anyway? I'd made up the barbed-wire angels because… well, they were a more powerful version of my cherubs. I hadn't planned them. They'd just happened.
Dark water squelched under my feet. The walls smouldered. Smoke fled from me and my angels. And one by one, as I wasn't looking at them, the other angels vanished. Soon, only two were left, standing on either side of a door.
I knocked.
There was no response. I took a breath, and left the Other Place. Maybe if I couldn't see her angels, they wouldn't be able to hurt me. Hah. No. Didn't work that way with mine. But I just needed to see things properly.
I knocked again. Still no response.
After a decent pause, I eased the door open, flanked by my unseen barbed-wire angels. She was in her room, lying on the bed in the pyjamas everyone here wore. I'd have thought she was asleep if her eyes hadn't been open. Her breathing was soft and shallow.
"Hello?" I tried.
She didn't answer. I took a closer look, trying to familiarise myself with her. Messy, short-cut mousy brown hair. Plump, and a bit below average height. She was a bit older than me if I had to guess, but she had a round babyish face that meant maybe I was over-correcting for it. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes watery, reddened and bloodshot. She didn't look at me.
Then there were her scars. The scars on her face were different from mine. Mine were self-inflicted, shallow cuts from my fingernails which had got infected. They'd healed quite well, and I could cover up the obvious red marks on my face with makeup. Her scars were much deeper and much… much more vicious. They had to have been done with a knife or glass or something sharp, and they were too straight to be anything other than deliberate.
It almost looked like someone had been trying to draw something. Or write something. I shivered.
I stepped inside fully and took a look around, easing the door shut behind me. I didn't want anyone overhearing what we might say in here.
I'd never visited Kirsty's room when I'd been here. I hadn't interacted with her at all. If I had, I'd have understood one of the things that had puzzled me in the early days.
She'd decorated all the walls. Greens and browns and yellows stretched half-way up the walls, each brush stroke clearly meant to be a blade of grass. There were animals and insects, too, done childishly – like the blob of red and black that was clearly meant to be a ladybug. Above the green there was sky blue and fluffy white clouds – and above that, on the ceiling, there were angels. Celestial choirs stared down on anyone who entered the room, with blobby eyes and crudely enthusiastic wings.
Inside this room in a psychiatric hospital, she'd painted what the Sistine Chapel would have looked like if Michelangelo had possessed the art skills of a small child. She must have been the one who'd painted the butterflies in the canteen. They looked just the same. I guessed that somehow her weird power meant no one had noticed what she'd done to her room.
Could they even see the painting in the canteen?
I gritted my teeth and sunk into the Other Place. The room lit up with surreal, mad firelight over which the pictures floated like holograms. It wasn't the serene, beautiful flame of other parahumans. It was something broken and raw and untamed, something that would burn me if I got too close. Or perhaps I'd extinguish it, because even as I watched the rot and rust of the Other Place sunk in, extinguishing the fire and flaking paint away from the walls to expose the bare concrete rimmed with soot. The fire didn't retreat all the way, though. I was the intruder here.
This wasn't my Other Place.
Kirsty sat up then, swinging her legs off the bed. She looked at me, and her eyes went to one barbed wire angel, and then the other. Her eyes didn't stay on me for too long. She kept on looking and then flinching away. The blood on her chest oozed S IX S IX S IX through her hospital pyjamas. I stared back at her, aware that my own wounds on my limbs and face were oozing blood.
She was the only other person I'd seen who looked almost human in the Other Place. Human, but… marred. Scarred. Hurt.
"Hello?" I tried again. I stood surrounded by decay and dampness. She sat amidst fire and soot. "Kirsty?" The perfumed smoke burned at my throat. I could barely smell the rot of the Other Place, for perhaps the first time ever.
Her breath sped up, catching in her throat. She looked away, her hands tightening around the side of her bed and her knuckles whitening.
I wasn't sure what to say. Or to do. She could see my angels, so I couldn't use Sympathy on her. I hadn't realised how much I'd come to rely on my powers in circumstances like these. Just talking to people.
"I like what you've done with the walls," I tried. "Did you paint them yourself?"
She caught my eye for a moment, and nodded mutely. I waited for a response, but there was none.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
She nodded.
"You do?" I asked, surprised. "So… so you know about the S-I-X thing I found? How do you-"
She flinched, violently, at the mention of S-I-X. All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as she cowered, and there was a sudden crackle of electricity. The television made a sound like a malfunctioning generator, then gave out a loud bang and a blinding flash. The smell of smoke overcame the lavender, and I blinked tears from my eyes. Had something come out of the CRT? I hadn't seen it, and perhaps that was a good thing. But I still wanted to know.
"Wh- what was that?" I asked, voice tight. My own barbed wire angels had moved in front of me, without any orders, to block whatever it was. I dropped back into reality for a moment, and the room stank of ozone. More worryingly, there was a hole in the tv-screen.
Like something had really clawed its way out. In the real world.
Kirsty shook her head violently. She was trembling. Scared.
"I found something," I told her. "In… in Brockton Bay. Down near the docks. Just south of Chinatown. It was all over the walls of…" I paused. She had to know what the Other Place was, right? She saw it. "The S-I-X thing, the six thing was all over the walls there in the other world. The one I can see. The one you can see. I can see it on you. What's the link?"
She refused to meet my eyes now. She just huddled up into a ball, covering her face with her legs. I could feel the tension rise in the air, building up like a pressure inside my head. It felt hot. Like the fires that surrounded her.
Mysterious fires. Blackouts. Power surges. And no one remembered her. How long had it been since someone had really tried to talk to her? Could she even control her power? Some parahumans couldn't. Was that why they'd put her in a mental hospital? Before they'd forgotten about her, just like everyone seemed to. Everyone apart from me.
Above me, the lights flickered and died. Not a brownout; a full blackout. This time I already had my eyes half-closed, and was prepared for the flash-and-bang from the bulb overhead – and the sense of motion, of something escaping.
The window shattered, too. The burning Other Place around me grew hotter and hotter – and in the real world, things were getting unpleasantly warm despite the fact it was cool outside.
"Kirsty," I said quickly. "You need to get under control! Or you'll hurt someone!"
Her eyes flickered to me. I could see the guilt in her gaze. I could taste it, the thick oily scent in the Other Place. Guilt – and fear.
I had to know what she was scared of, but if she wouldn't tell me, I couldn't… no. I knew what I could do to find out. I didn't want to, but I knew how I could see her fears.
I exhaled Phobia in a short, smoky cough. She wailed at me, clutching her ragged red robe with claw-like hands, her mask-face locked in a permanent expression of terror. I could feel the first tremblings of panic in my stomach. This wasn't going to work. It was all going to go-
"No," I hissed at her. "Down." Chains lashed out from my barked out words, and I gritted my teeth as I literally forced my fears down. I wasn't going to let her control me. I was going to control her. I couldn't let her win.
I trussed Phobia up in iron chains and left her to squirm on the floor. You work for me, I thought at her. Do what the cherubs do. Do what Sniffer did. Show me how you see. Show me her fear.
Phobia stared at me, lit by the flames around her.
And then-
I fell apart again. My soul spilt out and burned the world. I couldn't hold myself together. I couldn't keep it in because it all wells up and then I pray but the praying has to be done and when I can't pray enough it happens again and everything burns because burning is the only way to stop the knives. Sin must be punished. The wicked are consumed by the light. Except the light is too bright for the world and the angels come and the angels are not men but it's my job to guide them and I'm not strong enough because I'm not whole. I am broken because I'm not strong enough. Heaven's light surrounds me and I am not worthy of it. I can't fail him. Not like my mother failed him, by being possessed by one of the demons. She is lost and I can still see her face and her filed teeth and she has the knife and-
-it hit me until I twisted away from Phobia's gaze. Blinking, I staggered and started to mouth the words of the Lord's Prayer. I… no! Those weren't my thoughts! I shook my head, trying to remember that… my mother hadn't ever held a knife like that and…
Okay. I ignored the smoke and took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I had to remember that wasn't me. I could still taste her memories, filled with smoke and blood. But I was me. I was sure of it. My identity crisis was pushed aside by a sudden awareness of how hot it had become in here. The skin on my face felt taut. I blinked, trying to wet my stinging eyeballs. Kirsty lost control when she got too scared, I knew that. I'd nearly lost control just from feeling how scared she was. She had to be calmed down, and I didn't know what to say.
"Draw it off!" I snapped at Phobia, choking in the smoke. It felt like my hands were too close to an oven. "Eat the fear!"
Phobia whimpered at me, a soft wet toungeless sound. She clawed at her mask, crying blood. Her chains rattled and clanked. She didn't want to do it.
"Do it!" I demanded, layering on more chains. "Obey!" I whirled on my two barbed wire angels. "Make her do it!" I yelled at them. One angel grabbed Phobia by the wrist, blood oozing where its clawed hands punctured her skin. It squeezed, slowly. The other wrapped both hands around Phobia's neck and dragged her face closer to Kirsty.
The construct screamed out, as her resistance broke. She inhaled, something crackling from behind her rictus. I could feel the air grow thin as she bloated like a tick. Kirsty began to cough and splutter, fire and blood and pain welling up from her mouth like smoke, drawn into Phobia. As they did, the fires around me died down. The walls all around us were black, and flecked with embers. The paintings were smeared with soot, but something about their watery beauty remained. It wasn't the same bliss that the powers of parahumans gave me, but at least it was better than the fire. I wasn't trying to breathe in an oven.
Eventually Phobia collapsed, fat and bloated and only held up by the unyielding hands of my barbed-wire angels. She was whimpering wordlessly, but I ignored that. I was more interested in Kirsty.
The other girl looked at me, and whispered something softly. A tiny wisp of light escaped the broken television set, shaped like a little four-winged fairy – or maybe a tiny angel. And when I checked in reality, I could see it there. It glowed like a nightlight, hanging over us in this dark room. She couldn't hold my gaze for any period of time, flinching away yet invariably coming back with her watery green eyes.
"How?" I asked. I'd never seen one of my constructs in the normal world. They seemed to be creatures of the Other Place.
"I knew you'd c-come back," Kirsty said. My accent makes it clear that I'm a local, but she sounded like she was from the Vermont area and her voice was soft and croaky from lack of use. "H-he told me that I would f-find other people who could see h-heaven. He told me that I'd m-meet other p-people like me, when the grey men t-t-took me here. The world averts its eyes because I b-burn too brightly from where he laid his hands on me. And he gave me eyes that saw heaven's light so that I might witness your angels." She stared me, the sides of her mouth turning up fractionally. There was an expectant look on her eyes.
I blinked. "What… uh, excuse me?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure where this was going. "Who?"
She smiled at me fully, wincing slightly from the pain of the facial movement.
"God."
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
A being which persuaded her it is God.
It might, or might not, be God, or a god.
I assumed it was bizarro Jack Slash.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Oh taylor you're so broken.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well damn. Honestly, getting a clear story out of this girl seems like it's going to be a headache and a half. And since this universe's Slaughterhouse seems to be (can't remember if this is the case or not) hidden from public knowledge, I'm thinking it will take a while and a lot of screw ups for a real understanding of what exactly it does.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
Oh dear, she's been using her belief in a god (who, if he exists, is most likely uncaring) as the main support structure of her mind when dealing with everything.
That...isn't great.
Also, does Taylor not realize she's going to get all the fear that Phobia ate later on?
That...isn't great.
Also, does Taylor not realize she's going to get all the fear that Phobia ate later on?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So much information at once.
Based on the seeming parallels between her and the Obrimos (touched by heaven, connected to fire) and her lack of control over her own mind which in turn leads to lack of control over her life, I think I can pin this girl's Tarot card down as Strength Reversed if she ever gets an interlude.
Okay, there are a two big points here: she was assigned a task involving parahumans ( bright light in the other place) but utterly failed, and despite the fact that she has no listed known kin, she remembers something as her mother. There's a good chance this was the thing that disfigured her.
So Taylor is resistant to Kristy's isolation effect.
Someone is granting this power, though Taylor may be an anomaly who found it on her own.
And that person is "God", likely whatever is connected to the bible passages and the 9s, which in turn obliterates any last chance of Taylor being that.
Based on the seeming parallels between her and the Obrimos (touched by heaven, connected to fire) and her lack of control over her own mind which in turn leads to lack of control over her life, I think I can pin this girl's Tarot card down as Strength Reversed if she ever gets an interlude.
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Dr. Mercurious
Strangest Person You Know
- Location
- New England
Well, fuck.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Kristy's the Oborimos to Taylor's Mastigos. Not sure about the rest.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm thinking that "God" is probably Jack Slash
- Location
- Here
Taylor is growing more and more reckless in using here power I'm sure she will start paying for that soon.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
I'm wondering how Kristy has stayed so young? Has she been offloading age onto other people?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
I don't think that she can do that with her Oborimos powerset. Unless she's been dipping heavily into Life, Time, or Death (which is disfavored for Oborimos) she wouldn't be able to do that, and we haven't seen any evidence of that. She probably is just one of those people who age slowly.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Besides, it's noit really "Obrimos" though. It's just that she happens to manipulate electricity and create physical constructs. Taylor herself has shown no ability to branch out from her Pseudo mind-space powers.
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- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Well. Fuck.
The only real positive here is that Kirsty's commentary about "God" doesn't seem to set off any of the usual alarm bells - no reference to controlling or punishing others, no claim that she's somehow above the rest of humanity. Instead, her powers seem to have been described to her solely as a means of locating others with the power to perceive the Other Place.
Unfortunately, I suspect that Kirsty's issues stem from that description. To her, this power is just... part of the landscape, something that is already happening, but she happens to able to perceive where others can't. She can't control it because she doesn't think of it as something she can control, in the same way you wouldn't expect yourself to be able to control what random strangers do.
Taylor approached the Other Place as a parahuman power, and immediately set about examining how it works and how she can affect it. That let her go from "I see weird shit" to "teleporting clairvoyant Master" in a matter of weeks. Kirsty, on the other hand, is gazing drunkenly at this whole phenomenon through a blindfold made of old Bible pages, anxiety issues, and OCD: the second provides a constant IV drip of stress, the third gives her an intense need to try and regulate that stress through ritualized action, and the first encourages her to try and solve the other two problems by figuratively kicking the whole mess upstairs.
If this was a shard, I'd say she's bombarding it with "help!" requests, then refusing to actually let it take action, causing it to get confused and irritated and start causing trouble. As it is, I have no idea the precise mechanics behind her problems, but they seem to be screwing her over pretty hard.
The only real positive here is that Kirsty's commentary about "God" doesn't seem to set off any of the usual alarm bells - no reference to controlling or punishing others, no claim that she's somehow above the rest of humanity. Instead, her powers seem to have been described to her solely as a means of locating others with the power to perceive the Other Place.
Unfortunately, I suspect that Kirsty's issues stem from that description. To her, this power is just... part of the landscape, something that is already happening, but she happens to able to perceive where others can't. She can't control it because she doesn't think of it as something she can control, in the same way you wouldn't expect yourself to be able to control what random strangers do.
Taylor approached the Other Place as a parahuman power, and immediately set about examining how it works and how she can affect it. That let her go from "I see weird shit" to "teleporting clairvoyant Master" in a matter of weeks. Kirsty, on the other hand, is gazing drunkenly at this whole phenomenon through a blindfold made of old Bible pages, anxiety issues, and OCD: the second provides a constant IV drip of stress, the third gives her an intense need to try and regulate that stress through ritualized action, and the first encourages her to try and solve the other two problems by figuratively kicking the whole mess upstairs.
If this was a shard, I'd say she's bombarding it with "help!" requests, then refusing to actually let it take action, causing it to get confused and irritated and start causing trouble. As it is, I have no idea the precise mechanics behind her problems, but they seem to be screwing her over pretty hard.
- Location
- Spain
This, and the mental slipping effect seems like Arcane at work.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
I really love this story. You're a great inspiration for me, EarthScorpion!
Izicata
AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME
I think you mean was.
Oh, hi there, Carrie.
Yeesh, Taylor. I know you have control issues, but maybe try not to be a merciless tyrant to the parts of your own mind?
Ah, bonding over creepy angels. A good foundation for a friendship.
Kristy: Just to be clear, my angels are creepier.
Taylor: No way, mine have barbed wire.
Kristy: But that's the thing: they lack subtlety. Mine only hint at horrors lurking beneath their charred carapaces. Fear of the unknown is much more potent than just body horror.
Taylor: Oh yeah? Well... there isn't anything subtle about fire compared to the insect ideas crawling inside people's heads! So there!
Kristy: You keep telling yourself that.
A new member is added to the party.
No. When Phobia is free, Taylor feels fear as normal. When she's chained, Taylor has clarity.
Yeesh, Taylor. I know you have control issues, but maybe try not to be a merciless tyrant to the parts of your own mind?
Ah, bonding over creepy angels. A good foundation for a friendship.
Kristy: Just to be clear, my angels are creepier.
Taylor: No way, mine have barbed wire.
Kristy: But that's the thing: they lack subtlety. Mine only hint at horrors lurking beneath their charred carapaces. Fear of the unknown is much more potent than just body horror.
Taylor: Oh yeah? Well... there isn't anything subtle about fire compared to the insect ideas crawling inside people's heads! So there!
Kristy: You keep telling yourself that.
A new member is added to the party.
No. When Phobia is free, Taylor feels fear as normal. When she's chained, Taylor has clarity.
For anyone else, this would be metaphorical.
First thought when social fails - mind influencing powers go! And further down the slippery slope into casual mind control.
Huh. Reminds me of my first nWoD session - creepy young girl in an asylum who'd been that age for a while. Highly doubt Kirsty is anything like her though (she was a Death Archmage's creation, or something like that). Not sure how she'd still be this young - possibly something that 'God' did to her?
She's been nailing parts of them to various places for a while now
.Was anyone else concerned when Taylor kept mentioning S-I-X? I'm thinking that its possible that just saying it does bad stuff (drawing attention or whatever - would it be possible to do a conditional/sympathetic spell whenever it's mentioned?).
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