Katherine Legato

  Katherine didn't know what to do. The immense spiritual pressure radiating from the other bedroom was the most intense aura she'd ever felt through her power. She struggled to interpret it, other than that it was primal, aggressive, and most of all—overpowering. Is something wrong? What is she doing in there?

  Katherine had gone to sleep frustrated, confused, and disappointed—hopeful, too, she would admit—only to wake up not long after. It seemed her power continued listening even while she was unconscious. That seemed both good and bad, but right now, she was mostly just worried about Alex.

  The other Star Guardian's spirit had always been strange—even unique. Most people had broadly similar spirits—there were differences between individuals, of course, as well as constant fluctuations across time—but relative to all the different spirits she'd encountered so far in general, most humans were extremely similar. It was similar to how two very different looking people would suddenly look very similar when compared to the bodies of cats, dogs, and jellyfish.

  There was a marked difference between the spirits of most people and those of the various different Guardians she'd encountered since bonding with her Star Core, though. The Guardians had something else tangling through their spirits. It was influencing them and shaping their base form into something radically different. It didn't feel like a spirit itself, though—she wasn't sure what it was, exactly, but it was there. The more powerful Guardians, like Matthias, had more of it, and it had done more to change the overall nature of their spirit.

  It was also very different from the three Star Guardians she'd encountered—herself, Alex, and that frighteningly powerful man who took them away from the cult facility and incursion. Rather than a foreign element knitting and stitching them into something alien, their spirits were actually a lot more human—well, half of it was. Strictly speaking, that went for Katherine herself and for that other, older Star Guardian. Alex was a bit different.

  The first two, herself included, were less like a single modified spirit and more like two complete, separate, and fully functional spirits perfectly superimposed on top of each other. They interacted with each other, yes, but they maintained a degree of separation and independence that was almost deceiving. Like two sides of a coin, you couldn't see anything on the other side without turning the whole thing over. Bizarrely, it meant that in some sense, they were less changed than the more common, 'regular' Guardians were.

  Alex was—unique. It was a little hard to say which other category she fell closest to. In one sense, she was closer to Katherine, having two very different pieces layered together. Rather than floating above each other, though, the two had mixed and melded together so thoroughly that it wasn't really correct to call them two distinct pieces. Curiously, though the mixing was far more thorough than with any other Guardian spirit she'd seen, it felt more natural than any of the normal Guardians.

  Returning to the coin analogy, it wasn't like the two faces had been broken into small pieces and shuffled together, or even directly superimposed like semi-transparent image layers in a photo editor. Instead, it was as if the defining features of both had been mixed in a more logical and fundamental way—like they'd been interpreted and then reimagined into a conceptually singular whole.

  Regardless, Alex's spirit was putting out an intense aura of danger, aggression, and pain—Katherine felt like something had to be wrong. She didn't know what to do, though—she started by sending a text, but she didn't get any response. Then, she stepped out into the hallway and went over to the other girl's bedroom to see if she could hear anything. Hear any physical sounds.

  It was quiet. There might have been the sound of breathing, but she wasn't sure—either way, it didn't seem like there was anything happening on the other side. At least not anything physically active.

  She decided to knock on the door. It was a fairly quiet knock, and she called her friend's name softly. "Alex?" There was no answer.

  Now, Katherine really didn't know what to do. Maybe she's just having a nightmare? If that were the case, should she wake her up? Maybe, but—would she be okay with me barging into her room while she's sleeping? Katherine was starting to get stressed. She decided to try knocking again, and she did it a bit harder this time. A moment later, she got a response—it was a loud crash of glass shattering.

  What the fuck? Something was definitely wrong. Alex's spirit had also disappeared—did... Did she jump through the window? Now panicking, Katherine fumbled with the door handle. Please don't be locked!

  The doors inside Alex's weird, rooftop apartment thing had just the simple, twisty bit and key kind of lock. Ironically, there was nothing Katherine's power could do about that kind of lock. At least, she didn't think so. Her experiments over the past week had revealed the three big limitations of her core ability—or maybe it would be more accurate to say she'd started to understand the scope.

  The first was that whatever it was she was trying to manipulate had to have some kind of spirit in the first place. Or, at the very least, it had to have one that was capable of any degree of listening. That was admittedly still broad—it included pretty much all living things and a large number of machines. Especially with the machines, though, there were very specific things that her power could or couldn't 'talk' to. It might seem almost arbitrary from the outside, but there was a common thread—the machines had to have some kind of decision making capability, true information processing, or autonomy.

  Hilariously, Katherine had been able to easily change her home thermostat without touching it, but turning the lights on or off proved intractable. The thermostat was a whole system of sensors, a responsive touch display, and some kind of PID microcontroller, which gave it a small, primitive spirit that was nonetheless able to understand her intent and react accordingly. In fact, it was quite willing and eager to do whatever she asked.

  By contrast, the lights were just pieces of metal filament in a glass tube. Electric current made them heat up and glow, and her power couldn't make electricity where there wasn't any. They were controlled by physical switches, and neither was her power telekinesis.

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  Not all machines were so willingly obedient as the thermostat, and some were downright stubborn. She'd learned this when she tried stealing from a vending machine at the AAG office. The machine wouldn't automatically comply, but over the course of a few minutes, she managed to eventually convince it that a mistake had been made and that it really was supposed to have dispensed an item. The irony, then, was that some kind of electronic keypad lock would be the best scenario for her when it came to lockpicking. There was nothing she could do to argue her way past a deadbolt.

  Thankfully, the door wasn't actually locked. Less fortunate was that there was no sign of Alex. No sign—except for the massive, shattered window.

  Katherine ran over to the edge. Alex was gone, she was sure of it, and there was no one else other than her in the room. Peering over the frame, she suffered a wave of vertigo. A terrible nausea bubbled up from her stomach, and she tried not to throw up. Staggering away from the edge, Katherine had to steady herself against the edge of the bed. Deep breaths. Steady breaths. She'd been having her own nightmares over the past week, and the scene around her threatened to send her spiraling. Not yet. Steady. Go get Mr. Huntingfield.

  Now in a daze, Katherine dragged herself back to the door, leaving the shattered glass and billowing curtains behind. Along the way, she caught sight of several deep gashes torn through the carpet and some even the underlying floor. She knew Alex was strong, but those didn't look like marks that could come from fingers. Hazy, fragmented recollections of teeth and claws prowling among darkened trees pursued her back into the hallway.

  "What the fuck. What the fuck." Her friend had been kidnapped by some kind of monster.

  I ended up with a Tom Petty song stuck in my head. The grip of Hunger was squeezing my mind and turning all the other thoughts I had a bit silly. I relished the joy of weightlessness, savoring the precious seconds of freedom from the iron grip of the planet.

  It was only the illusion of freedom, however, and I soon smacked down not too far distant from where I had the first time. The pavement there was still cracked, but this time, it seemed like I'd only chipped it a little. That was probably because I landed flat on my stomach instead of my feet. That would have spread the force out a bit, and—probably the bigger factor—likely decreased the speed of my descent.

  Ow. Bullshit still hurts. My limbs were a bit roughed up, especially at my elbows and knees, but oddly, my face was pretty much fine. I attributed that to the way my whole jaw and lower face had shifted. Whatever the dirty, gold-colored metal that formed my claws and maw actually was, it was extremely durable. My monstrous face also sort of stuck out a little bit—I still thought the pug versus normal dog comparison was fitting. It made my head into the human equivalent of the non-pug shape.

  I didn't bother waiting around to heal off the damage this time. Just a second or two after smacking down, I rolled upright and scampered off into the night. Rather than immediately take off down the street, though, I ran down the parking ramp. Every step made my knees sting a bit, but it really wasn't that bad. I think... I think this stupid Hunger makes most other things kind of tame in comparison. That had to be part of why other Anathema tended to be so reckless and willing to take injuries, I realized. It's not just aggression and the ability to regenerate. Getting stabbed or something just isn't as bad as what they were already feeling.

  That was a bit of a sobering thought.

  Anyway, the reason for going down into the garage was because I didn't want Katherine or David to see me running off after jumping through the window. Whoever was knocking at my door was definitely in my room by now, so I didn't want them to get a good look at me. I also didn't want them to have any idea which direction I might be going.

  Alright. Park. Nature. Small animals, park, no people, no property—park. I made sure to keep drilling the plan into my own head. The sudden action had actually done a bit to clear my head a little, but I was still nowhere close to a good headspace. I was also still deteriorating, and it might only be a minute or two until my consciousness sank back to the level it was just moments ago. Park. Trees, Raccoons. No homeless people. Only animals!

  I really wanted to avoid encountering any humans. It would just be a whole mess—if they saw me, they'd freak out, and I wanted to minimize any rumors or reports of a strangely human-like Anathema running around in the middle of the city. I also didn't want to kill or eat anyone else. It didn't matter that I seemed to have gotten away with killing Bungee Guy. Killing actual humans was something I absolutely needed to avoid, especially outside of an active incursion.

  Doing it during an incursion was a much better idea, and it would work out nicely with my developing Guardian identity. Still, I felt like that wasn't something I should plan on doing. Even if it was a lot less risky, it seemed like a super bad habit to form.

  And, in my current state, I felt like it was important to minimize the risk. I might not have gone totally feral—yet—but I was getting there. Still, there was always the chance of stumbling on people sleeping on benches or whatever. Squirrels and raccoons and ducks and mutant gators, Alex! No people!

  For the past five or six years, there had been persistent rumors of mutant alligators infesting the city sewers. It got to the point that every now and then a Guardian team would decide to go on a special adventure and see if they could get to the bottom of some big slimy lizard conspiracy. Usually that didn't go very far, though, when they realized what it's actually like to deal with the municipal underbelly. In a way, those failures only served to fuel the rumors.

  If they're actually real, maybe I'll eventually eat one!

  The streets of downtown were pretty well lit, which was inconvenient. I just dealt with it though, sticking to the edges of darkness where I could and running as fast as possible. With my newly awakened nature as an Anathema, that turned out to be very fast indeed. Soon enough, it stopped feeling like sprinting and became closer to what I imagined trying to run on the surface of the moon would be like. I imagined an astronaut up there would end up sort of leaping and gliding along above the surface if they needed to really haul ass.

  That was kind of what I ended up doing, but sped up on account of the much higher gravity. There was definitely a primal, euphoric thrill in realizing that I was probably exceeding the speed limit, on foot.

  I also started to realize that my general gait had shifted. I was a lot more gangly and stooped forward, and it wasn't just on account of the high speed moon running technique. Like a cryptid! Looks like monster, yeah. Hehehe.

  I sort of lost track of where I was even going. Not too much later, though, I realized I was somewhere on campus. Eh? Familiar. Familiar places easier. Hmm. Yes... is right... probably.

  I tasted many things. Some were good. Others were less good. I went after the good ones. Some got away, most didn't. I learned how to catch them quickly. I would taste them, feel the air, make sure they couldn't taste me, get close, and grab. Then, I would...

  eat.

  Tasty. The hunger wasn't so bad, now—but maybe I could eat some more. After all, there was plenty more to eat.

  Yes.

  Tonight was a good night.