Episode 5 - The Tide Recedes, and What it Leaves Behind

  Chapter 48 - Squall

  “I’m sorry, Adrian. I thought it might go like this. This is why Pooka would not let you in.”

  “What are you doing to me? Did you keep some of the Erratic somehow?” His mind voice trembles as I shut doors on memories I don’t want to see, slowly gathering my sense of how to control this as I work through the process of organizing my thoughts. He watches me as I grasp the lines of his bond to all bodies of his symbiont, beginning to propagate my thoughts down those directions as well. His bond feels so stretched out, like thin membranes that need to be carefully touched lest they break. Adrian observes me work in passive, confused shock. “How do you know what you are doing?”

  “This is how I am, Adrian. This is how I always am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  You will be quiet, meat-sack. You will be silent while we do our work with your body.

  “Be nice. That’s Pooka.”

  “Why is your symbiont here? This is nothing like Rhett-”

  I am invited. You will not compare us to the unnatural perversion that your kind has created. You will submit to the conduit.

  I ignore them both, seeking Adrian’s symbiont on the other side of the membranous textures of his bond, strengthening the flow instead and drawing all parts of it closer. As I solidify the connection, I pass through to absorb into myself the bulk of his bodies… and I open one thousand eyes.

  Tumultuous images assault my brain. Some flash bright with light and terrible shapes. Others are dark and moist. Sound rings in my ears - people, voices, conversation, music, silence. Simultaneous, cacophonous. It threatens to overwhelm me.

  Then Pooka sweeps after, his confident command of the bond sorting and strengthening and shuffling information, seeking a specific voice. With a spark of clarity that I sense from him, he finds his target and crystalizes my focus for me.

  “Hello?”

  What are you?

  “I’m a guest here. I’m hoping to borrow your bodies?”

  You hear us?

  Sister.

  Brother?

  Subsume into us. I have need of your form here.

  We welcome you.

  Instant cooperation changes the flow of the bond, the edges shrink and we fall into communion. I can feel the gasp of shock as Adrian is carried with us to the tight bubble of consciousness we now all exist within. Pooka takes confident control. Adrian’s symbiont falls in line and adapts to our need, sending the six Vespa bodies with us off in brisk reconnaissance. The rest - the teeming hordes elsewhere and on Adrian’s stomach - his symbiont separates off for us, letting me keep my focus on only the task at hand.

  Two Vespa find gaps in a window in the stories below us, entering the building and beginning to patrol down the halls. A third and fourth thread their bodies between the louvers of a ventilation outlet and begin speeding down the dark corridors of the vents. The final two wait near my face at about eye level, hovering in the air in front of my eyes.

  I catch glimpses of what each Vespa body sees. They’re within the halls, spying on a guard with his Canis trotting at his side. Another lands on a security camera, examining the view from the lens to assess the line of sight before moving on to the next one. The ones in the vents pass gaps where they each pause to observe the room, catching glimpses of late-night shift workers with symbionts on their shoulders or working alone. Adrian’s dawning horror at my complete control of him stumbles with one final shock.

  “How can you see them? Why can you see these symbionts?” asks Adrian.

  “I-”

  Pooka shuts our connection. You will not discuss this with him. He will be as my kind is. You will use him, as we are used.

  No. I am not like them. You are not like them.

  They have exterminated your kind. Have you not realized that from my memories? You, or any conduit, are threats to the masters. So they have bred you thin and blind. I will protect you.

  Humans have exterminated others like me, yes, I got that. But not Adrian. He is a victim of this life as much as you or I. The choices he has made he made under duress. There were never any real alternatives.

  Pooka is silent.

  We don’t have the luxury of simple decisions or willing allies. I don’t want to be alone, Pooka.

  Am I not enough?

  My heart tightens, and I wrap him with my mind. You are everything. But we cannot stand alone. Strong roots need soil to grow. A lonely tree is better off as a forest.

  Sunlight streams through the leaves, loam gives way beneath my hooves.

  I smooth out the memories before we spiral again. We overlap. We are not quite two. We need allies that are not ourselves, I get it. I’m learning to do this too. We’ll just keep on hurting others unless we try to do these things right. Trust me to show you something new.

  I feel Pooka’s grip loosen, and I slip through to untangle Adrian’s consciousness from the ball of thoughts Pooka has silenced him in. I almost feel like I dust him off, partitioning him to the side of our communion. “Please don’t hate me after this?”

  Adrian’s stunned thoughts follow. He seems too overwhelmed by what has happened to him to really feel any anger or resentment, at least for now. “What are you?”

  “I don’t really know. Something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Time passes. Our hunt must commence.

  I narrow my thoughts to the Vespa with Rhett. He sits in a holding cell, legs crossed, arms leaning on his knees and hands clasped together as he watches his captors. There are two of them, bent over a desk reviewing something between them, Rhett’s handgun sitting on the table between them.

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  “He has a symbiont with him, sensors say as much. It’s not showing as the one that left its marks all over our security systems last time,” says one guard to the other.

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Most likely explanation. Someone went to wake VP Watanabe up. He’ll want to see this personally after the Board chewed out all the upper Execs in security from last time.”

  One guard turns from their conversation and taps the plexiglass to get Rhett’s attention. “Why were you trying to access our security servers? To clear your records from last time?” he interrogates from beyond the walls of Rhett’s cell.

  Rhett does not respond, cocking his head to one side and spinning my vision as the Vespa on his ear tilts with him.

  “How did you get into the building?”

  “I’ve given you a card with my employer's contact info. That’s all you’ll get out of me,” replies Rhett mildly.

  “How much money do you think they will pay to retrieve you? You think you are valuable enough for ransom? Better talk now and make life easy when you are inevitably stuck with us and we send you to be culled.”

  Rhett shrugs, sending my vision bouncing again. “Sure. Whatever you say.” Then he turns and lies down across his bench to stare at the ceiling with a sigh, leaving the guard to bang on the glass trying to get his attention again.

  I will the Vespa’s wings to buzz, the vibrations forming the sound of my words near his ear. “I’m on my way. Keep an eye on things via Pell.”

  I watch his lips open from the Vespa’s eyes, an expression of shock turning to intense disapproval passing across his features. Then he shuts his mouth, jaw tense, and continues to stare at the ceiling.

  The Vespa with Rhett takes to the air. I glimpse the side of his head as it spins to examine the cell he is within, to locate its position, to help its seeking siblings.

  They are deep within the building now, flitting between doors and halls. They infiltrate further with every moment we wait for them. The Vespa queen begins to sort and pass through to me and Pooka the most valuable glimpses and sounds. The two that remained with me buzz in anticipation to fly at my side.

  I push open the door from the roof again, and the two Vespa stream ahead of me. Pooka pads at my side, lips pulled back over his teeth. We break into a run.

  Unlike our previous flight, we pause exactly when we need to. We run between doors and hallways with the knowledge of an insider. Pooka bounds ahead of me, his feet silent on carpeted halls. We reach a stairwell and descend several floors, then hide for a moment in the dark while we wait for late-night shift workers to pass. We descend further, dodging between Murasaki employees like smoke.

  The holding cells must be lower. The Vespa have not found them yet.

  “They’ll hold Rhett until they can get in contact with Aquila. Standard protocol will be to ransom employees back in these circumstances. They might rough him up in the meantime, but he’s still valuable goods that could be sold till then. It’s only when they hear ‘no’ that he’ll be in any real danger, and that won’t happen,” explains Adrian as Pooka and I continue our hunt.

  “Have they contacted Aquila yet?” I ask.

  “Probably won’t until the morning. Or at least until the VP they were talking about approves the ransom demand.”

  “He’ll wake up. I’ve met the guy. He sold me to Regina.”

  “Ah, that one.”

  “So that’s our time limit then. Get Rhett out before Regina is notified we fucked up.”

  “'We'? I think you mean 'I'.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  We’re deeper still. I have to be nearly halfway down the building now. If I’d tried to do this on my own, I’d’ve been long caught. But with so many eyes surveilling around me, I know everything in my vicinity. I know the layout of floors before I even reach them.

  Finally, we reach tighter security. I tuck beneath one camera, pressing my back against the wall and whisper through my Vespa to Rhett, “can you get Pell to give me a hand here? I think I’m getting close.”

  Pell unfolds from my shoulder, jointed legs silent as she scuttles up the wall and latches onto the camera above me. The status LED on the side blinks out, and I take off again, Pell racing along the wall at my side.

  “They’ll know you are coming,” says Rhett aloud, his voice carried to me from my many ears.

  “What did you say prisoner?” barks a guard.

  Rhett says nothing in reply, tapping his foot against the wall of his cell. Is he impatient? Or nervous? I cannot tell in the multi-focal vision of the eyes that see him.

  We reach turnstiles and a metal detector, unmanned at these late hours. The Vespa scouted this pathway for me, but our options are growing slimmer and slimmer. I will need a distraction soon.

  Pooka cackles, anticipating my need. His ruff of black fur down his back bristles, and he stands perched on the tip of his toes, arching his back.

  Fine, go boil somewhere. Don’t kill anyone, none of this sweet blood nonsense.

  He bares his teeth, a flash of white as his form dissolves into black fog. He does not reply.

  I vault the turnstile and pass under the metal detector, ignoring the alarm that buzzes as I do so. They’re about to have bigger problems.

  Pooka has already slipped through the halls faster than I can run, following the lead of a Vespa into one of the manned offices with several employees monitoring camera feeds. They are on their feet, tapping the screen where Pell has already disrupted their feeds.

  Pooka bubbles up from the floor, his jaws opening and tongue curling, then he calls every piece of pure metal in the electronics simultaneously. The screens explode, the wires rip from the walls. Men duck under desks as glass shatters and plaster rains white dust upon them. One worker slams a fist on a red alarm.

  I tear my thoughts from Pooka’s chaos and keep focused on my path. I pause down one dark hallway as several men run towards Pooka’s mischief, clearing my way. Then I jog onwards. We reached a barred door, with a keypad lock. Pell climbs down from the roof and it clicks open in only a few moments, and I step into a plastic-lined security anteroom - and holding cells beyond.

  “What-?” starts a guard, the one I caught glimpses of from the Vespa with Rhett.

  I run with all my might into the desk he sits at, bracing, and throw the whole thing on its end towards him as I scream with exertion. Pell darts across the ceiling past me.

  “We knew there was a second!” cajoles the guard, backing away from the chaos.

  “Screw you!” I yell, bunching my hands into fists at my side.

  From his side, he withdraws a collapsible baton, flicking it open with a shake of his wrist. As he comes around the tipped table, I dodge the other way. The buzzing wings of the Vespa on the side of my head scream in my ears, or it might just be the sound of my rushing blood. My heart races as I double back the other way when the guard changes direction, and for a moment we both pause - eyeing each other. I grab a chair and toss it between us, then spin and bolt down the corridor between the holding cells. The guard gives a bark of frustration and gives chase.

  I catch a glimpse of Rhett hovering in the doorway of his cell, Pell glowing bright teal on the lock as I pass. I look over my shoulder and the guard follows, a menacing grin across his face as he taps his baton against his open palm. Then, too late, I realize the corridor is a dead end.

  I pause at the end and turn, my eyes jumping between the guard and my closed escape. Pooka is too far. I have nothing in my hands.

  My heart seizes. My body won’t move as the guard steps closer. I have no clue what I’m doing on my own. So, with a scream to steel my courage, I lower one shoulder and decide to charge the guard.

  We crash together, the point of my shoulder knocking him off balance. But my compact frame is nothing compared to his size. Sharp, mind-shattering pain blooms on my side as the baton lands a blow just below my ribs. As I exhale my breath in a gasp of shock, a mouthful of spittle explodes from my lips with it, and I double in half, falling to my knees.

  Somehow I have enough control over myself to roll, and the baton comes down a second time where my torso was only a moment before. The pain in my side scatters my concentration, and my vision flashes between eyes.

  I don’t know which body is mine. One moment I am small, with gossamer wings and jointed legs. Next, I am tired, with a heavy weight across my chest and weak knees, and heaving breaths as I watch with my mind, but can do nothing for those I watch. Next, I am fog, rushing between the halls, roiling and turbid, tendrils gathering metal within myself as a storm of blades.

  Then I gasp in pain as the baton landing across my back brings me back to my body. My hands completely slip from underneath me, and I land chest first onto the floor, cracking my chin against the laminate. Tears spring to my eyes, and I cannot find a single sound in my throat.

  I hear the guard cry out in pain, a sudden grunt like a rush of air. And a third blow never comes. I remain on the floor, my sides screaming at me and my hands too weak to collect myself.