A/N: I still have absolutely no idea how this is going to go over, so I'll just upload it. Oh, and the H.P. Lovecraft influences in this story will probably also be pretty obvious. Oh well, here it is.
***
Justin arrived at the safehouse a short time later, teetering near the brink of panic.
"Were you able to contact Michael?" Justin frantically asked Kristoph.
"No. This is bad," Kristoph responded as he shook his head in denial.
"This is dangerous," Justin agreed tersely. "Did Rain come back?"
"Not yet. She went to see if she could find them. She hasn't returned, and she hasn't checked in yet."
"Great!" Justin exclaimed. "Just what we need! Why can't they at least leave their comlinks on so we know they haven't died?"
***
Rain made it to the outskirts of the forest, to a spot where she knew Michael and his three foster children often played and picnicked. The place would had probably seemed idyllic under the midday sun; under the full moon, there was still something positively magical about it. However, there was no sign of them there in the tall grass, and nothing at all to indicate why Michael had fallen out of contact.
These heavily-forested foothills were all national parkland, and were often used by campers, rock-climbers, and hikers; still, Rain had heard rumors that the forest also occasionally served as cover for those with shadier purposes. There were also urban legends of a part of the woods that was so overrun by spiders that no one in their right mind would want to visit it. A whole section that was blacked out on the maps of the local police and park rangers; a place where the law didn't go.
Was the Nergal Faction somehow involved?
Only one way to find out.
Rain slipped between the boughs of the nearby trees without a sound. Within minutes she spotted the sign:
'KEEP OUT. NO TRESSPASSING. THESE GROUNDS ARE PATROLLED.'
A mounting sense of unease hurried her steps as she darted past it, and headed deeper into the woods.
The first spiderweb caught her by surprise, catching her full in the face as she made her way past a small stream through the large rocks and tree-trunks that bordered its banks. She fought her body's instinctive impulse to flail until the sticky strands were shaken free - after all, spiders were natural creatures and these woods were their home. She was the intruder here. She had a wry mental image of herself slashing desperately around with her drawn sword as an army of arachnids swarmed down upon her.
In such close quarters, I'd be just as likely to damage myself as them.
She spotted the web's occupant as it sped down the remains of its web towards her - fast, and unnaturally huge. Even as she ducked away, her Ether-sight caught what any normal human would have missed.
Familiarized. Controlled. By Who?
She'd met only one Aleph in her entire life with that ability, and he'd only been a child at the time.
It's only been...what has it been, thirty years? Thirty-five? Surely it can't have been that long already!
The pieces were still falling together in her head when she saw the comet arc overhead, and heard the first scream. Felt it as much as heard it, the nanites jolting to attention within her being at the sound of it.
Oh no...
Clouds were gathering overhead; something big was about to go down, and she had no doubt as to who was at the center of it.
She darted off at a run towards the source of the call.
***
Much later, with the benefit of hindsight, Michael would often reflect on the events of this night, and just how quickly a situation could go completely, horribly wrong. 'The drop of a hat' didn't even begin to describe it.
He wasn't supposed to be blowing holes in a mountainside, sending the hired mercenaries of the world's most insidious drug lord crashing down along with several kilos of blasted rock. On a normal night, Katy, Zeke, and Sean would've been in bed – not menaced by the same drug lord, who'd threatened to inject Katy with whatever had been in that syringe. Who'd struck her (no!) and who'd given the order to 'kill her first....'
The Kommissar would eventually suggest that perhaps Michael had experienced a full-on berserker rage, with the implication that such an event would have been fully understandable under the circumstances. But Michael had never been a berserker. Therefore, when his lucky star zoomed overhead and the transformation took hold, he'd done everything he'd had to do with a sick feeling in his stomach warring with the stubborn resolve that none of these men would ever be allowed to hurt another child again, ever - and the clear knowledge that he had no other choice.
And as he acted to protect the young ones who'd placed their trust in him, he couldn't help but remember another time, and another little girl...
***
He'd been advised against coming to Earth in the beginning. It was too dangerous, and it was said that his personage was too important to be put at such risk. But Michael had always wanted to go where he could do the most good - and he'd firmly believed that Earth was that place.
They'd known that Nergal lay somewhere beneath the sea; dormant, but not exactly inactive. His influence upon the human race was subtle but insidious; it could be seen anywhere where hatred, intolerance, and prejudice won out, or any place where madness, strife, and injustice was rampant. If Nergal couldn't have the planet back through the rule of interstellar law, he'd simply convince the human race to destroy itself from the inside out. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Earth's citizens remained blissfully unaware of the war that still raged between Nergal's followers and the Marduk faction.
The Alephs had never been very numerous, and they tended to group together in the secret places in the world. They'd been Nergal's first targets; if he hated humanity, he hated those who were born carrying traces of Sirian and Pleiadean nanotechnology even more. The Einherjar Faction had finally emerged during World War Two in response to this persecution - indeed, to all persecution. If the Nazis had the gall to use the ancient Teutonic legends as a part of their propaganda machine, the Kommissar joked that they'd find their own legends waiting to destroy them. The Einherjar were loosely allied with the Marduk Faction, but they were seen as wild cards; loose canons.
Michael remembered how that had come to be, how he'd found himself pulled back into the conflict. How he'd befriended Annie McNamara, hereditary leader of the Sidhe - the Alephs of Irish, British, and Scottish descent. She and her two children – fraternal twins – hid in plain sight amongst the humans in a modest flat on the outskirts of town.
He remembered the day he'd volunteered to watch over the twins while Annie took care of some chores in the house. He remembered how she'd hugged them and told them she loved them before sending them out to play.
He wondered if she'd known what was about to happen.
The twins – sunny, outgoing Belenus and shy, quiet Rhiannon, soon decided upon a game of hide-and-go-seek. Bel was quickly found, but Rhiannon had gotten the idea to sneak back into the flat and hide.
Michael found Annie first, lying facedown on the bedroom floor. Then he spotted Rhiannon, still frozen where she hid behind the dresser.
The assassin-Drone was already long gone. It hadn't noticed her at all.
She'd seen the whole thing.
***
He had to finish this quickly. He hadn't meant for the kids to witness anything like this. He knew very well how violence could scar the soul.
Michael had hoped it was all over when the drug lord finally scrambled for the safety of his walled-in cavern of steel and rock.
The first laser blast from the cannon caught him off guard, and sent him tumbling.
He straightened back out and flew back over the summit just in time to see the cannon powering up for another shot. Lideo was targeting the children.
Michael marshaled just about all of the power he had left, and screamed...
***
Whatever had just happened, it was all over by the time Rain made it to the source of the explosion – a crevice high up on the cliffside, which was now a smoldering, smoking ruin. From her vantage point, she could see the remains of what had probably been some kind of heavy machinery. It was now a melted, twisted lump of metal lying in a pile of debris. Michael was long gone.
Nothing should have survived whatever had done this; but it seemed that someone had done so. She could see movement further up the ravine. Something was dragging itself away from the wreckage.
She tried to tell herself that it wasn't a presence that she didn't already recognize - that when she finally made her way to them up the rock-strewn cliff face, it would be someone utterly unknown to her. This delusion died the moment she got close.
Only his tertiary nanites had been active the last time she'd seen him. This was the case with most Variants, Alephs somehow born to perfectly human parents. A quick scan confirmed that his secondary and primary nanites were now active, and they were putting him back together right before her very eyes. To her Ether-sight, they resembled countless tiny points of light burning brightly within him. They'd rebuild him exactly the way that he'd been before the blast, right down the last strand of his hair.
"Oh Frank," she said, dropping to a crouch beside him. "I thought I told you to stay out of trouble."
***
He'd been what - twelve years old the last time she'd seen him?
Thirty-three years ago, now. That's what it was. They'd been investigating rumors of Nergal Faction infiltration into the local mob, just like now. She'd been following a lead when the sound of violence caused her to turn off into a dark alley. There he was, shouting in vain at the older, taller boys who were in the act of playing keep-away with his dark glasses.
She'd melted out of the shadows then, turning the full strength of her Gorgon's Stare on the bullies.
"Gentlemen," she greeted them sardonically.
She had the grim satisfaction of seeing them all freeze for a heartbeat, and then run. The Kommissar himself couldn't have done better. She went after them like a stooping hawk, snatching the glasses away from the largest one as he ran screaming into the night.
"I assume these belong to you?" She held the shades out to the smaller boy with a sidelong glance and one of her almost-smiles, hoping to spare him the full effect of her gaze.
"Uh, yeah," he answered, taking the glasses from her and putting them back on with obvious relief. To her surprise, he looked her right in the eyes just before he did so – though not without a reflexive flinch. One look at the boy revealed the reason why he wore dark glasses; one of his eyes was blue, and the other was a darker shade that she couldn't quite make out in the dim light of the evening. She felt a pang of sympathy for him. Heterochromia had been a tell-tale sign of Variance since time out of mind.
"Are you all right?"
"I think so, but they killed my spider," he said mournfully. He pointed to a small, dark spot on the concrete; a thoroughly smashed arachnid had probably been nearly the size of a tennis ball while it was alive.
"Oh. I'm sorry," she said.
"It's okay. There'll be plenty more where he came from." He didn't sound okay. She felt bad for him. Still – there was a lead left to chase down. She didn't have any more time to waste.
"Stay out of trouble, all right?" She turned to leave.
"HEY! I'm not done talking to you!" the boy exclaimed. Rain turned back to him, eyes wide with astonishment at his sudden outburst. He flinched again and looked at the top of his shoes. "I mean – that was really swell the way you just appeared out of nowhere like that. Was that magic?"
"Perhaps," she said, still half-smiling. He could see it.
"My name's Frankie Lideo. That's spelled L-I-D-E-O. It's very easy," he told her. There was a pause. "And you are..."
"Rain."
"Rain? That's it? That doesn't sound like a real name," he said with some suspicion. "Is that a nickname or something?"
"I assure you, it's the only one I have." This wasn't exactly the case, but she'd flatly refused to go by Rhiannon since she'd had a choice in the matter.
"Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Frank - but I must bid you good evening."
Three blocks later, he was still following her. She had no idea how. Nobody had ever quite managed that before.
"You know you're dressed like a man, right?" he remarked.
"Indeed," she said, allowing the tiniest hint of amusement into her voice.
"What's that stick for? Is that a cane? You don't look like you need a cane."
"I don't."
Perhaps a demonstration was in order; though more than a few katanas had made it back to the States since World War II had ended, she knew it was unlikely that the boy had ever seen one in action.
"Stand clear," she told him. "I mean it. I don't want to risk hitting you on the backswing." He looked back up at her as if he expected that this was just another attempt to ditch him – and then he finally stepped back several feet, keeping his eyes on her the whole time.
"It's a sword? Why do you have a sword?" he demanded, after she'd gone through a Battojutsu kata.
"There are too many guns in this town already," she said, her sad half-smile back in place.
***
Too many guns in this town.
There were bodies strewn all over the place – armored, uniformed men fallen along with their weapons, felled by whatever had stricken this place. A quick sweep of the area revealed the true extent of the carnage. An army. He'd had a whole army here, and no one had known. An Aleph with this much firepower? No wonder the Drones would want to hit this place. I wonder what it was all for? And how did Michael get involved?
"Frank, What happened here?" she asked. "What is this place?"
"Rain?" he asked weakly, opening his eyes. "You're not here. You're not real."
"I'm really here, Frank," she said. She took one of his scorched-gloved hands and squeezed it – turning it over to see the blackened, cracked remains of an amber ring, the fossilized spider inside exposed to the open air.
"I need you to tell me what happened. Did you see what attacked you? I'm looking for a man. African-American, well-dressed. Was he a part of what took place here?"
"I'll kill that tin-headed creep!" he shouted, attempting to struggle to his feet. "Him and his little cockroaches, too!"
"Don't move," Rain said, extracting her hand from his as the words sank in.
There were no Drones here tonight. Michael did all of this, and Michael doesn't lash out unless he's provoked.
Very provoked.
"Wait! Where are you going?" he asked, grabbing at the sleeve of her overcoat. His mismatched eyes were wide, the pupils dilated as wide as they could go. He was still in shock. She noted that the flesh around the socket of his right eye was badly scarred, but she didn't have any time to wonder about that now. She pulled away, scooting towards the edge of the ravine.
"My apologies. I have to get to the bottom of this," she said. His nanites were active. He'd heal. Whether or not this was a good thing remained to be seen.
"Oh no you don't! You come back here!"
"Sir!" The shout rang from the plateau nearby, startling her into the shadows. Apparently not all of his men were dead yet.
"Don't let her leave!" Frankie Lideo ordered, making another attempt to pull himself up.
(She could still hear him pleading with her, all those years ago - "Please don't go -" )
"Don't let who leave?" the helmeted soldier asked.
He glanced back up, but she was already gone.
No one ever saw Rain unless she wanted them to.
