An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 6.05
Wearing my new skin, I headed upstairs. I almost wanted to whistle innocuously - but no, a grey man wouldn't do that. I had to act like one of them would. I had to speak in a flat voice, sound professional, and not show any emotions.
Worryingly, I was already bleeding personality into the grey husk of a woman I was wearing. There were damp patches on her colourless clothes, and rust flecks on her shoulders like some weird kind of metallic dandruff. The grey men might not have been people, but I was wearing this one like a suit.
I sunk into the Other Place and rested my hand against the beauty that blocked my way out. My borrowed hand sunk into it slowly. The feelings of wondering why I was doing this crept in just as slowly. There were voice in the background, but I ignored them. They didn't matter. I pulled my hand away, leaving pretty wisps trailing behind. The fog wasn't sticking to the grey man hand. So, they were resistant - but not immune. I could work with this, I thought as I tore out its influence with imagined nails.
"Is something wrong?" one of the cops asked, grabbing my shoulder, and I realised then that the voices in the background had been him trying to talk to me.
Oh. I had been standing there next to a mist no one else could see, staring at my hand. "I'm… my scanner is detecting something," I said. "I'm not sure what."
"Detecting? Is it dangerous?"
"I don't think so - but it's odd." Inspiration struck me. "Please keep back. I'm not sure what it is. I may have to," I started coughing, an odd itch at the back of my throat. This body was much better than the dog, but the breathing still didn't feel right. "May have to call it in," I concluded.
With a wary look, the cop backed away, leaving me in peace.
Taking the deepest breath my borrowed lungs could hold, I concentrated on the loneliness and the fear of being trapped inside here, hunted by the grey men. On how much I'd hated what I'd done to Dad and how I couldn't even tell him about how I was sorry. On how I lied to everyone and everybody.
And when I exhaled, Isolation was as thick as winter snow. Countless butterflies wrapped around me. Normally Isolation hid me from the attentions of others, but now I wanted it to keep me separate from the fog.
"Come," I whispered, crooking one finger towards me. The rust-coloured butterflies settled on me, like some strange dress from one of those Detroit fashion galas. But this wasn't a frivolity. This was armour.
When I placed my hand against the mist this time, it went through like a knife. Gritting my teeth, I took a step forwards. It was like walking through cobwebs. It didn't matter at first, but the pressure got thicker and thicker with each step and I started to leave the torn and tattered wings of Isolation behind me, lodged in the viscous fog.
"Come on," I muttered, eyes narrowed to slits so I didn't have to see the cotton candy. I thought of iron and rust and the horrors of the Other Place - sights much more honest than the wonderful barrier that was trying to keep me trapped. "Let me. Through."
And maybe that was what did it, because I was in the clear. I was coated in broken-legged, torn-winged Isolation, but the injured butterflies were squirming over my outfit, gobbling up the pink that'd stuck to me with their hungry little mouths. I took a deep gasp, palms on my thighs. I hadn't realised I'd been holding my breath. I'd done it!
"What are you doing outside your designated position?"
Oh, crap. Of course there were grey men positioned outside the doors to the police station to stop people entering. And here I was, standing in the open, gasping for air like I'd just run a mile. Isolation had been shredded by the mist, so of course they were going to notice me. I looked between the two bland government women. I'd had just about enough of today and how it kept on yanking my chain. It showed. My borrowed flesh was smouldering.
"Go back to your vehicle and wait for further instructions," I said, fat Idea-maggots dripping from my mouth. I could feel them stain the grey woman's lips.
"Orders are to…"
"Go back. To your vehicle." The maggots squirmed across the words on their brows, leaving trails of dark water. Grey men weren't people. They couldn't stand up to something like this, not when I was scrawling over their words. "Wait for further instructions."
Of course the two women obeyed. They headed down into the parking lot. I screwed my eyes shut. Urgh. I needed sleep. I was exhausted. Today had been way, way too busy. I'd sat an AP, fought a skinhead parahuman, hurt my arm, found out about two conspiracies, and now this? When I got home I was going to collapse, but I had to hold on just a little longer.
"Cry Baby," I muttered, feeding it my tiredness. I felt the fatigue drain from my mind. That was better. At least in a borrowed body, it only mattered if my mind was tired. The paramedic's body hadn't been through everything I'd been through for today.
I opened my eyes and the grey men weren't there. Where had they gone? I peered through the windows of the cop cars parked out front, but they weren't in any of them. They'd just vanished into thin air.
Crap. What if there was some hidden net-thing that grabbed people who escaped the cotton candy fog and then let down their guard when they assumed they were safe? I wasn't going to make any assumptions and I was twitchy as all hell for pretty damn justifiable reasons.
I sucked in a breath. The air tasted strange. The hair on the back of my arms and the back of my neck was standing on end. Something felt… off. Off in the same way as it'd felt off when the three-eyed man had been getting inside my head with his words, or when the cotton candy fog had stuck to me.
There was something going on here. Something I couldn't see, but I could feel. I went to take off my glasses – but of course, I wasn't wearing glasses in this body. The park on the other side of the road was sodden and swampy, the dull grey trees clawing at the heavens with bare branches. Smoky cars rushed past. Behind me was the fear-choked police station, hints of beautiful pink light streaming out of some windows. Nothing that would explain where the two grey men had gone.
I closed my eyes again, and sunk further into the Other Place. The cold gnawed my stolen bones. The light down here was a bloody red. It shone down on a world that really didn't look much like reality any more. Walls were a mere suggestion, sketches on the sky casting sickly violet shadows. Buildings stretched out like taffy. The park was entirely gone, replaced by an expanse of broken concrete where rusty nails stabbed at the sky. The few people across the street were ugly fusions of too many things that screamed and gibbered. My breath rasped in my throat and I tasted bile. This was deeper than I normally went; deeper than I wanted to go.
But I was looking for my Ideas - and here, without normalcy to get in the way, they gleamed like silver. There! I could follow chains to them. They were so fine that the shallows of the Other Place didn't show them.
With a sigh of relief I ascended back to the normal rotten hellhole of the Other Place, keeping my eyes fixed on where the maggots had been. There was something shadowy there, something that hadn't been there before. The more I focussed on it, the more distinct it became.
It was one of those armoured trucks, bulky and with dishes and sensors on the roof, parked in an empty space. Black words crawled over its surface. Words like IGNORE and MOVE ALONG and DO NOT INTERFERE. I grinned, though there wasn't much humour in my expression. This was something very much like Isolation. And now that I knew the truck was there, it was easy to keep my eyes on it. Was this what the bird lady had done to see me?
I leaned back against a cop car, trying not to blink in case I lost sight of the hidden truck again. The Ideas were like candles in the gloom, and that gave me an idea. It was a stupid idea, but I was utterly sick and tired of all this conspiracy bullshit. And if they had a hidden command truck, it might be packed with 'tech goodies. That'd show them. God, it'd be so good.
"Come on," I said, exhaling Cry Baby into the palm of my hand. I petted the crest of the indigo-skinned, horse-headed infant. "You're a good boy, aren't you? You do good work." His eyes gleamed red as he stared back at me. I kind of wanted him to respond or even show some kind of emotion, but no. It'd be nice if my creatures acted like pets. Phobia had come when I'd called it, but… well, it was a screaming monster that wore my face with its hands always covering where its eyes should be. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Oh well. "When I leave this body behind, knock it out. Eat its word and return to me. Got it?"
He didn't respond, but I knew he'd heard me. Hmm. I didn't want to leave the body somewhere it'd be noticed immediately, so I stepped behind a low hedge and lay down. I took a deep breath, drove a single nail into Phobia to lessen her influence, then thrust my hand deeper into the Other Place. And it was my hand, because my arm tore out of the paramedic's shoulder to do it. The hand was coming apart into a sea of roiling creatures, but I could feel the chain that tied the Idea to me.
Cold burned against my bare skin as I stepped out of the paramedic's body and fell into the chain. When I opened my eyes, I was in the cramped quarters of a government truck straight out of the movies. Where the walls weren't covered in screens, the space was filled with weapon cabinets and strange looping patterns made of circles and squares that glowed a dull orange. They were clearly for something, but I didn't know what. Machinery was bleeping in the background. And I was someone else. This time I was a different grey woman; black-suited, tie-wearing, dressed in sensible flats. And with a pistol at my hip.
The three-eyed man was right in front of me. Fortunately he was facing the other way, hunched over and wearing a headset. Was he looking at cameras? No, I realised; his forehead was resting on his palms. He looked like he was trying to hold off being sick. And from the smell in the air… yeah.
"... and the reports from the units inside so far have turned up negative," he said. He was talking to someone on the headset. He was distracted. "How soon can you have someone with the right methodology here? I was having problems reading her lower-level markers - you need someone else if you want a proper read-out. I don't think she's from the Slaughterhouse. None of her markers altered when I namedropped it in front of her."
I sunk into the Other Place. The eyes of my new body itched in the biting cold. The air smelled of mould and the screens were cracked and had something black growing on them. The letters under the black ooze weren't anything I could read, though something about them was achingly familiar. Everywhere there were traces of the things that the leaders of the grey men had done. Half-erased words were burned into the walls, and black feathers sat on the ground. Was that the smell of fireworks in the air, under the rot? There wasn't as much parahuman glow in here as I'd expected, though. Where were they keeping their tinkertech? I needed it.
"I made the mistake of getting in too close. She's got far more methodologies than I thought." He paused. "Yes, I read outside influences on her." Another pause, as he listened.
He was right to be scared. Anger flared in my chest for how much shit this man had put me through today, talking with his stupid strange-sounding words. And I needed him out of the way so I could make my getaway. So it was time for us to have a special talk. Only this time I'd have the advantage.
I didn't need to tell the other grey woman – so patiently standing by – to leave and 'guard the exit'. She already had an Idea in her. I just had to pull its chain and she obeyed. There was another grey man in here, sitting at a cramped seat with headphones. Cry Baby had finished its work on the paramedic so I sent it over to him.
And that left me and the three-eyed man in here alone. He had his back turned to me. He'd tried to control me. He'd nearly got me to tell him who I really was. I saw things with my power and I had no idea how much he'd seen about me with his.
He was at my mercy. If I killed him now, there'd be no way he could hunt me down. It was nearly the perfect crime. It wasn't even my body doing it, so there wouldn't be my fingerprints on the gun.
He was at my mercy. And so I had to show him mercy. I wasn't a killer. I'd… I'd just talk to him.
"Definitely metahuman. I don't want to scaremonger, but we might need to prep for an ambassador. She was an American citizen, though. I nearly got her name out of her, but I underestimated her. By a lot. I think she's integrated more methodologies than me. God, if she'd gone for a kill shot, she could have finished me off."
But then again, I didn't have to be nice about it.
I stepped up to the three-eyed man, drew my stolen pistol and placed against the back of his head.
"Something's come up. You'll need to call them back," I said flatly.
