The galley of the zeppelin was hardly a quarter of the one inside the Iron Vulture, though it could be presumed it didn't need to feed as many, nor as often. It didn't take long at all for the crew (that is, Dumptruck and Hal) to raid the pantries bare. Kit sat alone in there, hunched over a table. He had spent a lot of time meandering around the zeppelin, avoiding the others; since leaving Pirate Island, for a time it seemed he could distract himself enough now and then from overloading his mind on this immortality thing, but after seeing Port Wagoo, distraction was impossible. He felt so scared and stressed at all the unknowns lying before him that it was all he could do not to just ball up on the floor.
Now in the galley, he had found himself a steak knife and had it in hand, though what he thought to do with it… well, it seems from the time he pulled the knife out of the drawer to the time it took to sit down, that he ever imagined he had the guts to go through with what he had in mind seemed awful fanciful right now.
Call it a test. An experiment. He had the serrated edge of the knife against the crook of his left index finger. Just a quick little tug was all it would take, just a light, little cut. But people in their right minds, he knew, weren't sitting down somewhere debating on how to cut themselves without it hurting too bad. With the repeated thought of, 'this is ridiculous!' he had put the knife down several times already. But each time after he took hold of the knife again, put his finger to it, with a storm of fear and curiosity raging in his mind. He wanted to know what would happen. He had seen both Flynn and Blackmane take a barrage of bullets and heal like nothing happened. Would the same happen to him? Was he really immortal, like Flynn had said? He knew Klang had hurt him pretty bad, but he never saw anything for himself before he woke up on that beach. He wanted to see it, if it were true.
"Okay, gonna do it this time," he said quietly, through gritted teeth. "On the count of three. One… two…" He gulped. His hands were shaky. "Two and-a-half… t-two and-a little-more-than-half… THREE!" It was as if he were trying to catch himself off guard, but the only thing that moved was his left finger, jerking away from the knife. "Cripes, this is ridiculous."
He set the knife on his lap, closed his eyes and breathed, trying to calm down. "Just a little cut, that's all," he coaxed himself. "Won't hurt a bit. Just a teeny, tiny little poke. Aw, I feel like a nut!"
"Runt? Who ya talkin' to in here?" asked Ratchet behind him.
"Aaugh!" startled Kit yelped, jumping where he sat. The knife clattered on the floor. "Ow ow ow!"
"What happened?"
"I jabbed my knee, that's what happened!" Bent over his lap and clasping both hands over his kneecap, Kit sucked some air between his teeth. "Don't ya ever knock before bargin' into a room?"
"Whaddaya want me to do, knock on the wall? The heck were ya doin' with the knife?"
"Aw, mind your own business, will ya?"
"Did ya cut yerself?"
"Nope, I always sit like this."
Kit expected Ratchet would snort at him dismissively, or at least not miss the opportunity to add some sort of insult, but the mechanic did neither. Kit realized Ratchet was ogling, apprehensively, at his knee.
"Is it, uh… doin' anything?" Ratchet asked.
Part of Kit did not want to look, did not want to know. It took some courage to let his hands up, but he did; the cut on his knee had a trickle of blood smudged around his fur. Kit let out a long, relieved breath. A huge amount of stress suddenly released in the course of his veins. "I'm not one of 'em," he breathed, and, slouching back lazily against his chair, he grinned wearily. "Oh, man. You know what this means? Flynn was wrong. I'm still normal. Just a kid with a cut knee."
"Meh. A kid stabbin' himself."
"Aw, shut up." In that sensation of relief, though, Kit was suddenly accosted by a sensation in his knee that he had never felt; the wound, instead of hurting, became cold, very very cold. It tingled like mild electricity. "What the…?" Kit held his arms out and gazed on the cut. Ratchet leaned over and did the same. The blood on the kid's knee became like a fine powder and wafted away ― only to be pulled back and absorbed back into the cut. Kit looked at his palms ― the bits of blood that had smeared there also turned into crimson dust, into a snake-like strand that slithered back into his knee. The cut was gone, and the cold tingling sensation ceased. It left his knee feeling absolutely normal.
Ratchet blinked once, but it was a long blink, like someone had hit the system reset button in his brain. He was staggered at what he had just seen, and backed up until his backside bumped into the sink counter. "Jeez, runt. Ya… ya really can't die."
But Kit was mutely terror stricken over what he had just seen and felt. He pinched and stretched the skin of his knee, hoping the cut was still there. It was not. He was 'one of them.' Maybe now it was ball-up-on-the-floor time.
"You guys think I can't die, but…" His voice faltered and he stopped talking, realizing he was just blurting the words, not knowing why it was worth telling Ratchet any of this. He swallowed, and felt dizzy with fear. Who knows what compelled him to finish that thought, to say aloud what had him so frightened, but he did: "What if… I'm already dead?"
A gray, overcast sky was nothing uncommon in Olde Victoria, but the sight of a black storm emerging like a dragging cloak over the western horizon did elicit a few utterances of I say from tweed-clad gentlemen looking up from their newspapers while they sat on park benches. Hundreds immediately noticed this odd phenomenon, from the river docks, the streets, and even people gawking out of their home windows. Some strange weather was the first assumption, though no one had ever seen a storm that looked like it was being dragged through the sky by dark wings ― nor one that moved so swiftly.
The hundreds that saw it coming became thousands. Automobiles and carriages stopped in the streets and looked to the sky. Curiosity became apprehension ― people began yelling from their homes to those outside, to the effect that a radio broadcast was being issued, a state of emergency. It was all very confusing. Mothers began yelling for their children to come indoors. And then something occurred for the first time in twenty years, not since the time of the Great War:
The air raid sirens blared.
The youngest part of the population had little to no memory of what that sound meant, but others filled in the blanks for them quickly: Get to shelter! Duck and cover! Invasion, invasion! Panic reigned in the streets in short order. Warplanes, several squadrons from the Royal Air Force scrambled and zipped overhead at full throttle, headlong into the approaching darkness. The planes would never land again.
Preceding the dark mass in the sky, shades like ghostly eels slithered through the River Thumbs' murky water, swelling and forming until the water turned black and seethed with foam. Barges and other boats of all shapes and sizes afloat with their crew, of which there were countless, were rocked and jolted by some force beneath the surface. Crewmen, panicking, looked to the water to see what was accosting them. Skeletal hands clawed at their hulls ― clawing, scraping, tearing from the bottom. Screams and cries for help rang out desperately, but those ashore were helpless to do anything, and could only utter their prayers as the boats were torn apart below the waterline, sinking. Those on the boats jumped and attempted to swim to shore, for the length of the river in the city that amounted to hundreds of people flailing in the water at once.
Some made it to shore, but others did not. There were screams ― and heads being pulled below, never to resurface. Their drowned cries gurgled in gushes of bubbles breaking the surface. People ashore trying to help threw them ropes, but the ropes went taught like fishing lines and broke as the victims holding onto them went under. Soon the screams of the desperate swimmers were, in combination, louder than the air sirens. Red pools emerged in the dark water, swirling with the current and frothing pink in the foam. Then bodies started walking out of the river. They were not alive.
Their garments soaked and shredded, some bearing old pirate weapons, some unarmed save their teeth ― one among them wore the commander's uniform of the SKS Stalker. His tiger skull, glowing with red eyes in its hollow sockets, snapped its jaws over a collar still looked pristinely starched.
The visage of the Iron Vulture gazed upon the city, its eye shining red. Warplanes swarmed it, shooting and shooting, but it moved on invincible. Thunder boomed, but not the crack of lighting ― it was like the bellow of a volcano. Fire swelled under the immense and stretching expanse of its ghostly wings, churning in bright red clouds. As its wings at last cast shade over the outskirts of town, its beak… grinned. And then it opened to say,
"AHH. HOME, SWEET HOME."
