A/N: And we're back! A hearty thank-you to all who viewed, reviewed, favourited, and followed: you fine folk give me the strength to continue!
This is where things get messy, ladies and gents: by now, we're arguably past the middle of the story, and now begins the charge towards the climax... and it's here that the action becomes just a tiny bit more frenzied.
If you have any theories, don't be afraid to share them; if the codes frustrate you... well, atbash translators can be found online, and don't be afraid to speculate as to what lies within my ridiculous riddles:)
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and TSW are still not mine.
This chapter's soundtrack is Put The Pint Down by Steven Price.
The Old Man didn't look kindly on outsiders interfering with his business, least of all repeat offenders like Utterson.
Having to dodge the Bees that had decided to investigate the Park in the last few months had been a nuisance, but they'd been easily fobbed off with illusions and trickery. Utterson was a different kind of annoyance, one that wouldn't be dissuaded by sleight-of-mind… and the little tin soldier had already done far too much to delay this great work.
He didn't expect Utterson to understand, but the Old Man was writing a fable in blood and time and magic, weaving a cosmic ritual narrative that would pave his way to the infinite… and for the second time in thirty years, Utterson was doing his level best to spoil it – the first time by sniffing around his territory during what should have been a night of uninterrupted feeding, this time by separating Lorraine and Dipper, derailing the plot he'd worked so hard to construct. Such interference was to be expected; after all, the beret-wearing bastard couldn't access the power of Atlantic Island Park or confront the Old Man on his own terms, so the best he could do was chip away at the plans of his betters.
Well, the Old Man didn't often get directly involved if he could help it, if only because he did not have access to infinite power – yet. Besides, this ritual would work so much better if the sacrificial lambs surrendered themselves to his knife of their own accord. But every now again, he had to nudge things in his direction ever-so-slightly.
He needed to bring Lorraine back to centre stage.
Delving deep into the wellspring of power beneath him, he drew upon the Dreaming One's connection to the invaders from the sea, and to those tainted by the black bile of the earth. He couldn't control them entirely – yet – and certainly not without risking serious complications… but he could still prod them in certain directions.
So, reaching out with the power he had borrowed, he slowly turned the might of Solomon Island against the miniscule truck winding its way towards Kingsmouth…
Maffei's return to consciousness was slow and painful, and when he finally opened the one eye that hadn't been swollen shut, he found himself staring into coffinlike darkness.
As it eventually became clear, he was lying in the back of the truck; the cab had been completely caved in, the body of the vehicle itself had been flipped upside-down, and all around him were the bodies of his team – either out cold or dead. Maffei wasn't in the best of shape, either: on top of his black eye and busted nose, he was pretty sure he'd broken a leg, though it was hard to be certain in the dark. It didn't feel like a compound fracture, so he at least he wasn't going to bleed to death.
With his head pounding like a kettle drum in full orchestral storm, it took several minutes to remember what had happened: they'd been on their way to the entrance to the Secret Roads, but they'd been forced to take a detour onto Kingsmouth Road and then head south, intending to sneak between the Draug and the zombies via Belmont Avenue until they could reach Poe Cove.
But as they'd been creeping towards the Kingsbridge, Lorraine had begun to whimper behind her gag. In hindsight, she must have sensed that something was horribly wrong, but at the time, none of them had thought much of it. Indeed, his team had been so annoyed that Maffei had clambered into the back of the truck to restore order.
Then the driver had let out a shriek of horror, and Maffei had turned around just in time to see a Draug behemoth lurching up the nearby embankment towards them. This, needless to say, was very much out of the ordinary even by Solomon Island standards: the Draug preferred to stay close to the water unless they were on a mission, and even then, it was rare for their gargantuan captains to venture far from the shore. But somehow, one of them had decided to go for a walk right in front of their truck.
Fifteen feet tall at the very least, it was a bipedal mass of ex-human tissue layered with a sickly green crustacean exoskeleton, its tiny skull-face buried in the middle of its lumpen body, its two colossal pincered arms a full twenty feet across and thicker than sequoia trunks. Seeing the truck ahead of it. behemoth had roared in surprise – as if not understanding what had brought it to this lonely stretch of road – and had lashed out with one gigantic crab claw.
Maffei's last clear memory was of the truck's cab practically imploding before his eyes, a single swing of the behemoth's claws being enough to crumple everything from bumper to roof like an empty can of soda. After that, the rest was a blur.
Unfortunately, with the lights broken and the remains of the cab pancaked against a rock, he couldn't tell how many of his operatives were unconscious and how many of them had been killed in the collision, and in truth, it didn't matter: it was only a matter of time before something horrible decided to investigate the wreckage – in which case, all of them would be dead. First item on the agenda was to call for help and pray that it could arrive before the undead; doubly unfortunately, Maffei's radio had been broken in the crash.
On the upside, he at least had a working flashlight.
And then her heard a was a muffled clatter from the darkness ahead. Even though it was still pitch-black all around him, Maffei could still sense motion: someone out there was clambering to their feet, creeping towards him.
For a moment, he thought it might be one of his team regaining consciousness, and he eagerly shone the flashlight towards the source of the noise – only for something to land with a loud clank directly in front of him. On instinct, Maffei's flashlight swivelled to investigate the object now lying at his feet… and with a thrill of horror, he recognized it at once.
Lying in front of him was the twisted remains of mancatcher, broken in the crash: the collar had been mangled beyond repair, the bloodstained probes were shattered and useless, the polearm it had been attached to was long gone. And as for the Bee the mancatcher had been restraining…
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, a faint outline began to pulse with luminous energy, and familiar figure took a step forward.
"Where's Callum?" Lorraine hissed.
Maffei instinctively reached for his holster, only to realize that going for a gun would have been nothing short of suicidal. With her magic back with a vengeance and the element of surprise long lost, his sidearm would be completely useless against Lorraine, especially at this range; even if he could manage to land a fatal headshot before she got within arm's reach of him, it would only result in Lorraine springing back to life at the nearest Anima well – in which case, he'd be stuck dealing with her all over again in a matter of seconds.
Unfortunately, Lorraine must have noticed his hand straying for his belt, because the next thing Maffei knew, she was standing directly over him, seizing him by the collar and hauling him upright.
"I'll ask again," she snarled. "WHERE… IS… CALLUM?!"
It's okay, Maffei told himself. She's not a murderer at heart; according to the profile, she was already reluctant to kill on wetworks operations, and she didn't kill any of the troops sent after her, so I'm safe for now. All I have to do is to stay true to the Council, stay true to my commander, and remain unyielding; if I can just keep her talking until reinforcements arrive, then everything will be okay.
He was still thinking those words when Lorraine's free hand lashed out at high speed and slammed into Maffei's uninjured leg like a sledgehammer.
"WHERE'S MY SON?" she bellowed, her voice barely audible over Maffei's agonized screams.
His uniform was beginning to smoulder now, he dimly realized.
On second thought…
"This is Colonel Utterson broadcasting on all frequencies to any Council forces left on the island: Lorraine Maillard is loose. Repeat, Lorraine is loose. All evacuation procedures are indefinitely postponed until she is recaptured!"
Dipper barely had enough time to acclimatize to his new age and form before Utterson had begun barking orders: in short order, all essential personnel had been loaded into the three boats lined up at the dock, with the medics and troops being stationed in the middle and rear of the convoy, while any soldiers who couldn't be crammed aboard were to be left behind. Predictably, Dipper, Mabel, and Stan were in the lead boat with Utterson, a helmsman, and two bodyguards – all seven of them hidden under a fully-enclosed glass canopy that instantly muffled the clamour outside into near-silence.
Moments later, they took off with a muffled roar of engines and a spray of seafoam, rocketing away from the dock like a misfired firework, heading sharply northwards. Though the canopy, Dipper could just about recognize the blurred shapes of Draug, zombies, and other less-describable things looming out of the shallows towards them with hungry jaws open wide, but the boat was moving too quick for any of them to make contact. More often than not, it simply scythed clean through them in a shower of rotting meat and seawater, before plunging onward with the other two boats following close behind.
For perhaps a minute they continued northwards, carving through the still waters and shredding anything stupid enough to stand in their way; then, without warning, the boats swerved hard to starboard, heading east along the coast of the island as they javelined through the icy waters.
"Where the hell are we going?" Grunkle Stan demanded. "Have you got some hidden base on the other side of the island or something?"
Utterson shook his head grimly. "The Council doesn't keep bases on Solomon Island," he said. "The nearest thing we had was that improvised encampment south of the airport; by now, all my forces have disbanded and there's no shelter that can accommodate us."
"Then where are we going?"
"Nowhere! We're circling the island until Lorraine is recaptured: as long as we're out here, we at least stand a chance of remaining one step ahead of the damnable woman."
"Can't we just leave?" Mabel suggested.
"Leave?"
"Yeah, leave. I mean, the ocean's right there, just past the Fog." She offered a hopeful smile; then, as an afterthought, pointed in the general direction of the swirling fogbank perhaps forty feet to their left.
"You clearly haven't been here very long: past attempts to get through the Fog have not ended well. At best, the bodies either wash up right back on the shore or float out to sea; at worst, they're never seen again. The only way anyone can get off this island is by magic or by air – and only in specially-protected aircraft."
As one, all three of them eyed the gently roiling mass of Fog and tried not to think about how close they were to it.
Mabel patted Dipper's shoulder. "You okay, bro-bro?"
He shook his head. "I really don't feel so good," he whimpered, trying not to cringe at how high and piping his voice sounded.
"I can tell: if you were feeling okay, you'd have been asking questions about the Fog right off the bat."
Dipper managed an awkward grin; he didn't have the heart to tell her that he was practically sick with worry over the state of his mind. Those first few seconds after his transformation was complete but before his memory had returned had been one of the scariest moments of his entire life, and as far as he could tell, the nightmare still wasn't over: from the brief look in a mirror he'd been allowed, he wasn't completely identical to Callum just yet. What would happen if, once the next transformation was done, Dipper started forgetting his old life bit by bit, until he really was Callum? Or worse, what if that terrible emptiness that had briefly replaced his memories simply never went away?
Of course, he couldn't tell Mabel any of this. He didn't want her to worry, and besides, admitting it would only make him feel worse: he needed to stay strong, needed to hang on to what little confidence remained, or else he'd be panicking too badly to focus. He desperately needed to keep everything buttoned up, even if it meant holding onto his fear until it hurt.
Besides, Mabel seemed to be worrying enough already: for the last few minutes, she'd been doing everything in her power to make him feel better – putting her arm around him, hugging him, reassuring him that everything was going to be okay... Obviously, the transition from alpha twin to full-blown big sister had left her deeply troubled, for she had also gotten into the habit of acting as if he needed a layer of bubble wrap just to survive the journey: when they'd been making room aboard the boat, Mabel had gone to the trouble of holding his hand just so they wouldn't get separated, and when one of Utterson's bodyguards had shoved Dipper out of the way, she'd gotten within inches of punching him in the groin before Grunkle Stan had calmed things down. Normally, Dipper would have been left fuming at this sort of overprotectiveness, but after hours on end of being relentlessly babied by Lorraine, he scarcely minded it anymore; no, what really bothered him was the fact that Mabel was tackling this mess in such a serious – almost businesslike – way.
"We need to get to that hidden archive," he said quietly. "If we find whatever's there, we can end this: Lorraine can be cured, I can go back to normal, and Grunkle Ford can take us home."
There was a pause, and then Grunkle Stan asked, "But what if-"
Without missing a beat, Mabel gently elbowed him in the ribs, and Stan immediately fell silent.
But Dipper could already guess what he'd been about to say: what if there's nothing at the lighthouse? Or what if the things we find there aren't going to break Lorraine's delusions? What if we can't get you back to normal? What if Ford can't get us back home? Dipper could guess, in part because he'd secretly been doing his best to keep those dreadful questions at bay.
Meanwhile, Utterson was still shouting orders into the radio.
"No, no, no!" he barked. "I don't care if following her into civilian territory risks collateral damage: she needs to be recaptured now! The longer she remains free, the more damage she'll do. Airport team, have you gotten that helicopter ready yet?"
When not snapping orders into the radio or directing the helmsman, Utterson was anxiously peering down at the holographic map of the island – not that Dipper needed to look at it to know where they were: after he and Lorraine had spent such a long time creeping up the beach, he knew the familiar horseshoe of Fletcher Bay by sight. However, a second glance at the map revealed two things: first, the tiny dot representing Lorraine was hurtling westwards, following their path along the coastline, and while she was almost half a mile behind them, she was rapidly catching up; secondly, as they rounded the bend and crept into Red Oak Beach, Dipper realized with a leap of inspiration that they were now getting very close to a tiny spot on the southern tip of the island identified as Dagon Bay – just across from one very important landmark.
"Drop us off at the lighthouse!" he shouted.
Suddenly, everyone was looking at Dipper. "The lighthouse," he repeated. "That was where we were headed before you picked us up: there's meant to be an archive hidden there; if we can find it, maybe we can figure out a way of snapping Lorraine back to reality."
Utterson's eyes narrowed. "Putting aside the fact that you've got no way of confirming that this will even work-"
"The Bees told me that that's what we have to do-"
"-what makes you think I'd let you just get off this boat and wander off into the wilderness? The nearest landing point from here is World's End, and from there it's almost a mile of zombie-infested cliffs before you can actually reach the lighthouse. Even if Lorraine doesn't end up bumping into you on the way, you'll almost certainly end up dead or worse."
"You clearly don't know us very well," said Stan, grinning wolfishly. "Mabel and me were doing just fine before you showed up, and we've tackled worse things than zombies."
"All you'd have to do is drop us off where we can hide," Dipper continued. "Lorraine will think that you're still carrying us around, so she'll follow you; once she's gone past, we'll-"
Utterson coughed for attention. "Maybe I should put this another way: what makes you think I'd let any of you out of my sight after that little stunt you pulled back at the dock? Even if you hadn't transformed or revealed that bit of mental weirdness, you've been privy to a lot of classified information, kiddo, the kind I'm frankly not comfortable letting roam free."
At this, Stan got to his feet. "Look, pal, do you wanna end this mess or-"
Without saying a word, Utterson drew a handgun from his belt and levelled it squarely at Grunkle Stan's head. Meanwhile, the two bodyguards cocked their rifles, and though none of them were pointing anywhere in particular, Dipper could tell that they were ready to take aim at Stan… or Mabel.
"This ends the way I say it ends," said Utterson coldly. "We stay on this boat until Lorraine is recaptured… and then all three of you are headed straight to the nearest holding facility for detailed study. I could add that I only need one of you alive for vivisection, but I don't want to make this any nastier than necessary. Do you?"
Stan meekly sat back down.
"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
But no sooner had Utterson turned his back, Stan opened his jacket and whispered a few well-chosen words into his inside pocket…
"Did you get that, Ford?"
"Loud and clear. I've got a fix on your commlink: sit tight, and I should be with you within the next five minutes. We'll see how this Colonel Utterson stands up to a magnet gun to the propellers…"
"It's pretty rough country out here; are you sure you can make it in time?"
"Stanley, I've outran a pack of Auldman Northwest's best hounds, I've kept pace with creatures sporting more wings than skin cells, and I stayed one step ahead of Bill Cipher's bounty hunters for close to thirty years. I am not going to be outdone by some blue-beret bureaucrat in a glorified speedboat. I will be there in five minutes."
With one deep, apprehensive breath, Ford got to his feet. In the last few hours, he'd requested additional medical attention, claiming that he was in pain; he wasn't, but he'd learned the fine art of feigning illness from the very best. Now, after several applications of healing spells courtesy of Ms Usher, his leg was almost fully healed, along with all the bumps and bruises he'd acquired on the way here; if he wasn't ready to leave now, he never would be.
He glanced around the library, checking to make sure that Montag wasn't keeping an eye on him. To his immense relief, it seemed as if the faculty had decided to take a break from spying on him; either they'd decided he wasn't such a high priority after all, or they'd needed to attend to other matters. The latter wouldn't be such a huge surprise – after all, the academy was constantly under threat from the familiars, who replenished their ranks so quickly that it was a wonder that they hadn't overrun the entire island. In the meantime, Ford just had to hope that this absence was genuine, and Montag or Carter hadn't set an ambush for him.
Pausing only to double-check his blaster, he made for the nearest door as fast as his feet could carry him – only to be brought up short by a figure standing in the corridor outside. But it wasn't Carter or Usher; it wasn't even Montag.
The man blocking Ford's exit was quite clearly not a member of the faculty, nor was he a student. So far, Ford hadn't met any teachers or pupils at Innsmouth who stood at almost seven feet tall. Whoever this guy was, he was dressed in a navy-blue uniform coat, navy-blue fatigues, black combat boots, black leather gloves, and a gleaming black gas mask complete with seemingly opaque black lenses. Also, he was armed with an assault rifle, and his utility belt practically rattled with firearms. He said nothing at Ford's approach, and with the gas mask over his face it wasn't clear if he'd have been understood even if he'd been willing to speak; he merely glared down at him,
Immediately, Ford backed off, retreating into the library and making a break for the next available exit – only to find that another uniformed man was blocking that one as well; this one was nowhere as tall as the first, but Ford could tell that the pendants laying his gloves were all powerful magical talismans. A quick look around the room confirmed that more armed figures in gas masks were lining up around the room, cutting off his escape routes. There were even a few of them lining up on the second floor, most of them already taking aim at him with sniper rifles.
Ford knew at once that he'd never get a chance to go for his blaster before they opened fire, and though he briefly considered making a jump for the nearest window, he could see more uniformed figures in gas masks assembling just outside. Too late, Ford realized why Montag had been delaying him, why the headmaster had taken every opportunity to keep him here: he'd been buying time for backup to arrive in force, ready to snatch up the man from another dimension.
He took a deep breath. "Stanley, I think I might have hit a snag…"
"What's wrong?"
"Er… how should I put this-"
"Drop the comm unit and follow us," barked the nearest of the uniformed men, his voice only slightly smothered by the gas mask. "You have an appointment in Brooklyn."
"Oh god, are the Council giving you a hard time as well?"
"No, Stanley, I can honestly say that the people currently holding me at gunpoint are not with the Council."
"Well, who are they?"
"HANG UP," boomed another gas mask. "Our employer wants to speak with you."
Ford anxiously looked the approaching troopers up and down, looking for any sign of who these people could possibly be working for in the dim hope that he might actually recognize it. As he did so, he realized that he'd missed something in his first assessment: on each navy-blue coat, a symbol had been stencilled across the left-hand side, stretching from hip to navel, a cyan triangle marked with a perfect circle at its centre – one that looked uncannily like an eye.
He'd seen this symbol decorating almost every other wall of this very academy, and Stan had told him that he'd seen it on manhole covers all over Kingsmouth. And now it was right here before his eyes, in force: the eye and the pyramid.
All things considered, Ford should have been absolutely terrified at the sight and even more by the implications. By now, though, he'd been sick with worry for so long that he was all worried out: all he could manage was the familiar sensation of his heart plunging all the way to the pit of his stomach, this time so slowly that it barely stirred a ripple.
"I think I've just met the Illuminati," he said quietly.
And then a black hood was fastened over his head, and all Ford knew was darkness.
"Ford? Ford?"
"What's going on?" Dipper whispered.
"Just lost contact. I think he's just been captured."
"What?"
"It's okay: I think they wanted him alive, but I don't think he's gonna be providing any backup. They said they wanted to talk to him in Brooklyn."
"Did he say anything?"
"Uh, something about the Illuminati and Auldman Northwest's best hunting hounds, but that's about it."
Dipper looked up in bewilderment, mind reeling. "What did you just say?"
From somewhere outside, there was a thunderous boom, audible even through the soundproof canopy.
"I think we've got bigger problems to deal with right now, guys," said Mabel.
There was another muffled explosion somewhere in the distance, and the radio crackled to life: "Colonel… this is Lieutenant Dietrich with motorcycle team 1; we've hit problems! Lorraine is proving harder to recapture than anticipated. Motorcycle team 2 is trying to get ahead of her, but it's proving difficult to navigate the territory."
"You have net launchers, Dietrich! Pin her down and deploy a mancatcher before she struggles free."
"We're trying, sir! She's burned right through the last two nets we've hit her with."
"For god's sakes," Utterson snarled. "Just have one contingent gun her down and another one ambush her at the Anima well!"
"She's moving too quickly, sir! We've no way of predicting which well she'll manifest at, and we don't have enough troops to cover every well in the area, not with about 20% of them already evacuated!"
"Christ! Osprey 1, Osprey 1, do you have that helicopter in the air yet? We are in dire need of air support!"
"We can't get airborne, sir – we're under attack: the Draug have attacked the landing pad!"
"For the love of God, what is going on out here? Any artillery teams still in the area, I am ordering you to begin bombarding any and all Anima wells within reach of your current locations, civilian casualties be damned! Lorraine must not be allowed to continue her pursuit. Motorcycle teams, armoured units, open fire on the target now!"
Bullets rattled up and down the road, tearing divots in the asphalt, pulverizing long-abandoned vehicles, and reducing inanimate corpses to bloody froth. Any zombies caught in the bombardment simply collapsed into twitching heaps of limbs, Draug warriors hissed Old Icelandic expletives and waded back into the shallows, and any Wendigos that had strayed too close to the road instinctively shied away from the gunfire, seeking easier prey in the safety of the woods.
But Lorraine just kept on running, even as gunfire nipped at her heels and grazed her shoulders. For once, she was too angry to pay attention to the little things, too flooded with rage and adrenaline to notice the pain or even consider an alternate course of action. Her head was throbbing, the Bee inside her scream with such intensity that if she stopped even for a minute she would collapse, and the pain only made her onward charge all the more relentless. Here and now, the only thing she could do was run, galloping along the road with a fury that superseded all notions of fatigue and exhaustion, her body crackling with tendrils of neon gold energies, her incandescent boots leaving a trail of luminous footprints all down the length of the roadway behind her.
She was dimly aware that they were coming up on Azeban Span, that the convoy of boats that she was chasing had already finished their first lap of their island and was now rocketing past the distant whale-watching dock, that they would probably be coming up on the Moon Cove by the time she caught up with them. But these little realizations were vague, barely noticed before vanishing back into the haze of pain and fury that was still fogging her brain, because they had taken Callum.
They had her son.
They had already done everything they could to ruin her life, and now, right when Lorraine had been on the verge of clawing her way to some semblance of happiness, they snatched it away from her along with her baby. But they'd made a mistake this time: they'd forced their weapons upon her, forced her to endure the agony that they'd brought her, but they hadn't thought of what happened if she'd had the motivation to turn those weapons against them.
There was a muffled woosh from somewhere behind her; a moment later, a miniature rocket shot past her, barely missing Lorraine's head, and a parked car to her left exploded into flames, showering her with broken glass. By way of a reply, Lorraine spun around and launched a thunderbolt powerful enough to send the nearest of the pursuing operatives hurtling off his bike. Unable to stop to help him, the others hastily swerved around their fallen squadmate and opened fire on Lorraine again, but by then, she was already soaring out of range.
Ahead, the road forked, and Lorraine was already getting ready to catapult herself down the left-hand path – it wasn't easy to change directions when she was running this fast – when there was a roar of engines from Olegwasi Way; next thing she knew, another squadron of Council bikers appeared at the far end of the right-hand path and hurtled towards her at high speed, guns at the ready.
Somewhere behind the scarlet haze imprisoning her skull, she was half-aware that the bike troops were expecting her to change course, to turn back or try to dodge before they could open fire; after all, it would have been the smart thing to do, even if doing so would leave her open to attack from the first squad still hot on her tail. But unfortunately for them, they hadn't counted on Lorraine being too angry to back off.
Roaring at the top of her lungs, she put on an extra burst of speed and flung herself towards the oncoming bikes, her body wreathed in so much phosphorescent energy that she must have looked like a comet shooting down the road towards them. Dazzled by the light, the bikers scattered in all directions rather than be left blind in her path – all except for the operative directly ahead of her, who hit the brakes just in time for Lorraine to vault over his handlebars and smash headlong into him with a satisfying crack-thud of splintering bones.
The man went tumbling helplessly away, while Lorraine charged onwards, flinging herself away from the right-hand path and back onto Solomon Road before the rest of the bikers could recover. Held up by the failed pincer manoeuvre and struggling to avoid crashing into each other, they were left lagging behind by a good twenty feet by the time they could get moving again… but even if they could catch up with her again, there was nothing they could do to deter her, much less stop her.
They had nothing to threaten her with anymore, no "friendly warnings," no torturous Illuminati laboratories to imprison her in, no more nightmares of eternal dissection and enslavement. For the first time in three long decades, she was free, free in a way that not even Sparagmos could have offered – and there was nothing and nobody that could stop her from getting Callum back.
Far ahead of her, there was a rumble of tank treads in motion as a huge shape lumbered from around the corner: an armoured personnel carrier, its turret bristling with heavy machine guns and missile launchers. Lining up alongside it, a handful of Council operatives raised their assault rifles and took careful aim; a split-second later, all of them opened fire.
By way of a reply, Lorraine veered offroad, plunging downhill and out of the line of fire – suddenly leaving the armoured vehicle and its support team firing directly into the oncoming bike teams. As bad luck would have it, the teams hadn't had the time to properly coordinate, so it took them several seconds to realize that they were shooting their own comrades, and in the ensuing confusion, the roadblock team completely missed Lorraine vaulting back uphill towards them. One wave of frost at knee-height, and the entire team was effectively paralysed except for the man at the turret – and with the carrier having been positioned ahead of the turn, it was pretty damn hard for the gunner to fire after her.
Nothing, Lorraine thought, the Bee inside her screeching like nails on a chalkboard. There is nothing you can do to stop me, and there is nothing you can do to keep me from my son. You hear me, you bastards? NOTHING.
"I don't care how badly hurt they are!" Utterson thundered. "Get those bikes and that carrier moving, she's barely fifty yards from us!"
By now, all three boats were wildly swerving from left to right as they jetted across the surf, weaving in and out of formation in a desperate attempt to confuse their pursuer; Utterson was hoping that this manoeuvre would make it harder for Lorraine to tell which of them had Dipper aboard, delaying her attack long enough for their reinforcements to catch up with her. In practice, it just made Dipper feel like he was going to be seasick.
Peering out through the canopy, Dipper caught a brief glimpse of a glowing figure sprinting along the road barely a hundred feet away from them. Her face was unreadable at this distance, but Dipper could already guess that it had to be frozen in a rictus of anger, judging by the alarmed shouts over the radio. And past the nimbus of golden light that shrouded her, Lorraine's hands were already starting to crackle with lightning.
"Sir, we're not going to be able to catch up in time! The carrier wasn't meant to keep up with a target moving at this kind of speed, and the bikes are trying to find an alternate route through the foothills!"
"Oh for – boat 3, I am ordering you to eliminate the target ASAFP. You have a sniper aboard, don't you?"
"It's going to be difficult to hit a moving target from a speedboat, sir."
"I don't care! Just open fire, NOW!"
Behind them, every single operative on board boat 3 opened fire at once; Dipper saw Lorraine stagger briefly as the gunfire rippled across the road, only to recover in a split-second and go charging onwards as if nothing had happened. Then, a deafening report from a sniper rifle split the air, loud enough to be heard even through the soundproofing; a moment later, a colossal spray of blood split the air as a hole the size of a dinner plate seemed to materialize in Lorraine's chest, tearing her left arm off and sending her crashing to the ground in a smouldering heap.
"Target down, Colonel."
"Fine shooting, lieutenant. Now, all boats return to dock: we need to get as far away from the nearest Anima wells as quickly as possible. With any luck, the artillery teams will… hang on, what's happened to Lorraine's tracking chip? She's not on the map anymore!"
Sure enough, the familiar dot that had marked Lorraine's location on the hologram map had vanished. More worryingly, the white triangles that supposedly represented the artillery teams were nowhere near Blue Mountain, most of them barely managing to hold their positions around the south.
"Dr Stubbs, what's the meaning of this?" Utterson demanded.
There was a nervous cough from the radio. "I think the prototype chip must have failed to materialize along with her."
"I thought you said the subdermal Anima bonding would-"
"It's only a prototype, sir; we aren't up to replicating Illuminati technology just yet."
"Then how the hell are we supposed to find her now?!"
"We've still got the magical tracer charms active, sir; yes, they're a little bit on the general side, but they're still as strong as they were when they were placed thirty years ago."
"Alright then; where do the tracer enchantments say she is?"
There was an awkward pause, broken only by the sound of someone muttering the words of a spell.
"Uh… Solomon Island."
Utterson thumped the control panel in frustration. "OH, THAT'S REALLY FUCKING HELPFUL, DOCTOR!" he roared.
"Language!" snapped Grunkle Ford, belatedly covering Mabel's ears.
"FUCK! YOU!"
There was a muffled boom from somewhere outside, and the entire boat rocked wildly from left to right as the ocean around them briefly erupted into a waterspout, courtesy of a storm of fireballs from the freshly-resurrected Lorraine. Immediately, boat three opened fire on the shoreline once again, every single gunman on the boat peppering their target with every kind of weapon they had at hand: grenade launchers, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns, submachine guns, even the odd harpoon gun.
Unfortunately, their target was ready for them this time…
This time, Lorraine didn't bother taking aim for the boats, didn't bother readying a lightning bolt, and didn't even think of an alternative; she simply put her head down and flung herself into the air, launching herself from the top of the hill, across the beach and out over the shallows with one almighty blast of magic.
For almost five seconds, she was flying, ten feet above sea level and rising steadily higher – her legs still singing with pain from lifting off so violently. Then, seeing the nearest of the boats almost directly beneath her, she summoned up as much power as she could consciously draw upon, enough to make the Bee in her scream louder than ever, enough to make her head pound so violently she thought her skull might split in two, enough to make her blood boil so hot she felt as if she might simply cook from the inside out. Then, once again glowing like a comet, she flung herself downwards in a physics-defying death-dive.
She didn't quite manage a direct hit on the boat below her. Instead, Lorraine merely clipped the stern as she shot into the water, leaving a manhole-cover sized crater in the armour-plating and tipping the entire boat on its rear end for two glorious seconds. Had the hull been built of anything less than military-grade materials, it would have probably been smashed into matchsticks on impact, but with Council-grade armour at work, she only succeeded in knocking the helmsman flat on his face for a few glorious seconds.
Unfortunately, that didn't stop the crew from opening fire on her. Bullets tore through her undefended flesh as she struggled to rise from the water, grenades sent her plummeting beneath colossal waves, and a harpoon grazed her back as she surged towards the surface. Had she not been constantly bathing herself in one healing spell after another, the bombardment would have been too much even for her, and she still erupted from the depths as a blooded, bellowing wreck.
Catapulting herself from the water and onto the boat with a howl of frustration, she drew her blade and tore through the ranks of the defenders, scything neatly through the first three of Council operatives before they had time to reload. The remaining five soldiers caught on much quicker; tossing aside their guns without bothering to reload, the first three of them threw drew their sabres and charged in, allowing time for the two mages at the back to ready their foci.
Lorraine had never been much of a swordfighter: most of her training had been devoted to pure elemental spellcasting, with additional focus in blood magic and chaos magic. Her education in the art of melee combat limited to surprise attacks and one-strike battles; after all, the Council had never meant her to get close enough for anyone to get a good look at her face. Her style of fighting wasn't that of a fencer or a classical duellist, for her blade of choice was closer to a machete than anything; she simply waded into combat, hacking away at the target as quickly and brutally as possible until it stopped moving.
For the first thirty-five seconds, the operatives had her on the ropes: every single wild swing of her blade was instantly parried by the sabres of the two closest swordsmen, while the third slashed at her undefended legs and back – and when she spun around and charged him, the parrying operatives went on the attack instead, slicing away at her knees and ankles. From the bow of the boat, the two mages worked chaos magic, altering probabilities so that every strike from the operatives hit Lorraine with perfect accuracy, while every swing of her machete simply clanged harmlessly off the ensorcelled sabres without so much as grazing her targets.
With Lorraine frantically spamming as much healing power as humanly possible, the wounds they inflicted didn't last for long, but that didn't stop them from wearing her down. Through the clanging inside her head, she was half-aware that this was probably their strategy – to exhaust her with minor injuries until she was too tired to defend herself from the killing blow – but she couldn't stop now. From the corner of her eye, she could already see the two remaining boats frantically accelerating away; if she back down now, she might never catch up with them again.
And then one of the two mages stopped casting just long enough to reach into a compartment under the helm and retrieve a strange iron ring. Lorraine felt her heart freeze as she recognized the internally-spiked collar of a mancatcher, this one without the distinctive polearm but no less effective for it. She felt the tempo of the battle shift again, the duellists whittling away at her flanks, spinning her around until she had her back to the bow – where the mage with the mancatcher could easily pop the collar around her neck.
Blind panic flooded her. Faced with the possibility of losing Callum and her freedom for the second time that day, she fell back on wild improvisation: planting her feet on the deck as hard as she could, she flung herself backward with a surge of magic that made the entire boat rock wildly back and forth like a demented hobby horse, propelling herself headlong into the surprised chaos mage directly behind her.
She couldn't see how hard she'd hit him, but she felt him go hurtling away, and more importantly, she caught a brief glimpse of the mancatcher flying past her head; it hit the deck and went clattering away, all three swordsmen making a frantic grab for it as the collar tumbled towards the waiting ocean.
Meanwhile, Lorraine rounded on the mage she'd just crashed into, kicking him hard enough to send him skating helplessly across the wildly-listing deck – right into the other chaos mage, who promptly went hurtling over the edge of the railing and landed with a splash in the churning waters below. Before the remaining mage could recover, Lorraine grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and flung him bodily over the railing on the opposite side of the boat. Then, acting entirely on a whim, she hurried over to the helm and hit the accelerator again, pausing only to check that the wheel was pointing them straight at the Fog before charging back into the fray.
Suddenly finding themselves fighting on a boat headed straight for an eldritch mass of airborne Filth with an armed Bee between them and the controls, the operatives resumed their attack. This time, though, they weren't content with just holding her still until the mancatcher could be popped over her head; this time, they were out to stop the boat before it reached the edge of the Fog, and their fear gave Lorraine the edge this time around. Their technique was sloppy, their moves meant to get them to the steering wheel as quickly as possible, and Lorraine simply blasted them with lightning as they sprinted across the deck; with their guards down, each shot caught them unawares, sending them flying over the railing.
In a matter of seconds, she was alone on the boat. But before she could turn the boat around, she heard the radio crackling:
"Open fire, dammit!"
"Sir, we're the medical team! We're doctors, not soldiers! We haven't even got weapons on board!"
"You know how to pilot the goddamn boat, don't you? You've got forward-facing machine cannons, idiot!"
"But-"
"NOW!"
Lorraine had just enough time to hit the deck before the air was split with the thunderous rattle of heavy machine gun fire, the hull of the boat instantly split by hundreds of tiny pinholes as a tsunami of bullets washed over it. Then, pausing only to make sure that the boat was still in motion, she scuttled across the floor and slid out the rear hatchway, diving deep into the icy waters of the Atlantic.
Then, as the attacking boat surged overhead, she flung herself to the surface, torpedoing herself into the air so violently that the crew were left briefly blinded by the colossal waterspout. When they finally could see again, they found Lorraine standing before them, dripping wet, cut to ribbons, and seething with rage.
There was a pause, as the unarmed crew looked around for anything that they could use as weaponry, without much success. Then, Lorraine cleared her throat.
"I'm only going to say this once," she said coldly. "RUN."
The five-man crew exchanged glances for a moment. Then, apparently deciding that they weren't paid enough to face down a pissed-off Bee, they turned and fled, vaulting over the railing and diving for the safety of the water.
Then, as soon as the boat was empty, Lorraine made for the controls, gunned the engine, and took off – aiming squarely for the one remaining boat in the convoy. She could already tell that Callum was aboard; after all, why else would the other two ships have been ordered to cover its escape. Right now, the vessel was already rocketing across the surf churned up in the chaos, heading south… but this time, Lorraine no longer had to follow on foot.
This time, she realized with a tiny surge of satisfaction tangible even through her rage, she had the advantage.
For the next few minutes, all Dipper could do was watch helplessly through the canopy as Lorraine's ship loomed closer and closer to their own fleeing speedboat.
Unlike boat 3, Utterson wasn't willing to open the canopy to attack just in case it gave Lorraine the opportunity to launch an attack of her own, so all they could do was plunge onwards through the frothing waters, frantically zooming around the southwestern tip of Solomon Island and skirting past the jagged black rocks dividing the Blue Mountain foothills from the southeast coast. Dipper was dimly aware that they were within minutes of reaching the lighthouse again, but by then he was too scared to speak up, not even to suggest dropping them off.
He knew Lorraine wasn't a monster; he knew it was possible to bring her back to reality; he knew that she wouldn't hurt him… but for all that, he didn't know what would happen if he failed to convince her – not that his imagination would ever stop suggesting awful possibilities: having his mind inadvertently hollowed out and replaced with someone else's personality so he could spend the rest of his life as Callum 2.0 did not appeal in the slightest. Worse, he didn't know what Lorraine would do to kidnappers, and right now, Mabel and Grunkle Stan might just look like accomplices to her.
"Sir, we're pushing the engine too far! If we go any faster-"
"It doesn't matter!" screamed Utterson. "We need to buy time for that helicopter to arrive, and she's piloting the faster boat; we've just got to hope that she breaks her engines before she gets close enough to ram us. She'll be aiming to puncture our hull, force us to head for shore."
"Why isn't she shooting us?" Grunkle Stan demanded. "I thought you said that boat had machine-guns on it, so why isn't she just blasting holy heck outta the engines on this thing?"
"I imagine because she doesn't want to risk hitting Dipper."
"But this canopy's supposed to be bulletproof…"
"She doesn't know that – for now. Hopefully she's not willing to push her luck."
Mabel coughed nervously. "Um, Mr Secret Colonel Whatever-Your-Name-Is, is this canopy magic-proof as well?"
"…nnnot to my knowledge."
"Then I think we're in trouble."
She pointed to the pursuing boat, now barely five feet behind them. For the last minute or two, Lorraine had been firmly behind the steering wheel, but now she was clambering out of the cockpit and onto the deck, even as her boat went on accelerating without her. For a moment, Dipper thought she was going to try strafing them with magic… but then, she made it to the prow of the ship, hunching down low as if readying herself to pounce.
Utterson must have seen it too, because he went white as his uniform, eyes bulging in horror. "TURN!" he howled at the top of his lungs. "TURN HARD TO STARBOARD, NOW, BEFORE SHE-"
Too late.
With an eye-searing eruption of magical power, Lorraine shot into the air, and for a split-second, Dipper swore that she had wings – six translucent wings composed entirely of neon-gold light, shining a million times brighter than the Fog-shrouded sun; but then they were gone, and Lorraine was thundering towards them with all the inevitability of a nuclear ICBM.
Dipper felt the boat beneath them lurch sickeningly as Lorraine landed on the bow, nearly throwing everyone aboard off balance; then, she reached down with glowing hands and seized the edges of the canopy. Utterson's bodyguards instantly took aim, waiting anxiously for the inevitable while the helmsman tried to shake Lorraine off, but without success; now that Lorraine's feet were planted on the boat and her hands gripping the glass, there was nothing that could be done to force her overboard.
Seconds later, the bulletproof shield gave away with a deafening succession of cracks and crunches as Lorraine tore the entire canopy out of its housing. Immediately, the bodyguards raised their weapons to fire-
-and then boat 2, left powering blindly forward with nobody at the controls, slammed into them at high speed, dealing them a spectacular portside blow just below the waterline before speeding off and embedding itself in one of the larger rocks nearby. Meanwhile, boat 1 was left limping helplessly onwards, its engine effectively crippled and the hull punctured in several places.
Total chaos ensued.
Suddenly finding themselves effectively scuppered, the crew of boat 1 could only stumble helplessly about as a rapid succession of geysers erupted from the deck, effectively blinding them in an unrelenting saltwater mist. When they could finally see again, the helmsman was already frantically swimming for his life, and Lorraine was standing among them, the convulsing bodies of the bodyguards at her feet.
"Callum," she panted. "Callum, I-"
She paused, eyes sweeping over the three other passengers – before finally alighting on Utterson.
"You," she snarled, eyes narrowing in hate.
Without hesitation, Utterson grabbed Dipper by the shoulder and positioned him directly in front of him, either as a peace offering or as a human shield. And then Dipper felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as Utterson unclipped the holster at his belt and – accompanied by gasps of horror from Grunkle Stand and Mabel – pointed the 45-calibre pistol right at the back of Dipper's head.
But for once, Lorraine was too angry to be held back by any of the old talent-scout's threats. Dipper didn't even see her move: one moment, Lorraine was standing there, quivering with hate; the next, she was a glowing blur vaulting over Dipper's head and slamming into his captor with bone-crushing force. Suddenly free of Utterson's grasp, Dipper fell forward and slid down the rapidly-listing deck of the ship… right into Grunkle Stan's arms.
"Come on, kiddo," he whispered. "Let's leave these two to fight it out."
He was already halfway across the deck with Mabel following close behind, when a low growl of fury split the air.
"And just where do you think you're going?!" Lorraine snarled.
To Grunkle Stan's credit, he didn't even bother turning around; he simply put his head down and ran, splashing frantically through the knee-deep water layering the stern as he made a beeline for the rear hatch. Unfortunately, Lorraine was faster: darting forward, she grabbed Stan by the scruff of his neck and flung him back across the boat, slamming him hard into the steering wheel. Groaning, he slumped to the deck next to Utterson, too winded to claw his way upright.
"Bastards," Lorraine hissed. "Both of you."
She lunged forward, dealing a vicious kick to Utterson's undefended ribs, before hammering Stan into the steering wheel again. In desperation, the colonel tried to crawl past her, as if hoping that she was too angry to pay any attention to his escape attempt, only for Lorraine to grab him by the ankle and reel him in like a trout, dealing him a vicious right hook to the jaw as soon as his face was in range.
"Bad enough that you're still alive and still holding rank, you old fuck, but you-" she rounded on Stan again, kneeing him in the stomach. "I trusted you! I let you get close, and you stabbed me in the back! YOU HELPED HIM TAKE MY BABY AWAY!"
Stan opened his mouth to protest, only for Lorraine to fell him with a right cross.
"How long have you been working together?" she roared, hauling him upright by his lapels. "Did he send you to the motel to retrieve me?! Did you tell him I had Callum back? Did Utterson tell you to kidnap my Callum, or was all this your idea?! How long have you been manipulating me?!"
In desperation, Dipper and Mabel hurried forward, trying to calm Lorraine down before she did fatal damage, but she just pushed them gently aside and went on the attack again.
Back at the steering wheel, Utterson made one last grab for his fallen sidearm, only for Lorraine to send a lighting bolt searing across his hand, leaving him clutching the charred remains of his fingers as she turned her attention back to Grunkle Stan.
"You were laughing at me the whole time, weren't you, you piece of shit?!" she continued, aiming a vicious kick for his kidneys. "'Crazy old Lorraine and her imaginary son', am I right? 'Poor, sad, lonely old madwoman, she'll believe any cock-and-bull story if it's sympathetic enough; smile sweetly at her and she'll open up to you like a flower!' That's how it always is with you people – first Utterson, then that useless therapist, and now YOU! Always one fucking poisonous smiling rat bastard after another-"
A grapnel bounced off her head.
"GRAPPLING HOOK!" Mabel shouted.
For a split-second, Lorraine didn't seem to know what to make of this. Once again, she seemed to have accepted Mabel as one of "Callum's" friends, if not actually ally material, and the idea of being attacked by her was so far beyond Lorraine's expectations that it didn't compute. Indeed, the look of rage on her face briefly faded to bemusement, as if she had found herself on the receiving end of an annoying but otherwise harmless prank.
Then, Mabel pushed Dipper behind her and took aim for a second shot, and suddenly the look of bemusement was gone. Now, Lorraine was angry again, and judging by that wounded look in her eyes, she seemed to be taking this perceived betrayal even more personally than Stan's.
This time, when the gas propelled grapnel went hurtling towards her, Lorraine reached out with one glowing hand and snatched the hook out of the air.
Then, just as her attacker's eyes were starting to widen with shock, Lorraine drew back on the cable, wrenching Mabel off her feet with one impossible surge of strength and launching her into the sky; for less than a second and a half, Mabel soared like a kite on the end of a string – right up until Lorraine let go of the grapnel.
Dipper didn't see how far Mabel flew, but it couldn't have been more than ten feet before she landed with a splash amidst the churning waves. From what little he could see through the rear hatchway, she was still conscious enough to stay afloat, and once she had recovered from the impact, she even started swimming after them. Unfortunately, the boat was still in motion; true, it was currently trundling along at barely a fraction of its top speed and taking on a lot of water, but it was still moving fast enough to outpace a human swimmer. Sooner or later, Mabel was going to have to cut her losses and swim for shore… or risk drowning.
Meanwhile, Lorraine had finally given up on coherent speech, and was now spitting out meaningless words at the top of her lungs, bellowing like a wounded bear as she went on beating the living daylights out of her newest captives; right now, Utterson was slumped unconscious in a corner, his body covered in scorchmarks, his legs bent at unnatural angles; meanwhile, Grunkle Stan was having his face repeatedly hammered into the steering wheel – and by the looks of things, she'd already succeeded in breaking his nose. He was doing his best to fight back, once or twice managing to twist out of Lorraine's grasp just long enough to aim a wild haymaker at his assailant's face, but she seemed too angry to even notice pain or injury, and just kept on hammering.
And then the bottom dropped out of Dipper's stomach as Lorraine flung the now barely-conscious Stan to the floor… and then drew her machete.
Dipper flung himself to her side with a scream of "MOMMY, STOP!"
Once again, he wasn't putting on an act; in that moment, he was as close to becoming Callum as he was likely to get without losing his sense of self… and it still wasn't enough, because for the first time, Lorraine was ignoring him.
In desperation, he tried again, frantically tugging at her sleeve: "HE'S MY FRIEND, PLEASE DON'T HURT HIM!"
But Lorraine was in no mood to listen; she just pushed him gently aside and took aim at Grunkle Stan.
For the first time since the summer began, there was absolutely nothing Dipper could do: not only was he so much younger and so much weaker than he'd been, but he couldn't even bring himself to attack Lorraine; every time he tried to raise one of his scrawny little fists to punch her in the chest, the idea of fighting her seemed to dry up inside his head before he could act on it. In Weirdmageddon, when he'd been up against Bill Cipher at the height of his power, Dipper had still found some way of fighting back, even if the odds had been against him, even he'd known that it was completely pointless – but now he couldn't even do that. For the first time, Dipper was completely useless.
Lorraine raised the machete to strike, ready to bring it down on Grunkle Stan's skull.
And in desperation, Dipper screamed. "HE DIDN'T TAKE ME, I TOLD HIM TO!"
Lorraine paused, suddenly blinking in confusion. "What?"
"It was my idea, Mommy. I told Mabel I wanted to see more of the island, and she told Stan, and when you were hurt we had to run so… we thought you'd show up eventually, so we kept moving so the zombies wouldn't catch us, and Stan was only taking me where I told him to go and then the Council found us and-"
Dipper was horrified to discover that he was crying – actually tearing up even as he tried desperately to invent a story that Lorraine might believe, and he didn't know if it was because that failing would cost Grunkle Stan's life or because Dipper had become so much like Callum that he was ashamed of making Lorraine upset.
To his surprise, Lorraine lowered the machete and scooped him into her arms. "You don't need to make excuses for them, Callum," she soothed. "You were scared, and they took advantage of that; don't blame yourself – I should have been more careful around them, I should have known they might have been trying to separate us." She took a deep breath. "But all that's over now: you're back in my arms… and I'll never let anyone take you away from me again."
And to Dipper's horror, he found himself actually feeling comforted by this – or rather, Callum was feeling comforted, while Dipper's conscious mind could only reel in horror.
"Can we go to the lighthouse?" he asked weakly.
Lorraine looked baffled for a moment; then she looked down and realized that she was almost knee-deep in seawater, the boat around her rapidly plunging beneath the waves. "Oh, right," she muttered. "Almost forgot. Yeah, we probably should be on our way; they probably won't look for us at the lighthouse."
Then, without another word, she took off, launching herself skyward with another blast of magic. The last thing Dipper saw, before they landed with a splash in the shallows and took off running towards the beach, was Grunkle Stan clumsily hauling himself to his feet, blood fountaining from his nose as he struggled to leave the sinking boat. Some distance away, Mabel was still splashing through the waves, though Dipper couldn't tell if she was trying to reach the boat or heading after Lorraine.
Either way, the two of them wouldn't be catching up anytime soon.
A/N: And now for the code:
Uork gsv Vnkvili.
Gsv Yofv Girzmtov.
Gsv Uzgsvi lu Gsv Roofnrmzgvw Lmvh.
Srh vbv ivnzrmh urcvw lm gsv Nztrxrzmh rm gsv Krmvh.
Sv szh szw z hxliv gl hvggov uli hlnv grnv.
