12. Phantasma
"It's Cissnei."
Rude half-expected the vision to disappear the moment he said it out loud, cast from his mind by the sheer doubt in his voice. It didn't.
Reno shoved past him and charged headlong inside. Rude stayed, distantly aware of some protocol that had been hammered into him: Remain by the door. Keep a lookout. Except he just looked at Cissnei instead, splayed lifeless on the floor. It couldn't be her. Could it?
Reno dropped to his knees beside her and cupped her cheek in his hand. Her head lolled toward him; her eyes were closed, her face slack. Blood welled from an ugly gash near her hairline and ran down her face.
"No…" He gingerly touched her wound with trembling fingers. "No, not..." He stared at his fingers, red with blood, and his whole body began to shake. "Oh fuck..."
He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her into his lap. Her body was as limp as a sack of potatoes.
"No, no, no," Reno wailed, pressing her tightly to his chest. "Not you too!"
"Reno," Rude rasped, but got no reply. "Reno!"
Reno didn't even look up; he just rocked back and forth on his knees, clutching her against him, as if he was lost in another illusion.
Rude rushed to their side and knelt down. He pulled up her left sleeve, exposing the leather bracelet around her wrist. Before he could reach for it, Reno's hand shot out and wrapped tight around it. A green light enveloped his fingers, threaded up her arm in bright, spiraling tendrils. The air filled with the tang of magic.
"Please," he choked out. "Don't go."
The light grew as it crept over her, over them both, grew until it became too much for Rude's eyes to bear. He squeezed them shut and turned his head away.
For several seconds all he heard were Reno's breaths, so ragged they were more like sobs. The brightness waned, and Rude looked back just as the last filaments of it retreated into the bracelet once more. Cissnei lay still in Reno's arms, as they both shook with his choking gasps for air. Rude kept his flashlight on them and watched, holding his breath.
Her clothes rustled and shifted. Cissnei gently pulled her wrist out of Reno's hold, and flattened her hand over his back. Rude let out his breath.
Reno made some broken sound and squeezed her harder. She shuffled around in his embrace until she was sitting in front of him, and wrapped both arms around him. He buried his face in the nook between her neck and shoulder.
"It's okay, Red," she whispered. "I'm okay."
"Ciss..." He sucked in a harsh breath. "Don't fuckin' scare me like that."
"Sorry. Wasn't exactly part of the plan."
She pulled away. She'd barely straightened up before Reno pushed her hair out of her face and ran his fingertips over her forehead. The gash was gone.
"Damn, Ciss." He laughed, light and brittle. "You're a bloody mess, yo."
"Speak for yourself." She took his wrist and held up his fingers in the light of Rude's torch, smeared with her blood.
Reno snorted, though it came out awfully shaky. He tried to turn away, but Cissnei placed her hand on his neck and pulled him closer, touching her forehead to his. He was quick to clasp the back of her neck in return. Framed in the torchlight, they were mirror images of each other.
"Hey," she mumbled. "I knew you'd have my back."
His hold on her tightened. "Always."
After one more shuddering breath, he let her go. He offered her a weak smile as he sat back on his haunches, then covered his eyes with his hand. Cissnei pushed herself off the floor, and Rude offered her his hand to help her to her feet.
"What happened?" he asked.
She grimaced as she wiped her face with her sleeve.
"Can't say. One second I'm running down a passage with the professor, the next I'm caught up in these..." She sighed and waved her hands in a vague gesture. "Just random moments from my life, really. Something knocked me over, I hit my head..." She frowned and looked around. "Where's Rayleigh?"
"Did she knock you over?"
"I can't say for sure... but if she did, she's a hell of a lot stronger than I gave her credit for."
"Pretty sure Rayleigh ain't the one who did this," Reno cut in, staring at Cissnei's back.
Cissnei shrugged out of her jacket and held it up in the beam of Reno's flashlight. A jagged tear ran diagonally across the back, from the shoulder blade to the waist. The ragged edges glistened. Rude scooped some of the residue with a gloved finger and brought it up to his nose. The reek of it was ripe and organic, like a pile of moldering leaves.
"What is it?" she asked.
He shrugged and wiped his finger on the sleeve of her ruined jacket. Cissnei took a sniff herself and wrinkled her nose.
"So much for that jacket." She retrieved her PHS from the inside pocket, then wadded up the garment and tossed it into a corner.
"Fuck." Reno squeezed the bridge of his nose. "How do we fight somethin' like this?"
Rude's gut tightened as he thought back on their desperate flight. Whatever they had faced kept shifting, changing. He had no idea what it really looked like. He had no idea if any of the things it had made him see was really it.
"I don't think we can," he murmured.
"No, hang on. Let's think this through." Cissnei closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "You think it's a creature, right? Some kind of... animal?"
"Animal, monster, freaky lab experiment," Reno listed. "Could be anythin'."
"But it's something alive, right?" She lowered her hands. "Something with instincts, maybe even intelligence."
"What's your point?" Rude asked.
"If you were right, this thing has lived down here for years. This is its home, and we're intruders. It ought to be happy to see us gone."
"Yeah, 'gone' as in torn into lil' bits for dinner," Reno remarked.
"No, I don't think it's hungry. It could have eaten me while I was out, but it just left me there and ran off, probably after Rayleigh. This thing, if it's territorial like other animals, it's got to be freaking out right now."
"What, it's more afraid of us than we're of it?" He gave a hollow laugh.
"Think about the hallucinations we've had down in these cellars," Cissnei insisted. "It made me try to... lure you out of here." She offered Reno a weak smile. "Gubbins died falling down the stairs; maybe she was trying to leave, too." She looked at Rude, expectantly.
"I heard someone call my name," he said. "I had to turn back and check."
"So, you headed back the way you came," she said, nodding. "See what I mean, guys? This thing wants us out."
What had Rude's hallucinations been before? Voices whispering in the dark, spiders crawling under his skin; visions fed by whatever had been on his mind at the time. He'd freaked, he'd run, but nothing in the visions themselves had tried to lure him this way or that… until they had come down here.
"We were on our fuckin' way out just now," Reno pointed out. "It attacked us anyway."
"Because we stood between it and its creepy lair," Cissnei maintained. "Look, just… imagine a bear, okay?"
"The fuck…?"
"Humor me? Just pretend this thing is a bear. Maybe a young bear, hardly old enough to leave mommy bear. It's got a nice, safe cave, but it's curious about what's outside. The first time, it only takes a few steps before it gets scared and runs back. The second time, it goes a little farther. By the third time, it might be brave enough to reach the river."
Reno gaped blankly at her.
"What fuckin' river?"
"Just listen, okay? Maybe the bear runs into people. A couple of hunters. It watches them from afar, maybe sneaks up to poke around their backpacks when they camp for the night. It's just curious, wants to figure out what these two-legged things are. But the hunters see the tracks, the claw marks on their stuff. Maybe they find the bear while it's out exploring and shoot at it. They follow the tracks to the bear's cave, armed with guns, but now the bear is scared instead of curious. And these guys are marching right into it's cave–"
"Okay, fine," Reno interrupted, rubbing his eyes, "I see what you're getting at, but this thing sure ain't no bear. It was engineered in a lab, by fuckin' Hojo. If I was that thing, I sure as hell wouldn't be curious. I'd wanna rip every fuckin' human I met to shreds!"
"It could have done that already. It could have done it plenty of times, and we're still alive. You don't know what it is or how it thinks. Hell, you don't even know that it was engineered. Hojo had plenty of wild-caught specimens in his lab at HQ, remember? If it's an animal, it doesn't even get what revenge is!"
"Yeah, and if it used to be a person, it sure as hell does!"
With a huff, Cissnei threw up her hands and strode away.
"You didn't see what I saw." His voice seemed small against the thick silence. "You didn't feel what that thing made me feel. If you had…" He swallowed hard. "Maybe this thing is just real fuckin' evil, okay? What did you say just before, Rude? It's learning, right? What if it wanted us dead the whole time, only it wasn't strong enough to pull it off yet?"
Rude opened his mouth to reply, only to find he did not care. His mind felt dull and his limbs were stiff and leaden. Every lungful of stale air was heavier than the last.
"Talking… is pointless."
Reno snorted.
"Course you'd say that," he mumbled.
"We are tired," Rude continued, ignoring him. "We know too little. And… we don't need to know what it is. We don't need to fight it. We need to find Rayleigh, and leave."
Reno raised his head, just enough to peek at Rude from under his bangs.
"Leave? Just like that, huh?"
Rude shrugged.
"We can try. Stay quiet, out of sight. Run, together, if we have to."
"I'm all for that." With a few brisk steps, Cissnei joined them again. "Look, if I'm right, then all we have to do is make it back to the bedroom and shut the door. This thing will curl up down here and lick its wounds, and we can get the hell away from this place. If I'm wrong… Well, the sooner we get out of here, the better."
Reno looked from her to Rude, then let out a slow breath and nodded.
"Guess we have a plan. Grab Rayleigh and get out."
"Have to find her first," Rude pointed out.
"Yup," Reno sighed, climbing to his feet. "Again. You better keep your promise, buddy. I'm so ready for boozing on a Costan beach after this."
The dark felt darker now. Every shadowy corner seemed to hide slavering maws and gnashing teeth. Down these winding, pitch black halls, something lurked.
They found her in the lab. Rayleigh stood by the crude examination table in the middle of the chamber. She didn't react to their arrival; she might not have heard them, but that didn't explain the way she stared out into nothing at all.
"Shit, she's seein' things again," Reno hissed, peeking in through the gap between the doors.
"This thing keeps bringing her here," Cissnei muttered. "Think it wants something?"
"I don't give a flyin' fuck what it wants. What I want is to grab her and go." He nudged the door farther open as he spoke, keeping his voice to a hush. "Spread out, guys. We don't know what she might do, but we don't want her runnin' off on us again."
Reno went first. Rude had just slipped inside when he glimpsed it; in the alcove behind her, the shadows began to take shape. He went still, strained his eyes. He made out a limb – or was it a tentacle? No, it was some kind of serrated appendage – and then it wasn't.
The world shimmered, shifted. Bright light flooded in from high above; Rude yelped and flung his arms up to cover his eyes.
"Uh, guys?" Reno's voice was shrill. "Are you seeing this?"
A high-pitched shriek pierced Rude's ears. Not a human cry, though. It sounded like... a seagull? A breeze swept across him, carrying the scent of brine.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and lowered his hands. His mouth fell open as he looked around, taking in the sandy beach and dappled turquoise water spreading to the horizon.
"Is this... Costa?" Cissnei asked.
She and Reno stood where he expected them to stand, their faces grimy and their uniforms smeared with muck. She squinted up at a sun that shouldn't be there. He stared down at the tall blue cocktail that had replaced the mag rod in his hand, complete with a red umbrella.
Rude looked down and dug his heels deeper. It looked like sand. It felt like sand.
The buzzing was growing louder in his head.
"Fuck! Where'd she come from?"
Rude looked up. Rayleigh was there in front of them, right at the waterline, frothy tide lapping at her heels. She stood sideways to them, just as she had... Wait. Where had they just been? Had they been...?
She was holding something in her hand, looking at it. It glinted brightly in the Costan sun.
Rude's head felt like a rubber band pulled taut, being pulled tighter still. With a final tug it snapped, with an audible pop in his ears. He flinched, blinked – and opened his eyes onto total darkness.
He blinked and blinked again, until in a flash the world returned.
The beach was gone, replaced by cold, white tile. Rayleigh remained; she stood before a mirror, holding a stubby pencil. She tilted her face from side to side, and drew a fingertip along her eyebrow.
"Shit, she's got a knife!"
His view flickered again, like a visual stutter. The white walls fell away. It was no longer a pencil Rayleigh was holding – it was a scalpel.
Rayleigh removed her glasses. Staring straight ahead at nothing, she raised her hand.
"Stop her!" Reno hollered.
Late, too late, Rude moved. He watched Rayleigh's hand lift the scalpel to her face, watched her line it up with her eye. She was too far. He'd never make it.
Reno blew past him in a blur of spiky hair and pumping limbs. Rayleigh bent forward, brought the scalpel closer.
Reno lunged, crashed into her. They fell, and the scalpel clattered across the stony floor.
Where she had stood, something formed out of pure darkness. A hulking shape of rippling muscle and gleaming claws.
Rude had no time to stop or swerve. He did the only thing he could: he threw all his momentum into a punch. Instead of smacking against solid muscle, his fist sank into something soft and yielding. His vision stuttered again, and his hand was free, just hanging in the air.
Something whizzed past his ear, glittering silver, and sank into a solid mass that hadn't been there a moment ago. On his other side, a flash of blue lit up the stone walls, and lit up something else, something huge in front of them. The crackle of Reno's mag rod drowned in a raw animal scream that rang through Rude's ears, rang through his head, until he wasn't sure whether it came from the inside or out. The world shimmered, and twisted, and convulsed–
And then it was gone.
As the discombobulation faded, Rude found himself crouched on the floor, cradling his head in his arms. His head pulsed hotly, but the buzzing was gone.
A hand touched his shoulder and gave him a shake.
"Hey, man." Reno's voice; tense, urgent. "You okay?"
Rude unfurled himself and nodded. Reno clapped his shoulder and hurried over to Rayleigh. She sat in a heap, her breathing quick and panicked. She was wiping her eye with a shaking, bloodied hand.
"Easy there, Prof. Lemme take a look." Reno kneeled down beside her and pushed her hand down. "Ciss, some light?"
Reno tilted her face toward Cissnei's flashlight. A trickle of blood was smeared down Rayleigh's cheek, but the cut was too small for Rude to see at a distance. Both her eyes were intact, wide and panicked as they flitted from one Turk to another.
"I-I was just doing my makeup," she stammered. "J-just a bit of eyeliner..."
"It's okay, Prof. We get it, believe me." He looked around, then snatched up a pair of glasses from the ground and pressed them into her hands. "We need to get the hell outta here, okay? You know the way out?"
Rayleigh fumbled her glasses onto her face and looked around. "I think so. It should be right–"
Rude grunted as an invisible force pressed down on his head. His vision rippled.
"Take the lead," Reno growled, yanking her up to her feet. "Run!"
Rude galloped after them, following the mad weaving of their flashlights, the strobing silhouettes they left in their wake. Every shadow seethed with things straight out of his nightmares, every chamber echoed with their demented shrieks. He had no idea how long they stumbled through those dark passages, or what route they took. He didn't recognize anything – until at last Rayleigh led them to the root of the tower, and the wooden spiral up to the world above.
The women sprinted straight up the ramp, unheeding of the lifeless Mrs. Gubbins on the floor. At the foot of the ramp Rude paused and glanced back over his shoulder. The entrance to the chamber appeared to be… writhing.
"Rude!" Reno yelled, peeking over the edge of the ramp, half a spiral above him. "Get a fuckin' move on!"
That was exactly what Rude did. He ran and ran, legs pumping, lungs burning. How long had he been running? Whenever he looked up, all he could see was the ramp, spiralling on forever. Rude gritted his teeth and kept going. It didn't matter how far he needed to go, he had to get out, he had to run–
And then, on the spiral above, he saw them: Cissnei and Rayleigh. A section of the ramp was gone, leaving only a narrow, splintered lip along the wall. Cissnei had stepped onto the ledge and was shuffling along it with short, fumbling steps in the beam of Rayleigh's flashlight. Nothing remained of the missing boards save for a few shattered stumps on the other side of the gap, still nailed to the beam underneath. Something had crashed through them. Gubbins, Rude realized, as he drew to a halt beneath.
Reno was still running.
"The hell are you doin'?" he hollered. "Fuckin' move!"
"Stop!" Cissnei yelled. "The ramp is–"
With a startled cry, Reno went over the edge. He had momentum, though, and he had reach. He slammed chest-first into the beam across the gap; too hard, for he swung violently under the ramp. The wood groaned and crackled as he slid off, catching himself with his bare hands, scraping his palms raw across the splintered ends of the boards. He scrabbled for a better grip, but that only coated the edges wet with his blood. His fingers began to slip.
"Fuck!" he panted. "My fuckin' hands! I can't hold on!"
Cissnei was stuck on the ledge, not even halfway across. The beam Reno was hanging onto might not hold the weight of two; but if Rude did nothing, his partner was doomed. They were all doomed.
"Hang on! I'm coming!"
Rude took off running again, and at the edge he leapt.
His feet hit solid wood. So did his knees, and his injured elbow. A lick of pain seared up his arm, bursting into white spots before his eyes.
"Rude!"
He had no time for pain; he scrambled around on all fours, just in time to see Reno's bloody fingers slip over the edge. Rude lunged forward, both arms stretched out in a blind grab. His fingers brushed fabric and he snapped his hands tight around Reno's wrist. The wood under him creaked and split under their weight – but it held.
Reno was clawing for a new hold, smearing more red on the broken wood.
"Pull me up, pull me up!"
Rude was flat on his stomach; he had no leverage, but he tried. He pulled and he pulled, until Reno got his whole arm onto the ramp. Once he moved one hand to Reno's belt, it got easier. After what felt like an eternity, they were lying side by side, gasping for air.
"Keep moving!" Cissnei yelled. "It's coming!"
The wood cracked alarmingly beneath them as Reno rolled over. Rude got up on his elbows and shuffled backwards as quickly as he could, spreading out their weight. Reno flattened himself against the wall near the ledge and held out his hand.
"C'mon, Ciss, I'm right here for ya. Just a lil' more!"
Rude couldn't help; if he went any closer he might endanger them all. He couldn't do a damn thing except watch.
He crawled to the lip of the ramp and looked down. The darkness below had turned into a churning mass of tentacles, black as night, boiling up from the depths below. And then they weren't tentacles at all; they were eyes on segmented stalks – then vicious claws at the end of impossibly long fingers, digging into the crumbling walls.
Yet one thing remained the same: a darkness like an inky shroud, creeping up the ramp. He stared into it, tried to see through the dark. He caught glimpses; movement here, a shape there, thrashing like a twisted limb. Something was in that darkness, and it was coming for them. His fists were no use to him here.
Rude got his feet under him and took off along the ramp.
"Rude!"
He kept running, trying to blot out the shrill panic in Reno's voice. Up and up he went, away from the others and toward the only way out of this hellhole. The secret door was still open, just as they'd left it. He threw himself into the bedroom, rug skidding beneath him. There he froze, and his mouth went dry. All his strength drained from his limbs.
"Chelsea?"
She was standing right there, right before him. She hadn't changed one bit since he last saw her. She even wore the same green dress. She smiled and held out her hand.
"Come with me, Rude. It's time to leave this place."
He could see every strand of her hair as it fell about her shoulder in loose waves. He saw the tiny lines around the corners of her smiling lips, the little crinkles by her eyes.
"I'm… sorry. I can't."
"Of course you can." She raised her hand higher. "Just take my hand."
He felt the air shift as she moved. He could even smell her perfume. His knees felt weak, his legs were shaking. His whole body was shaking.
"I… I can't."
Rude turned his back on her. He grabbed one of Rayleigh's silver trunks, gritting his teeth against the pain that lanced up his injured arm.
"Rude…"
By Ramuh, her voice. He swallowed hard, trying to push down the painful lump in his throat. The trunk seemed to grow heavier in his hands with every breath he took.
Rude tightened his grip on the handles.
"Rude!"
Her voice deepened as he dragged the trunk back into the stairwell, turned into something low and guttural. The wood groaned and popped under his feet as he struggled down the ramp, far enough to see the others. Cissnei was off the ledge. Only Rayleigh was left, shimmying sideways on unsteady feet toward Reno's outstretched hand. Her face was twisted up in mask of pure fear; her lips moved in a frantic babble he could not hear. Rude's ears; no, his mind was filled with that ceaseless, wordless roar, louder than ever before. The source of it – that creeping darkness, he was sure of it – had reached the broken ledge.
With a cry he couldn't even hear, Rude raised the trunk over his head and took aim. He hurled it across the stairwell; it shone brightly as it arced through the beam of a flashlight and struck the opposite wall, right above the roiling darkness. It crashed straight down, swallowed by the dark – and then the darkness fell, too. The roar turned into a wail, then a high-pitched shriek. Rude doubled over and pressed his hands to his ears, but it did nothing. The noise was inside his head, and it was too loud, too much–
And then it was gone.
Slowly, he straightened up. He swayed, blinked several times. He saw nothing, heard nothing. Had he gone deaf and blind?
No, that couldn't be. He could see light below, the glow of a discarded flashlight. The shattered ledge on the other side was empty and much wider now; a whole section of ramp had sheared off under the force of the trunk, taking who knows what down with it. He inched closer to the edge until he could peek over. The bottom of the stairwell was beyond his sight; there was nothing down there he could make out.
The teeth, the tentacles, the noise; all of it was gone. The darkness had gone still.
"Move!" Reno appeared at his side and shoved his arm. "Go! Go!"
Cissnei and Rayleigh had already passed them. Rude forced his legs to move and stumbled up the ramp with Reno at his back, urging him on. They didn't stop and neither did he, not until they reached the bedroom and felt the secret door thud shut beneath their hands.