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blueheronteanookTitle: Memoirs
Rating: Teen
Major Warnings: No major warnings apply
Genre: Worm/Pale Crossover
Summary: Seven years after gold morning, the ghosts of Taylor Hebert’s past still haunt her. Seeking some solitude to hopefully help with her head, she moves to a small town called Kennet for some rest and relaxation. She doesn’t get it. Co-written with the beautiful Chartic.
There was a spider on the nightstand, slowly crawling along the limestone surface, navigating between dusty forgotten picture frames like an explorer staking new ground. It had been taking up residence in that general area for the last twenty-four, building a web that strung loosely between the wall and the nightstand.
I grit my teeth. Stop.
The spider continued to weave its web without so much as a hitch in its movements. It was a good sign. My power still hadn’t returned.
And yet…
A few seconds later, the spider stopped in place. Was it a coincidence? I couldn’t discount the chance that it wasn’t. I watched it for what felt like hours, poring over each minute movement, each little jittering bend of its legs. And every few minutes, I’d reach out to it and think:
Stop.
And every time, I wasn’t sure if its actions were controlled by me or if it was just pure coincidence. It couldn’t have been me, could it? I would’ve known if I had my powers back. I’d feel it. I wouldn’t feel so trapped inside my own body. I’d have that wide arrange of senses again, that local omniscience that I’d grown to rely on when I was a cape.
But I didn’t. I was still as blind and helpless as I’d been for the last seven years.
“Damn it,” I said, shaking my head, turning back to my laptop. My quota for today was pretty much fulfilled; even though I’d been distracted, a nonsense article covering an online microcelebrity harassing a public official was something I could’ve done in my sleep. It was a stupid controversy, like so many things I wrote about. All I had to do now was turn it in in the morning. I shut my computer off and put it on the ground beside my bed, uneasily watching the spider on my nightstand the whole time. It was still on my mind by the time I finally drifted off to sleep.
It started, as always, with gold.
A miniature sun fell upon us, melting the platform to slag and the people along with it. I rushed to the edge. I flung myself over. I was too slow. My body ripped itself apart as I fell into the ocean and then morphed, grew into some horrifying monstrosity approximating flesh. I swallowed sea water as I fought to stay alive.
I couldn’t breathe.
A beam of golden light slashed its way across the landscape, ripping through the battlefield. It split mountains and tore apart capes. He was difficult to look at, blindingly bright and his eyes full of rage. So human. He looked so human.
I stood on unsteady feet, shaking. My body was out of my control. I was held up by the two capes next to me. Doormaker and Clairvoyant. One had their hand grasped in mine. The other held my stump, weeping pus. Drool ran down my cheek and my jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might shatter. My attention was spread across thousands of people through millions of portals. Every parahuman I could find. All under my control.
I made them leap. I made them fight. I made them die.
I couldn’t breathe.
I reached out to my swarm, and with a thought, struck out at him. A thousand attacks unleashed all at once. Blasts of light, rays of fire, swirling masses of beast and bug. It was for nothing. He took them like water against his skin.
A woman was torn apart in Scion’s hands. A man was ripped to atoms. A cabin blown away. Some bodies were left half dismembered on the ground, others I carried off to be fixed and thrown at him again. I barely even noticed. My eyes were only on him.
I couldn’t breathe.
A form approached me: a girl with curly black hair, glasses, and an enraptured gaze. “Wake up,” she said. She hadn’t moved her lips, and even if she had, I shouldn’t have been able to understand it. “Wake up.”
Wake up.
I commanded my swarm to attack, and—
I woke up gasping for breath, forcing down air but still unable to get enough. It was like there’d been a weight on my chest, pressing down, choking me. It was gone now, but the pressure still lingered. And the spider…
The spider was still on the nightstand, and it was looking my way. It was almost like it was staring at me.
I peeled my eyes away like they’d been burned, rubbed them, and climbed out of bed. It was just a dream. A spider. It didn’t mean anything. I had dreams like this all the time. None of it meant anything.
I had work to do.
At my kitchen table, I finished the article, gave it a quick editing pass, and emailed it to my supervisor. That had gone simply enough. Then I made breakfast, which was significantly more annoying. Breaking eggs one-handed was something I’d had to practice quite a bit, but it was a skill I’d never quite managed to master, and this time I ended up with bits of eggshell in the pan.
Damn it.
The whole time my food was cooking, I tried very hard not to think about my dream, about the crushing weight on my chest, about the spider on the nightstand that wouldn’t leave. Breakfast tasted like shit—undersalted, overcooked.
My phone rang, displaying a familiar name: Erica Murray. My local supervisor at the Chronicle-Journal, one of the more well-known papers in the area. Out of all of my contracts, this one was one of the more important ones. More than others, it opened doors, kept my bills paid, and I was kept on their payroll on a semi-permanent basis, which was more than I could say for most of my jobs.
So I answered as quickly as I could. “Hello?” I said, holding my phone to my ear.
“Taylor?”
“Hey, Erica.”
“Oh, thank God your phone’s still working. I’m calling about your current assignment. The one about the social media gaffe with the, uh, internet personality?”
“Sharon Griggs? Yeah, that’s done.” I frowned. “I emailed it to you this morning, didn’t I? Is there a problem?”
A nervous laugh rang through the speaker. “Oh, you could say that. Our entire system is down, Taylor. Someone in the office clicked a bad link, and whoops—our databases, internet access, email servers, everything—it’s all locked up. I only managed to get this call out to you because we’ve talked before, and your number’s saved in my personal phone.”
“Ouch. Sounds like a mess.”
“Oh, yes. It is. We’ve got people working on it, but it could take days or weeks, so right now it’s like we’ve gone back in time thirty years. We’re faxing things to the Thunder Bay office, Taylor. That’s how bad it is. I’m calling to see if it’s at all possible for you to print out a physical copy, bring it into the Kennet office for us?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to have to go out if I didn’t have to, but this job paid for a significant portion of my expenses. I probably couldn’t survive without it. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Thanks, Taylor. You’re a lifesaver.”
She hung up, and I was left alone in the silence of the house. It took only a few minutes for me to print out my article and get dressed. I wasn’t in the habit of dressing nice—whatever clean clothes I had in my closet were usually good enough for me. In this case, it was a plain pair of jeans, a plain gray shirt, and a plain green-gray coat.
On the way out, the spider on my nightstand was nowhere to be seen.
There was something discomforting about driving, about the way the world passed around me, unerring and ephemeral. There was something I never liked about the way I was separated from it but still moving through it, watching but never being able to properly interact. It was a constant reminder that I didn’t have my powers anymore, couldn’t reach out and touch things the way I’d used to. Especially here, in Kennet, when I knew I was being watched everywhere I went.
The Kennet office for the Chronicle-Journal was about fifteen minutes away from my house, in a small block of office buildings and warehouses, flanked by rows of trees. It made for an interesting effect: these concrete structures fighting against the procession of nature broaching in from the opposite fields. Kennet was a small town, and it showed here, in the way that grass fought its way up through cracks in the pavement, undeterred and unattended. The parking lot itself was decaying; Kenent’s losing front in the war against the forces of nature. It was more potholes than pavement, and today, it was filled almost to the breaking point with cars.
The emergency had drawn a lot of people to the office, it seemed. I found a single open spot in the back, wild grass growing through a wide crack down the center. Papers folded neatly in my bag, I left my car, moving for the office’s front door.
There was a rustling behind me as I left the parking lot, and I froze.
Fuck, come on. I was being good, I was keeping my head down. I was only here because I had to be. There was no reason for anyone to come after me.
Slowly, painfully, I turned around.
There was a black cat sitting on the sidewalk, watching me with a piercing gaze. I narrowed my eyes. “You’d better not be a twelve year old girl disguised as an animal,” I said.
The cat blinked. My eyes narrowed further.
Then, casually, the cat hopped off, walking down the sidewalk away from me. I watched it until it had entirely disappeared from view, turning the corner around the far side of the building. I let out a breath, and continued toward the office.
Hopefully it was nothing.
Inside, the place was bustling with activity. The room was lively with chatter, and nobody paid me any attention as I went toward Erica’s office. She was under her desk when I came in, almost entirely obscured from view, save for the very top of her hair: a braided bun, brown, poking out over the far edge of the desktop. Over in the corner was a taller man, overweight, with short, buzzed hair, working on an internet router.
I cleared my throat. “Hey,” I said.
There was a bang, a hissed curse, and then Erica climbed up from under the desk, rubbing at the back of her head. “Taylor!” she said, putting on a smile, wincing a little. “Hey!”
“Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she said. “Just fine. Do you have the article?”
I fished it from my bag and handed it over. “Already did a first editing pass on it. There shouldn’t be any of the more obvious mistakes.”
“Fantastic,” she said, tucking it under her arm. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice. Really appreciate it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can see things are hectic around here.”
“Honestly, that’s kind of an understatement,” she said, laughing a little. She glanced over to the man in the corner of the room. “Hey, Brett, how long did you say you think it’ll take to fix all this?”
“A week, if we’re lucky,” he said gruffly. “Longer than the heat death of the universe if we’re not.”
Erica shrugged. “There you have it. Heat death of the universe. Anyway, thanks again. There’ll probably be another assignment for you next week—uh, I’ll call you about it. Keep your phone on. Oh, and you’ll probably have to come into the office in a few days to pick up your check.”
I rubbed my eyes. “The payroll system’s down, too?”
“Yep. Welcome back to the twentieth century, my friend,” Erica said, chuckling. “Everything’s got to be done by hand.”
I didn’t like it, being forced out of the house again when Kennet’s capes were watching me, but I didn’t really have a choice, did I? I needed the money. I could’ve asked them to mail it to me, but I didn’t have many other prospects to keep myself afloat while I waited for the Canadian postal service to carry a piece of paper from one side of Kenent to the other.
I sighed. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
She waved me off, and I went back to my car. I was done here. All I had to do now was go back home before one of Kennet’s capes freaked out on me.
But there, waiting beside the driver’s side door, was a girl with dark hair, wearing a black cloak and a black witch’s hat. This one didn’t have a mask, but she was obviously a cape all the same.
Goddammit. Were all the capes here little girls?
“Before you ask,” the girl said. “Yes, I was the cat from earlier.”
My hand tightened into a fist. “I wasn’t doing anything. I just work here. I told your friends already—I’m a writer. The paper’s network is down, so I had to hand in my article in print form.”
The girl nodded. “I was watching.”
“Then why are you here now?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“Why?” I snapped. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve played ball, I’ve kept my head down. I’ve been really fucking calm, considering everything that’s happened—because I have no idea what’s going on! Your friend Lucy blew up my arm and just disappeared. What the hell am I supposed to think about that?”
“We were being careful,” she said. “There’s trouble in Kennet, and we’re not sure who we can trust.”
“Yeah, I know. Lucy told me that already. Then she just left me alone! What am I supposed to do if someone comes after me? I don’t have my power, I don’t have two arms.”
“Well, that’s kinda why I’m here,” the girl said coolly. “I’m Verona.”
I sucked in air. There was no point in introducing myself. “What do you want from me?”
“To explain some things, answer some questions you probably have. But first, I need you to answer a few questions of mine.”
I narrowed my eyes. I was tired of answering questions. If anything, I was owed some questions of my own. “You want to ask me stuff here? We’re not exactly alone, you know. There are a ton of people in the office today. Anyone could walk out and see you in your Halloween costume.”
She didn’t even have a mask.
Verona shook her head. “They won’t be coming out here for a little bit.” She gestured toward the door, where there had been a piece of paper taped to the outside surface, with a bunch of geometric designs drawn on it.
My heart skipped a beat. Did this girl just put a bomb on the front door? What would happen if someone tried to open it? “The last time someone drew one of those around me, it exploded,” I hissed.
“This is different. Different circumstances, different connections being blocked. It won’t blow up—well, so long as you don’t touch it yourself. Now—what do you know about practice?”
I grit my teeth. “Only what you guys have told me. Avery told me that it’s a name for powers in this world, and some of it’s based on association.”
Verona winced a little at that, and I wasn’t sure why. “Okay. That’s…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Okay, second question: what gave you your power? Like, what actually is it?”
“Don’t you guys have them too?” They were capes, weren’t they?
She shook her head. “Humor me, please?”
Fine. Maybe capes were new to this world, and the ones here didn’t have the same framework of knowledge that I’d had back on Earth Bet. I’d been here for seven years, after all, and not once had I heard anyone mention superpowers. The chances that these underground capes would have the medical equipment to do research on themselves was slim to none. I could afford to throw them a bone or two, even if I was still pissed at them.
“I don’t really know exactly what it is,” I said. “I never got the full picture. But from what I’ve learned, it’s a part of this… alien being called Scion, who was an incredibly powerful cape. It draws power from alternate universes, connects to me through a certain part of my brain. It gets more powerful when I’m in my element. I’ve heard it called a passenger. A parasite. Someone I met who was called, uh, the Faerie Queen? She called them faeries.”
Verona frowned. “...The Faerie Queen?”
“A villain,” I said, not bothering to elaborate further. There was a moment of silence as she took it all in.
“Okay,” she said slowly, nodding along. “Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. I think Lucy was onto something… the language is a little bit different, but the core concepts are there. Capes, faeries. They’re like… Practitioners, faeries themselves, or some kind of general set of Others, or… kind of like subgroups of them.” She scratched her head. “You said there’s a part of your brain that lets you control your power?”
“Yeah. On Earth Bet—the world I’m from—we called it a Corona Pollentia. It’s a part of the brain that grows when we trigger. Lets us control our powers.”
“Trigger,” Verona mumbled under her breath. And then she raised an eyebrow. “Wait, ‘we’? You weren’t the only one with a… power?”
I shook my head. “No, there were plenty of people with powers. Thousands.” Wasn’t it the same here?
“Jeez,” Verona mumbled softly. “Friggin’...” She shook her head. “Okay. Cool. I really appreciate you answering.”
“Now could you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“I can, but…” She bit her lip. “Does it ever speak to you? Your power? Does it communicate in any way?”
I swallowed. “No,” I said, trying not to think of the nightmare I’d had last night, trying not to think of the spider on my nightstand. “Never.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“It’s never spoken to me before,” I stressed. “I’ve tried communicating with it, and there’s never been any real response.”
“What about in your dreams?”
My heart sank into my stomach. How the fuck did she know about those? She couldn’t read minds, could she? I shook my head quickly. “They’re just dreams,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Okaaaay,” she said, biting her lip. “Great. Super.” She didn’t really look like she believed me, but she didn’t belabor the point, either.
“Is that it?” I was looking forward to the end of this conversation already.
“Just one last question, okay?” She met my eyes. “How much danger are you willing to risk? Because this? Learning about this stuff? It could be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do. And it makes us responsible for you. Not just metaphorically, but, like, metaphysically. What you do will reflect on us, affect us in ways you don’t even understand yet. I need to know that you can handle that danger.”
I opened my mouth to respond, and—
“It’s not just risking death,” Verona continued. “There are things worse than death that could happen to you. I mean, really bad stuff. The kind of stuff they put in horror movies, and worse. Nightmare fuel, sometimes literally.”
Literally? What was that supposed to mean? And then, for a moment, I was struck with a thought: she was twelve—was she even supposed to be watching horror movies?
Then I shook my head. “I’m no stranger to that kind of thing,” I said, thinking back to Grey Boy, the Butcher, Bonesaw. “I’ve faced plenty of those in my day. I’ve faced monsters, plagues, and world-ending threats more times than I can count, and I’ve always lived to tell the tale. I’m not afraid of them.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you’re really sure.” If you’re really telling the truth was the part that went unsaid.
“I am.” I stood up a little straighter. “Believe me, I’ve been there, and I can handle myself. But I need to know what’s going on.”
I needed to know if my power was trying to reconnect to me. I needed to know if it was succeeding. Because if it was… I had the feeling it would be Khepri coming back, not Weaver.
Not me.
“Okay,” she repeated. “And… hey, we’re really sorry about your arm, by the way,” she said. “We’ve been talking about pooling some money together to help replace it. I don’t know how much a prosthetic costs, exactly, but—”
I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said, sighing. “You guys are kids. Don’t worry about it.” Where were they supposed to get the money from, anyway? Their parents? I didn’t think four kids’ worth of allowances would amount to much.
“Hey,” Verona said, raising an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t underestimate us just because we’re young.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I get it. I got brought into this game way too early, too. I did a lot of bad things before I even knew I should regret them.”
For a moment, Verona was silent. Then she nodded. “But if you’re lucky,” she said eventually, “there’s a chance to make amends, or do better next time. So—this is us trying to do better.” Then she stuck out a hand for me to shake. “We’ve all agreed. I’ll try to explain things to you as best as I can, and in return, I hope you can try to trust us. There’s just one condition.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What is it?”
“If you hear us out, and you agree to stay in Kennet, you have to help us. Help protect the town to the best of your ability. And I mean you, not your power. Not Khepri or the Queen Administrator. You, Taylor Hebert, writer of newspaper and magazine articles. You have to promise.”
Huh. That wasn’t a distinction I’d been expecting. “I can leave if I want to?” I asked.
“Yeah. But, uh, if you’re going to leave, I’d probably suggest you go sooner rather than later. Just to make things easier on all of us.”
I looked her up and down, this twelve year old cape who carried far more authority than any kid should have.
“Why?” I asked, frowning.
“Why what?” Verona’s hand wavered in place a little.
“Why now? You guys have been, I don’t know, suspicious of me this whole time. I haven’t done anything that would change that. So why now?”
“If I'm being honest, there are a ton of different factors. We’d be here for a while if I had to explain them all. Like, I’m still kind of terrified by your power, but I think it’s better to have you in a position where you can work with us instead of around us. I think you can really help us out. But the most important thing, I think, is that I believe you’re not here to do harm—or, not on purpose, anyway. You had the chance to do something to my dad, and you didn’t.”
Wait, what? My frown deepened. “Your dad?”
She shrugged, a bit of an unhappy look in her eyes. “The IT guy you ran into. Brett? That’s my dad.”
I blinked. Jesus. “You thought I might’ve been coming after your family,” I said.
“I was a little bit concerned, yeah.”
And she’d done nothing. It was her father, but she’d given me the benefit of the doubt, anyway. She’d just watched from a distance as I’d walked into an enclosed space with her father. Could I have made the same choice, if I’d been in her place? I didn’t think so.
Besides, a chance at answers seemed worth putting some things aside.
My lips curled into a tiny smile, and I took the handshake. Her grip was firmer than I’d have expected from a girl her size. “Okay, I’m in.”
Verona grinned. “Super. Welcome to Kennet,” she said. “Let me tell you about magic.”
.
Rating: Teen
Major Warnings: No major warnings apply
Genre: Worm/Pale Crossover
Summary: Seven years after gold morning, the ghosts of Taylor Hebert’s past still haunt her. Seeking some solitude to hopefully help with her head, she moves to a small town called Kennet for some rest and relaxation. She doesn’t get it. Co-written with the beautiful Chartic.
There was a spider on the nightstand, slowly crawling along the limestone surface, navigating between dusty forgotten picture frames like an explorer staking new ground. It had been taking up residence in that general area for the last twenty-four, building a web that strung loosely between the wall and the nightstand.
I grit my teeth. Stop.
The spider continued to weave its web without so much as a hitch in its movements. It was a good sign. My power still hadn’t returned.
And yet…
A few seconds later, the spider stopped in place. Was it a coincidence? I couldn’t discount the chance that it wasn’t. I watched it for what felt like hours, poring over each minute movement, each little jittering bend of its legs. And every few minutes, I’d reach out to it and think:
Stop.
And every time, I wasn’t sure if its actions were controlled by me or if it was just pure coincidence. It couldn’t have been me, could it? I would’ve known if I had my powers back. I’d feel it. I wouldn’t feel so trapped inside my own body. I’d have that wide arrange of senses again, that local omniscience that I’d grown to rely on when I was a cape.
But I didn’t. I was still as blind and helpless as I’d been for the last seven years.
“Damn it,” I said, shaking my head, turning back to my laptop. My quota for today was pretty much fulfilled; even though I’d been distracted, a nonsense article covering an online microcelebrity harassing a public official was something I could’ve done in my sleep. It was a stupid controversy, like so many things I wrote about. All I had to do now was turn it in in the morning. I shut my computer off and put it on the ground beside my bed, uneasily watching the spider on my nightstand the whole time. It was still on my mind by the time I finally drifted off to sleep.
It started, as always, with gold.
A miniature sun fell upon us, melting the platform to slag and the people along with it. I rushed to the edge. I flung myself over. I was too slow. My body ripped itself apart as I fell into the ocean and then morphed, grew into some horrifying monstrosity approximating flesh. I swallowed sea water as I fought to stay alive.
I couldn’t breathe.
A beam of golden light slashed its way across the landscape, ripping through the battlefield. It split mountains and tore apart capes. He was difficult to look at, blindingly bright and his eyes full of rage. So human. He looked so human.
I stood on unsteady feet, shaking. My body was out of my control. I was held up by the two capes next to me. Doormaker and Clairvoyant. One had their hand grasped in mine. The other held my stump, weeping pus. Drool ran down my cheek and my jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might shatter. My attention was spread across thousands of people through millions of portals. Every parahuman I could find. All under my control.
I made them leap. I made them fight. I made them die.
I couldn’t breathe.
I reached out to my swarm, and with a thought, struck out at him. A thousand attacks unleashed all at once. Blasts of light, rays of fire, swirling masses of beast and bug. It was for nothing. He took them like water against his skin.
A woman was torn apart in Scion’s hands. A man was ripped to atoms. A cabin blown away. Some bodies were left half dismembered on the ground, others I carried off to be fixed and thrown at him again. I barely even noticed. My eyes were only on him.
I couldn’t breathe.
A form approached me: a girl with curly black hair, glasses, and an enraptured gaze. “Wake up,” she said. She hadn’t moved her lips, and even if she had, I shouldn’t have been able to understand it. “Wake up.”
Wake up.
I commanded my swarm to attack, and—
I woke up gasping for breath, forcing down air but still unable to get enough. It was like there’d been a weight on my chest, pressing down, choking me. It was gone now, but the pressure still lingered. And the spider…
The spider was still on the nightstand, and it was looking my way. It was almost like it was staring at me.
I peeled my eyes away like they’d been burned, rubbed them, and climbed out of bed. It was just a dream. A spider. It didn’t mean anything. I had dreams like this all the time. None of it meant anything.
I had work to do.
At my kitchen table, I finished the article, gave it a quick editing pass, and emailed it to my supervisor. That had gone simply enough. Then I made breakfast, which was significantly more annoying. Breaking eggs one-handed was something I’d had to practice quite a bit, but it was a skill I’d never quite managed to master, and this time I ended up with bits of eggshell in the pan.
Damn it.
The whole time my food was cooking, I tried very hard not to think about my dream, about the crushing weight on my chest, about the spider on the nightstand that wouldn’t leave. Breakfast tasted like shit—undersalted, overcooked.
My phone rang, displaying a familiar name: Erica Murray. My local supervisor at the Chronicle-Journal, one of the more well-known papers in the area. Out of all of my contracts, this one was one of the more important ones. More than others, it opened doors, kept my bills paid, and I was kept on their payroll on a semi-permanent basis, which was more than I could say for most of my jobs.
So I answered as quickly as I could. “Hello?” I said, holding my phone to my ear.
“Taylor?”
“Hey, Erica.”
“Oh, thank God your phone’s still working. I’m calling about your current assignment. The one about the social media gaffe with the, uh, internet personality?”
“Sharon Griggs? Yeah, that’s done.” I frowned. “I emailed it to you this morning, didn’t I? Is there a problem?”
A nervous laugh rang through the speaker. “Oh, you could say that. Our entire system is down, Taylor. Someone in the office clicked a bad link, and whoops—our databases, internet access, email servers, everything—it’s all locked up. I only managed to get this call out to you because we’ve talked before, and your number’s saved in my personal phone.”
“Ouch. Sounds like a mess.”
“Oh, yes. It is. We’ve got people working on it, but it could take days or weeks, so right now it’s like we’ve gone back in time thirty years. We’re faxing things to the Thunder Bay office, Taylor. That’s how bad it is. I’m calling to see if it’s at all possible for you to print out a physical copy, bring it into the Kennet office for us?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to have to go out if I didn’t have to, but this job paid for a significant portion of my expenses. I probably couldn’t survive without it. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Thanks, Taylor. You’re a lifesaver.”
She hung up, and I was left alone in the silence of the house. It took only a few minutes for me to print out my article and get dressed. I wasn’t in the habit of dressing nice—whatever clean clothes I had in my closet were usually good enough for me. In this case, it was a plain pair of jeans, a plain gray shirt, and a plain green-gray coat.
On the way out, the spider on my nightstand was nowhere to be seen.
There was something discomforting about driving, about the way the world passed around me, unerring and ephemeral. There was something I never liked about the way I was separated from it but still moving through it, watching but never being able to properly interact. It was a constant reminder that I didn’t have my powers anymore, couldn’t reach out and touch things the way I’d used to. Especially here, in Kennet, when I knew I was being watched everywhere I went.
The Kennet office for the Chronicle-Journal was about fifteen minutes away from my house, in a small block of office buildings and warehouses, flanked by rows of trees. It made for an interesting effect: these concrete structures fighting against the procession of nature broaching in from the opposite fields. Kennet was a small town, and it showed here, in the way that grass fought its way up through cracks in the pavement, undeterred and unattended. The parking lot itself was decaying; Kenent’s losing front in the war against the forces of nature. It was more potholes than pavement, and today, it was filled almost to the breaking point with cars.
The emergency had drawn a lot of people to the office, it seemed. I found a single open spot in the back, wild grass growing through a wide crack down the center. Papers folded neatly in my bag, I left my car, moving for the office’s front door.
There was a rustling behind me as I left the parking lot, and I froze.
Fuck, come on. I was being good, I was keeping my head down. I was only here because I had to be. There was no reason for anyone to come after me.
Slowly, painfully, I turned around.
There was a black cat sitting on the sidewalk, watching me with a piercing gaze. I narrowed my eyes. “You’d better not be a twelve year old girl disguised as an animal,” I said.
The cat blinked. My eyes narrowed further.
Then, casually, the cat hopped off, walking down the sidewalk away from me. I watched it until it had entirely disappeared from view, turning the corner around the far side of the building. I let out a breath, and continued toward the office.
Hopefully it was nothing.
Inside, the place was bustling with activity. The room was lively with chatter, and nobody paid me any attention as I went toward Erica’s office. She was under her desk when I came in, almost entirely obscured from view, save for the very top of her hair: a braided bun, brown, poking out over the far edge of the desktop. Over in the corner was a taller man, overweight, with short, buzzed hair, working on an internet router.
I cleared my throat. “Hey,” I said.
There was a bang, a hissed curse, and then Erica climbed up from under the desk, rubbing at the back of her head. “Taylor!” she said, putting on a smile, wincing a little. “Hey!”
“Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she said. “Just fine. Do you have the article?”
I fished it from my bag and handed it over. “Already did a first editing pass on it. There shouldn’t be any of the more obvious mistakes.”
“Fantastic,” she said, tucking it under her arm. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice. Really appreciate it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can see things are hectic around here.”
“Honestly, that’s kind of an understatement,” she said, laughing a little. She glanced over to the man in the corner of the room. “Hey, Brett, how long did you say you think it’ll take to fix all this?”
“A week, if we’re lucky,” he said gruffly. “Longer than the heat death of the universe if we’re not.”
Erica shrugged. “There you have it. Heat death of the universe. Anyway, thanks again. There’ll probably be another assignment for you next week—uh, I’ll call you about it. Keep your phone on. Oh, and you’ll probably have to come into the office in a few days to pick up your check.”
I rubbed my eyes. “The payroll system’s down, too?”
“Yep. Welcome back to the twentieth century, my friend,” Erica said, chuckling. “Everything’s got to be done by hand.”
I didn’t like it, being forced out of the house again when Kennet’s capes were watching me, but I didn’t really have a choice, did I? I needed the money. I could’ve asked them to mail it to me, but I didn’t have many other prospects to keep myself afloat while I waited for the Canadian postal service to carry a piece of paper from one side of Kenent to the other.
I sighed. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
She waved me off, and I went back to my car. I was done here. All I had to do now was go back home before one of Kennet’s capes freaked out on me.
But there, waiting beside the driver’s side door, was a girl with dark hair, wearing a black cloak and a black witch’s hat. This one didn’t have a mask, but she was obviously a cape all the same.
Goddammit. Were all the capes here little girls?
“Before you ask,” the girl said. “Yes, I was the cat from earlier.”
My hand tightened into a fist. “I wasn’t doing anything. I just work here. I told your friends already—I’m a writer. The paper’s network is down, so I had to hand in my article in print form.”
The girl nodded. “I was watching.”
“Then why are you here now?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“Why?” I snapped. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve played ball, I’ve kept my head down. I’ve been really fucking calm, considering everything that’s happened—because I have no idea what’s going on! Your friend Lucy blew up my arm and just disappeared. What the hell am I supposed to think about that?”
“We were being careful,” she said. “There’s trouble in Kennet, and we’re not sure who we can trust.”
“Yeah, I know. Lucy told me that already. Then she just left me alone! What am I supposed to do if someone comes after me? I don’t have my power, I don’t have two arms.”
“Well, that’s kinda why I’m here,” the girl said coolly. “I’m Verona.”
I sucked in air. There was no point in introducing myself. “What do you want from me?”
“To explain some things, answer some questions you probably have. But first, I need you to answer a few questions of mine.”
I narrowed my eyes. I was tired of answering questions. If anything, I was owed some questions of my own. “You want to ask me stuff here? We’re not exactly alone, you know. There are a ton of people in the office today. Anyone could walk out and see you in your Halloween costume.”
She didn’t even have a mask.
Verona shook her head. “They won’t be coming out here for a little bit.” She gestured toward the door, where there had been a piece of paper taped to the outside surface, with a bunch of geometric designs drawn on it.
My heart skipped a beat. Did this girl just put a bomb on the front door? What would happen if someone tried to open it? “The last time someone drew one of those around me, it exploded,” I hissed.
“This is different. Different circumstances, different connections being blocked. It won’t blow up—well, so long as you don’t touch it yourself. Now—what do you know about practice?”
I grit my teeth. “Only what you guys have told me. Avery told me that it’s a name for powers in this world, and some of it’s based on association.”
Verona winced a little at that, and I wasn’t sure why. “Okay. That’s…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Okay, second question: what gave you your power? Like, what actually is it?”
“Don’t you guys have them too?” They were capes, weren’t they?
She shook her head. “Humor me, please?”
Fine. Maybe capes were new to this world, and the ones here didn’t have the same framework of knowledge that I’d had back on Earth Bet. I’d been here for seven years, after all, and not once had I heard anyone mention superpowers. The chances that these underground capes would have the medical equipment to do research on themselves was slim to none. I could afford to throw them a bone or two, even if I was still pissed at them.
“I don’t really know exactly what it is,” I said. “I never got the full picture. But from what I’ve learned, it’s a part of this… alien being called Scion, who was an incredibly powerful cape. It draws power from alternate universes, connects to me through a certain part of my brain. It gets more powerful when I’m in my element. I’ve heard it called a passenger. A parasite. Someone I met who was called, uh, the Faerie Queen? She called them faeries.”
Verona frowned. “...The Faerie Queen?”
“A villain,” I said, not bothering to elaborate further. There was a moment of silence as she took it all in.
“Okay,” she said slowly, nodding along. “Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. I think Lucy was onto something… the language is a little bit different, but the core concepts are there. Capes, faeries. They’re like… Practitioners, faeries themselves, or some kind of general set of Others, or… kind of like subgroups of them.” She scratched her head. “You said there’s a part of your brain that lets you control your power?”
“Yeah. On Earth Bet—the world I’m from—we called it a Corona Pollentia. It’s a part of the brain that grows when we trigger. Lets us control our powers.”
“Trigger,” Verona mumbled under her breath. And then she raised an eyebrow. “Wait, ‘we’? You weren’t the only one with a… power?”
I shook my head. “No, there were plenty of people with powers. Thousands.” Wasn’t it the same here?
“Jeez,” Verona mumbled softly. “Friggin’...” She shook her head. “Okay. Cool. I really appreciate you answering.”
“Now could you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“I can, but…” She bit her lip. “Does it ever speak to you? Your power? Does it communicate in any way?”
I swallowed. “No,” I said, trying not to think of the nightmare I’d had last night, trying not to think of the spider on my nightstand. “Never.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“It’s never spoken to me before,” I stressed. “I’ve tried communicating with it, and there’s never been any real response.”
“What about in your dreams?”
My heart sank into my stomach. How the fuck did she know about those? She couldn’t read minds, could she? I shook my head quickly. “They’re just dreams,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Okaaaay,” she said, biting her lip. “Great. Super.” She didn’t really look like she believed me, but she didn’t belabor the point, either.
“Is that it?” I was looking forward to the end of this conversation already.
“Just one last question, okay?” She met my eyes. “How much danger are you willing to risk? Because this? Learning about this stuff? It could be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do. And it makes us responsible for you. Not just metaphorically, but, like, metaphysically. What you do will reflect on us, affect us in ways you don’t even understand yet. I need to know that you can handle that danger.”
I opened my mouth to respond, and—
“It’s not just risking death,” Verona continued. “There are things worse than death that could happen to you. I mean, really bad stuff. The kind of stuff they put in horror movies, and worse. Nightmare fuel, sometimes literally.”
Literally? What was that supposed to mean? And then, for a moment, I was struck with a thought: she was twelve—was she even supposed to be watching horror movies?
Then I shook my head. “I’m no stranger to that kind of thing,” I said, thinking back to Grey Boy, the Butcher, Bonesaw. “I’ve faced plenty of those in my day. I’ve faced monsters, plagues, and world-ending threats more times than I can count, and I’ve always lived to tell the tale. I’m not afraid of them.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you’re really sure.” If you’re really telling the truth was the part that went unsaid.
“I am.” I stood up a little straighter. “Believe me, I’ve been there, and I can handle myself. But I need to know what’s going on.”
I needed to know if my power was trying to reconnect to me. I needed to know if it was succeeding. Because if it was… I had the feeling it would be Khepri coming back, not Weaver.
Not me.
“Okay,” she repeated. “And… hey, we’re really sorry about your arm, by the way,” she said. “We’ve been talking about pooling some money together to help replace it. I don’t know how much a prosthetic costs, exactly, but—”
I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said, sighing. “You guys are kids. Don’t worry about it.” Where were they supposed to get the money from, anyway? Their parents? I didn’t think four kids’ worth of allowances would amount to much.
“Hey,” Verona said, raising an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t underestimate us just because we’re young.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I get it. I got brought into this game way too early, too. I did a lot of bad things before I even knew I should regret them.”
For a moment, Verona was silent. Then she nodded. “But if you’re lucky,” she said eventually, “there’s a chance to make amends, or do better next time. So—this is us trying to do better.” Then she stuck out a hand for me to shake. “We’ve all agreed. I’ll try to explain things to you as best as I can, and in return, I hope you can try to trust us. There’s just one condition.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What is it?”
“If you hear us out, and you agree to stay in Kennet, you have to help us. Help protect the town to the best of your ability. And I mean you, not your power. Not Khepri or the Queen Administrator. You, Taylor Hebert, writer of newspaper and magazine articles. You have to promise.”
Huh. That wasn’t a distinction I’d been expecting. “I can leave if I want to?” I asked.
“Yeah. But, uh, if you’re going to leave, I’d probably suggest you go sooner rather than later. Just to make things easier on all of us.”
I looked her up and down, this twelve year old cape who carried far more authority than any kid should have.
“Why?” I asked, frowning.
“Why what?” Verona’s hand wavered in place a little.
“Why now? You guys have been, I don’t know, suspicious of me this whole time. I haven’t done anything that would change that. So why now?”
“If I'm being honest, there are a ton of different factors. We’d be here for a while if I had to explain them all. Like, I’m still kind of terrified by your power, but I think it’s better to have you in a position where you can work with us instead of around us. I think you can really help us out. But the most important thing, I think, is that I believe you’re not here to do harm—or, not on purpose, anyway. You had the chance to do something to my dad, and you didn’t.”
Wait, what? My frown deepened. “Your dad?”
She shrugged, a bit of an unhappy look in her eyes. “The IT guy you ran into. Brett? That’s my dad.”
I blinked. Jesus. “You thought I might’ve been coming after your family,” I said.
“I was a little bit concerned, yeah.”
And she’d done nothing. It was her father, but she’d given me the benefit of the doubt, anyway. She’d just watched from a distance as I’d walked into an enclosed space with her father. Could I have made the same choice, if I’d been in her place? I didn’t think so.
Besides, a chance at answers seemed worth putting some things aside.
My lips curled into a tiny smile, and I took the handshake. Her grip was firmer than I’d have expected from a girl her size. “Okay, I’m in.”
Verona grinned. “Super. Welcome to Kennet,” she said. “Let me tell you about magic.”
.
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Date: 2023-07-16 03:15 am (UTC)Hard to tell the difference between an omninous dream and a flashback, huh? Really gets across what Taylor thinks about that part of her life though.