When I was last in the Front’s hideout, I didn’t notice the smell. Maybe that was because I was hyper-focused on feeling out the Front. But now that it’s just me and Saw Off standing around in this dingy back hallway separated from the club by only a set of double doors, waiting for someone to come down the stairs and tell us Epione’s ready, the mildew really wants to make my nostrils’ acquaintance. Sweat and alcohol permeate through the door with the steady beat of electronic beats, and I resist the urge to go peek into the dance floor.
I wonder if Kitsune, without a mask, is out there somewhere, maybe waiting in line and listening to the electronic dance music thumping through the brick wall. Or maybe she’s inside, dancing along to it. I picture her, although I have trouble imagining a face for her, moving wildly and freely, in a way that I never could. I imagine that golden hair whipping, those legs moving, that ass in a tight dress…
“Yeesh,” I say to myself, shaking my head, making sure Saw Off is minding her own business. She’s standing a good ten feet away, reading an old western she had tucked into her coat pocket.
Megajoule appears next to me, scowling and glaring at me with no mind for the people around us.
Before he can get one of his Megajoule brand barbs in, I whisper, “Come to give me another lecture or are you actually letting me back in, ya big dick?”
“Please. If I’d really shut you out, you’d know. I only pumped the brakes on your power a little. If I really wanted you to feel it, you’d be telling me what Houston summers actually feel like.”
That thought, that I’d feel temperature like a normal person, unnerves me. “What do you want?”
Megajoule sneers, crosses his arms like a shitty disapproving dad. “Some common sense.”
“I’ve got common sense.”
“Then, please, make use of it, and forget this woman you’re hung up on,” Megajoule says. He leans on my shoulder, but there is no weight to it.
I sigh and roll my eyes, trying to feel out the club in front of us with my power, but Megajoule taps my shoulder, distracting me.
“Look,” I hiss, “if you’ve got nothing kind to say then please shut the fuck up before I figure out how to bash a ghost’s teeth in.”
Megajoule shakes his head, and for a second, I detect pity from him. “I know what you felt. I won’t even lie to you and tell you she wasn’t attracted to you, too. But love wasn’t made for people like us.”
“Oh, so you’re looking out for me,” I say, trying not hard at all to hide the venom in my words. “Like you were looking out for me when you took away my power?”
“You did fine on your own,” Megajoule huffs. “We live in a dangerous world, , where every stray emotion can be physically destructive. You have to control yourself. Especially if we’re going to find Pandahead.”
“We?” I ask.
But he’s gone. At the same time, senses kick up a notch, the heat inside eases up and mellows out. My whole body relaxes as my inherited engrams come flooding back and managing my power becomes far easier. He’s let me back in.
I heave a sigh, enormously relieved to have my full strength back.
“You all good over there, homie?” Saw Off asks, looking up over the top of her book at me.
“Just wondering how much longer!” I shout up the stairs. The more bored I am the more danger there is of additional comments from Megajoule.
“Oh I’m sure that’ll hurry ‘em right along,” Saw Off says, turning the page of her book.
I stomp over to her, but by the time I reach her she’s got her book over her face like a shield. I spot her smirk behind the shitty flaking cover of a cowboy in far too little clothing. “I’m gonna knock that book right outta this dimension,” I half-joke, half-threaten.
“And I’ll fucking blow your head off, chump,” Saw Off retorts.
“Oh it’s on-” I say, reaching to grab the book as she plants a heel in my stomach. Her kick catches me off guard – doesn’t hurt, not really, just feeds my energy – but I do stumble back before pulling the book out of her hands.
Saw Off cracks her knuckles, rolls her neck a bit, then stances up like a sumo wrestler.
“Wait, no!” I shout, holding my hand out.
But Saw Off’s face says “No wait, yes!” and she rocks her head backward.
It’s not the weirdest power I’ve seen, but it’s up there. I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of Saw Off’s shotgun sneezes, but it’s not unlike the feeling of Danger Close’s bullets. I’ve been shot plenty of times, but few times have felt like this, so all encompassing and thunderous. The roar and shrapnel hit my body in a fiery trumpet, and in the aftermath I wonder if I’ve actually been shot to death.
Half-panicked, I pat myself down. Not even my clothes are scratched – I managed to absorb the impact like normal.
“What the fuck, you got a hole where your brain should be?” I hiss.
“What? You’re bulletproof, ain’t ya?” Saw Off shrugs, and I think with a cold chill that I might not have been if Megajoule hadn’t given me back his engrams.
“What if someone in the club heard that?” I shout. “What if you hit someone with shrapnel?”
Saw Off presses one ear to the door to the club while making a jack off motion with one hand. “No screams.”
I roll my eyes. We got lucky.
“Did you seriously just use a power in here?” comes Silent’s stern voice. She’s marching down the stairs at a deadly pace, her hand on the hilt of her sword. I can only describe her mood as “not so good” and the reason as “us.”
“Nothin’ happened!” Saw Off complains, snatching the book out of my hands. “Nobody got hurt.”
“You tell me if no one gets hurt when the drones pick up the Affect flux and decide to look closer at the club.” Silent walks up to me, shaking her head. “You better be on your best behavior tonight.”
“I’ll mind my own behavior you fuckin-”
Silent snaps her fingers, and whatever words were going to come out of my mouth fail. The air, the muscles, it’s all there to make my voice, but there’s still no voice. “You listen to me, the both of you. This is not a job from a liquor store owner trying to muscle out his competition or protect his shop front after hours. This is not a game. This is a mission we cannot afford to fail. Epione herself is going with us, and if she is captured, we lose an incredibly valuable asset to the Front. To the city. To the world. Am I clear?”
I stare daggers at her.
“Fine, don’t speak the rest of the night. It suits me fine,” Silent says, turning to go up the stairs.
I’m not letting her get away like that. I stamp my foot so she turns back to look at me. I cross my neck with the unmistakable hand signal of “I’m gonna fucking get you,” but… then I nod.
My voice returns. “Damn it,” I whisper. I don’t like that she can just shut off my voice like that.
“Ahhhhhh!” Saw Off shouts, and I realize she’s been shouting this whole time trying to get someone to hear her. Now that her voice is back, she stops.
“Who is she?” I ask. “Who is she that’s so important that if we lose her, the Front is doomed?” Not even just the Front… the world. She said the world.
“Her worth to us is determined by her actions, not her identity.” Silent continues climbing the stairs. “That is what the mask is truly for. It strips away the things you might gain because of your name, your beauty, who knows you by face. It strips away everything else except what is important.”
I can’t really argue with that, me, who would have very different dynamics with everyone if I took off my mask.
“I wonder if she’s hot under there,” Saw Off muses behind me.
Silent leads us up the stairs and back to the strange community center room. Epione is there, sitting at a white plastic fold-up table with Portrait, the woman who makes the black paint gateways.
“I’m very honored you could make it. We’re pleased to have you join us.” Epione rises to her feet and bows her head to us.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumble, still annoyed I’m doing this whole job for free. “So tell me what the plan is for shutting down this Affect dampener.”
“The dampener is located within PK’s corporate campus. As such, getting in would be difficult… if one didn’t know of alternative routes and have the means to say, melt through several feet of foundation.”
I chew on that in my head. “So you mean…”
“We’re going underneath!” Epione says. “You’re familiar with the maintenance tunnels they built after the collapse? We just happen to know of an entrance near a patch of black paint. It’s the safest way to approach to avoid drones.”
“Except for the fact that the tunnels have drone patrols, too, and there’s no place to escape them down there.” We’ll be crawling along the telephone and power lines like rats, stuck in the hole they buried cables in to protect them from Affected war.
It sounds stupid to me, but I guess it’s better than them all trying to hold onto me as I fly.
“The tunnels are still relatively safe. We use them all the time for moving throughout the city and supply drops. As for the drones, we’ve got you and Silent,” Epione says. “Both of your senses are sufficient to get us around any patrols.”
I think about how much work and power it’ll take to actually blast through the floor. “I guess knocking and asking politely is out of the question.”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Epione says, not laughing at my joke. “We won’t get politeness in return.”
“Not even if we ask very nicely? ‘Say, would you folks mind if we just shut down your big machine keeping everybody from developing superpowers?’” I look around the room for support. “We don’t think that’d work?”
Saw Off smirks at me and that’s about all the humor I find here. Tough crowd.
“Alright, fine. We go under,” I say. “But let me ask you this: how do you know all this shit? How do you know how to get there and where it’ll be and how we can get in?”
Epione raises a single finger to the lips of her mask. A pantomimed “hush.”
All that matters are the actions.
#
Portrait’s gateway lets us out behind a dumpster in an alley closed off by a chain-link fence on one side and three different brick buildings on the other sides. A bright yellow sign with faded black text warns us with “NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY, VIOLATORS WILL FACE PROSECUTION.” Silent lifts up a corner of the fence, revealing the sign to be all bark and no bite, and we all crawl through.
On the other side of the fence is a square manhole entrance into the tunnels. A large padlock keeps it shut. A rudimentary solution for city infrastructure, but not all the tech can be Affected. Silent crouches down next to the entrance and starts working the lock. After a few tugs, she gets it open.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Epione claps her hands and gestures for everyone to gather around like a teacher might. “Alright. Silent, you will take the front to listen for drones and mask our sound. I will take the middle. Saw Off will be behind me, and Home Run, you’ll take up the rear and watch out for followers. Are we all agreed?”
I shrug. I don’t much care where they want me. Just want to get this done.
While everyone climbs into the manhole, Saw Off smacks my arm with a playful punch. “Looks like you get to put your face in my ass.”
My cheeks flush, and I’m sure my Affect starts smoking up the alley.
“Ooooo,” she melodizes. “He gets embarrassed.” She gives me another love tap and drops into the tunnel behind Epione.
Then, I come face to face with the tunnel myself. My heart picks up the pace just a bit. It’s dark in there, barely enough room for me to fit, and crowded in with wires and panels. I can already imagine being choked in, getting stuck, not being able to keep going.
I suck in a deep breath and climb down.
The walls feel like they’re right on top of my skin. I’m used to being free, open, flying through the sky. Being cramped underneath the earth is just not my thing. The space here is barely enough for me to get on my hands and knees. And since there’s people in here with me, I have to move with them and restrain my power. I grimace, trying to get used to crawling so slowly, and thank the stars I’m wearing a mask and goggles.
All I can go by is Saw Off’s… feet, legs, and etcetera in front of me. I keep pace with her as she crawls forward. I feel entombed. Like I’m back in the lab, in our stupid bunks they locked us in at night. Like I’m about to be shoveled into a furnace.
“How’s the view?” Saw Off whispers back at me.
“Don’t be crass,” Epione says from somewhere up ahead.
That’s when I remember I’m down here with an empath. Great. Epione can read every emotion and I bet she’s currently reading the fact that I’m anxious as shit.
I lose track of time crawling after Saw Off. She leaves me alone after Epione’s remark, but I kind of wish she was still talking to me. Now all I’ve got to rely on are my thermal senses and the sound of people scraping through the tunnel ahead of me.
And… oh shit, the drone that is not far behind us. “Hey, we’re being followed.”
“How far?” Epione asks.
“About five hundred feet.” I strain to feel it, still panicky about being cramped in this place.
“We’ll wait, then. Silent, mask our sound, please. Home Run, let me know if it comes close.”
I wait, breathing heavily, listening for this drone, this new wall closing in on me, and my chest wants to collapse. It’s like the tests they did on my brothers and me back at the lab, where they’d squeeze us into a tiny room and test how much energy we could absorb from being crushed.
Suddenly, I’m pushing against the tunnel with my hands and feet, trying feebly to keep walls that aren’t moving from closing in on me. My heart isn’t just beating faster, it’s actively trying to escape from my chest. Sweat drips over my goggles. I mouth the words: “G for Good, A for Able, B for Beautiful, E for Enough.”
“Home Run,” Saw Off whispers at me. “Are you okay?” She turns, as much as she can, to look at me.
“I’m- I’m fine,” I manage. “How far are we?”
Saw Off fully turns around to face me. “Never good to tell a claustrophobic person how long they’ll be in a cramped space.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You ain’t gotta be fine with this. It don’t make you less of a man.”
“It’s not that. Just bad memories. I’ll get over it.” I don’t want these people thinking I’m unreliable in the middle of a mission.
Saw Off snorts at me.
I reach out again with my power and find the drone has left my perception, having gone down another corridor somewhere. “We’re good,” I call to Epione.
“Let’s continue,” she says back.
I steel myself and we continue the crawl. We turn a few times, but I lose track. Occasionally, Saw Off gently taps me with her foot, I guess to ground me, and it actually does help me get over how cramped this places feels.
Slowly, a new sensation creeps into the others. A vibration not exactly in the air, but felt with my Affect, in the molecules of my soul. It doesn’t shake my bones – it shakes my spirit. I reach out again with my thermal sense, this time aimed above us.
A series of maze-like hallways and cavernous spaces sprawl above us. My senses touch on the flow of water that’s cooling massive engines and technology buzzing with energy. The lights of human life move and work between all this machinery. The heat of industry and labor grind above us.
Epione calls back, “There isn’t anyone near us on this floor. Home Run, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Yup.” I’m eager to get the hell out of this hole. “Y’all might want to get a bit away.” They retreat a comfortable distance. “We ready?”
I unleash my power and burst up through the floor, wrenching a molten hole through the foundation and tile, and spraying hissing bits of concrete and metal all over the place.
As Epione promised, there’s no one in this room. Just huge waterfalls cascading down into an empty chamber lined with smooth, gray concrete. And yet, when I look out at the concrete, my body ties itself up in knots. I’m enveloped by strange wisps of Affect, of emotions so tangled I have no hope of identifying them, drifting down here like smoke on the water. We stand above a huge dark pool, and I can’t see the bottom, and it feels like I’m looking into a black hole. Into the Fear.
“Don’t look very long at it,” Epione warns, coming up behind me, her boots clanking on the metal grating of the walkway. “The making of PK technology involves a lot of cast off that can be quite dangerous. Much like the Fear around us, only more concentrated.”
I blink and look away from it. “How do you know that?”
Infuriatingly, she doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look back as she strides down the walkway. “There’s some personnel in the facility,” she calls back. “But not many. We should be fine if we avoid them. They monitor using Affect sensors rather than cameras, and I’ll protect us from that. I’ve honed my ability to dampen Affect quite a bit, such that I can extend it to others. You won’t find many empaths capable of that feat.”
Silent slides past me, looking me over from behind her visor. “Just follow her. She’ll keep us from getting caught.”
“I need a fucking explanation,” I growl at her. “I’m not like you, I can’t just trust blindly. Because as much as it’d suck if she got caught, it’d suck a lot more if I did.”
Silent stops, and her Affect blooms at first with indignation, but then curiosity. What could I mean by that, I bet she’s wondering. But then it fades and she snorts dismissively. “Probably not.”
“C’mon, Home Run.” Saw Off pushes into my back. “If anybody tries to kidnap you, they’ll have to go through me.”
“What are you gonna do if somebody has the power to kidnap me?” I sneer at her. She can blast somebody with her shotgun sneeze… but what would that do against Krater, or Bedevil, or hell, even Pandahead? I don’t know anything about his power yet.
“Enough ammunition and eventually you’ll blow someone’s head off.”
I’m living proof that’s not true, but all I want to do is roll my eyes and follow Epione.
#
We sneak through the belly of the PK corporate facility, leaving the water chamber behind us and heading vaguely upwards through tight, dark hallways encased entirely in stone. Houston is swampland, yet somehow PK has been able to build multiple basement levels, probably with someone’s power. The place smells stone-sterile, not steel-sterile, like no bacteria could ever hope to grow here in the first place rather than being bleached away. Buzzing bulbs give off dim, white light.
Between my power, Silent’s, and Epione’s, we’re able to avoid the guards and workers. It makes it feel a bit surreal, not seeing anyone, but knowing they exist because I can feel their heat signatures moving around us. The facility feels abandoned since we’re able to maneuver around the living so well, and the few close calls we have are almost like nightmares, ominous warnings of footsteps clanking down the empty halls.
It’s like I’m walking around ghosts.
The hallways converge on a point locked behind double doors. Through the glass windows I see a more traditional facility, with linoleum floors, squat ceilings, harsh fluorescent lights. Dozens of doors wait for us in there, filled with so many people. “I’ll keep us quiet,” Silent says, drawing her rapier. “But be prepared in case we’re spotted.”
Epione waves her hand in front of an access panel off to the left, and something clicks into place. She opens the door. Seeing my raised eyebrows, she says, “PK uses Affect tech in many places. Being an empath makes me the perfect skeleton key.”
I glance through a random door as we pass by, catching a glimpse of the scientists inside. Standing on an assembly line, they work in steel grey uniforms with rainbow logos on the chest, almost like hazard suits but less bulky, and they wear slim golden backpacks that look almost like beetles clinging to their shoulders. A hovering device that looks like four blank-featured faces mashed together hums over their shoulders.
“What are they doing?” I ask Epione, since she apparently knows so much of the inner workings of PK Resonance.
“Affect tech construction,” she says.
“Since you know so much, how does PK tech work? Isn’t Affect gear tied to the engineer that made it?” I ask.
“PK Resonance learned much from Carnality’s death. And their research is based off research from the Vanguard’s own Lilac facility. In fact, Park Dae-seong…”
Everything in me tenses, all of my cells go on full alert. The mention of that name and Lilac in the same sentence unlocks a memory in me.
#
Park Dae-seong, a severe man with a blade of a smile, stands before a large mahogany desk with one hand behind his back and the other gesturing proudly at an array of strange box-shaped machines with glowing, hissing panels. He’s dressed in an Old States business suit – a charcoal gray jacket with matching slacks and a finely hatch-patterned blue tie. Every single edge of him is sharp.
And judging by the plaid button-up , olive slacks, and familiar horseshoe of silver hair, the man behind the desk is Paul, but I can’t see his expression from my vantage point at the back of the office. I’m hiding, watching from the closet Paul shooed me into when Park Dae-seong entered the office.
As Park Dae-seong waves his hand, the boxes he passes over make music and change colors, beeping out an alien song. The panels shift and move. “Isn’t it incredible?” Park Dae-seong asks, his eyes darting back and forth between Paul and the machines. When he sees Paul looking unexcited, he asks, “Now, why the glum face? This is it! This is the one-mind-in-many! This is going to change Affect technology forever. It’s going to allow for true industry again, on a scale we’ve never seen.”
The tired man behind the desk must be half a decade younger than he is now, but he’s never looked more feeble than this moment. He nods, but I can’t see his face, I can’t know what expression he’s making. Just that he trembles as he rises. “No, this is excellent, Dae-seong, it really is.”
“I’m sure the Vanguard’s going to be very interested in this, very interested indeed,” Park Dae-seong continues. “It will revolutionize… well, everything from armor for their capes to phones and Internet again. The things we thought were lost! And the best of all – the best of all, Paul, is that this can outlast the death of its engineer! The mind can be preserved. The ghost in the machine, Paul! We’ve made it. We’ve really… really…” and then he trails off, seeing Paul’s face once more. “Paul, really, what’s wrong? Isn’t this it?”
Paul doesn’t answer, he only nods.
“This isn’t it, is it?” Park Dae-song asks, his eyes going wide. He’s not despairing, he’s… he’s envisioning something. “For me, this is all I’ve ever worked toward, but I’m just handing you a baton, aren’t I?”
“That’s beyond your pay grade,” Paul says. “But I have a feeling your work on this is just beginning.”
#
“Earth to Home Run!” Saw Off says, snapping her fingers in my face. “Where the heck did you go?”
I shake my head, feeling sick from that sudden memory. The part that shakes me up is not just that I’ve seen this Park Dae-seong before… it’s that Paul, who has always told me that he was just a minor worker at Lilac, just a lab assistant or janitor or whatever I assumed, seemed to be in some kind of position of authority. He was responsible for things. He had a desk there.
I can’t even catch a breath. If I can trust this flash of unlocked memory, Paul was much higher up at Lilac than he’s led me to believe.
“Helllooooooooo,” Saw Off says again, before looking back at Epione and Silent, who watch us with no small amount of trepidation. “Are you good, my dude?”
I nod, my wits suddenly rushing back to me. “Get out of my face.” Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe it’s someone else I remember, not Paul. I’d been watching whoever it was from behind their back, after all. Maybe my brain is just subbing Paul into this memory.
“Jeez, just trying to make sure you’re okay,” Saw Off says, bristling at my attitude. She huffs and follows the others, and I stalk behind her, my head down, bewilderment and dread slowly alchemizing into fury. Fury that this place is tied to Lilac, to my brothers, to me. Fury I’ve never realized it before this. Why can’t I rely on my memories? Why is it they only seem to come at the most random of moments?
I’m so stuck in my head that I don’t realize it when we enter the dampener chamber, until I bump into Saw Off’s back. She’s looking up, reaching back for me to try and steady herself. I follow her gaze upward.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Huge steel cables and engines piece together in ways I don’t recognize, like the intestines of some god machine feeding off steam and electricity. Entire sections churn and groan, undulate and squirm, and I get the feeling I’m staring at something alive, not mechanical. This almost-organism has ten distinct pods all in a row down the center of the room, pulsing with alien emotions. I can’t tell if they’re good or bad, just that they exist and they are powerful. Here at the heart of it, my power feels so far away from me that I have to reach deep to touch it. I will some heat into my hands – it’s the same as it ever was, it flows at my call. But it all feels sluggish, like when Megajoule took his engrams away.
“Holy shit, it’s real,” I whisper.
“Any guards down the hall?” Epione asks Silent.
Silent listens, and says, “Nope, but there’s a lady having an anxiety attack behind one of those pods.”
Epione nods and strides over there, beckoning us to follow. “We should expect that we’ve triggered an alarm, despite my abilities. PK Security will be here soon and the capes won’t be far behind them, so we need to hurry. Home Run, how long do you think you’ll need to melt this machine into unusable slag?”
I feel at the machine with my power. It’s thick metal, but I’ve got more than enough power in me to destroy all of these pods now that Megajoule turned the faucet back on. The only issue is that I’d kill just about everyone else in the room while I do it. “Not long, if you’re willing to wait outside.”
The woman having the anxiety attack is in the corner of the room, next to a series of panels and computers, holding up her ID card like a cross at Silent. Silent swats the card out of her hand, points her sword at the lady, and merely gestures to the door. The woman takes the opportunity to stumble out of danger. “Don’t take too long, ladies,” Silent says, stepping out behind the woman.
Epione nods to me and gestures for Saw Off to follow her. “We’ll give you space to produce as much heat as you need. Be quick, we’ll need to leave very soon.”
I feel out the pillar with my power, now that I’m closer, but I can’t get a clear picture. Almost like when I’m interacting with a PK dampener cuff, but instead of my power fizzling out completely, this just seems to make it hazy.
Still, something is very wrong with the vague picture I get. I almost can’t believe it, but I’m seeing… the barest hint of limbs and a face.
I place my hands on the machineto try and get a clearer image of the heat moving through it.
The structure clarifies. Current runs through a mass of wires, giving off heat, each thread revealing itself to me. These wires connect to nodes on a human body buried beneath the plates.
Their heart beats.
There is a living, breathing person inside this machine.