Eric killed the sirens but left the lights going. He had parked the cruiser long ways across the road, blocking it off. He was positioned well ahead of the anomaly, at the next major intersection.

Other people, if any showed up, could easily detour to another route. Berkeley had been feeling like a ghost town lately though. Most people worked from home if they were working at all.

Other police cars would be arriving soon on the other roadways leading up to this point. The area would be completely closed off until the Feds could arrive.

He checked that his mask was on properly, tightening the straps until it was nice and snug everywhere. Until this very moment he had only worn it out of caution and because it was the new safety policy. One more piece of PPE to add to the kit.

Only now would he actually be putting it to the test. There had been minor anomalies of course but unless you touched one of those, or stood within it, it wasn't going to do shit. That was what his sister had told him anyway.

“Did I tell you my sister was a biophysicist? That she’s actually studying these things?” Eric asked Rick.

“No.” Rick said.

Rick’s voice was raspy but contradictingly still quite loud. He was not one for idle conversation. Eric often felt that Rick was doing whatever he could to bring any conversation to its end. His words were chess moves designed to end things in as few moves as possible.

“Yeah, she told me getting exposed to these things is a little like getting exposed to radiation. A little from the little ones won’t do much of anything. The smaller ones are like an x-ray at the dentist or something.” Eric repeated what Olivia had told him.

“The big ones though, that’s like getting a lot of radiation. It’s not radiation, obviously, it's just kinda like that. You get a big enough dose and you’re fucked.”

Rick turned toward him like he was going to say something. He just sat there, unreadable with his mask on. Just when Eric opened his mouth to keep talking, Rick spoke up.

“Seems like we’re good to get out, no sentient anomalies.”

He opened his door before Eric could reply.

Eric got out of his own side of the car. He was on the same side of the car as the anomaly.

He started taking in the scene. The anomaly hung in the air. He could tell that light shone out of it, but it was nearly invisible through the filter of the mask. All he could register was a faint shimmering on the pavement, the van, and the nearby people.

There were four people on their knees facing the anomaly. They looked like door to door church missionaries. That registered as a weird fact to Eric. He had grown up in Berkeley; you didn’t get those types around here that often.

They looked like they were on death’s door to Eric. They were bleeding from their still open eyes. The blood had run down their cheeks and then their necks. It was soaked into the front of their white collars. The blood loss had turned their skin nearly as pale white as the unstained portions of their shirts.

A fifth individual was laid out on the sidewalk, face down. White male about six feet tall, average build. He had gotten a little further away than those four church people.

Based on their postures it seemed like the missionaries had simply given up and said their prayers. Eric couldn’t blame them. It hadn’t worked out for the other guy in any case.

Any of them might still have a pulse, but they were all surely dead in the long run. That was an anomaly 9. No one had as of yet survived direct exposure to an anomaly 9. Not in any meaningful sense of the word survived.

The training had specifically mentioned not to call these people zombies. People suffering from permanently reduced capacity was the approved terminology. This was probably a more accurate title, however tempting it was to call them zombies. They seemed more like far gone drug addicts than horror movie fodder.

Rick leaned back into the cruiser and came out with his M4 tactical shotgun. It was loaded with less than lethal ammo; bean bags. In the same training where they had been told not to use the ‘Z word’ they had been told that tasers were not an effective solution to subdue those with permanently reduced capacity.

Erick reached back in and grabbed his own M4 from its rack. He chambered a shell.

“We hold position ‘til AROG shows up, right?” Erick asked Rick.

Rick shook his head but said “Yeah… be ready though.”

Rick shouldered his M4 but kept it pointed down at the street. Erick did the same. He waited and he watched.

—

Grant was in the black void of his unconsciousness. Instead of dreaming, he was just in a black space. There was nothing here except for him, and it.

It was behind him. He had no body here, he just was, and just perceived. Given time to think he might say that he was perceiving this place only in his mind’s eye. He did not have time to think so eloquently. His mind raced with panic because he knew that thing was in here with him, where it had no right to be.

The void changed in an instant. He found himself in his childhood kitchen. He was in a well worn memory, something he thought of almost every time he put a pot on the stove. It calmed him, though he realized that it was a deliberate effort to do so.

The memory was from when he was young, five years old. He had insisted that he help his mother cook something. Grant had become aware that when he ‘helped’ this was his mother going out of her way to find something he could do, something easy.

He had explained that he wanted to do something real, something harder than throwing away the trash or getting out ingredients. She gave him a good hard look, holding him up to more scrutiny than he was used to. He hadn’t wavered and she had smiled and nodded.

“Okay.” She said,

He heard her voice now, coming from right behind him. He, in his adult body, his current body was standing in front of their stove as he had then. Of course, the step ladder he had needed back then was not there now.

He noticed a few other differences too. The pot on the stove was not filled with cream and milk. Instead it was filled with blood. Eric could even smell it, the sharp metallic tang hitting his nostrils.

Along with that he noticed that the burner underneath was not orange but the shimmering blue green of the anomalies. He tried to turn away but it felt like he was caught in a steel vise.

“It’s really important you watch what you’re doing okay?” his mother’s voice asked.

She had not said exactly that at the time. This was a counterfeit. Something was playing with his memories. He wondered if it was trying to trick him somehow.

“We need to get the eggs ready now. When you make custard you need to temper the eggs. If we don’t temper the mixture, it’ll split, and we don’t want that.”

She had actually said something like that, maybe exactly that. Grant didn’t remember the exact words. The process was simple though. Instead of adding eggs directly to the hot pot, you added some of the hot mixture into the eggs first.

Tempering the eggs in this way prevented temperature shock and the resultant ‘splitting’ of the materials. If they split, they would never properly combine. Grant, seeing the blood, wondered what they were going to combine.

A tentacle slipped forward from behind him; from where he could not turn his head to see. Coiled within it was a carton of eggs. Rather than being made out of cardboard the carton looked like it was made out of rough jade.

The tentacle itself was very similar to that of an octopus, complete with suction cups. Rather than the bright orange, or purple of an octopus though, it was gray. A thin coating of transparent slime coated it. It was just viscous enough to sag in hanging strands here and there, but not enough to actually drop off.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The tentacle set the jade carton down on the counter. The jade clacked gently as it touched the tile countertop surface. As the tentacle slid away back behind him it left behind a residue on the carton and the counter.

“Okay, pick out the eggs, we need three to create your base formation.” His mother’s voice again.

This she had not said.

He stared at the carton.

“Honey… I thought you wanted to help. If we don’t do this quickly, it’s going to boil over.” It said,

The voice of his mother was deepening, becoming something else. There was the slightest hint of an echo that he could hear.

“Look, it’s boiling, we can’t turn down the heat, you didn’t get far enough away.” The voice said.

A tentacle appeared on his right and pointed at the simmering pot. It was indeed boiling more than it had been. The blood threatened to dance over the top of the pit and drip down the sides. It was telling him that he was going to die, he realized. He had not gotten far enough away from the anomaly.

The tentacle disappeared behind him again. He tried once more to look behind him. He did not really want to see but he couldn’t avoid trying. Thankfully, he was not able to turn around.

Instead of the steel vise sensation, something new happened. He felt a hand grab hold of his mind. It was not just behind him it was within him now. Its thoughts were sliding into his like a million little fingers sliding into a glove.

His arm moved not of his own accord and took the lid off the carton of eggs. It fell to the floor as he looked inside. Within were eighteen eggs. Each one was perfectly spherical. As he looked at them a few of them blinked open and shut in rapid succession.

Not eggs, but eyes. Maybe they were both somehow he thought. They began to not only blink but to remain open. They stared at him.

As each one opened he began to understand. They imparted knowledge into him. He felt the hand of the Other withdraw from his mind. It somehow felt worse leaving than it did going in.

“Okay, pick out the eggs, we need three to create your base formation.” It repeated itself, sounding like his mother again.

Each of these eggs, each of these eyes was power. It was something from beyond. He needed them not to die. He was the boiling pot. He looked into those eighteen eyes, they stared back implacably.

He glanced at the pot. The blood was rising, bubbling more and more vigorously. Little spots of gray began to become visible sporadically through the churning liquid.

They all represented different means to the end. A curated selection prepared for him by… this thing that had come into his mind. The Other, that was his name for it he realized.

Grant knew that without help of some kind, which this might be, he would die or be as good as dead. No one had survived an anomaly 9 without becoming a vegetable of some sort. He asked himself now; is that the worst outcome?

The Other seemed to want to help him with this, but was this something he wanted. To join with something from beyond?

He felt the lightest touch of the Other on his mind. It urged him forward. Grant knew it was capable of forcing him. That it could force and did not, helped him make up his mind.

He grabbed the top left one. He needed to get one in the pot now. He had wasted too much time already.

A bowl had appeared on the counter. It was made from the same rough jade as the carton. He took that egg from the carton and cracked it into a bowl on the counter. The ‘white’ of the egg was glossy black, the yolk was a pulsing translucent silvery gray orb.

A ladle now sat in the pot. He pulled it out and gently poured a small bit over the egg in the bowl. The egg swelled some. It was ready now. He scooped it into the ladle and dropped it into the pot.

The contents cooled marginally. They stopped threatening to boil over. He felt the egg/eye fuse with his being. The hand of the Other taking control of his mind had felt invasive like Grant imagined a prostate exam might.

This went far deeper but did not feel like a violation. It was as if he had drunk a cooling medicine. It was suffusing his whole body. It eased pain he hadn’t realized he had been feeling.

He felt it complete its initial circuit of his body. It was part of him now. It reached into his mind, not as the Other had, but gently perusing the contents. It wanted to make itself understood. It alighted on something, a framework, a translation of its purpose that Grant could understand.

It appeared in front of him like a skill description from a video game or tabletop RPG. The color of the window was a pale imitation of the glowing light characteristic of the anomalies.

Elder Flesh

Massively increased Regeneration.

Passive: When you suffer damage, you will heal equal to that damage over a short period of time (requires abundant raw material).

Rejoice in your remaking!

“Good, see, when we temper the mixture it doesn’t split.” his mother’s voice again.

That title, Elder Flesh, kinda had a creepy vibe to it Grant thought. Massively increased regeneration seemed like a good thing. The flavor text added at the end, ‘Rejoice in your remaking!’, swung it back towards worrying. He tried not to think about it as he looked at the rest of the egg eyes.

He began to notice hints of what they were as he looked at them and they back at him. Little things, images from his past colored each of them. Looking at one he saw a toy he had had as a child, Professor Oozblach’s Chemistry Kit.

He thought he’d avoid that one.

Another drew on a childhood memory of finding a spider. It was a memorable moment to him because he had first seen the web, coated with morning dew. Then he spotted the spider at the center wrapping silk around some recent prey.

It was somewhat scary to the young Grant but it was also beautiful. He knew that he could crush the spider but he did not want to. It was just trying to survive and its web was glistening and beautiful. The first time he had felt such conflicting emotions together.

Also a pass on that one. The egg eye had chosen his one positive memory of spiders, but in general he didn’t like them.

He paused on one that reminded him of the power of the tides. It drew on many memories of being at various beaches listening to the pounding surf, the moon high in the sky. Ultimately that was too vague though. Well.. He’d put that one into the maybe pile.

The next drew on memories of Grant sitting with his brother, testing if they had a psychic link. They had taken turns trying to guess what the other was thinking. They had failed almost every time.

The memory shifted as he considered this egg eye though. He could see in his memory an altered version of that real event from his childhood; a version in which they had gotten every answer right. This egg eye contained the power of telepathy.

He put that at the top of his mental pile. Of course he was going to look through the rest of them first, just to be safe, but Telepathy seemed like something he would really really want.

After perusing the rest, he found that nothing beat telepathy and whatever the tides thing was. Most were just too creepy and alien for Grant. For instance one promised the power of becoming a hive mind organism; his mind had flickered with images of a beehive composed of thousands of little Grants. Grant had no doubt that that would make him very powerful and resilient, but it was a fundamental change to his being. Grant couldn’t handle that.

Some offered fire, ice, and lighting powers respectively. Those did pass the creepy test and sounded quite powerful too. In the end though, Grant was worried about what collateral damage he might wreak if he started tooling around with such powerful forces of energy.

The pot began to bubble a little more aggressively. The Other was trying to remind him that time was a concern, even if this new Elder Flesh had ameliorated the situation somewhat.

Grant took the telepathy egg and cracked it into the bowl. This one was all one color, deepest violet. He ladled some blood from the pot over it. It swelled just like the other had. He dropped it into the pot.

Immediately he delta new sense. This was wildly disorientating even if it only ‘heard’ silence. He could feel his mind reaching out into the world though, almost as if it was seeking something out. Behind him, where the Other was, there was a hint of something but he could tell it was blocking him off in some way.

Another window appeared for him.

Resonant Mind

Increased Focus and Perception.

Skill: Create, stabilize, or destroy resonant links with other minds.

Harken ye to the deeper song!

“Okay, good job honey! Mommy is going to finish now though.” His mother’s voice came from the Other.

Grant remembered that she had actually said that. After he had done two she had decided that was enough. She had been visibly afraid he was going to burn himself during the first two. She couldn’t take it anymore, no matter how earnestly he wanted to help.

It seemed that the Other had a different motivation though. The carton disappeared. Everything did, except for the bowl, the flame, and the simmering pot.

Grant was once again bodiless in this place. From behind him, or behind his field of vision, came the tentacle of the other once again. Within its grasp was a final eye egg. This one was shining blue green light every bit as bright as the flame under the pot.

The Other cracked the egg eye open above the bowl. The white was similar to an actual uncooked egg white, and also similar to the goo coating the tentacle. The yolk though was radiant with the blue green light. Grant would have looked away if it were possible. He would have closed his eyes if it were possible. He could not in this place though.

Instead he just watched it drop into the bowl. He watched helplessly as his blood was mixed into this thing.. The bowl lifted into the space above the pot and tipped over and out into it.

Just as before a rush of new feelings came over him. New strange sensations beset his mind. As the understanding wormed its way into his mind he screamed out in anguish.

Time seemed to halt. A window appeared. He faded away into true unconsciousness.

Harbinger of the Beyond

Increased Focus

Passive: Convert the emanations of the beyond into fruitful gifts.

Skill: Create, stabilize, or destroy pathways into the beyond.

The seed is planted...