Unfold

It was shocking how much of a relief it was to have Daniel back.

Trapper hadn’t shown itself for an hour, and Nemuleki was still AWOL. But Tasser didn’t act worried about it when I tried to bring it up, so I had to trust their judgement.

The other Casti had carried Tasser’s bolt-rifle, maybe they were making their own ambush for Trapper.

That probably meant we were the bait, but with Daniel active again, that prospect was a little less daunting that it otherwise would have been.

< That’s really not a good thing. > Daniel said. < Just because I’m back, it should still be plenty daunting. You might die. >

I said.

It was still scary. Any second now, I felt like I might just curl up in a ball and start shaking. But I wouldn’t ignore the fact that I’d been feeling worse while he was gone. I’d take any improvement, however small.

The fact that I was only half joking surprised me. I really had done a one-eighty about him hanging around in my head, hadn’t I? It hadn’t been that long ago I was doing my best to pretend he wasn’t there.

I told him.

< I’d be disappointed if you didn’t share .>

< And you’re a bit aggravated on—>

< My sympathies.> Daniel said, < One liners just aren’t the same if no one else can appreciate them.>

My nerves were still wound tighter than a suspension bridge cable, but being able to trade talk with Daniel let me decompress by the tiniest fraction. Anything to distract me from the alien beast that wanted to kill me.

But even then, we were skirting around the elephant in the room. Or rather, the one in my brain.

< Spit it out. It’s like you’re about to pop.>

< Enumi-what? >

I said,

The pages of the journal started turning in the corner of my head where I was keeping them.

< Okay, alien radar, go on? >

< You were about to talk about the radar.>

<…>

< Sorry, it’s a bit hard to put things together from the time I’m gone. Help me out. You talked to me?>

Daniel hadn’t elected to show up in front of me, but I was unmistakably aware of him rolling his eyes at the phrase ‘in a dream’.

I said,

< Sorry, sorry. You’re right. What did dream me say?>

< …No. >

I thought, turning my imagination toward the mirror that Daniel had used in the dream. I hadn’t made that. That had been all him.

The sequence of sensations was bizarre, but I could tell that he could tell it was his own work. It was like invisible dominos tipping over in my brain and I was only aware of the last one falling over, giving me some undeniable information.

< Shit.> Daniel said, < Alright, I wish I’d had more time, but you need to know before it’s too late. >

I said. He was talking himself into it, but I wasn’t sure I had the patience.

< I’m dying.>

He’d mentioned something as much in the dream, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still shocked me. He was so blasé about it.

I snapped.

< Yeah. I’m missing time, and not just the hours I disappear. I remember having the memories, but I can’t recall how we got out of the cell. We were in it. You had an idea. And then the next thing I remember, we were running from Nai.>

I remembered,

< I realized pretty quickly that we’re not equals in your head. The information exchange is skewed toward you. >

< That’s because you don’t need to hold your thinking together. You can let your surface thoughts bubble over, but I have to try and keep what I’m thinking in. Otherwise it feels like I’m handing away little pieces of myself. Those moments when you get a glimpse into what I’m thinking? It feels like the veins in my brain are being slowly pulled out through my eyes.>

< Yeah. I remember telling you my parents’ names, and an hour later I couldn’t remember them.>

I supplied.

<…Thanks.>

< How many weeks were we on that spaceship, and you never asked? >

< It’s on my ID. You grabbed it on the station along with all the rest .>

I did have Daniel’s ID, but the California driver’s permit was badly scorched. None of the personal information was legible. Only part of the picture remained untouched.

I guessed.

< …No. >

My gut wrenched. I’d been so worried about losing my mind. Even after all I’d been through, even with an impossible person stuck in my head, I didn’t really think about how much worse it could be.

I gave him a second to compose himself.

< Whatever feelings or attitudes you aren’t using. I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first, but every time you got scared, I found it was a bit easier to be calm and logical. But the longer this drags on, the more acclimated you’re getting to the fear and stress. It’s not so easy to crib the mental resources you aren’t using.>

It should have been disturbing to learn that he was leeching my thoughts like this. He’d kept it a secret at least partially because he worried about what I might do.

But the truth was I didn’t blame him.

It was a matter of degrees.

I knew how on edge I was. I was worn down to the point where I was having trouble remembering how it felt to not worry about all this. I hadn’t forgotten the moment where Daniel had given me my wake-up call. It would be too easy, too convenient, to think of Daniel as just a tagalong.

The truth was he experienced everything I did, and then some.

< You’re a real hypocrite you know?>

< I dunno. Maybe.>

< I guess now I have a better idea of how shitty you felt about it. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, it’s just…>

< I don’t know, man. I just feel stupid for not saying anything.>

I said.

< Alright fine. I’ll lay off myself, but only to get you to do the same. Deal?>

< No, but I suppose that is the situation we find ourselves in. >

< We don’t .> Daniel snorted.

< I can only begin to put it into words Caleb, but I do understand what’s happening to me. It’s inevitable. >

< I know. If I thought it was possible, I’d say so.> He said, his words quiet, < But… gah. I’m trying to put it into words.>

I got a flash of an image from him. A figure stretching its arms out from an incomprehensible tangle of metal, and with each movement it made, the metal shifted and tightened inward.

< It’s like I’m stuck in the prongs of an egg beater. The more I try to slip out, the more it turns and tears at me. Even just doing nothing, it’s still grinding into me, taking little bits and pieces.>

He checked the mirror again and my entire nervous system recoiled a moment later. Confusion didn’t have a sound. Neither did bewilderment. But Daniel’s psyche bellowed both of them for the split second that he looked at the thing my mind had built.

< What in the ever-loving hell is that?> he hissed.

I said honestly.

< I concur. One look and it felt like it would chew me up. >

< No. I don’t think so. It’s not alive enough to be hostile. It’s… well it’s like a machine—just doing what it was built to. But I think that only means it’ll keep tearing into me. Zero hesitation.>

Good Lord. He was terrified of this thing.

I could feel the shift in my own mind. He wasn’t even trying to, but he was using my own capacity to be afraid. The worse he felt, the calmer I got. My blood ran cold.

Feeling my own fear ebb while his grew? It was like realizing there was shifting sand under my feet, that where I stood, how I looked at the world, was not… reliable.

It called me back to the moment when I’d first awoken in front of the Vorak, when I’d shrunken up and cowered at the prospect of discriminating the outlandish truth from my genuine delusions. But I wasn’t afraid now. Because Daniel was afraid.

I should have been afraid. Now, more than ever before.

Ignorance had been terrifying, but the beginnings of understanding were proving to be so much worse than mere terror.

It took Daniel several long quiet minutes to collect himself.

< Sorry. > Daniel said. He didn’t have lungs, but his tone gave the mental impression of panting from exertion. < I don’t—I don’t know what happened. >

I said.

Except Tasser was helping Nai to its feet.

< I can shake it off. >

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Nai was awake, but its presence was diminished. If our current hypothesis was that I was detecting aliens that were ready to create things, Nai wouldn’t be able to muster more than a few sparks, much less any of the firestorms that made the alien so disturbing.

Tasser gave me a cursory look and saw that I was ready to move.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it had started, but at some point during our trek over the mountain we’d settled into a predictable rhythm. We had moved together. Because, if we hadn’t, we would have died.

Tasser took us out from the spartan storage room and through a large concrete walled room filled with heavy metal piping and machinery. If this was a mine, this could be where the ore was processed.

Daniel warned.

We both sensed it. Trapper was fabricating something on the other end of the room. Was it getting bolder? I tapped Tasser’s shoulder and aimed a silent figure at Trapper’s location.

“Tasser!” I shouted, reversing direction and bolting away from the wall. The Casti took one look at me and followed. Nai was a second slower, but Tasser pulled it along with us. We moved behind some of the larger machinery near the door, and the rest of the room exploded a few steps short of the door.

Daniel’s warning had saved our lives. Trapper’s bombs turned the whole wall into concrete pulp. The shrapnel would have caught all three of us.

Tasser only held still for a few moments. My ears were still ringing when they pulled Nai down a side corridor. I came around the corner and caught a glance of Trapper ducking around the corner.

Tasser squeezed a few shots at it, but they were a fraction of a second too late.

It went against common sense, but Tasser barreled onward, though not chasing Trapper. The Casti didn’t seem as worried about running over any hidden traps.

I started to call out a warning when they rounded a corner and apparently didn’t see the tripwire. Except Tasser’s boot snapped the wire back and absolutely nothing happened.

I’d figured out that Trapper was trying to delay us, but I hadn’t realized it was using fake devices.

Daniel realized.

When I made the flashbang, it couldn’t weigh more than a few grams before detonation. But even so, it took more energy to create than the inert, more massive, chunks we’d made previously. The energy for the explosions had to be supplied on the front end, it had to be invested when the object was made physical.

I replied.

Some of my earlier apprehension about how the Enumius powers disagreed with science started to evaporate. Just like Daniel being stuck in my head, there were physical limits to the creations.

Trapper couldn’t make an unlimited number of explosives. It might not even be able to make more than one. Whatever the number, if it wanted to get really destructive it had to pay the energy costs.

There was solid chance it was running because it needed to recover the energy it had invested into its bomb.

I had.

Daniel said,

I said.

I said,

<…You think Trapper’s ability betrays its own shortcoming: that it’s actually weak in direct physical confrontation. > Daniel followed, < But if that’s the case, why was it willing to attack Tasser and Nai, one against two?>

I thought.

I gave a shudder. I could almost feel a new idea occur to Daniel. That was disturbing.

That was a good point. The machinery of the trap discs had to be at least as intricate as any automatic pistol. And there was no way it took more energy to create a gun and bullets than it did the trap-deployer discs.

I didn’t have a good answer.

Instead of chasing the Vorak, Tasser beckoned us back through the machine room Trapper had destroyed. Energy costs weren’t the only drawback of Trapper’s explosives. No mechanism could survive a blast like that. Wherever Trapper chose to deploy its high energy explosives, it would be safe to move through that area after the blast cleared.

We cleared the room and exited the building out into the snow again. I’d fallen underground inside the second, but climbed up from where it connected to the third structure in the complex.

From here though, a fifth building was visible tucked behind the fourth and tallest one. The large doors that dominated the long side of the single-story building gave it an appearance like a short barn, or maybe a vehicle garage.

I heard a twang come from up high and Tasser let out a shout.

There was an arrow-shaft sticking out from the back of their arm. I dimly saw how Tasser was holding their arm over their head, but Daniel helped me out first.

Sure enough, from the top of the building we’d just emerged from, Trapper stood holding a slim but long crossbow. It was already aiming another shot when Tasser shoved Nai aside and fired a few rounds.

Once again, the otter didn’t stick around. It was getting more aggressive. It had to. We’d figured out the tripwires were fake, at least some of them.

Daniel warned,

Tasser pushed through the snow toward the short garage building with Nai following close behind. I took up the rear casting my attention anywhere I thought Trapper might appear.

We made it to the building where a side door popped open and Nemuleki beckoned us inside.

So this is where they’d disappeared to.

The inside of the building confirmed one of my guesses. It was a garage. Two large blocky vehicles, almost like industrial versions of hippie vans, sat before two of the doors, ready to roll away.

Or… they would have been ready, if not for the gaping holes melted through what was probably the engine. It occurred to me that these vehicles might have been the primary reason we’d tried to reach this mining facility.

Stalker sabotaging our first set of wheels was what had prompted us to hike over a mountain. It was obvious now; we’d never be able to get away on foot. This had always been about securing new transportation.

And Trapper had melted those hopes into slag.

Nemuleki and Tasser traded conversation while Tasser stood at the door, pistol at the ready in case Trapper came at us directly.

I saw that Nemuleki had broken open several metal cabinets and strewn tools near one of the vehicles. They must have been trying to see if one of the heavy vans could be made operable. Evidently the prognosis was bad.

After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Nemuleki and Tasser traded positions and weapons to give Tasser a chance to pull the arrow out of its arm.

Daniel corrected.

Daniel corrected.

I followed his logic,

He said.

I could sympathize. Under less fraught circumstances, this would have ranked as one of the coolest conversations of my life. But the theory he and I were covering wasn’t very helpful unless it yielded some information that might improve our chances.

I surveyed the garage too, trying to force the gears in my brain to turn. There had to be something. Some piece of information that could help us…

It was a garage big enough for three vehicles, but there were only two. I almost got excited at the prospect of another van that might have been spared Trapper’s sabotage, but a closer look at the garage’s floor showed that to be unrealistic.

The spaces the two vans occupied had dust and wear from the tires rolling over the floor time and time again. The third space was free of such wear and the odd large caddy jutted out into the space a bit, enough to convince me the third space was typically empty.

Two cars, both dead.

I asked nobody.

Daniel said.

This was exciting. I got to my feet and started pacing. If we got to the road, maybe we could find any tracks the car left in the snow.

“That’s it!” I said. We could use this.

There wasn’t time to struggle for the right words with Tasser. Every minute we stayed here put us more at risk. It was quicker to show than to tell.

I walked out the door and into the snow, Nemuleki wasn’t sure to stop me.

If we were right, then Trapper’s vehicle had to be nearby. There were only two options. The first, and actually more ideal, was that the car was outside the perimeter fence of the mine. If that were the case, then we could take the Vorak’s own ride and strand it here, as long as we could get to the thing quickly.

The second was if Trapper had brought the vehicle through the gate, and shut it inside the fence. Then we would have to find a way to open the gate in order to escape on wheels.

It didn’t take long to spot the vehicle. Even built by aliens, cars were not small.

It was buried under more than two feet of snow, tucked into the back corner of the perimeter fence.

Tasser followed me out into the snow, trying to talk me back.

I just pointed toward the huge mound and went to unearth it. I wished I had gloves as I tried to dig into the snow, but my fingers were stinging instead of feeling numb. If I went quickly and warmed back up soon, I wouldn’t get frostbite.

Trapper had covered the truck in a tarp before the snow had come down, and once we pulled it off along with a metric ton of snow, it was obvious why. The window was shattered.

Had Trapper broken into this car to use it? If the Vorak had already hotwired the car, then we might not even need the keys.

A loud shout came from the roof of the fourth building.

Tasser turned to look, raising their pistol.

Trapper was peeking its head out, just barely. Tasser didn’t say anything, but it repeated itself louder. Even shouting, the Vorak’s voice lost volume over the distance, muffled by the snowscape.

Maybe it was trying to negotiate something? If it lost its ride, then it was just as stuck here as we were.

Tasser listened for a moment before muttered quietly to me, “Cayleb. Nai.”

Was I supposed to get Nai? I tried to be subtle pointing toward the garage. Tasser nodded for me to go, and they kept the pistol aimed at Trapper’s rooftop.

Tasser didn’t shoot the Vorak, but neither did I get a crossbow bolt. As I got close enough, I called out to Nemuleki, who in turn got Nai to the door. I pointed at the truck and saw that Tasser had changed positions. They had gotten close enough to the building that Trapper would have to lean over the edge to get a shot with its crossbow.

But Trapper wasn’t on the roof anymore.

Tasser locked eyes with Nemuleki and gave a short nod before going inside the fourth building. I almost followed, but Nemuleki caught my shoulder and pointed me back toward the truck.

Both of them shuffled through the snow toward the truck. Nemuleki helped Nai into the bed of the truck and indicated for me to follow suit. I tossed my backpack in before climbing up. It was bitter cold, and a ride in the exposed back of the truck would be awful. But I was more than ready to be far away.

I watched the building for Tasser. They must have gone into the building for the gate control. Tasser was opening the way for us. I looked at Nemuleki in the cab.

“Tasser?” I asked. They didn’t respond, face buried in loose wires.

Another few minutes dragged on, and I expected to see Trapper’s discs crawl toward the truck, but nothing came.

The vehicle roared to life and Nemuleki throttled the truck forward. It had massive tires, large enough to bite into the snow and crush most of it in front of us. Nemuleki hauled on the control handles and pointed the truck toward the gate.

The gate started to slide open, and Tasser’s exchange with Trapper clicked for me. We needed to open the gate. Tasser seemed to have succeeded, but as long as Trapper was alive, the gate wouldn’t stay open long.

And since Nemuleki didn’t appear to be waiting for the other Casti…the plan was for Tasser to distract Trapper while we made our escape.

“Hell no.” I said.

Immediately, Daniel could tell what I thought to do.

I warned.

I moved to exit the vehicle and Daniel stood in my way. He hadn’t bothered actually appearing as an image for a while. I owed him a lot, but not even he was going to make me leave Tasser behind. That alien had saved my life, even the first moment I met it.

he said,

<…Rapport.> I said,

He looked at Nai and Nemuleki for a moment, considering them. He nodded and the image of him vanished.

I did, in fact.

I did and jumped out of the bed of the truck. Nai didn’t stop me.