It didn’t take Jacob long to track down the ruin that had once been Lardo’s. After bowling through a gangly one right out front and piercing its great eyeball head with a bent road sign, he approached the establishment looking for a means of ingress.
A neighboring building had collapsed onto the diner and taken out half of it, including the door, but Jacob was able to access what was left by climbing through a shattered window and leaping over a table. He found what had been his and Becca’s booth at the back wall, and sat down in one of the scorched-black seats, which crunched under his weight.
It didn’t look much like what he remembered, everything all broken and burned and tossed around. It didn’t smell the same, either. And she wasn’t there. Even so, it still felt important to be there.
He took out the book and opened it to a random page. Clearing his throat, he read: “What kind of tea is hard to swallow?” Forced to play both roles, he continued. “I don’t know, what kind?”
He paused.
“Reality.”
That should probably have been a little too topical to be funny. Maybe that was precisely why Jacob found himself cackling with laughter. Alone in the shattered remains of a precious memory, surrounded by the wreckage of a dead world, his clothes stained with demon blood, he couldn’t think of anything funnier.
He slapped the table until it broke and and fell over, laughing himself wheezy and breathless.
“Reality, that’s… that’s funny. I’ll have to tell her that one.”
His laughter echoed out over the empty street. It took him a long time to gather himself, suppressing random giggles. When he’d finally settled, he sat in silence for a moment, staring at the opposite wall, through the empty spot where another person should have been.
Then he tucked the book back in his pocket, stood, and walked out of the diner through the window.
Soon.
I’ll see you soon.
*****
They were able to pick up some decent supplies at the Lodge. Shelf-stable bread, some frozen ingredients. Most notably several bottles of hot sauce.
They took off almost as soon as Jacob got back. This time, Mars was their only destination. Danger explained that because of how the waylines worked, they’d still go past the Moon, but without needing to stop there they would make good time. He estimated a little under two weeks until they hit Mars, assuming everything went to plan.
Obviously, something was going to go wrong. Jacob had no doubt about that.
He mixed the bark Guppy had given him into some water and managed to get Fenris to drink some of it. There was no appreciable effect. The wolf was still extremely languid, refusing to eat, and spent most of his time licking himself. His forelimb and sides were dripping with sticky saliva.
At this point, Jacob figured their best bet was finding someone on Mars who knew what they were doing. There had to be a fair number of arcanists in Standing.
As they neared the Moon once more, Danger performed his first wayline skip. The ship threw out all kinds of alarms and warnings, but held together. The powered-up skip drive produced a high-pitched humming that reverberated throughout the whole ship. Streaking lights flashed outside the viewing ports and the cockpit windshield.
Jacob had expected it to be a turbulent experience, like breaking through an atmosphere, but it was strangely smooth, as though the ship was drifting through an endless ocean.
The lights grew stronger and more frequent, every color of the rainbow twined together into a complex weave around them. The entire main deck was lit up bright, and though there was no sudden acceleration or shaking, Jacob had to suppress the urge to vomit.
Through the lights, he could almost make out what looked like a landscape—mountains, valleys, even trees. He couldn’t tell if he was imagining it or not.
Tarim gazed around him in pure wonderment, the lights reflecting off his mutated yellow eye. Jacob held him back by his collar so he wouldn’t run off and distract the pilot by asking him 202 Stupid Questions. Gillis did not deign to emerge from her cabin to watch the light show.
It was a little bit like a fireworks display. The duration, too, because after about ten minutes Danger took them out of the wayline, and they returned to regular vacuous space, with only little twinkling pinpricks of light to break up the blackness. Jacob was left blinking to get the blotches out of his vision.
They would perform about half a dozen more wayline skips until they reached their destination. It would help them cut down on their travel time significantly, as concepts like time and distance were compressed and distorted inside the waylines.
They were soon out of range for both Earth and Moon communications, and they got notifications on their nodes that System connection had been lost. With the six of them grouped together in a great steel box ready to shake itself apart at any moment, Jacob hoped there wouldn’t be enough time for cabin fever to set in.
Clara was confined to what had become her cabin for the entirety of the first few days. Tarim tended to her most of the time, bringing her food and keeping her company. Gillis saw to the girl’s more private needs, helping her wash and go to the bathroom. As whatever substances she had been ingesting were flushed from her system, she went through painful withdrawal. Jacob was already sleeping badly, but hearing her whimpering and wailing in the night didn’t make things any better.
On the fourth day, Clara’s symptoms cleared up enough that she was able to complete a brief walk around the main deck with Tarim’s assistance. On the fifth, Jacob came into the living area to enjoy an MRE loaded with hot sauce for brunch and found her sitting there eating a piece of toast, a blanket over her legs. She still had an unhealthy greenish pallor to her skin, but the cold sweat had subsided, and she looked slightly less like a junkie with her hair tied back and out of her face.
“Feeling better?” Jacob asked, sitting down at one of the curved benches that ringed the large circular table.
“A little,” she murmured into the bread.
“You’re headed to your mom’s on Aribel when we get to Mars, yeah?”
“Probably.”
Jacob cleared his throat uncomfortably, unsure exactly how to broach the topic. In the end, he decided to just be blunt. “You’re aware that Tarim has a bit of a schoolyard crush on you, I assume.”
“I am now.”
“When you break his heart, do it gently, will you?”
“Why are you assuming I’ll do that?” she said in the kind of naturally snarky tone only a teenager could produce.
“Because you clearly aren’t the type of person to cultivate healthy or lasting relationships.”
“Tarim is nice. I like him.”
“This is me telling you to let him down easy.”
Eating the last piece of her toast, she licked her fingers clean and crossed her arms. “What are you, my—”
“Dad? No, he’s dead, remember? And as far as I can tell, you don’t have a lot of other places to turn, so maybe try not to burn the few lucrative relationships you can scrape together.”
Clara sat in stubborn silence, sticking out her chin. “You saying I’m not good enough for your son?”
“He’s not my son. And yes, that’s pretty much what I’m saying.”
“Wait, he’s not even your son? Then why do you care?”
“Because I got stuck with him, and now I can’t seem to get rid of him, so if he fucks his life up that’s just going to come back on me.”
“You’re weird.”
Jacob rubbed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Whatever,” he sighed. “Just let him down easy, okay? That’s all I’m going to say.”
That same afternoon, he found them kissing in the cargo bay.
He didn’t even bother telling them off. It was out of his hands at that point.
*****
On the morning of the seventh day, Tarim called Jacob into the cabin he shared with the wolf, panic in his voice. Jacob barged in only to find the wolf encased in some clear, slick cocoon made of its own saliva, curled up tight and stuck against one wall.
“What the fuck,” Jacob breathed.
“I dunno!” Tarim shouted. “I woke up and he was just like that!”
“He’s not dead… is he?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
Jacob approached the huge sticky mound and leaned close to where he thought he could make out the vague shape of the wolf’s head. He obviously couldn’t breathe through all that mucus, and Jacob didn’t see any movement.
Still, Jacob didn’t think he was dead. The whole thing reminded him too much of an insect chrysalis for him to consider that a likely possibility.
Almost as soon as Jacob sent the boy away to fetch Thatch, the cocoon burst open like a popped water balloon, spilling foul-smelling liquid all over the floor. A smaller wolf slid out of the opened belly of the great monster, with the same black fur that lay slicked-down and wet against its body. The wolf shuddered and awakened, opening three red eyes. It staggered to its feet and slowly padded awkwardly over to Jacob, getting used to its legs.
The wolf sniffed him, licked his hand, then laid down at his feet to begin cleaning the mess off itself.
It was still Fenris. He could tell. His leg had grown back, and so had his eye, with one extra to spare—sitting vertically at the center of his forehead like a precious gem—but it was all him. His size had regressed back to something comparable to what it had been after the RRH facility; large for a wolf, but not monstrously so.
Tarim returned with Thatch too late to catch any of the action. The director gaped as he inspected the devastated room, and put a hand over his mouth for the stench.
“I guess someone’s gonna have to clean this up,” Jacob said.
“Not it,” Tarim said quickly.
“It’ll have to be a team effort, I think.” He looked down at the reborn wolf. “Thatch, theories? Did he do all this to heal back the parts he lost?”
“Maybe.”
“I guess we’ll need to find him a Chaos-rich diet somewhere so he can get his strength back. He’s looking a bit puny.”
“I wonder about that.”
Tarim stepped strategically across the room to avoid the worst of the goop and bent down to pet the wolf. His tail wagged languidly at that.
“What are you thinking?” Jacob prompted.
“He might not actually have gotten weaker than before. It’s possible that this was his way of gaining even more strength. Have you heard of the concept of ‘power compression’?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“I’ll give you the lecture rundown, then. As a creature gains strength by supernatural means, especially through Chaos influence, it tends to increase in size, too. Think Akor-Goram’s lieutenants compared to the regular soldier demons. But as power further increases, the size increase stops and eventually reverses. A creature that gains enough strength begins to compress all that power inside itself further and further, producing a more compact form that allows it to more effectively and efficiently apply its power.
“You can compare this to Akor-Goram’s lieutenants and the demon thane himself. Despite being the most powerful of his brood by a wide margin, he was likely the smallest demon we saw on that entire battlefield. This is likely a form he chose for himself with power compression in mind, whether consciously or not. Make sense?”
“Makes sense,” Jacob said with a nod. “So what you’re saying is, this is like his perfected form?”
“Well, an iteration closer to it, anyway. It’s not like I’ve studied this kind of thing, so it’s hard to know for sure, but that’s what it immediately brought to mind.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Let’s hope for that, then.”
Jacob immediately fetched the wolf several large hunks of raw meat, hoping he might want to eat. He had evidently worked up quite an appetite while gestating his new form, because he hardly chewed in his haste to force the meat down his gullet. He drank a large bowl of water, then ate even more. After Jacob gave him a sudsy shower to get the worst of the nastiness off of him, he stretched out on one of the benches in the living area, gave a big yawn, and promptly fell asleep, leaving his lowly helpers to handle the cleanup.
Jacob was able to drag the carcass to the starboard airlock, and they blasted it into space. From there, Jacob, Thatch, and Tarim were able to mop up most of the mess. Danger helped a little, too, when he wasn’t needed at the helm. They got the cabin looking okay again, but there was still an unmistakable funk to it. Jacob allowed Tarim to swap cabins with him, since his sense of smell was worse, anyway.
The fact that Fenris wasn’t dying anymore took a weight off Jacob’s mind. He needed it, too. He was barely sleeping at night, and what sleep he did get was never restful. The hands got hold of him as soon as he drifted off. Grabbing at his wrists, his ankles, his clothes. Then a blond boy would strangle him until he woke up, sweaty and gasping for air.
The closer they got to Mars, the more he worried. At first it was just a vague, nagging sensation, but it quickly grew until it was on his mind constantly.
It was all going too smoothly, that was the problem. Something was going to happen. He knew it. Something terrible. Now, in his dreams, the boy was strangling Becca, instead, and he couldn’t help her because he was too far away and his legs wouldn’t move.
He knew that it was irrational, but the more he tried to push these feelings away, the stronger they returned until he thought, privately, that his doom was certain. He didn’t dare mention it to anyone else, lest the act of uttering it into the world would make it even more real.
On the tenth day, Jacob and Tarim had dinner in the living area. It was becoming increasingly rare to see him apart from Clara. The boy had a smug satisfaction about him, humming while he tucked into his retort pouch.
“Clara said she was thinking about staying on Mars for a while when we get there,” he said. “She says she could probably get a job there.”
“How do you feel about that?” Jacob asked in a neutral tone.
“I’d really like that. Clara’s nice to me, and she doesn’t care about my face.”
“Good for you, kid. You’ve got more game than I thought.”
Tarim grinned proudly at that.
“Just, uh… I didn’t think we’d need to pack condoms for this trip, so nothing under the waist, please. The last thing we need is you producing little lizard offspring. The thing with Fenris was traumatizing enough.”
Tarim snorted. “Don’t worry, I know. I’m not stupid.”
Sure.
“Clara says if I want to be a hero, I should go for it,” he continued, scraping out the last of his lentil casserole from the inside of the retort pouch with his spoon.
“Well, Clara doesn’t know anything about being a hero, so maybe you shouldn’t rely solely on her expert opinion.”
“What do you think I should do, then?” Tarim asked, voice dripping with that trademark teenage snark.
“Go to school, for one. Presumably they have those on Mars.”
“I can do that and train to become a hero at the same time.”
“Or you could find a normal hobby like, I dunno, playing the guitar or something. I bet Clara would love that. Girls love a musician.”
Tarim rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re so against me becoming a hero. I mean, it’s what you do. Why can’t I do it?”
“I am also immortal. Look, I’ve died twelve times in just a few months, kid. How long do you think you’d last?”
“Well, yeah, but you’re stronger now, so you probably won’t die again. And if I become your sidekick, you’ll be able to keep me safe until I’m good enough at it to do my own thing.”
“You’ve put some thought into this.”
“Of course I have.”
Jacob couldn’t share his premonition that the world was about to come crashing down around him, so he just said: “We’ll see, how about that? For now, let’s just get to Mars. One step at a time.”
“Well, all right then. As long as you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it as long as you shut up about it.”
Tarim grinned. “Deal.”
But they didn’t pinky promise, so it wasn’t binding. A grave error on his part.
“What do girls like?” Tarim asked, looking intently at the tabletop as though something very interesting was going on there. “Like, I’m thinking about what to do with Clara when we get there. If I should take her out for a date or something. I don’t really have any money, but…” He glanced up hopefully.
Jacob sighed. “Don’t worry about that, kid. If I’m going to be your unofficial guardian or whatever, I’ll make sure to throw some cash your way. There’ll be chores involved, of course.”
“Of course,” Tarim agreed, nodding.
“As for what girls like… They like being treated good. They like being shown appreciation. They like being listened to. They like being given gifts. Thoughtful gifts. Not generic stuff, but gifts based on things you’ve picked up about her.”
Tarim nodded even more fervently, looking as though he was taking mental notes. “So if I want to take her out, what should I do?”
“Well, she’s older than you, so her tastes will probably be a bit more refined than yours. We’ll figure out something classy, don’t worry.”
“Classy. Right. That makes sense.” He stroked his chin pensively, as though contemplating the great questions of the universe.
Once Clara came and joined them, wrapping her arm around Tarim’s and entwining their hands, Jacob quickly excused himself to hit the showers.
Just let it play out, he thought, teeth clenched.
*****
On the twelfth day, they made contact with the Mars instance of the System, and their nodes regained full functionality. That meant they were close. Danger estimated just one more wayline skip, then they’d be right on top of the red planet.
The first thing Jacob did once the System was restored was call Becca. She didn’t pick up. That had him pacing around the main deck, grinding his teeth. But it was still early by Martian time, so he waited.
About two hours later, she called him back, and his worry retreated somewhat.
The video feed was spotty, but he could see her from the shoulders up. Her hair was a mess from sleeping, and the cramped apartment in the background looked like it had been the victim of a bombing, with all the random items and articles of clothing strewn around.
She was smiling. And she was beautiful.
“Hi!” Becca said. “Sorry, I didn’t get your calls at first ‘cause I was sleeping!”
“Yeah, I figured.” Jacob couldn’t help but smile back. “We’re almost at Mars now. Only about a day or so off, the pilot thinks.”
“Yay!” She looked around her place. “Hmm, I should probably start cleaning up around here, then.”
She wouldn’t. She’d forget. But that was all right. He was looking forward to the therapeutic exercise of cleaning up one of her messes.
“Look, Becca, are you all right?”
“Mmhmm, yeah!”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Why?”
“Nothing, it’s just… just making sure.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. No, actually. I’m freaking out.”
“Blue-balling that bad?” she said with a knowing smirk.
“Fuck off.”
“Teehee.”
Tarim, sneaking over at Jacob’s side, whispered: “Can I say hi?”
“Oh yeah. Becca, so, uh, there’s this brat I picked up along the way. He’s extremely annoying, but I’m stuck with him for now, so try to put up with him. Oh, and I should probably mention that he’s offensively ugly.”
“Hey!” Tarim shouted indignantly, but became all smiles when Jacob angled the interface towards him. “I’m Tarim. I’m actually Jacob’s love child with another woman, so…”
“Yeah, nice try, fuckhead,” Jacob grumbled, smacking the back of his head. “I would’ve had to be fucking at like ten years old to have caused your ugly ass.”
Becca giggled. Then, with mock seriousness, she said: “I will accept the fruits of your infidelity, Mr. Sorenson. But we will be speaking about this later.”
Becca and Tarim proceeded to introduce themselves to each other, which took about ten minutes longer than it should have and included a lot of sidetracking about useless topics. He could tell that the two of them together would be a dangerous combo against his sanity.
After that she wanted to see Fenris, who was busy napping and didn’t feel like waking up, only cracking his third eye slightly when prodded and giving an irritated groan. Jacob didn’t divulge how he had been split off from the wolf or how Fenris had almost died or how he had somehow given birth to himself. That would be part of a longer, significantly less fun conversation.
He kept talking to her for a long time until their last wayline skip came up. When he hung up, and rainbow lights began flashing around him, his dread came back to embrace him.
And he waited patiently for the other shoe to drop.
*****
Once they came out of the wayline, the red planet loomed large in the distance, with spots of blue and a ring of green running across it; the green belt of Mars. They strapped in for entry into the Martian atmosphere, and Danger brought them down. By now, he had learned many of the ship’s quirks by heart, and this descent was smoother than expected.
Danger was soon in contact with the air traffic controllers in Standing, and received permission to land along with updated coordinates of the walking city’s position. They flew low over the rust-red landscape, great mountains and canyons rolling past on the horizon. Even the sky was red, filled with minuscule dust particles from the planet’s famously fearsome weather patterns. Its storms had only gotten worse since the planet was terraformed.
Becca had invited everyone on the ship for dinner once they hit Standing. Predictably, Gillis declined, citing urgent work matters. Thatch looked like he wanted to refuse as well, probably tied down by some Heroes’ Guild business, but in the end he accepted the invite, as did Danger and Clara.
An hour or so after arriving on Mars, they caught sight of Standing, and soon it loomed large over them. The city was a massive steel behemoth, walking on six legs that made the earth shudder and threw up plumes of dust whenever one touched down. Its pace was ponderous and almost lackadaisical, only lifting a foot once every twenty seconds or so and taking almost as long to bring it back down.
Danger slowed them down as they swung around Standing and came down from the top, getting a good look at the cluttered sprawl of the city through the viewing ports set into the floor of the lower deck.
With such limited horizontal space, the Martians built vertically. Standing was like three cities stacked on top of each other and smushed down into a dense, confusing mishmash.
By the time they got ready to land on a pad protruding from a large tower, Jacob had already been packed and ready for hours. Not that he was bringing much. It was early afternoon, so everyone would spend their day however they liked and convene at Becca’s place around 19:00, local time. For the first outing, only Fenris would be coming with him. Tarim wanted to spend the day with Clara, which Jacob thought was just as well, since it would give him some time alone with Becca. To that end, he gave the kid 100 flora to spend on whatever.
That was the plan. Everything was looking good.
And there was still time for something to go wrong.
They landed. The ramp went down. Martian air blasted in Jacob’s face, rushing into the ship. He had expected it to be warm for some reason, maybe because the planet was red. In reality, it was rather frigid, like a late autumn chill.
The official who met them on the pad as they disembarked wore a fur-collared jacket and a beanie pulled firmly down over his ears. Red-nosed and sniffling, he asked them to pay various fees. Docking fee, parking fee, first-time entry fee, ship safety inspection fee, processing fee; Jacob lost track after a while. Thatch covered most of it, leaving Jacob to pay roughly 3 000 flora. That would let him keep the ship stored on the pad for up to a month before incurring additional fees.
The landing pad jerked into motion and retracted into the tower itself, allowing the Quickdraw to come out of the Martian elements and biting dust storms. Technicians came off the large, open main floor to work on the Quickdraw, with two other ships arrayed about the floor receiving similar attention. He observed with mild annoyance that they were in far more presentable condition than his own vessel.
They took a large elevator down to the first floor, and went through a tedious customs screening with System sig identification to get them logged in the Martian database.
Upon exiting the flight tower into the red-dusted street, they parted ways. Thatch went with Gillis, Tarim went with Clara, and Fenris went with Jacob. Danger stayed with the ship to make sure none of the technicians walked off with a component or two. Not that that was a big worry, considering the state of the ship.
Standing was busy and loud. The buildings ran up seemingly forever like impenetrable walls unless he craned his neck all the way back, which offered a paltry slice of red sky. The streets were left in such deep shadow that street lights burned even during the day, providing what looked like a pale moonlight to see by.
Having gotten used to the loneliness of apocalyptic wasteland with only small pockets of survivors around him, Jacob was overwhelmed by the sheer crush of people. Pedestrians filled the roads, bustling to get this way and that, and he found himself bumping people left and right as he tried to make his way through the endless, noisy crowds. He understood what Becca had said about feeling like she was on a boat. The movements of the city set the ground slowly shifting and rocking underneath him, forcing him to constantly shift his weight. The effect was exacerbated by the fact that, while stronger than on the Moon, gravity on Mars was still less than half of that on Earth. This left his steps feeling floaty, and he stumbled more than once trying to adjust himself to this new way of locomotion. He probably looked like an idiot to the locals, struggling to even walk normally.
There were seemingly no cars in Standing. The only transportation he saw were trams that ran on rails high over the streets. Everyone else walked.
The people at Port Longing had looked more or less like regular Earthers, but Martians were evidently a strange bunch. Many of them wore jackets with high collars and long sleeves that covered their hands completely. He saw more variations of bowl cuts than he had ever wanted to experience; seemingly a popular choice both for men and women, with subtle variations in length and cut based on gender. There were those with glittering face tattoos reminiscent of the thunes’ facial markings, Many of the ones that wore these tattoos had also shaved themselves completely bald, eyebrows and all. The thune aesthetic was clearly all the rage on Mars.
Jacob punched the address Becca had given her into his System and caught a tram to get him to the right district. Fenris sat faithfully on the floor next to him, tongue lolling. A few people gave the three-eyed wolf odd looks, but not as many as he had expected. Maybe the otherworldly was more common here.
Once he’d successfully navigated to the right part of the city, his System wanted him to go down, somehow. After wandering around aimlessly for a while, he eventually found a wide set of stairs leading down into the underbelly of the enormous machine that made up the walking city. The area below was just as crowded, if not more. The lack of any natural light at all increased his sense of claustrophobia, the lamp posts providing little islands of light surrounded by blackness. He could hear the machinery down there, loudly clunking and grinding as it operated the walking mechanism
This was evidently the seedy part of town. Less business people and thune lookalikes, more down-trodden workers and beat-up bots. There were beggars on the corners, and homeless people in makeshift shelters that were crammed into the narrow alleys, forced to climb over each other to get in or out. He heard a distant gunshot while he walked, the sound echoing strangely inside the big metal box. No one paid it any mind, which presumably meant that it was a normal occurrence down here.
The Earther housing quarter was no better. Jacob fought the growing trepidation in his gut as he tracked down Block C, then Building H. It was a runty little apartment building made of crumbling concrete and rusted steel. It was covered in various graffiti to the general effect of ‘Fuck off, Earthers’. Charming.
She’s been living in a place like this?
He entered the building, barely avoiding a puddle of congealed vomit by the door, and made his way up the narrow concrete staircase to the third floor. He found himself standing in front of Apartment 312, Fenris waiting patiently next to him. He double-checked that the address was correct, then triple-checked it. It was the right place.
The door was made of a beige hard plastic, warped and covered in dirty scratches after years of hard use. The light above the door flickered, went out for a few moments, then came back to life.
If the other shoe is going to drop, now’s the time.
There was no doorbell, so Jacob knocked.
The door flew open approximately three seconds later, and Jacob was wrapped up in some sort of ineffective grappling technique by a very determined blonde gremlin.
“Welcome home, bro!” Becca shouted into his chest, all her limbs wrapped around his torso.
“Thanks,” Jacob said numbly. “I missed you.” He let one of his hands come up to stroke her soft hair and leaned in to smell its sweetness.
She was real.
The shoe didn’t drop.