A Day Of Faces (7 page)

“Five more ought to do it,” Marv said. “How many more of those you got up your sleeve, anyway?”

Cal ignored him, retreating with the cabinet then burying it back into the wall. As he bashed his way through I watched his single-minded focus, unaware of what was around him, oblivious to our presence and the hundred-or-so pissed off people beyond the walls. I guess he’d been building up to this his whole life. Gotta give you purpose.

The wall quivered, buckled, and collapsed in on itself, light blazing in from beyond. Chunks of masonry rained down from above the hole and dust filled the air, splitting the light into drifting shafts. Cal disappeared through into the next room.

“Got a bad feeling about this,” Marv said quietly.

“
Now
you’ve got a bad feeling? You not been paying attention or something?”

“How well you know this guy, Kay?”

Felt like I’d known him for years. My whole life. “I met him a couple months back, I guess.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Even less for me. He lived at my digs for the last four weeks, but I got no clue who the hell he is.”

“Guess he doesn’t either. That’s why we’re here.”

“Right. But your whole life been defined by not knowing; what happens when you find out?”

I shrugged. “Let’s go see.”

Holding a hand to my eyes I stepped through into brightness. The room was white-walled and lit by a row of fluorescents and was considerably smaller than the main archive - more like the size of an office. It was empty except for a device in its centre, next to which stood the hulking form of Cal.

The device was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It resembled a machine but was also like an animal, of sorts. It was clearly built, and designed, but also had organic parts intermingled with the mechanical pieces. Standing half as tall as Cal and wide at its base, it seemed to be pulsating. In front and below the contraption was some kind of receptacle, above which hung a wide nozzle.

Marv followed me through. “Yeah. Told you I didn’t know what the hell I was seeing.”

“Cal? What is it?”

He held something up. “This was in there,” he said, pointing at the receptacle. With a jerk of his hand he threw the object at me. I caught it and examined it. It was white and sculpted, with a bumpy, undulating surface and holes punched through, like three face masks linked together as a single piece. I rotated it around and saw my own face, with Cal and Marv represented either side. Our likenesses, carved into the object. I stared for several seconds, then flipped it over again. There was a message on the back, warning of our imminent arrival at the spire. “In all the confusion I guess they didn’t get the message,” Cal said.

Marv touched the sculpted message with a hand. “Who sends a message like this?”

The scales on my neck fluttered. “We’re way out of our depth here,” I said. “Which, I know, is, like, super obvious. But even with that taken into account, we are then extra out of our depth.”

Cal actually laughed. “Do you not remember your religious studies?”

“I went to a state school. Didn’t really have much of that.”

He grimaced. “Orphanages are mostly run by the church,” he said. “I’ve heard them talk about this kind of thing.” He moved cautiously around it, as if circling a wild animal. The fur on his head and arms was pointed, like an alarmed cat. “But only in terms of proclamations from god. Stone tablets. Messages from the mountain. Ring any bells?”

Cal reached out and touched the contraption. The device heaved and swelled as Cal touched it and he cried out in pain, seemingly unable to remove his hand from its surface. At the same time there was a deafening blast from the archive room.

“Ah man, that’s just bad timing,” Marv said, heading back through the hole in the wall. “I got this.”

I leapt forwards and pulled at Cal, tearing him away from whatever had been holding him in place. We both tumbled backwards onto the floor as he began shivering uncontrollably, eyes glazed over and mouth agape. The fit intensified and as he rocked back and forth he began to shed his fur, leaving it strewn across the floor as he rolled. I tried to pin him down but his form kept shifting, his arms and torso shrinking down and changing texture, from fur to bare skin to scales to feathers and back again. His face was a contortion of pain, eyes bulging, irises flicking from black oval to diamond slit to yellow orbs. His teeth pushed out through his lips, then retracted, then turned to points, then fell out entirely. I backed off, unable to hold him down and at risk from being knocked out by his movements. He writhed, shifting over and over again.

Shouts came from the other room, then gunfire. There was nothing I could do for Cal, but Marv needed my help. Reluctantly backing away from Cal I turned and ducked back through, into a warzone.

The archives were a blaze of light and fire, flames spreading from the far wall where they’d blown their way in. Soldiers were pouring in, firing intermittently and seemingly at more than one target. I crouched low and scampered forwards on all fours, flitting from one fallen row of shelves to another, tasting the air, closing in on Marv’s scent.

I found him underneath a stack of cases, leg trapped and arm bleeding profusely. “What the hell?” I shouted over the weapons fire.

He grabbed me and pulled me close with his uninjured arm. “There’s somebody else here. Gotta be. I sure ain’t a threat.”

Risking a glance around the cabinet I caught a flash of movement and two soldiers evaporated, leaving behind a shower of blue sparks. The others turned and re-aimed their fire, but my view was blocked.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“Captain Obvious,” Marv said. “Get my leg out.”

I helped him prop up the cabinet and he rolled clear. Slinging his arm over my shoulder we moved as fast as we could back through the smoke-filled records room, where sounds of gunfire were being replaced with screams of soldiers.

We reached the gaping hole in the wall and scurried back through into the white room. It was now emptier than before: the device remained in the centre, as if nothing had happened, but Cal was nowhere to be seen.

The sounds of fighting from beyond the hole slowly diminished while I moved around the room, hunting for an exit, or a hidden door. The walls were clean and featureless, and yielded no escape.

A frightened shout from the hole turned our attention back, just in time to see a terrified soldier running towards us, covered in blood. Before his feet touched the floor he erupted into vapour and sparks and vanished before us. Through the mist-that-was-man another person was revealed, stepping closer and holding some kind of weird gun. He looked unlike anybody I’d ever seen, and bore no discernible genoform markings. No horns, or fur, or wings, or scales. No tentacles or additional limbs.

His defining feature was his face, deeply scarred from chin to forehead.

He grinned crookedly. “Hello, children,” he said, “I’ve been looking for
you.
16
”

apex predator

noun

ECOLOGY

An apex predator is a predator residing at the top of a food chain on which no other creatures predate.

“I should be more precise,” said the man with the scarred face, speaking with a weird accent that I couldn’t place. “I’m looking for
him
. Your friend.”

Marv stood next to me, one hand placed on my arm. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to warn me not to try anything, or gripping me out of his own fear. This guy in front of us had just vapourised the entire room. That kinda thing gets your attention.

“Don’t know who you’re talking about, man,” Marv said, shaking his head so much that I was worried it might fall off.

The scarred man made an adjustment to his weapon, turning a dial, then aimed and fired at Marv. Now, the thing about guns is that you don’t get that slow-motion scream or cry of anguish, as you lunge across the room trying to push someone out the way or take a bullet for them. Hell, I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Marv and still had no time to react. One moment his arm was gripping mine; then he didn’t even have an arm. Half of it was simply gone, the forearm and hand still gripping mine, but nothing connecting it back to its owner.

At first Marv didn’t really react. He jerked a little, maybe, at the initial impact, but that was about it. As the blue embers that had been his shoulder fizzled to nothing, he glanced down and his brain tried to register what had happened. Instead, he turned a little and, using his remaining arm, pulled at the disembodied hand, removing it from my arm and holding it up in front of him. Blood pumped from his shoulder.

He looked up and into my eyes. “Really want to make an unarmed pun, Kay,” he said, not smiling. Then he collapsed to the floor and started convulsing.

“You’ll want to do something about that blood loss,” the man said. He threw something onto the floor in front of me. It was a bandage of some sort. “Put it on his shoulder, quickly now.”

Grabbing at the bandage, I ripped off the packaging and fumbled with it. It wasn’t long enough to wrap and, besides, there wasn’t enough arm left to form a tourniquet.

“Apply it directly.”

I did as the man instructed. As soon as it was placed onto the wound the bandage expanded to encompass it entirely, binding itself into the flesh and sealing it up, as if it knew what it was doing. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it. There
wasn’t
anything like it.

Then again, this guy had a ray gun. So I probably should’ve been ready for anything.

“Consider that a gesture of goodwill,” the man said. “So tell me, where is your friend?”

The man’s outfit was as odd as his accent. Not just the style, but the materials themselves seemed unfamiliar: smoother and more form-fitting. A little like tight leather, but different and less natural. Around his chest he wore a circular contraption with metal filaments stretching out over his torso and down his limbs.

He raised the gun again, pointing at Marv’s other arm.

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands in a vague and obviously useless attempt to shield him, “just wait. He was here. But he’s gone, and I don’t know where.”

“There’s no door out of this room. So where did he go?”

“I genuinely don’t know, you arsehole.”

The man grimaced and stepped closer. “I know your friend has unusual powers,” he said. “What happened when he came in here?”

I thought about trying to feign innocence, but there was Marv, writhing on the floor and frothing at the mouth, and decided that now wasn’t the time to be awkward. “Something happened when he touched the machine, or whatever it is.”

His face turned towards me, eyes glaring and jaw set hard. “What happened?”

“He started changing again.”

The man dropped the gun to his side. “Well, shit,” he murmured. “That’s really fucked it, then.” He adjusted something on his chest contraption and I heard a barely audible hum as something electronic started charging up. “I didn’t want to get into this, but you’re both going to have to come with me so we can figure out what you know. If anything.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off his scars. “Go with you where?”

“Nice try,” he said, smiling icily. “You wouldn’t understand, anyway. The alternative is I just shoot you both now, so take your pick.”

There’s nothing more lame than being the damsel in distress. Generally, as a life rule, I made a point of not being that. It’s pretty easy to avoid when you just go to school every day. Gets harder when you start hanging out with shapeshifting dudes and leftie anarchists. As it turns out. Anyway, it wasn’t just me - Marv was in far more distress than me at this point, even if I was a lot prettier.

The air before me puckered then stretched, like when you pull at the surface of an inflated balloon. Where you’re expecting it to tear and pop at any moment, but it doesn’t quite. What I could see of the room refracted through the disturbance, then there was a
snap
and a rush of air and something formed in front of me, raised off the ground a little.

Dropping to the floor as he materialised, Cal stumbled a moment then sprang to his feet and reached forwards, grabbing both me and Marv. His clothes were shredded. There was a breath as Cal looked up at the scarred man, who was raising his gun, then the air stretched again and I felt myself being pulled and crushed at the same time as the world cracked in two and all three of us slipped between the cracks.

Lights and energy flashed all around us and I couldn’t tell up from down, then it was over as fast as it had begun, and I was in open air, floating, the ground half a mile below.

Scratch that. Not floating:
falling
. Those blue embers danced around me as I tumbled, and I could see Marv a little distance away, unconscious, dropping limply. Cal was between us and he was changing, his limbs growing longer and more slender, and I caught glimpses of the changes as I spun out of control towards the ground. Unable to really process the observation, I noticed that the city was nowhere to be seen. There was just desert, all the way to the horizon.

Cal was the only one not flailing. He was concentrating on the genoshift. The final alteration was a pair of wings, unfolding from his back as if they’d always been there, feathers rippling in the wind. He stretched out the wings and they flexed, then held shape, and he swooped towards me, scooping me up with one arm.