Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle (22 page)

She had to take advantage of the opening; there might not be another before Martin bled to death. But she also needed energy. The meager amount gleaned from the sun so far this morning wouldn’t go far. She could take all the energy from the Millie Field charged items in her office. The creature would never leave before Martin’s immunity dissipated, so this was likely a one-way trip anyway.

If she thought about it, she might change her mind, or the opportunity might pass while she dithered. She sucked the Millie mojo from every item in her cubicle. It jarred her in what seemed to be a physical way, even though she didn’t have a “physical,” but only for a moment. Her energy stores were not only full but also much larger. The
iMillie 2, now with 110% more battery life!
Taking her eyes off the predator would alert it, so she used her memory of the location to make a blind move at light speed. She entered Martin’s suffering body while the predator was still expanding to encircle Alice’s soul, oblivious to Millie’s migration.

Even through his pain and confused mental state, Martin noticed the instant she arrived. He joyously invited her soul to contact his. An image of Martin, his shirt soaked in blood stood before her with his arms open wide. She ran and threw her arms around him.

The contact was different this time, every remnant of reticence gone from both of them. Their earlier encounter was a reserved introduction compared to the complete communion they shared. She was not standing on the banks admiring the landscape of his soul as before. Rather she was immersed in him, becoming a part of him and he a part of her, neither sure where one ended and the other began. They studied their spirit. Arms around each other, they watched the two individual fountains of experience as they each flowed from the distant past to the present where they intertwined and then exploded into future potentials. They observed only for a moment, and then they were swept up in the tides.

Together they experienced the memories, thoughts, and dreams of each, interlaced in a patchwork quilt made from two bolts of fabric. Better than communicating, they experience a single stream of thought, based on what they collectively knew and filtered through the experiences of both their lives. They knew what it was to be artist and engineer, man and woman, and to be living and dead.

They would have taken time to revel in it if it weren’t clear to them that their future possibilities were few and shrinking. Millie had planned to painstakingly apply her warehouse of energy to individual nerves and cells to ease his pain, to aid his damaged veins in constricting, and to speed up the clotting around the wound. Her brute-force efforts would be crude and inefficient because she didn’t truly understand these things, but she had seen them at work, and she had to do something. It was all she could think of.

Martin/Millie had a better idea. Martin’s body knew exactly what to do. Its problem was the amount of power it had to work with, limited as it was by various physical, chemical and biological processes. Millie understood how to channel her larger Millie Force supply quickly and directly. Together they would supercharge his body’s efforts. Millie/Martin worked in concert to reduce blood loss and repair vital areas.

In the background the beast watched, measuring the strength of Martin’s immune field as it waned, like a buzzard waiting for the jackals to leave. As they worked to staunch and mend Martin’s wound, his future possibilities expanded, but Millie’s continued to decline. They had no idea how much time had passed. How long would it take for emergency medical personnel to reach him?

The scavenger would be able to come through before long. Martin’s immunity to the touch of the beast was nearly too weak to stop it, but their joint efforts left a growing Creation Energy Field on his body. As a result, just being outside a Millie Field no longer used any of Millie’s energy and allowed them to spend more on repairs. The new field however, only protected the bonded entity that created it. When Millie’s power supply was gone they would no longer be able to keep the connection. Millie/Martin would cease to be, and the Millie/Martin Field would be of no use to either of them. They considered drawing from Martin to replenish some of Millie’s available energy as they had before, but they concluded that was impossible considering the state of his body. Running was useless since she had nowhere to go. Soon Millie would have to make the choice or be consumed. Millie accepted it as the price to save Martin from a fate she had brought about. Martin refused to accept. Their wills being no longer in complete accord, the connection unraveled.

I see you there

I'm blinded by the colors I see

I'll take good care

Of what belongs to me

—
From “Spirit on the Water” by Bob Dylan

The grid of off-white ceiling tiles that once again dominated his view seemed much less real than Millie’s psychedelic world of energy. The images from her world fled from his mind like a dream on a manic morning. He no longer recalled what it looked like, but he remembered in a visceral way, a memory of sensations that did not translate to any of his senses. The pain from each shallow breath was excruciating. They had decided pain mitigation wasn’t worth the energy.

His eyes scanned for something, without his being aware of what he was looking for. The Grim Reaper hovered in front of his filing cabinet, spewing dark energies into another dimension. Nothing about the radiating revenant registered on his retina, but he could tell it was there. Soon it would consume Millie or she would make her choice and join creation. Martin either sensed the strength of his ebbing immunity or he remembered it, no time to ponder which. He had to do something fast. He tried to yell for help but barely produced an agonized croak. The room was dead silent. People couldn’t help Millie anyway. His eyes darted about, searching for inspiration. His gaze returned to the monster. Why was the thing hovering in that spot? Past it, inside the bottom drawer, he sensed the strength of the Millie Field on her two statues he had stashed there. It was positioned to prevent Millie from reaching them! They would be just strong enough if they were together. If he could only fetch them so she could safely get to them.

The effort might undo what they had done to keep him alive, but he had to try. He retrieved his keys from his pocket and found the correct one, his hands trembling. Then he rolled over to the desk beside the cabinet and hauled himself up, using first the drawer handle and then the top of the desk. The monstrosity moved in concert to keep itself between the sculptures and Millie, who was spending her last dregs of Millie juice on his wound. He’d thought his chest couldn’t hurt much worse than it did lying on the floor just breathing, but he was wrong. It wasn’t possible to get up to the lock without using muscles around the wound. It felt as if someone was tearing his chest open with a rusty saw. The world swam, and his vision closed in. Tears of agony flowed down his face as he paused briefly, supporting his weight with his legs and his right forearm on the desk.

Time was short, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything if he passed out. He willed his body to keep the blood flowing to his brain, apparently invoking another skill he learned (or a memory that was awakened) during his fusion with Millie. His body responded, using energy and resources as he willed, increasing circulation to his brain at the expense of blood flow to his other organs. He couldn’t keep it up for long. His vision cleared, but his wobbly legs would never support him. He transferred the keys to his left hand and kept part of his weight on his right arm. Lifting his left arm to put the key in the lock caused the pain to jump to a new intensity. He willed his body to dampen the pain, and it subsided. His hand shook, making it difficult to insert the key, but eventually he slid it in and turned it to pop the lock open.

He collapsed, as gently as possible, back to the floor in front of the cabinet, causing yet another wave of pain as he landed. There was little of the creation energy left stored in his body. He didn’t have a supply tucked away in a pocket universe like Millie or the monster. As his little league coach liked to say, he would just have to suck it up.

He sucked it up, pulled the bottom drawer open, pulled out the two statues, tangled them together, and clutched them to his chest as he fell back on the floor. Millie was instantly there in the center of the two, safe. His job done, Martin lost consciousness.

My hour is almost come,


When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames


Must render up myself.

—
From
Hamlet
by William Shakespeare

Millie/Martin dissolved, and she became merely Millie again. She wished they could have spent her last moments together, but it was just as well. The time spent bonded and working together left her with the knowledge of how to continue her first aid. Martin’s body trusted her touch and was willing to allow her efforts. The little energy she had left was better spent there than maintaining the connection. She kept working, coaxing platelets and clotting factors to work faster, constricting damaged veins and arteries, rebuilding ravaged areas. The effort was painfully slow to Millie with her time perception cranked down.

It now appeared that the decay of Martin’s immunity to the thing’s touch was accelerating and would collapse before she ran out of energy. If the predacious phantasm touched him again, she wasn’t sure how Martin would respond in his condition, but she figured it wouldn’t be good. She had felt the beast’s gaze return at some point, but she had been so focused on the effort that she lost track of its location. She took a quick glance, vainly hoping it had run out of fuel or patience and left, so she could keep working on Martin until the end. But she found it nearby. It floated at a fixed point, waiting for its chance, its energy supply freshly refilled by the consumption of Alice’s soul. She returned to her task, determined to do all that she could.

Martin’s aura flared, and he began moving. It took a while at her perception rate to realize the motion wasn’t just breathing or involuntary trembling. His movements involved chest and back muscles around the wound, unknitting delicate repairs. She paused her work to figure out the cause of his motion and to save her last bit of energy to fix the worst of the damage it caused. It was like watching a glacier melt to see what the land would look like when it was gone. Moving with him, she increased her perceived passage of time and scanned to see if paramedics had arrived or if the assailant had returned. She saw neither of those things, but she did see the creature moving with Martin as though to keep itself between Martin and something. She looked to see what was beyond the beast.

It was maintaining a position directly between Millie and the two statues Martin had taken from her box of things. The field on the two of them together would be enough to protect her. The thing that was once a man might be a vile cannibal, but it wasn’t stupid. When it had finished its meal, surely it noticed her recharged batteries. She imagined a quick check of her nest had verified the source. The fiend then put itself in position to prevent her from reaching her last possible refuge. Its aura flickered with smug satisfaction and anticipation.

She had overlooked the statues, but Martin hadn’t. He was making his way up to unlock the file cabinet holding the pair, pain and determination pulsing through his aura. Millie watched with dismay, as fragile knitting was undone. Leaning on the desk, his aura showed signs of digressing to unconsciousness when Martin did a remarkable thing. He willed the creation energy in his body to increase the blood flow to his brain.
An aftereffect of their bonding?
She had learned things from him during the union. Perhaps he learned a few things too. There would be much to discuss if they got the chance.