Chapter 13: Monitor

James tooled along the street, windows down, listening.

Nothing good came in with the night air.

The sounds were nightmarish, a tapestry that would have had him sweating bullets only three or four days ago.

Now, the blurred cacophony of screams, shouts, car horns, gun fire, and sirens were almost normal. But he could tell things were rising to a fever pitch.

The Third Wave was proving brutal.

There was a decent amount of traffic. Cars stuffed full of belongings, families gazing out the windows already looking lost, leaving town as quickly as they could.

Where you going? James wanted to ask them all. Everywhere’s gone to shit. There are no good places left.

Occasionally he swerved to try and run over a gremlin. They usually scampered away unharmed.

He got off the busy street and slowed to a crawl. An ambulance was parked outside a brownstone, lights flashing, paramedics dragging themselves up the stoop steps with a stretcher.

James felt a twinge of guilt.

He could be helping them. He had the knowledge, the skills.

But that wasn’t what he did anymore.

Wasn’t who he was.

He took a random left. Another residential street. Blocky four-story apartment buildings, ugly and probably built in the 70’s, when offending sensibilities was a source of pride.

A handful of gremlins were cavorting around a fallen body that lay stretched out upon a merry-go-round in a pocket park, lit up by the streetlights.

James parked, got out, watched. A bleak horror washed over him. Nobody was screaming, nobody was running away from the scene. Just another dead body. Who would collect it? Bury it? Morgues were overflowing. Would they start digging trenches like they used to during the typhoid pandemic at the turn of the century? Dump corpses by the thousands into unmarked graves?

Would it get so bad they’d eventually just leave them to rot in their apartments and homes?

“It’s quite a sight, is it not? Watching children at play.”

James spun, looked around, then up at where a figure was slowly gliding down through the night air to join him on the street. Far above, one of the iron symbols spun, wreathed in purple flame.

It was a woman, slender, dressed improbably in an elegant business suit, her ash blonde hair fanning about her face, a tablet held in the crook of one arm, rimless glasses resting on the bridge of her nose.

“What the fuck?” whispered James.

It was Jessica Miles. A gray pencil skirt was wrapped tautly across her hips and thighs, while a button-up white shirt was open at the neck, showing a hint of her clavicles. Her heels tapped lightly on the asphalt as she landed, tilted her head to one side, and fixed him with the same piercing stare with which she’d first greeted him at the NYCEM headquarters.

“Good evening, James.”

“What… you’re… you’re working with them?”

“Hmm?” She looked down at herself, and James could tell she was feigning a moment’s confusion. “Oh - no. I plucked this image from your mind. It suited my purposes perfectly. Fascinating to ponder why. There were… other… forms I could have taken, but those would have rendered conversation… impossible.”

“You can read my mind?” James took a step back, then forced himself to stop. Whatever this thing was, it was willing to talk to him. As far as he knew, this was the first time anyone had interacted with something other than a Nemesis 1. He had to get intel. He had to learn something.

“Are you a Nemesis 2?”

Jessica laughed. “Nemesis 2? I’m as far from that as you are from cockroaches. No, farther. I am a Monitor, assigned to watching how the Winnowing progresses.”

“Why?” The question came from the depths of his soul, encompassed every tragedy he’d seen over the past two days. “Why are you doing this?”

“Speaking with you?” Her amusement was obvious, her misunderstanding purposeful.

“No. Attacking my species. Winnowing us.”

“Ah. It is necessary. Would you believe me if I said we had no choice in the matter? This has been your destiny since you were coaxed forth from the savannah and given the greatest gift. Your fate is ineluctable. It was written in your stars countless millennia ago.”

“By what? Who’s compelling you?”

“On that we may not speak. But your time grows short. Be quick, James Kelly. My charitable instincts wane before my sadistic impulses.”

What was the most important thing he could ask? He felt overwhelmed by the responsibility, inadequate to the task.

“How many waves are there going to be? What - what are these pits that are going to open? How do we get Miracles and Benedictions? Who’s giving us these powers? What are Aeviternum Points?”

“There,” she said, her lips pulling into a pitying smile. “The babbled cry for comprehension. The Winnowing prepares your species for the opening of the Pits. Those who survive shall be tempered and prepared for the true war. The rest I will make clear to you if you lie with me.”

James grunted as if punched in the gut. Her words were like brands across his mind. Jessica watched with avid interest, then slid her hand between her legs. “I know you find this form arousing. Would you like to dominate me? Make me beg? We can fulfil your every fancy, James. Lie with me, use me, and I will tell you everything you wish to know.”

A blank and fierce rejection arose within him. It was due to the way the corner of her lips curled, her derisive amusement.

She had no interest in telling him everything.

She’d already delved into his mind. Knew his past. She was toying with him. Stress testing his weakest seams.

“No,” he rasped.

Jessica’s laugh was delighted and unsurprised. “No? Very well. Not so desperate yet. The day shall come when you eagerly betray yourself for any advantage.”

“But that day isn’t this one.” He had to seize the initiative, prevent her from leaving now that her game had failed. “Why’d you come down here to speak with me?”

She raised both hands, the tablet simply disappearing, and ran her fingers languorously through her long, smooth hair. “We Monitors can sense Nexii. Those in whom fortune and resolve are wed to optimal consequences. You are one such, James Kelly. There are…” She trailed off, looking out over the city. “Another seven hundred and forty-eight Nexii in this metropolis, but only six have advanced as far as yourself. Thus I was curious. I wished to gauge the caliber of your species’ best and refine my estimate as to how long you shall survive before the last of you falls in battle.”

“And?”

Jessica’s features were becoming more vulpine, predatory, as if whatever wore her face was starting to shine through. “Currently? Five months and six days, as your species reckons time.”

Three months till the pits opened. All of humanity would be extinct two months after that?

James tried to swallow but couldn’t.

“Please. To make a difference. What level do I need to be before the pits open?”

She arched a brow. “For you alone to make a difference? If the rest of humanity advances at their current rate, you would have to be at least Level 500 to give your kind another month.”

The words hit him like a blow. He took a reflexive step back. Level 500? In less than three months?

Impossible.

Wasn’t it?

“Your name.” She’d grown taller, more angular, was half-turned back to her symbol. “Tell me your name.”

She considered him over her shoulder. “I thought you wouldn’t ask. You may not know my full name, for that would give you power over me, but may instead address me as Meladrix. Goodbye, James Kelly. I shall be watching.”

And she lifted into the air, to soar faster than he could track out of the streetlight and over the rooftops toward the burning symbol. Toward the end she lost all resemblance to Jessica, and he thought he saw great wings, bat-like and leathery, but then she was gone.

James looked up to the burning symbol. Was that what they were? Places that housed Monitors?

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He felt dizzy.

Could he trust her?

What if all she’d said have been little more than base fuckery?

But why come down to lie to him?

Her curiosity had felt genuine, but what did he know?

James curled his hands into fists. She’d left him with even more questions than before. What determined if you were a Nexus? Why was her kind compelled to do this? Did she mean that it was their nature, or that another compelled them? Did she mean she alone was compelled, or all Monitors, or all of her kind, Nemeses and more? What would come out of the Pits? How could he reach Level 500 by the time they opened? Why was she interested in his progress? Or that of his species?

James clutched at his head and wished desperately for a whiskey.

But he had nothing.

Just his skillet and the gleaming army truck.

Taking a deep breath, he violently shoved his thoughts and fears aside and turned to face the playground again. The gremlins there - seven of them - had hidden at Meladrix’s approach, and only now were they emerging.

“You!” James’s voice shook. “Get over here.”

He stalked toward them.

They lowered their burning gazes from the sky, stared at him, then grinned.

As one they scampered forward and leaped.

All ashed as they fell upon him, the last screeching in horror as it windmilled its arms, trying to swerve aside.

Black grit blew past James.

Who turned back to the car.

He was some sixty blocks from the warehouse.

Musing, he bounced the keys in his palm again, then dropped them in his pocket.

Summoned the countdown timer:

49 Hours till Nemesis 2 Released

James went to the rear of the truck and opened the trunk. Lifted the flooring material, found the spare tire, and embedded in its center a tire iron.

This he took.

Then, with great deliberation, he closed the truck and started walking. And as he went, he struck his skillet with the tire iron, over and over, so that the clank resonated out over the block.

“Come and get me!” he shouted. “I’m right here!”

If he needed to reach level 500, he’d better get started.

The clanging worked like a charm.

Or perhaps it was the scorn in his voice.

It felt like the Nemesis 1’s didn’t like being called in like sheep to pasture.

They boiled out of the alleys and windows, came bounding over the rooftops, dropping with ease to then surge toward him.

Each and every one symbolized an innocent person’s death.

And each and every one ashed upon hitting his aura.

Three blocks down he was being trailed by a handful of chitterers whose cry summoned reinforcements. James ceased beating his skillet and instead propped it over his shoulder. Kept walking, no longer bothering to try and track attacked Nemeses, just staring right ahead as his aura flared and flared until it became a constant.

Your rank is now Mendicant 4

You have 5 unspent points.

James walked a block as he considered his options.

He felt weary. Not a physical depletion, but rather an expenditure of the soul. It was a familiar feeling. One that had disappeared these past couple of days, but which the conversation with the Monitor had returned.

That sense of futility. Of being awake at 6:30 in the morning in a random parking lot outside a coffee shop, watching folks park their shining cars and get out for their lattes and cappuccinos, and knowing that he had nothing to look forward all day long, nothing but panhandling and staying out of trouble, of drifting across the city to the right soup kitchens and charity donation spots before finding another quiet corner to sleep in undisturbed.

It was a sensation that demanded he find something to drink. That could be momentarily beaten back between the third and sixth gulp of cheap whiskey, but which would spiral into mania and dark depression after that.

Almost he considered just marching into a liquor store, trailing his frenzying carpet of gremlins, and just grabbing one of those glittering bottles.

Who would stop him?

He thought of Jessica’s green-blue eyes glittering behind her rimless glasses. Felt revulsion and self-disgust rear within him. Her amusement had more than rankled, because if she was amused, she wasn’t threatened, and if he was the premiere fucking Nexus in NYC than it meant things were likely fucked for the human race.

Maybe because their exemplar wanted nothing more than to chug a bottle of booze.

Gremlins hurled themselves at him, transformed into ash, over and over.

He marched on.

Opened his statistics sheet. Considered putting points into Stamina or Power. Something that might give him a kick, lift his spirits.

But in the end, with a feeling of resignation, he dumped them all into Arete again.

Aura: Lead

Aura Strength: 4

His aura expanded, pushing out another few feet, so that he now walked within a bubble of gray, sere light that surrounded him at a distance of three feet.

The gremlins screeched their nihilistic hatred and continued to assault him, poofing into ash again and again.

He made it to the end of the next block when new words appeared.

Your rank is now Mendicant 5

You may select a Benediction:

Shield of Faith | Smite | Bless

Your choice of Benediction is your first step

in determining your class.

You may now purchase Aeviternum points.

You have 5 unspent points.

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