Chapter 15: Chapter 15 – APOLOGY

It was the day before I was going to go back to Ottawa for Christmas, but there was no way I could just leave everything I’d just learned about the Grey City hanging over my head. Huang was reluctant to meet, but I insisted we should get together and actually talk about all the new information—and all the new questions it raised.

Finally, Huang suggested we meet at a coffee shop that was at about the halfway point between our apartments.

As I headed out to the meeting, I couldn’t stop myself from running conversations through my head about how I could make Huang less pissed at me. Somehow “I’m really sorry I tried to kill you last time I saw you” didn’t seem like it was gonna cut it… boy, this was going to be awkward.

I found the place without too much trouble and saw Huang already seated at a table in the quietest area of the shop.

“Hey,” I greeted him, dropping into the seat next to him. He blinked at me over his coffee, his skin pale and dark circles under his eyes.

 “Geez, dude, are you sick?” I exclaimed.

 “Nah. Exams.”

“Seriously? My sister was done with hers by last week.”

He sighed through his nose. “Well, I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Whatever, it’s not important. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

I frowned, re-evaluating. He seemed stressed, but not angry with me, and I was starting to think whatever had been making him so quiet was his own problem. Maybe I should feel obligated to see if he was okay—but despite everything we’d been through together, we weren’t really friends, were we? I decided not to push it.

“I had another dream,” I said instead, pulling out my phone to find my notes. “This time I actually got some answers.”

I gave Huang the lowdown: how Leviathan had described itself, the existence of the Grey City and its need for warriors to protect it from the demons. Huang nodded as I spoke, but when I was done, he folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

“It’s interesting, I’ll give you that,” he said. “A lot of it makes sense based on what we know already. But there’s no way we can trust this Leviathan thing.”

“He seems to think his survival is tied to ours,” I pointed out. “Last time he said something like: if I fail, he’s screwed, too.”

“Okay. Let’s assume he’s all about trying to help us and has no reason to hide anything,” Huang declared, leaning his chin on his fist. “Doesn’t it say something that the first thing you did when you were in that Leviathan’s form was attack me?”

I winced. “Uh, listen…”

“Look,” he interrupted me, then sighed. “It’s not like I’m…  I’m not really upset about it. I can’t complain when the unexpected happens in the Grey City, of all places. But if this creature in your dreams is the same one that you turned into at the Waterfront, then there’s no reason to trust it.”

I didn’t want to think back to the feeling of being swallowed up by the Leviathan’s ferocious, empty mind, but I’d have to confront that eventually.

“Hear me out,” I tried. “The instincts it has… it’s not like it’s full of rage and wants to kill everything. It’s very focused on protecting the Waterfront. It sees the water as its territory.”

“You’d think it would be able to tell the difference between me and the demons,” Huang said mildly.

“Leviathan already saved our lives before, remember? He told us how to fight off the spiders.”

“Doesn’t prove that he told the whole truth about that, or that he’ll keep helping us in the future,” Huang pointed out, rubbing at his eyes. “Anyway… ah, there’s no point to this meeting. We won’t get anywhere with this dream shit.”

I scowled, trying to think about something important I’d learned from my dreams.

“…Well,” I finally said, “We’re one step closer to figuring out what’s going on. We just have to figure out why Leviathan says the ‘game isn’t fair’, and…” I trailed off—Huang did not seem to be listening. “Huang.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Before, you said you thought something might have been trying to communicate with me through these dreams,” I reminded him. “Did you change your mind?”

He offered me a noncommittal shrug.

“Okay,” I sighed, trying not to get pissed off. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Huang said. “I just don’t think this will get us anywhere.”

 “So… I should just leave it to you, then?” I asked.

He gave me a flat look. “What do you mean?”

“I’m apparently not getting us anywhere. You’re saying I should leave it to you to figure it all out, right?”

He lifted his chin, actually meeting my eyes. “Yeah. Why not? I’ve been doing this myself so far.”

I’d run into a spider’s den to save this asshole’s life. My dreams, pointless as they may have been, had saved us on at least one occasion. I could feel my heartbeat rising and blood rushing to my face, but I forced myself to breathe evenly, gripping the table until the worst of the anger wore off. Huang gazed at me disinterestedly.

“…All right,” I snapped, “It’s all on you now.”

He stared into the remains of his coffee cup. “Good.”

Before I lose my temper and make an ass of myself, I stood and left the café, hands jammed in my coat pockets. I flung the door open and stepped back into the cold.

I walked into the Grey City.

My spatial sense, which I had almost stopped noticing at this point, registered a jarring shift as my surroundings completely changed. I was looking out into a dismal street, plain buildings and tall, round street lights: part of the old-fashioned district where I’d first entered the dimension.

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I turned around to look for Huang, but there was only a blank storefront behind me, bearing no resemblance to the café I’d just exited. I tried the door with no luck.

Okay. Okay. The only thing to do was get to the Sanctuary and hide. Maybe the Leviathan had killed all the demons at the Waterfront, but if it had only chased them away, they would still be roaming the streets.

I saw one at the very next turn. A snake sentry, standing tall at an intersection, scanning its surroundings. I put a wall in between us and leaned against it, heart pounding. I didn’t think it’d seen me, but…

I turned around to try the other way, and caught a glimpse of movement at that end of the street. I grit my teeth, using my spatial sense to scan the area—there was no clear exit from this street that wouldn’t bring me in close contact with either the snake or whatever was lurking at the other end. If I couldn’t go through, maybe I could go… up?

I edged toward the nearest building, where my sense had revealed some low-hanging brass pipes on the wall. Focusing hard on the movement of the demons at the periphery of my radar, I grabbed hold of some horizontal pipes at about head-height.

They could hold my weight—so far, so good. There was a vertical pipe just above I was able to hoist myself up to, holding tightly with my feet braced against the wall.

Desperately attempting to be quiet, I started to inch myself higher up the building until I was able to press my foot down on another horizontal pipe.

It let out a squeak.

I froze, pulling myself close against the wall. I sensed the snake instantly swivel its head my way, then take a slow, careful step down my street.

It stopped just out of sight, resuming its usual patient scanning. I grit my teeth, building the courage to keep moving, then pulled myself up another few inches. My muscles were starting to shake.

At barely a third of the way up I was forced to stop, trying to rest my weight against the wall in a way that took the pressure off my arms. Damn it, I really had forgotten how awful it was to be alone in here. This was the first time I’d been here without Huang. Maybe he would enter soon?

But we were pretty sure the Grey City only operated when we were moving places, so if he stayed on his ass in that café, he probably wouldn’t get here anytime soon. Couldn’t expect much help from that quarter. I took several deep breaths as quietly as I could, steeled myself, and started climbing again, pushing through the pain.

Thankfully, there were more pipes further up the building to use as footholds and handholds. I carefully placed my foot on a horizontal pipe and reached up for another.

The pipe under my boot creaked, then snapped, falling in a cacophonous noise like pots and pans clattering. I swore under my breath and picked up the pace, scrambling up the wall as quickly as possible.

I sensed the snake demon move swiftly onto my street, and more distantly, I sensed the second demon as well. I only received a vague impression of the second; just enough to know it wasn’t a familiar kind to me.

Why was this building so tall? I was barely halfway up! The snake made a shrill cry and leapt at the wall.

Adrenaline spurred me on and I scrambled up a few feet, just in time to avoid its claws as they slammed into the bricks below me. I sensed its neck extend, mouth opening.

I couldn’t climb fast enough to escape it. Its head darted towards me and I released one of my handholds to swing out of the way. Its jaws snapped an inch to my left, then the demon fell back to earth. The pipe I was hanging all my weight on creaked and bent, but didn’t break.

My feet scrambled against the wall, struggling for any kind of purchase as the creature jumped for me again, this time hardly able to miss. My foot found something and I pushed myself up at the last second. Its jaws snapped right where my leg had been hanging.

Somehow, I managed to pull myself onto the roof. I rolled, then got to my knees, panting. The snake scratched at the wall, unable to reach high enough.

The Grey City looked different up here, the fog collecting in the streets below and affording me a view of the flat rooftops extending in all directions. I squinted out and could just see a white tree in the distance. The Sanctuary was that way!

Something effortlessly jumped onto the roof right in front of me.

The demon was small, only about six feet tall. It looked like a big cat, but with wide, circular eyes that filled its skull, and a jumble of uneven fangs in its mouth. Its legs tapered down into skeletal feet and claws made of black bone.

The bone cat stalked toward me and I scrambled back. I was cornered. On the street below, the snake shrieked again, probably drawing even more demons toward our location.

I don’t want to die here, I thought, staring into the round white eyes of the bone cat as it neared. It tensed its body, crouching low before the pounce.

You will not, said a kind of a voice: not Huang’s like I had still somehow been hoping, but a deeper, darker voice that seemed to come from deep within. The mind of the Leviathan opened around me like a chasm, and I had little choice but to fall in.

 

* * * * *

 

I had to fight, really fight, to come back to myself. If I relaxed for a second, the mind of the Leviathan took over, content to patrol its territory forever with no interruption from the little human trapped inside of it.

Wait a second. Where was I? Sensation was slowly coming back to me and I latched onto it with all the strength I could manage. Time had passed. I had somehow ended up back in the water. There was a huge blank space in my memory in between being trapped on the rooftop and getting here.

The instincts of the creature bubbled up and I forced them down with a vengeance. No. I had to get out of here, get back to dry land. My sense told me I was far out from the shore; I had been tracing the currents, patrolling the area.

It was an effort, but for now, I was in control again. I turned my nose toward the nearest shore and started to swim, cutting through the water. I ignored the melodic voices of the currents around me.

I pulled myself up to dry land and hissed at a twinge of pain down my neck. A smear of dark, bluish blood stained my clawed hand when I touched the painful area.

I needed to be human again. Just like the first time, I could barely remember what that felt like. The reasons I’d come up with before, that had made me want to be human again, now seemed flimsy and pointless. All I could feel was the drive to get back in the water, to keep patrolling, to keep protecting the area from intruders.

I clung as stubbornly as I could to my humanity. I am Camilo Santos. I was born in Ottawa, Ontario. I am twenty-four years old. I am human.

After a few minutes of stubborn concentration focusing not on what I wanted to be but what I was, it began to work. I shrank down to my normal size. I was looking at my human hands, shaking in the lakeshore dirt.

Apparently, this would not get easier. It only seemed to get harder. Twice already, I’d almost lost myself completely inside the monster. Each time I did this, it was going to wear away at my will to survive, at my will to be human.

I’d already had to fight so hard for the life I had, to find value and goodness in it. How long could I possibly fight against that endless mind that had no regard at all for my humanity? Alone, on my knees by the foggy lakeshore, I quietly started to cry.

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