Chapter 42: Part 42

Okay, so Janet was basically a straight psychopath. Or sociopath. Whichever one is really good at faking empathy and emotions. I dove to the side, choosing a direction at random, before she could pull the trigger on her magic shotgun again. Thankfully, Her's razor shroud seemed to shape itself around me, and I didn't land on any barbs or snags. Those things could stop bullets, I can't imagine they'd have difficulty with my fingers.

My landing wasn't graceful, but I at least managed to not knock the wind out of myself. That was the last thing I needed right now, to be wheezing for air in the middle of a firefight.

Distant thuds punctuated that a firefight was indeed going on. I judged it a bad sign that gunshots were so muffled for me at this point. I rolled onto my side to see what was happening. My back hit a broom handle.

Janet had been forced to abandon her shooting stance, and held her shotgun tightly in one hand. By the barrel, not the trigger. She was surrounded on all sides by writhing metal tendrils, but was managing to avoid them through a combination of good luck, using her magic shotgun as a shield, and constructing posts to tangle them up in. A part of me (not a constructed part, just that part that we all have that makes inane comparisons during moments of stress) likened it to a gardener madly putting up trellises to tame murderous tomato plants. It wasn't that far from an accurate description.

I started to scoot backwards, hoping to reach the shelter of the planter pot, mere inches away. There was a clatter from the broom handle.

No. Not a broom handle. Where would a broom have come from? I reached behind me and closed my hand around the handle of my torchfork. I pulled it around in front of me. Okay. I was armed again. It was a fork, and this was a gun and magic razor wire fight, but I was armed. That was something. I continued my scoot until I was behind the planter again.

There was another thud against the ringing in my ears. I saw Fast Cousin spin around quickly, clutching his hand. I tried not to notice that he was bleeding pretty badly from his wrist and failed. Crap. Evil Boddy was a better shot than him, apparently. And in all this razor wire? I glanced around the corner of the box. It wasn't Evil Boddy. Janet had finished erecting her blockade against the wire. She looked like a hunter in a tree blind, kneeling in a box of free space.

I was nearly blinded by a shower of dirt and stone chips as Janet took a shot at me. Ducking back behind my planter, I met Her's gaze. She was focusing deeply on all of the vines, and black tears were staining her cheeks. She wouldn't be able to keep this up for long. I looked down at the weapon in my hand.

A weapon of revolt. The weapon of revolt. So iconic that it was an idiom in the English-speaking world. And Janet had just proven herself to be revolting. The realization was like a balm. Suddenly, the anger I had locked away for later was rushing through my mind, causing the torch between the tines to flare up. The pain was freed alongside it, turning the edges of the flame blue as it flickered and grew. It renewed me, somehow. Little imps of fiery anger sprang to life in my mindscape. In the time it took for me to blink, they started to round up all the uncertainty, the fear, the stress. Everything got in line and waited. Anger took the lead. Anger, with none of the blindness. The original material of the torchfork.

I swear, even my hearing started to improve. I surprised myself by standing up. Wasn't I supposed to be in hiding? No, the anger imps whispered in my mind. You have the advantage. Look, the enemy cannot even take aim through the spell of your witch. I looked. It was true. Janet might be free of the wires herself, but they still interposed themselves whenever she tried to line up a shot. And with the same quickness, they made room for me to move. Now, STRIKE! my anger shouted. Warden shouted alongside it.

It took me three strides to cross to Janet's safe box. With a grunt of effort, I swung the torchfork like I was splitting wood. It shattered one of her trellises, and the wires began to invade her safety. She yelped. She actually yelped. I only realized later that Her's spell had obscured my approach until I was mid-swing. Another stride and I smashed another trellis. Janet was sitting on the ground now. She fired blindly in my direction. I heard the earsplitting sound clearly, despite everything. New creatures appeared in my mind, temporary manifestations of some sensation. My anger imps put them into formation with everything else before I could even register what it was.

With a last swing, I shattered her gun. Fragments of hot metal shot out, vanishing into nothingness before they could hit the ground. Janet's hand and arm were both red with fresh burns. She gaped at me. I don't know what I must have looked like, coming out of a curtain of razor death like that, but she was afraid. No psychopathic mimicry involved. A moment later, Her directed her spell to form a sort of cocoon around Janet. It never touched her, but she would shred herself if she tried to crawl free. One threat down.

Evil Boddy had taken the smart option and moved to the next room. The one Carver had left open. The wires didn't seem to be able to cross the threshold, which I found mildly surprising. Evil Boddy was shooting with a steady rhythm from his pistol. Aim, shoot. Aim, shoot. Each bullet raised sparks as it inevitably met with one of Her's infinite guarding arms.

I noticed I was slower as I started to walk towards Evil Boddy. It was like something was caught around my ankle. I looked down. There was a large stain on my right pant leg. It looked like blood. That would track, with the hole in my pants. In my mindscape, the imps brought forward a guilty-looking prisoner. Pain. The prisoner was a representation of my pain. The anger imps had kept me from feeling it. Pain in my leg. From a gunshot.

Holy crap. I had been shot in the leg. I took one more staggering step towards Evil Boddy, still refusing to feel the sensation of the pain. I was mad, and my fork was built to use it.

My leg didn't hold the weight. I collapsed, landing safely on the ground as a barricade of wires formed itself over me. I heard a distant clang as my torchfork bounced free.

---

In the chaos of Daniel unleashing his terror, everyone seemed to forget about Mean Uncle. In general, everyone seemed to forget about everything. The beast's shriek had that effect on a person. Even Daniel, whose grin had been a match for Mean Uncle's own, had been too distracted by having a shotgun aimed at him. Mean Uncle, for all his bluster and reputation, did feel bad for the kid. It wasn't his fault he'd been in the wrong place with the wrong special powers. But Mean Uncle was who he was because he could make the hard choices.

A cupboard in one corner had been splintered and cracked by stray gunfire. Through it, Mean Uncle could see a sliver of light. He ducked inside the cupboard before everyone could recover. There was a retort and he was distantly aware of one of the Cousins rushing to a fallen hob. He ignored it, and focused instead on something that should not be coming from inside a cupboard.

The shaft of light he had noticed was coming from the hall on the other side of the conference room's wall. Mean Uncle felt around for a couple minutes and discovered that the back panel of the cupboard was removable. Behind it was not a secret door, like he expected. Instead, he discovered that the wall had been carefully designed to be slightly thicker than it seemed. A ladder led up to a crawlspace between the second and third floor. Secret passages. That was how Carver intended to escape this conflict. Well, Mean Uncle would see to that, sure enough.

Another retort sounded behind him. He didn't look to see who had fired on whom. He started to climb.

Like he said, the hard choices.

---

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Loyal rushed through a corridor. She had been given a job. And she was good at doing jobs. It had earned her her name.

Unfortunately, this particular job required new skills. Loyal hadn't been given those skills. Tracking wasn't a job for her. Hers was to defend. Always, to defend. But she made do. There was a sense to the man she was meant to capture. The man who meant harm to her creator. It was a familiar sense. Almost like the invader. The virus-man. Oh, how she hated the virus-man. He had escaped her, on that last hunt before she awoke. This man who bore the same impression would not.

The corridor ended with a door. Loyal did not know how to use a door. She wasn't sure she would ever know how to use a door. Why should she bother? She ran through the door. Splinters of wood brushed against her hide, a new sensation. Down below, she heard loud sounds. Gunfire, she managed to dredge up from some fragment of Daniel's knowledge carried with her. That wasn't her problem.

She turned her head, shafts of light piercing the room around her. Yes. The sensation was close. But not in this room. A wall stood in the way. Walls. Walls were tougher than doors. Several small creatures were fleeing in a panic. She stepped up onto their table, turning a slow circle, tasting the air through her beak.

Taste, yes. She had a mouth now. She hadn't before. Taste gave her new information. A new sense. And carried on it, distant through the hallways, she felt the impression she was chasing. The man whose sense was the same as the virus had come through this room. She could smell his trail as he entered through another door that the tiny creatures were using to flee. He had crossed the room and exited through the door she had just broken.

Yes. She had him now. She could taste his breath on the air, even as it grew stale. She turned back towards the shattered remains of the door and stepped back into the corridor. He was still near. No longer moving. Perhaps he thought he was safe.

Loyal bellowed with joy. He would never be safe. Not as long as he meant harm to Daniel. She was loyal. She was Loyal. She did her job. She would do this one too.

---

I managed to get my belt off. I remembered something from a first aid seminar about using a belt as a tourniquet. Where did you put a tourniquet, though? I hazarded a guess. The shot was just below my knee. I looped the belt just above my knee and pulled until it was biting into my flesh. It hurt. The anger imps had lost control of my mindscape, and with a grunt of effort, I simultaneously pulled the belt as tight as it would go and banished all the temporary constructs from my mind.

Then it hurt a lot. My ears started ringing again as all the sensations held at bay by construction trickery rushed back. My face was sore, and it was wet with what I hoped was tears but feared was blood. Broken nose, maybe some tears from the planter shrapnel. All the other aches of the fight rushed in at once and for a few seconds, it was all I could do to hunker down in my cocoon of safety and try to focus.

The stain on my pant leg stopped spreading. That was a good sign, right? Slowly, my hearing started to return. I heard voices shouting. One of them was Her. The other was...Boddy? That was reassuring. Boddy was awake again. Or had I already known that?

You're losing consciousness. Warden informed me helpfully. Yes, thank you Warden, I could tell by how I'm not staying awake. Manifest me. He said.

What? I managed to pull my thoughts into clarity for another brief moment. Manifest me. Warden answerred. Outside the cocoon. You know how to do it. I can take the torchfork, (deliriously, I wondered if he called it that because he was polite enough to use the name I had assigned it or because he was essentially a fragment of me and liked the name as much as I did) and I can stop Carver and his Boddy. You can't fight anymore. Not in person. But you can manifest me.

Wait. Hadn't that voice asked me to manifest it before? I seemed to recall that was a bad idea. The voices outside were shouting now. Some of the shouting might have been words, but I couldn't make them out past the fading ring of my hearing and the rapidly retracting awareness of my surroundings.

That was the other one. Not me. I'm Warden, not Rookie. Daniel, you have to manifest me. I swear, I will return. But if you don't, you give up any say you have in the rest of today.

Rookie was talking sense, I had to admit. Thinking sense? No. Not Rookie. Not-Rookie. Warden. Warden?

The crystal moment. My own voice echoed out from my mind. I may have spoken the words aloud, too. It's recharged now. Use it.

Right. I had a secret weapon. Well, not secret anymore. I'd used it twice already. Of course nobody could tell when I did. So still secret, I guess. I reached for it.

The world snapped into clarity. I could make out every individual strand in the protective cocoon Her had woven around me. And, to my surprise, I could think clearly. I only had this one moment, but for it, I had clarity. Of course. Clarity meant more than just my senses. My mind. My mind was crystal clear.

Warden was right. I was out of other options. With an effort, I opened a door for him to climb out of my mindscape, and a rope ladder fell from the aperture. He started to climb.

The moment shattered. I was aware only of a scene of someone climbing a rope ladder. Was I watching search and rescue footage? There was more shouting. With a sigh of relief, I laid back and let my eyes glaze over as I watched the wires swimming around me.

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