20 – Loose Lips Sink Ships

Erika waited, back up against one of the walls, as she heard footsteps approach. The Stalker stood on the opposite side of the doorway, unnaturally still. Erika wasn’t even sure that she was breathing. Simone, either in a nervous tick or eager anticipation, flicked her butterfly knife open and closed repeatedly. The slight sound it made was as loud as thunder in Erika’s ears—she wanted to tell the woman to stop, but that would only make more noise at this point.

Erika came here somewhat expecting a fight. She had come with the confidence of someone who knew they weren’t quite human, someone who could break anything that she put her mind toward. The Stalker following her into the museum only served to bolster that confidence. She had an ally. One more experienced in this strange world she was exploring.

Now, with each footstep softly tapping against the tiled floor, each slightly louder than the last, Erika was starting to regret her decisions.

What the fuck was I thinking?

She had seen a teleporting wizard and an invisible robot just a few weeks ago? What if these masked people were anything like them? Or like The Stalker—who could teleport without blurting it out like a comic book hero and find people across the entirety of Chicago. She apparently knew nothing about what was going on in the city. Even the Kings and the rest of the ghost hunter club only had their toes grazing the surface of the water.

Erika’s mind snapped back to reality as a faint shadow darkened the opening to the statue room. She raised her bat—

“Wait,” Simone hissed.

An older man with wispy white hair wearing fatigues stepped through. Michael shot a withering glance at Erika before surveying the rest of the room. He stopped at The Stalker and started speaking.

“Spotted four people out there. Two put on masks and started toward the museum. The other two hung back. There might be more around the rest of the building. I don’t know.”

The Stalker clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“While on watch, I pulled up a map on the website. It wasn’t listed, but the museum security room was still there, just off in an employee-only section. They likely have camera access there and see exactly how many are after us. Should probably see if we can delete records of tonight anyway.”

“Lead us.”

Michael nodded and turned back the way he had come.

Although Erika didn’t have a map, she figured the masked statue was somewhere in the center of the museum. Michael immediately turned, not heading in the same direction that they had originally come from.

“Nervous?” Simone whispered, coming up alongside Erika. “You almost clocked Mike there.”

Erika did not jolt at her sudden appearance, but only because she had been glancing back that way to try to spot anyone wearing a mask. “I’m a break-the-knees first, ask questions later kind of girl.”

“Respectable, but you should keep in mind who your current allies are. We knew Mike was coming.”

Erika pressed her lips together. Simone wasn’t wrong. The lecture was both annoying and noisy. “Old habits die hard,” she said, coming up with an excuse on the spot. “Had to deal with a guy called The Doppelganger once upon a time. Couldn’t always tell if an approaching ally was actually an approaching ally.”

Simone hummed, frowning slightly.

“I’ll try to keep in mind that The Doppelganger isn’t here now. Probably,” Erika said before obviously turning her focus away from the woman. Hopefully, nothing about that brief story was obviously wrong. The Stalker already thought that Erika was from out of town, so presumably, there were other supernatural people elsewhere in the world, and, presumably, not everybody would know each other.

All she had to do was never mention the subject again, and nobody would be able to find any inconsistencies.

They didn’t make it to the security room before a loud shout echoed down the gallery.

Erika didn’t even hear what the shout was before Michael pivoted, pulled his pistol from his holster, and fired in one smooth, practiced motion. The crack was much louder than the paintball guns. Erika flinched, but stiffened her grip on her bat as she whirled.

Michael didn’t stop firing, filling the air with another three cracks.

Two men stood in the hall, down several of the museum’s gallery rooms. Except for their masks, they looked just like regular people. One had a larger ‘dad-bod’ and wore a casual pair of workmen’s jeans that were slightly stained with black spots, like he was a mechanic just getting off work. The other looked more like a postman with his light blue top and dark slacks.

The postman didn’t stay standing for long, collapsing to the floor under Michael’s repeated shots. The other jerked back again and again, rocking lightly as Michael fired more.

The man didn’t fall. Michael fired his final shot, and the man still stood. The one that had fallen didn’t stay down for long. He got back to his feet, slowly but surely.

“Suppression rounds ineffective,” Michael said.

“The Warrior is going to be pissed if we waste all the good stuff,” The Stalker said, clicking the revolving part of her revolver around.

The mechanic let out an inhuman screeching as he barreled forward, arms splayed and waving like he was trying to crawl through the air.

The Stalker didn’t even flinch. One-handed, she leveled the barrel of her revolver and squeezed the trigger.

A bright streak of yellow shot down the hall, striking the charging man square in the chest. A glowing yellow sigil burst into the air in front of his chest, centered right where he had been hit. It pulsed once, sending a ripple through the air.

Erika didn’t get to see what the actual effect was. The other man, who had just gotten to his feet after being shot several times, used the cover of the bright flash to rush forward. In a seeming instant, he was upon Erika, leaping at her.

She brought her bat around, more on instinct than intention. The metal bat struck, sending reverberations up her arms. She heard the ribs breaking in a dozen different spots. It did not stop his momentum.

Erika threw herself against the wall, out of the way of the man. He crashed into a portrait of a cat in a straitjacket. His head plowed straight through the relatively thin wall. The impact dislodged his mask, slipping the thin linen holding it to the back of his head over the top of his scalp. The porcelain clattered to the ground on this side of the wall.

The man went completely limp, head still in the hole.

Erika let out a short breath as she turned to see how her allies were faring. All three were standing. Simone was watching her while The Stalker approached the man they had dealt with. The glowing rune was gone, as was the man’s mask. Unlike Erika’s attacker, there was no sign of it around. Rather, with the scorch marks around the man’s face and faint boils forming on his skin, it looked like it might have spontaneously combusted in place.

The man himself looked dazed and confused. Not harmed despite the gunshots. He kept grasping at his face like he was trying to reseat the mask.

Deciding to leave their target to them, Erika turned back to the man stuck in the wall. Using her bat, she lightly prodded him in the side she hadn’t hit him. With how broken his ribs undoubtedly were, it was a small surprise that he didn’t instantly start screaming. He didn’t even move.

Walking around the wall to the other side of the exhibit, she found a painting on the floor and the man’s head and shoulders where it once had been. A small trickle of blood ran down from his temple, pooling on the back of the painting. Erika reached over, lightly pressing her fingers against the side of his neck.

He still had a pulse.

“Oi.” Erika reached into her jacket, reaching just a little deeper than was possible, and pulled out a half-filled water bottle. The bottle had been in the refrigerator of her house—the fridge protected it from the fire, though the power going out had ruined just about everything else inside. Now it was here. Popping the cap, she upended it over the top of the man’s head.

His eyes snapped open. Immediately, his face contorted in pain as he started drawing in a sharp, hissing breath. The breath hitched as the pain in his expanding chest surely jumped a level, but then the hitch made him grimace.

Erika was genuinely surprised that he wasn’t screaming in pain. From his reactions, it looked more like he stubbed his toe than had all his ribs broken.

Maybe she hadn’t hit him hard enough.

“What are you?” he hissed.

Erika raised an eyebrow. What was a telling word to use in this situation. “I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be asking questions. Where’s The Fixer?”

He chuckled. Erika could see the pain in his face, but that didn’t stop him for the first several seconds. Eventually, he trailed off with a small whine. “What? Fixer? I just work here! I swear, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Uh-huh. Try again.” Erika firmed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Unless you want to break a few more bones?”

A flicker of a grimace crossed the man’s face before he forced a smile. The change was abrupt enough that it was like flipping a switch. He didn’t even bother to try ignorance again. “Pain is temporary. Even death. Kill me and I shall rise again more powerful than you can imagine.”

Erika cringed in second-hand embarrassment for the guy. That quote was far too famous to be saying in a situation like this. “If pain is so temporary, why not push yourself out of the wall and try to attack me again?”

He wiggled a little like he was trying, winced, hissed, and promptly stopped.

“That’s what I thought,” Erika said, staring at him. “The Fixer?” She flipped her bat, catching it after spinning it, hoping it looked intimidating. Despite her minor victory, he still wasn’t giving her answers.

Maybe a broken wrist would get him talking?

Or…

Erika could break things. Even things that didn’t physically exist, like links to her own identity. She didn’t know exactly how that worked—she had never really cared enough to experiment so long as she could avoid the cops—but it stood to reason that she could break other things as well. Did that include someone’s will?

She frowned as she tried to figure out what she would even use to break something as ephemeral as willpower. Normally, she needed things. A bat, a keyboard, false ID cards. The best idea she had was to use words, but no words were coming to her. No sudden epiphanies came to mind about his undoubted disaster of a personal life that merely mentioning them would break him down.

It was a bit disappointing. Perhaps if she had more practice.

“Right. Kneecaps it is,” she said, dropping her baseball bat on her shoulder as she walked back around the wall.

The other masked assailant was on the ground, tied up with several zip ties binding his wrists and ankles. He still looked dazed, however, with his eyes somewhat glassy. Simone perched over him, dragging her butterfly knife over the bare skin on his neck just hard enough to make thin red lines appear in their wake.

Michael was up against one wall, peering around with narrowed eyes, on watch for more trouble.

The Stalker was crouched down, staring at the mask that had fallen from Erika’s captive.

“The masks don’t link to one another,” she said softly as Erika came around the opening. Her eyes shimmered, glowing a bit brighter than they had every other time Erika had seen her use her ability. “But they all link back to the statue in the other room. Unfortunately, the connection seems one-directional. I can’t track them backwards, from the statue to the masks, to find out how many of these masks exist.”

“What’s wrong with your guy?” Erika asked, nodding to the man Simone was hovering over.

The Stalker looked over and shrugged. “The Warrior said the bullet I hit him with would be highly effective against undead. Mummy, to me, sounds like undead. It didn’t seem to physically hurt him, but it did destroy his mask. He’s been nonresponsive.”

Simone pressed her knife right up against the man’s cheek, just beneath the eye. “Doesn’t even react. I think you broke him.”

“Don’t really care,” The Stalker said. “I’ll call The Strategist, see if he wants the body for examination. Maybe drag it to The Healer.”

The Warrior and The Healer just went on the list of terms Erika shoved aside for the moment. Even more people who worked with The Stalker, it seemed. This whole world was getting larger by the minute.

“Mine’s still talking,” Erika said, looking down at the mask. “Though he’s not saying what I want to hear. I was thinking about breaking his knees… If the masks are valuable to them—or controlling them—maybe threatening to break them would get more of a reaction.” She paused, glancing back the way they had come. “Or threatening to go smash up that statue—”

The moment the words were out of Erika’s mouth, the man pressed his hands against the wall. He began trying to push himself out, but was still struggling with the obvious pain in his ribs. A heavy bruise on his left arm, turning his pasty skin almost completely black along his forearm, didn’t help.

Seeing his arm, Erika realized she must have clipped more than just his chest with her bat.

Yet he still struggled. Maybe he really wasn’t feeling as much pain as he should have been.

The Stalker grasped hold of the back of his shirt. In complete apathy and disregard for his injuries, she wrenched him out of the hole and shoved him down against the opposite wall. His eyes rolled for a moment before he managed to focus, first on The Stalker, then on Erika, before he finally looked down at the mask on the floor. He lunged despite his injuries, only for The Stalker to slam her foot against his chest, pinning him against the wall.

That made him scream, loud and harsh.

“There are still others about,” Michael warned.

The Stalker didn’t seem to hear, focused as she was on their attacker. She dragged her gun over, holding it in front of his face. When she didn’t speak, Erika took that as her cue.

“That statue and the masks are a bit important to you, aren’t they?” With the lightest tap of her bat, she nudged the fallen mask just a little closer to the man. He pressed against The Stalker’s boot, but an equally light tap of Erika’s bat against his shoe cracked bone, twisting his leg as it forced another scream from him. “Where’s The Fixer?”

He ground his teeth. “You can’t destroy the masks. You have nothing but pain.”

“Destroyed that one well enough,” The Stalker said, jerking her head off to the other man.

He flicked his eyes over, staring a moment before his eyes slowly widened. “Apil?” he hissed. “Apil Ilisu?” he tried, speaking a little louder before descending into a long string of words that Erika couldn’t make heads or tails of. It wasn’t Spanish or German or Russian or any other language she could recognize, even if she couldn’t speak them.

She shot a quick glance at her allies. Michael kept his eyes outward, looking for more attackers, but from the puzzled expressions on The Stalker and Simone, neither understood his words either.

He glared back, teeth still grinding together.

Erika flipped her bat around, hovering it just above the porcelain mask. “Where is The Fixer?” she asked.

He sucked in another short, pained breath. “I have served for three thousand seven hundred years. If today is to be my final day, I go knowing The One Without a Face will acknowledge my efforts and grant me the promised reward.”

“Wow. I don’t even know what to say to that level of melodrama,” Erika said. “Five minutes ago, and you were all like ‘pain and death are meaningless’ while quoting Star Wars, and now you’re getting rewarded in the afterlife or some shit? Your religion needs some consistency…”

Erika trailed off, watching as his eyes drifted to the mask on the floor before lightly closing, like he was overacting a death scene in a B-movie. Realization started to creep in as she looked over to the other one that Simone stood over.

The dazed, vacant expression on his face. The unresponsiveness despite Simone poking him hard enough to draw blood. The lack of any real movement beyond simple breathing.

There had been a lot of strange things leaping into life these past few weeks. Was this possibility any less strange?

“Stalker,” Erika said. “Does he look like a normal human to you?”

“He does.”

“The masks don’t link to the people. They link to the statue.” Erika swung her bat up to her shoulder again and started walking. “Be right back. Holler if he goes all glassy eye—”

“Wait! You won’t find the one you’re looking for if you destroy that statue.”

Erika paused, smiling to herself. “I don’t know,” she said without turning. “Doesn’t sound like you’re going to tell me where he is, so I might as well get to doing the one thing I’m good at.” Turning, finally, she stared him down with all the dramatic flair she could muster. “Breaking shit.”

The man donned a smile of his own, leaving Erika taken aback. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected given his flip-flopping of his attitude toward death, but it wasn’t a smile.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to meet The Fixer? That can be arranged.”

It sounded like what she wanted. Hearing it from him didn’t make her any happier.

“Idiot.” The Stalker smacked him with the butt of her pistol hard enough to knock his head against the wall. “You want to lead people into a trap, you should try to be subtle about it.”

“Not a trap,” he hissed, glaring at The Stalker before turning his attention back to Erika. “I just didn’t realize who we had with us.” His smile grew a little wider, if a little more strained. “You’re the one who led us to him.”

Erika’s heart skipped a beat at the man’s words. She felt a slight chill run down her spine. She hadn’t been trying to hide, but the way he was looking at her now made her regret not taking more measures to conceal her identity.

She would be snipping a dozen ID cards after this.

The man’s eyes took on a fervor. “Yes, you. The Breaker. The one who disrupts the order, who will shatter the binding coils trapping The One Without a Face.”

The Stalker, for the first time since pinning the man to the wall, took her intense gaze fully off him to stare at Erika. She maintained a perplexed expression, one that Erika couldn’t read but with which she deeply felt resonance.

What the hell is this guy yapping about?

While it was true, if the ghost could be believed, that Erika had inadvertently led these people to her house, The Breaker? The one who disrupts order? Erika’s first instinct was to call him the nutjob that he was. But, unless she wanted to go try her interrogation again on the other two people Michael saw, it did sound like she was going to get what she wanted if she went along with it.

With all the bullshitting she had done to get the Stalker to take her here, what was a little more?

Erika took a deep breath, weighing her options even as she felt the weight in the air. Though she had hired The Stalker, that was only to lead her here. Because of that, this was her call. The Stalker had already called out that this was likely a trap. Would she go along with it if Erika agreed? Erika didn’t exactly want to be on her own, but discussing the matter in front of him didn’t seem like a good idea.

“First, we’re going to deal with your buddies,” Erika said. That might buy time to discuss the situation further with The Stalker. “You want them alive and their masks unbroken? Convince them to surrender. Then we’ll see about your blatantly obvious trap.”

He didn’t say anything. The expression on his face said enough.

“Don’t like it?” Erika asked. She thumped her bat against the floor tiles. It was barely more than a tap, yet a fissure spread through the ground, reaching toward his mask. It stopped well before reaching it—Erika put next to nothing into the attack, certainly nothing close to what she had used outside the Old St. Patrick’s Church—but he still stiffened, tensing momentarily until he was sure that it wouldn’t reach the porcelain.

“I’ll agree,” he said.

“Good. Let’s tie him up,” Erika said, looking to Simone. “Got any more of those zip ties?”