21 – The Masks Are the People

“The masks are the people,” Erika said softly.

It was a disturbing implication, but the one that made the most sense with what information she had.

“They don’t need to wear the masks, but doing so likely grants them some kind of resilience,” Erika said, glancing back over her shoulder. Simone and Michael were watching their captive. “I don’t know how else to explain them getting right up after being shot like nothing was wrong, but a few broken bones and that guy can barely function.”

“I agree mostly. It fits with what I can see. Though they may carry their masks because of range limitations,” The Stalker said. “If I had some kind of soul jar, I wouldn’t keep it anywhere near me if I could help it. It would be buried in a vault or something.”

“Not sure how the statue fits into it. If the masks are something that allow these people to possess bodies, I thought maybe it was some hub of souls, but that guy is acting like his buddy is dead for real just because the mask is gone. If his soul was still in there, I don’t think he would act like that.”

The Stalker just shrugged. “It’s linked to them somehow. I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t like to think I’m an idiot, but I know when to leave the thinking up to other people. I’m sure The Strategist will figure it out.”

Erika frowned at The Stalker, wondering why The Strategist hadn’t come himself with how much she had been talking about him. What would it cost to get in contact with him and hear whatever theories he had? The situation had her uncomfortably worried.

Not for herself.

She glanced back at the man without a mask. The one who was, even now, dazed and nonresponsive.

Had these people been regular people before coming into contact with those masks? Did they have kids and jobs and lives beyond whatever the masks had? Or were they, and had they always been, blanks? If the former, would that man recover?

A pertinent question, in Erika’s opinion.

She couldn’t help but see parallels with Leah’s situation.

Was that what happened? Was that broken mask that Erika found at her house Leah’s? Or, rather, was The Fixer in the mask? These guys didn’t need to wear their masks, so it was entirely possible that Erika wouldn’t have ever seen the mask. Yet they kept them close at hand. All the snooping about Erika had done wouldn’t have found the mask if Leah kept it on her person.

Except that mask had broken. And yet this guy talked of The Fixer like he was still around.

“More importantly,” The Stalker said, pulling Erika’s thoughts out of her worries. “How do you want to do this?”

Erika looked out onto the Chicago streets from within the museum. Michael said that there were four total suspicious individuals, though only two donned masks and entered the museum. The other two were still outside. One was a middle-aged man tapping away at a phone. His attire looked more suited to a bowling alley than whatever supernatural nonsense was going on here. The other leaned up against a tree, smoking a cigarette in his jeans and tee.

They could have been normal passers-by.

Both kept glancing toward the museum.

Given their captive’s usage of a language no one else present understood, they elected not to allow him to try to convince his compatriots to surrender.

“The one with the phone is either in contact with others or waiting for these guys to message him. Either way, they may not stay only two for long,” Erika said.

“I’m fine blasting away half the street,” The Stalker said as if she were discussing nothing more interesting than what she ate for lunch. “Might limit our time. We still have to prepare for whatever trap your guy wants to lead us into.”

“Not worried about that?”

“Na. No cell can hold me. Besides, I died once already. It wasn’t so bad.”

“Not too keen on the notion myself.” Sensing a potential in, Erika looked over. “Someone called The Strategist must have opinions on this trap. Maybe we get his advice.”

From the disagreeable expression on The Stalker’s face, Erika figured they would not get a second opinion.

“This is my mission,” The Stalker said with a sudden seething, glaring at Erika. “I have the authority to carry it out as I choose. Running back to the others, begging for help, would not elevate my status in their eyes.”

Erika gave The Stalker a flat look. She didn’t know the other woman’s situation or how friendly her other cohorts were, but she couldn’t help but feel that pride was a dangerous thing to cling to. Not even in their exact situation. Just in general. It wasn’t like Erika didn’t understand. She hadn’t wanted to ask Daniel for help while being chased by robots and wizards, but she had anyway.

“Luring them inside would be for the best,” Erika said. She could try further to convince The Stalker, but didn’t want to jeopardize their current working relationship; the few times she brought up The Strategist ended with The Stalker snapping at her. Walking into a trap with The Stalker was better than walking in alone. “Not sure how. They don’t look armed. Maybe we just go out, break their kneecaps, and drag them inside.”

“Is breaking kneecaps your usual response to things?” The Stalker asked, her irate attitude vanishing almost instantly. “Is that why that guy called you The Breaker?”

Erika pursed her lips, frowning. “I really don’t know what that guy was talking about. Nobody has ever referred to me as The Breaker before,” she said in complete honesty.

“It fits, though, with what you told me about your skills. He seemed to recognize you.”

That was the most shocking aspect. Given that fake-Leah tipped off Carter by messing with his clocks, Erika assumed that The Fixer could do similar things to what they could do. Thus, when Erika went around using her abilities, they might have mixed her up with The Fixer. But no. They knew that she and The Fixer were separate entities.

“They’re enemies of The Fixer. It isn’t surprising that they’ve done their research on those around him,” Erika said, mostly as an excuse to herself. “Binding coil? One Without a Face? What bullshit is that?”

Erika shook her head. It didn’t matter. She would find The Fixer, get her answers about Leah, and maybe get her answers about what the hell was going on in the city with all these other people, and then… then she would decide what to do from there. Maybe she and Carter would leave, find somewhere else to live away from this all. Maybe The Fixer would unpossess Leah and they could put their lives back together.

“Let’s just deal with these assholes,” Erika said, shouldering her bat. “We can figure everything else out later.”

“My kind of talk,” The Stalker said, hunching forward.

Erika wondered if she knew how creepy she looked when she smiled while her stringy hair half covered her face. Could she even see out of that?

From a small pouch at her hip, The Stalker pulled a green-tipped bullet. With a flick of her thumb, the revolving part of her gun snapped out and, with another bit of fiddling, partially popped out the cartridges. She removed the one she had fired, pocketing it in the same pouch, before inserting the green in its place. With a flick of her wrist, she closed the revolver, then spun the barrel, and finally pulled back the hammer with a rather satisfying clicking noise.

“Incapacitation round. Will knock anyone—baseline human at least—flat on their ass and keep them that way for at least fifteen minutes. Not the most powerful round, but based on what we’ve seen so far, it’ll be good enough.”

She had said something earlier about not using the good rounds or one of her other companions would chew her out. Erika had to wonder how much she got along with them. Or what they even considered themselves. From the email to The Fixer, she gathered that they were part of some faction. What did that actually mean, though? Like gangs?

It was a question Erika wanted to ask, but hadn’t yet found the right moment to slip it into the conversation without exposing her own ignorance.

“I saw what your other round did. Seems like you’ve got a lot of effects to choose from. Your bullet maker take commissions?”

“I’m… not sure.” The Stalker shrugged. “I’ll take the smoking guy if you want to bash in the other guy’s head.”

“Let me see if I can convince them to come inside first. Get out of public view, you know?” Erika said, pushing open the door. She took a glance up and down the street. Although there were a few people at the far end of the road, back near the park, no one was near enough to matter just yet. Someone would probably call the cops if they saw The Stalker waving around or shooting her gun.

Both men looked to her, startled somewhat.

“Hey there,” Erika said, walking out as calmly as she could while still trying to close the distance. “Your buddy in there—”

The smoking man immediately dropped his cigarette, crushing it underfoot as his posture stiffened. The bowler-dressed man’s fingers froze over his phone screen, his eyes darting between Erika and the museum entrance.

“—wants to talk to you. Says it’s urgent,” Erika finished, keeping her voice casual while subtly adjusting her grip on the bat.

A tense silence stretched between them. The bowler’s thumb hovered over his screen, clearly considering sending some kind of alert.

The smoker’s hand twitched toward his jacket pocket.

For Erika, that was enough. She lunged forward as a gunshot cracked through the air. A green flash of light slammed straight into the smoker’s chest—his body went rigid before collapsing like a marionette with its strings cut.

The bowler man looked back at his phone and tapped a few times. Erika didn’t know whether he managed to send a message before her bat connected with his wrist. The phone exploded into electronic debris while his wrist bent at an unnatural angle with a cracking noise.

He opened his mouth, but Erika barreled on, slamming her shoulder into his chest. Again, she heard a cracking noise, and whatever scream or shout the man had been about to shout simply cut off with a whimper.

Erika took a quick look around. The people she spotted at the end of the street were gone. They probably ran when The Stalker fired her gun. That meant cops might show soon.

“Check their pockets,” The Stalker said, approaching from behind. Michael came alongside her. With a motion from her hand, he moved over to the guy she shot. “If they’re like the others, they’ll have masks on them.”

“They better have masks on them,” Erika said, prodding bowler-man with the end of her bat. She wasn’t trying to break anything, just feel for weapons or, as The Stalker said, the mask. “If they don’t, I’m going to owe some people some apologies.”

“One here,” Michael said, holding open the flap of the smoker’s jacket. He was careful to show off the mask without actually touching it.

“Think I feel one on mine as well,” Erika said, feeling an oddly shaped hard lump in the man’s pants pocket with her bat. “Unless that’s… Na, not even going to make that joke. Let’s drag them inside and tie them up. Then we’ll see about our other friend.”

“Yeah, no. I’ll leave that to you two,” The Stalker said, fiddling with her gun again as she exchanged the expended cartridge for a fresh green-tipped one.

Erika, fully expecting that yet still somehow disappointed, looked down at her guy. He was a bit larger, definitely on the heavier side. Carrying him unaided wasn’t going to work, and even if Michael helped, any amount of fighting back would make things a pain.

And Michael was busy hefting the other guy up over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“Right. You can walk yourself, or I break your mask and leave your body for whoever—”

“You can’t—”

“I very much can,” Erika said, leveling her bat at the man’s crotch. “Apil Ilisu can attest to that,” she added, guessing that the first few words she heard were a name. “But one word more and you’ll find out for yourself. I have no more patience.”

His eyes widened at the name. Erika guessed that it wasn’t something outsiders were supposed to know. The Stalker, The Strategist, The Warrior, and whoever else were all obviously not their real names, so there was some culture among the people here to only go by titles.

Or, if they were using their real names, their parents had shit naming sense.

With a light yet threatening tap of her bat against the pavement, sending fissures spreading through the ground, the bowler man quickly got to his feet. He clutched at his broken wrist, which hung limp and unsettlingly floppy, and alternated between stepping slowly, glaring at Erika, and sending worried glances at the smoking man on Michael’s back.

Erika was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that these men weren’t the same ones who attacked her home and disappeared The Fixer. They were too… simple? The Stalker helped with that gun of hers, no doubt about that, but even were she on her own, Erika doubted she would have had much trouble with them. She hadn’t even felt a need to draw her gun yet. The bat was more than enough.

But they had those masks…

Unless, as she feared, Leah had picked up a mask and gotten herself possessed by The Fixer. Or, if The Fixer simply had stolen that one that Erika found, rather than it belonging to an attacker.

But that other guy knew The Fixer. He knew that she was the one who led them to her house. So they were still related.

It was making her nervous. Someone more similar to The Stalker, the robot, or the wizard was going to pop out of the woodwork and beat their asses into the ground. That could easily have been the person on the other end of the bowler man’s phone. Unfortunately, with the phone having been so thoroughly destroyed, Erika couldn’t even check.

Shoving the man into the museum right behind Michael and the other guy, Erika took one last look around the street. No sign of those people from earlier. Maybe they were hiding out, spying from behind lamp posts or the corners of buildings. Maybe they were gone completely.

Hopefully, the cops would have their usual response time to gunshots in the streets.

Michael got to work, slipping zip-ties around the wrists of both men. Erika and The Stalker headed straight past a decorative display piece to find Simone, still crouched over their other guest with her knife pressed right up against his throat, digging into the flesh just a bit.

“Any trouble?” The Stalker asked.

“Nope. He barely moved. More than the other guy, I guess.”

“Good.”

Erika stared down. “The Fixer,” she said.

He leaned around slightly, pulling away from Simone’s knife to peer around the baby-wearing-goggles statue to see his two companions. For a moment, Erika thought he was going to call out, but he stopped himself. Or Simone’s butterfly knife against his throat again stopped him. Either way, he clamped his jaw and looked up at Erika.

Slowly, a smile spread across his face, showing off far too many of his teeth. “Of course,” he said. “You’re closer than you think.”

“No games. No wordplay. Speak straight.”

“I mean it literally. The statue from before guards the way.”

Erika frowned as The Stalker popped a suspicious eyebrow. “Convenient,” the latter said in a tone that didn’t sound particularly believing. “Some hidden passage?”

Too convenient.

“Would you like to see? Or would you like to yammer on some more?” he said, smile strained. Erika couldn’t help but be impressed. She wasn’t sure how many bones he broke, but if she had broken that many, she doubted she would be talking, let alone talking back.

The Stalker gave Erika a shrug. She had already said that she wasn’t afraid of being trapped. At least not physically. Erika wasn’t either. While she couldn’t teleport around, she could break any bars, doors, or even walls that got in her way. The real trick would be dealing with other people, people like her or The Stalker.

But if they had those other people already on site, surely they would have come out and dealt with them by now.

“Lead the way,” Erika said, standing fully.

The Stalker snapped a few quick orders to Simone and Michael, ordering them to keep an eye out and to watch their new captives.

The man struggled to his feet, wincing with every movement. The short exertion left him breathing heavily, like he had just run a short sprint. He limped forward, through the museum, one arm cradling his ribs.

Erika kept her bat at the ready, watching for any sudden moves. The Stalker’s revolver never wavered from his back.

The Semblance of Man stood in the same muraled room as before, unchanged despite some minor expectations in the back of Erika’s mind of it coming to life. The gaunt, semi-skeletal form still wore its porcelain mask, still looking upward rather than downward.

In another moment of mild surprise, their captive did not go pull a lever on the base of the statue to reveal a hidden passage. Instead, he knelt down well before the red velvet ropes, folded his arms over his chest, and bowed his head. He started speaking, chanting, using those words that Erika couldn’t make heads of tails of.

Erika thought to stop him. That mage used words to change the world around him. Erika probably only escaped because he gave himself away by speaking in plain English. This man, speaking words she didn’t recognize, could be doing anything.

Before she could move, his chant finished, barely more than a few words long.

A long, slow creaking noise pulled Erika’s attention to the side, to the mural. The large painting of the temple-like structure, which ran floor-to-ceiling, shimmered and faded away like it was nothing more than an image projected onto a thin sheet. Beyond was no museum. The mural vanished to reveal a gaping maw of darkness-shrouded stone, faintly illuminated by the light in the museum, that stretched deep into the museum’s foundations—a corridor that shouldn’t exist. The walls here were thin, more props to hang paintings from than proper walls. They certainly weren’t large enough to hold an ancient-Egypt-looking temple.

Cold air seeped from the opening, making Erika shudder as she tightened her grip on her bat. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The captive grinned, blood streaking his teeth. “No games. No wordplay. Just truth.”

“Shut up,” Erika snapped, shooting a glance at The Stalker. “Ever seen anything like this?”

“Spatial manipulation… or a portal. The Warrior can make bullets that do something similar, but… not quite.” She paused and shook her head. “I’m not going in there. I know what I can and cannot escape from.”

Erika ground her teeth. The Stalker already went well beyond what she expected, but… the thought of entering alone did not appeal.

“The Fixer awaits below,” their captive said, gesturing toward the hole in the wall.

And that was the real problem, wasn’t it? The Fixer allegedly was inside. This wasn’t a door that Erika would simply be able to open if she left and came back with the ghost hunters or anyone else. Whatever words and phrases the guy said had already slipped her mind, so she couldn’t even try to repeat them, assuming it worked for her at all. If he wasn’t present and willing, she might never get this gateway open again.

She took a step forward, keeping well on the museum side of the threshold as she pulled out her phone to shine its light in.

It didn’t help much.

“You still owe me that favor,” The Stalker said, warning note in her voice. “Hard to collect if you go off yourself.”

“Nice to know you care,” Erika said, snide. But she did pause to send a quick message to The Stalker. “If you don’t hear from me in a day or so, call the number I just sent you. It won’t be quite the same, but if you ask him to steal you some time, he’ll know what you mean and he’ll know I told you. Just tell him sorry from me.”

“Ugh. Fuck off. Tell him yourself when you come back.”

That almost made Erika snort. “You,” she said, pointing her bat at their captive. “In.”

He smiled, didn’t argue, and went right for the portal in the wall. He waited on the other side, turning to watch. The portal didn’t collapse immediately, which Erika might have tried if she were in his position, using it to escape. That certainly meant that he wanted her to follow.

With one wan look at The Stalker, Erika stepped over the threshold.

The portal still didn’t close, leaving her standing self-consciously as The Stalker watched with a flat expression.

“Right,” Erika said over her shoulder. “I’ll text you when I’m back, let you know you can still collect that favor.”

With that said, Erika turned to level a glare at her captive.

“This way,” he said, turning and walking further into the darkness.

Erika, holding her phone in front of her for light, followed.