21 – Breaking the Bounds of the Ethereal Realm

Erika’s good mood did not last long. As if attracted by the fight with the pale-tattooed man, flocks of metallic birds swarmed overhead. If there had been a sun in this place, they would have blotted it out. As it was, Erika didn’t know why she could see with no obvious source of light and, frankly, did not care.

“Reload!” Erika shouted, passing her spent gun to one cultist whose name she still had not learned. They took it from her and passed her a loaded gun in return, which Erika snatched up, leaned out the window, and aimed upwards.

It didn’t matter that Erika could barely hit a still target in a controlled environment. There were so many birds, it would have been a feat to miss. Erika still tried to aim at the closest of the bunch, those posing a more immediate danger to the van as it careened down the narrow bridge.

Bird after bird fell, crashing to the ground in groaning heaps of metal scrap. Each squeeze of the trigger felled a bird, if not the one Erika wanted. The Stalker, leaning out of the passenger seat window, and Simone from the window opposite Erika, covered for her faults. With the cultists and Carter on logistics duty, they kept a small bubble around the van safe enough.

Erika kept waiting for The Warrior to pull out some trick and mass delete every bird in sight, but it seemed like they were just about out of destructive weaponry on that scale.

“Going to be hard to find a way back if we’re hounded constantly,” Erika quipped as she ducked inside for another reload.

“I’ve got a few barriers I can deploy that will give us some cover,” The Warrior said, swerving back and forth. While the bridge was relatively wide, it wasn’t wide enough to give them any real room to maneuver. At best, The Warrior could dodge around scrap metal from birds shot down ahead of the van.

The moment Erika got a new gun in hand, planted her ass on the windowsill, and aimed upward, the van jerked hard to the left. Erika felt it go up on two squealing wheels as The Warrior avoided a stream of molten lava laid out by The Stalker. Erika’s hand darted around the interior ceiling of the van, searching for the handle even as she felt herself totter outward.

Down below, off the side of the waist-high barrier lining the sides of the bridge, Erika glimpsed it—the dark shadows in the haze of the red mist that faded into the arm of the monster just below the bridge’s cobblestone archways. Its sheer mass filled Erika with a nihilistic dread; she had already thought it was a massive being from afar, but up close, it was too large to exist. Someone telling her that from the monster’s elbow to wrist would reach higher than Mount Everest wouldn’t surprise her.

A weight clamped onto her legs, anchoring her to the van, keeping her in until it slammed back onto all four tires. The lurch threw her back inside, lightly knocking her shoulder as she slipped through the window. Closing her eyes, steadying herself, Erika breathed, then held out her hand to one cultist. “Lost the gun,” she said.

“Lost it?” The Warrior snipped, glaring into the mirror. “What do you mean, lost it?”

“It flew off over the edge. Lucky I didn’t fly off too with the way you’re driving.”

“Quit losing my guns! Do you know how hard it is to enchant those so they can resist the magic of the bullets?”

“Don’t know,” Erika said, grasping hold of a gun the cultist offered. She didn’t even have to climb out the window to blast off a bird clinging to the van’s side. “Don’t care.”

“You…”

Erika planted her ass on the windowsill again, making sure she had a tight hold of the handle before she aimed and missed.

A bird swooped down, dive-bombing the rear of the van. The Strategist sat in the back, slumped against the rear seat. Erika wasn’t sure if he was dead, passed out, or just resting his eyes in calm meditation, thinking while everyone else did all the hard work.

The Warrior flung her shotgun over her shoulder, aimed backwards while she still faced forwards. Cultists, Carter, and somehow The Strategist—now obviously still alive—all ducked and dove for the sides as a warble erupted from the gun. A shockwave blasted the rear doors right off the back of the van, shaking the air violently enough that all birds in a rapidly expanding cone behind the van abruptly fell from the skies.

The cone did not extend above or ahead of the van, forcing Erika to aim and fire overhead. “Wish I had a few of those bullets,” she shouted as her disappointingly narrow stream of plasma took out a mere two birds.

“If only I had more,” The Warrior snarled, using her teeth to pull a spent shell from her shotgun. She fumbled a shell from her bandolier, knocking it further in a clumsy attempt to grab it. Cursing under her breath, she left it where it clattered to the floorboards, opting to grab another one to reload her shotgun. “That kind of thing is for a show of force, not to be used normally. Bullets like that aren’t useful in an actual fight with The Eclipse. I’d blow up the entire city.”

“Speaking of blowing up a city,” Erika shouted back, firing at another bird that swooped too close. “I want to commission a dozen of those sun bomb bullets.”

“What the hell are you going to do—”

“Truck ahead!”

Erika snapped her gaze at The Stalker’s call, easily spotting her familiar red pickup. Not far away, a trio of birds ignored the rampant fight the rest were engaged with, crouched around a particular spot like vultures with strands of bloody sinew stretched to their metallic beaks. A jolt of nausea struck Erika as she realized just what that sinew was.

A wave of molten magma swept over the trio, fired by Simone, before Erika could even think to comment. The red-hot glow faded rapidly as the lava solidified.

Maybe it was for the best.

“That’s our truck,” Carter said, voice soft against the cacophony of the fighting. “We’re here. Please stop right next to it.”

The Warrior swerved again, blowing right past the molten remains as she aimed directly for Erika’s pickup. She fiddled with the dials of the radio, waiting with her hand hovering over the power button until she slammed on the brakes. As soon as she pressed the button, Erika felt another rush swarm around her, flipping her hair on end.

Birds, spotting their target, dove en masse. None quite reached the van; they slowed in the air, then stopped cold twenty feet away. Erika kept her gun up and aimed, but removed her finger from the trigger when it seemed like they wouldn’t get through.

“How long is that going to last?” Erika asked, slipping the rest of the way out of the window. Her feet hit the ground, but she felt wobbly, like the stone wasn’t quite solid.

“As long as we work quickly, long enough.”

“And if we don’t work quickly?”

“What do you think?” The Warrior snapped, stepping out of the van. She sighed, looking over it as she walked around. “Oh, my poor baby…”

Erika shook her head, wondering where The Warrior’s priorities were. “Carter,” she said, throwing open the van door. “You said you had an idea?”

“I said I thought I might know how to get out of here,” he said, warily staring up at the birds stuck in the sky.

Those closest to the van, locked in place and unable to twitch a single feather, ended up as platforms for the others while they beat their wings in slow-motion, trying to escape the effect.

“Well, think fast. Not that I don’t trust The Warrior’s work,” Erika hedged, “but it would be best not to push our luck.”

Carter flinched, arms trembling. “Okay,” he mumbled into his chest. “Okay. Okay, think. Okay—”

Spotting an oncoming panic attack, Erika planted her hands on his shoulders. “Hey. It’s going to be alright. Just calm down and do your thing. I’ll protect you, so don’t worry about the birds.”

Carter nodded, but it was a shaky, jerky nod. He deliberately avoided looking upward, eyes cast on his shoes.

As a sedate person, the action couldn’t have been easy on Carter’s nerves. His arms trembled and his knuckles paled as he clenched his fists. Erika firmly squeezed his shoulders, trying on a reassuring smile, but he didn’t even look up at her.

“You remember the prison?” Carter said, still staring at the ground.

“With The Fixer? Hard to forget.”

The Warrior rounded the front of the van, popping the hood. Glitter-tinged white smoke billowed out, forcing her to duck to the side for a quick breath before she leaned over the engine. The Strategist, seated in the blown-out back of the van, directed the cultists into a defensive arrangement—they dragged out card-barriers, much like what The Warrior had deployed at the hotel.

Her stomach dropped as she scanned the others and found not one of them looking for another way out. They were really trusting her to fix this. She slid her foot back a step, bumping into The Stalker, hovering close behind her.

“The Warrior said to keep you safe,” The Stalker said when Erika shot her a look.

“I’m good… for now, I guess.”

“I can still see that guy. Or… lots of him?” Her eyes shimmered as she turned back down the bridge. “He wasn’t fast enough while we were driving, but now they’re getting closer.”

“Then we’d better work fast,” Erika said, turning back to Carter.

He wasn’t looking at her anymore, instead staring at The Stalker.

“What?” The Stalker grunted, shifting aggressively. “Got a problem, kid?”

“Yes,” Carter said, tilting his head toward Erika. “I think we can get home if we can see outside. It connects everything, so it connects home. I… think I can agree to something, but you’ll have to act quickly to break a path home.”

Erika’s eyes slowly widened as she realized just what Carter was saying. “Woah. Hold on,” she said, taking a full step back with raised hands. “That thing is the underlying fabric of reality. Breaking anything related to it seems like a bad idea.”

For his part, Carter just looked confused. “But you break it all the time, every time you break something.”

“I most certainly do not. I didn’t even know it existed before Christmas.”

“Whether you know it or not doesn’t matter. I’ve seen you break things. I know what you’re breaking. You break the backbone of reality… probably.”

“Carter…”

“It’s like at the museum; you were going to do the same thing there, open that portal with a bobby pin.”

“That’s different,” Erika said, shaking her head. “I knew there was a portal there. We just had to open it. This is…”

“They didn’t bring us here through a door like that, so I’ll try to open a small gap where it’s already weak. But you’re going to have to be the one to get us through it.”

A greasy sweat welled on Erika’s palms. She always said that she could break anything, but that was more boasting than literal. Not that she hadn’t come across anything she couldn’t break—even that naked chick, though she took a few tries to get right. The idea of deliberately fracturing the very fabric of reality—of shattering the underlying machine that ran everything—made her stomach twist with a cold, crawling dread that no amount of bravado could mask.

Worst of all, now that Carter had put the idea in her mind, Erika could see how she might break reality. Back at the prison, she got an up-close and personal glimpse through the outside window, so she knew what it looked like, what it felt like. It was a machine—a strange, twisted, ephemeral machine unlike anything that could exist, but a machine all the same.

“A baseball bat is probably not the best tool to open a door,” Carter said after Erika had a moment to think.

Erika searched over the tense, anticipatory faces of the rest of the crew. The Warrior muttered curses at the van’s engine, and while The Strategist looked half dead, he still pointed out spots in the cultists’ barrier that needed work. Simone had an array of guns set out on the rear of the van, ready for anyone to run up and grab if needed. The Stalker was the only one who looked calm, simply alternating between glancing at Erika and staring off into the distance with her shimmery eyes.

“A baseball bat can break anything—you let me handle that part,” Erika quipped back, donning a grin that she didn’t feel as she ruffled Carter’s hair. “When all of reality falls to pieces and we end up dancing some transcendental cha-cha-chá for the rest of eternity, I’m going to blame you.”

“Maybe the concept of blame won’t exist?”

“Whatever you’re doing,” The Warrior barked out as she leaned around the popped hood of the van, “figure it out fast or step aside; the way I’m thinking about getting us out of here is going to be risky.”

“Riskier than shattering all of reality?” Erika shouted back at The Warrior.

“I care very little about all of reality and far more about my personal reality—and what I’m thinking about risks that.”

Erika narrowed her eyes, firming her stance. If the alternative was The Warrior killing herself, who was she to refuse the safer route? Carter said it would be fine, so it would be fine.

With a firm nod, Carter turned away. “I need someone willing to lose something important.”

“You get my catalyst over my dead body,” The Warrior shouted back, even as she poked the end of the silvery needle into a plume of smoke coming from the engine. The white, glittery cloud shifted to an orange hue, but did not stop.

“A part of someone will probably work better.”

“My arm,” The Strategist said immediately, gesturing to his stiff, ruined, stitches-covered arm. “The Healer can replace it when we return.”

“Not something easily replaced,” Carter said with another shake of his head. “Something like a learned skill, a cherished memory, or a connection to someone. I think that would work best. Something that grounds you as real.”

Nobody volunteered this time.

Typical, Erika thought, rolling her eyes. Even with the situation as tense as it was, the moment it came to putting something real on the line, everyone dipped. Taking a breath, Erika stepped forward, only for Carter to shove her back.

“Not you. You’ve got to focus on breaking reality.”

“That guy is getting closer,” The Stalker hissed, scowl deepening. “I don’t think the copies I see are afterimages. I think there are a lot of him. Aw fuck it.” She grabbed Carter by the shoulder, dragged him a step away, and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

Carter’s face twisted to a grimace. “Gross.”

“Hey, you little shit. You want to take something, that’s what I’m offering.”

“But… it has to be something valuable or I can’t give anything in return—which is what opens the portal. So, is that important to you?”

“Deadly,” The Stalker said, her arm leaving no room for argument.

Carter wasn’t one to pick up on social cues like that. “But… why would you—”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I don’t think so,” Carter said with a heavy shudder. “Ew. I don’t want your—”

The Stalker’s fingers gripped Carter’s cheeks, palm over his mouth, stopping him from talking. “You tell anyone, and nobody will ever find your—”

Erika stepped in, intervening before The Stalker could do more than grab Carter. “No threatening my brother,” she said, twisting The Stalker’s wrist away from him.

The Stalker cowed immediately, backing a step off. Erika’s presence didn’t stop her from clicking her tongue in annoyance. “Will it work or not?”

“I… guess so,” Carter said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’ve never actually done something like this—”

“Great. I don’t give a shit. You said I get something in return?”

“Something more material, like health or wealth or…” Carter trailed off, face scrunching in thought. Knowing him, Erika figured he was trying to find something else that rhymed, just for the sake of maintaining the pattern he accidentally started.

“If I might make a suggestion,” The Strategist said, still slumped in the van’s rear. “We could use—”

“Fuck you.” The Stalker threw a middle finger over her shoulder. “This is my—” Cutting herself off with a glance at Carter, she snarled. “I’m deciding. Fuck, I wish there were more time to think.” She ground her teeth, eyes shimmering. “Damn it, damn, damn.” Pacing back and forth, she muttered to herself, “—worth that? Money? Stupid… fuck. It has to be something material?”

“I… I think so?”

“Right. You’ve never done this before,” The Stalker sneered. She dug her fingernails into her scalp, scratching for several moments before pausing, looking at her lightly bloodied fingernails with a few strands of her stringy hair hanging off, and getting an idea in her eyes. “Get me everything I need to care for an undead body. Oils, lotions, eyedrops, everything. A lifetime supply. Or… unlifetime supply? Can you just make it constantly apply so I don’t have to worry about it myself?”

“Maybe? I’m not actually—”

“Fuck,” The Stalker shouted, eyes shimmering as she glared at Erika. She snapped her gun up.

Erika threw herself to the side, just in time to avoid the gout of molten metal spewing from The Stalker’s gun. The Stalker didn’t track her, keeping her gun aimed in the same direction.

The molten metal caught the pale-tattooed man square in the chest, melting a hole straight through his flesh in the few moments he existed before fading into motes of light. The dense metal chain slipped through his fingers as they faded away, only to be caught by a twin appearing at his side.

“Out of time,” The Stalker shouted, even as she let off another shot toward the new clone of the man. “I agree to what I told you in exchange for the best skincare products possible. Got it?”

“Okay. That’ll work,” Carter said with a flinch at another gunshot from Simone. “I don’t know how long we’ll have once it opens. Better move fast.”

The Warrior’s shotgun barked—everything went dark for a single instant; when the light returned, she was back in the driver’s seat and two corpses of the tattooed man were fading out near the front of the van. “Will it be big enough to drive the van through?”

“Uh—”

A strange sensation flooded through Erika: calm. The plan had been decided. There was no need to think anymore, just to act, and acting had always been Erika’s strong point. It was up to her. The Strategist could barely move; the van had to come with them.

“I’ll make it big enough,” Erika said, teeth clenched in a grinning grimace, as she took up a position right next to Carter. She held her bat at the ready, slowly sweeping her gun along the outside edge of the bubble. Simone took down another clone near the van, but none had appeared near Erika so far.

The tattooed man popped up near the van once again, burying a dagger in the stomach of one cultist. He didn’t have time to strike again before Simone capped him.

“Erika, be ready. Stalker, shake hands?” Carter held up a hand, offering it to The Stalker.

The Stalker ground her teeth hard enough to be audible over the scattered gunshots. Clones were popping up everywhere now. If they didn’t fade away, they would have drowned in them. The tattooed man had no sense of self-preservation. After one shot over Erika’s shoulder, hitting the clone now carrying the chain, she grasped hold of Carter’s hand.

“Well?” she snarled, firing again. “Do something!”

“Just a second—” Carter mumbled, eyes closed with his face deep in concentration.

“Don’t have a second—Agent!”

Erika ducked, bringing up her bat to defend herself rather than strike. A dead-on shot from The Strategist, one-armed, popped the tattooed man’s head like an overly ripe pomegranate. The chain fell once again.

“Okay,” Carter said. “Erika!”

Erika whipped her head. He hadn’t shouted a warning—just her name, sharp enough to cut through the noise.

She spotted it, just to Carter and The Stalker’s sides, a short distance ahead of the van; the world twisted and ripped, pulling open into that chaotic space of biomechanical machinery. Erika knew she could break it. She didn’t know if she could break it home, but she trusted Carter’s instincts.

With no time to think of how she was going to break it, Erika gripped her baseball bat and swung with all her might.

The tattooed man popped directly into the arc of her bat, chain raised above his head mere millimeters from the hard aluminum. The chain snapped in twain without resistance, and her bat sailed onwards to destroy the man’s head, back, and body, splattering blood, bone, and gore across the cobblestones with not a mote in sight. In the distance, she heard a thunderous crash, but before she could even think, her bat collided with the gap in reality.

Reality splintered, shattered, and fell to pieces.