02 – Flying High

“The Terminator didn’t follow you into the future,” Erika said, not as a question, but as a simple statement. She was willing to admit that most of the fight sounded confusing, but she got that part of it.

“I don’t believe it can. At least not to the same extent that I am able.”

Erika drew in a deep, slow breath as she took in The Fixer’s recounting of their fight with the clockwork angel. Having seen The Fixer’s full robot form in action against Jack, she was surprised they would lose a fight to anything short of some godly being.

She suppressed a shudder, knowing she had almost drawn that thing’s attention when she and Carter broke reality to get off that bridge.

“And it couldn’t figure out when you would reappear? It wasn’t watching the hotel, ready to follow you the moment you popped back up?”

The Fixer shook their head. “If it had, it would have attacked already.”

Erika pursed her lips, wondering how they could be so certain. “Does the Terminator not have planning and tracking capabilities? Can’t it let you go, watching so it knows when you’ve returned home, and thus can ambush you at its leisure?”

“No. They aren’t human, and they aren’t Terminators from the films either—”

“I know that.”

“They are constructs,” The Fixer continued. “They aren’t capable of independent thought. Even if I appeared in front of one, so long as I am in a full guise, it wouldn’t notice. Not unless I did something to set it off.”

Erika hummed, still disbelieving, but she lacked choices beyond accepting The Fixer’s word or going out and getting the reality guardian’s attention for a little first-hand experience. “Speaking of guises,” she said, shifting the topic. “Lavender?”

The Fixer hesitated; Erika guessed what they were going to say before they opened their mouth. The last time she had seen Lavender, she had been bleeding from a head wound before The Fixer turned into their robot-self. “She served her purpose,” they said, tone soft.

Even knowing it was coming, the admission hit Erika like a fist to the stomach. Lavender, a known serial killer and someone to whom Erika had never even spoken a single word, was dead, and that thought filled Erika with disquiet. It wasn’t the woman herself—Erika shouldn’t have felt bad about that—it was The Fixer that gnawed at her stomach. She had been offered a misleading contract, one that Erika had penned herself, only to be used up with all the gravitas of a foil wrapper being tossed aside after finishing a burger.

“I see,” Erika said, forcing her disgust away. “Are you going to get… another?”

Again, The Fixer hesitated, perhaps aware of Erika’s feelings on the matter. “Usually, when a guardian appears in an area, I move on to elsewhere until the heat dies down, both in the interest of protecting my guises and knowing that The Mummy is not a localized problem. There is always more to uncover elsewhere. I tend to cultivate long-term guises, not disposable ones,” they said, almost urgently.

“Yes, yes, you aren’t a terrible person,” Erika said, tone utterly flat.

“Given the circumstances here, both with you and with…” They trailed off, eyes flicking toward the door. “Finding another short-term guise would be optimal.”

“You could have just said yes. None of those extra words softened the answer.”

The Fixer didn’t get a chance to respond before the door flew open. Carter dashed in, blurring as he moved, and just about tackled The Fixer right off their chair. Erika watched as The Fixer visibly swapped with Leah the moment they were sure they weren’t going to tumble to the ground. As soon as they did that, Erika stood and started toward the door, figuring Carter would keep them occupied for a while.

“You’re back!” Carter chirped as Erika walked away. “I went to hell!”

Erika froze, foot caught mid-air.

“You… what?” Leah’s confused response spurred Carter on before Erika could stop him.

“We got captured after some people killed themselves, and woke up in hell. I got to drive a car and shoot a gun.”

Leah’s tone turned hostile. “You what?”

Glancing over her shoulder, Erika locked eyes with Leah and felt a fear she wasn’t sure she had ever experienced before. “Well, great talk. Got to go. Important meeting with… someone.” Sprinting toward the door, she bumped straight into Leslie’s barrel chest.

“Florence. Erika. Walker.” Leah crossed her arms, shuffling to manage with Carter still latched to her side. “What is he talking about?”

“I… was busy while you were gone,” Erika said, raising her eyebrows at Leslie in a plea for help.

Confusion evident on his face, Leslie knew enough to not want to be around. He offered a halfhearted shrug before closing the door on her face.

“Traitor,” she hissed before turning to face the reckoning. “You up and disappeared, leaving us with nothing, so I took to hunting The Mummy my own way.”

“So you took Carter to Hell?” Leah paused, cocking her head to one side—listening—before frowning. “Hell isn’t even real. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Look,” Erika said, hands up. “I was going to go over the whole story after we dealt with The Fixer’s shit, alright? If they weren’t being a bastard over Delilah, we probably would have gotten to it already.”

Leah’s foot tapped against the floor. “Go on, I’m waiting.”

Erika grimaced. She hadn’t thought about how to go over this; at some point, she just accepted that The Fixer was gone and probably wouldn’t be back. Starting at the start, with her and Carter getting kidnapped by The Mummy, was going to lead to shouting and arguing. Snapping her fingers, Erika decided the best way to soften the blow was to prove that she had done something good.

“Try to say the aspect of The Mummy’s name,” Erika said.

A puzzled frown tugged at Leah’s face. “The Daughter?”

“No, not that— The one we escaped from back in October.”

Leah’s face went blank until she cocked her head to listen again. “The ██████ of Maggots?”

“There, see? Did you see?” Erika’s triumphant grin faltered as she realized that nobody else seemed to notice that they couldn’t speak the name, only static. Saying the name proved nothing. “Damnit. We went and—”

“██████ of Maggots,” The Fixer said—she could tell by the tone. Judging by the surprise on their face, they noticed. “Odd. What did you do?”

“I broke an aspect of The Mummy,” Erika announced, grin returning. “Or… an aspect of an aspect of The Mummy. It’s still alive, I guess, but it is broken.”

“That’s… not possible.”

“Empirical evidence begs to differ,” Erika teased in a sing-song tone. “Unless you think I’m magically censoring your words, like I know how to do that.”

The look of confusion on The Fixer’s face changed to a slightly different look of confusion as Leah took over again. “I don’t understand.”

“That concept, as it relates to that aspect, is broken. Completely.” Hopefully, Erika added to herself. She still hadn’t said the word in relation to the maggot, not sure if doing so might accidentally break what she broke. For all she knew, her words would be censored as well. “You’ll notice there aren’t any maggots swarming Chicago?” Erika said, thumping her chest. “That’s thanks to us.”

“Because you dragged Carter into something dangerous?”

“Well…” Erika lost some of her steam, abandoning the hope that Leah would get distracted enough to let that little problem slide. “Causality exists for some of us, so I suppose Carter’s existence led to the inevitable—”

“Erika.”

Grinding her teeth, Erika let the excuses fall away. “It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, but things don’t always go according to plan. I have cultists hounding me. You left Carter with me and then fucked off—”

“This isn’t about me.”

“It’s always been about you,” Erika snapped. “You went and fucked some monster from beyond the bounds of reality, what did you expect would happen? You’d have normal kids who would live a normal life? Ha. You didn’t even have Carter until after you knew I wasn’t normal, so you fuck off with your judgement and your crossed arms. I’m doing my best here.”

Erika turned and stormed off. If she stuck around, she was liable to break something, and she didn’t want to bother rushing off to dump the ripples. She kicked open the back door and slammed it shut, careful not to break it. Daniel, Anna, and Delilah, leaned up against her junker, all turned to her.

“Told you she’d be out,” Daniel said, looking pleased with himself.

Anna folded her arms, taking in Erika’s appearance for a short moment. “Things not go well?”

“Fuck!” Erika shouted.

“Things did not go well,” Anna confirmed.

Delilah shifted, tensing, as her eyes flicked to the door over Erika’s shoulder. “Do I need to run again?”

Erika shook her head, huffing as she planted her rear on the hood of her car. The metal creaked and groaned. “They try anything and I’ll break their legs,” she said, ignoring her piece-of-junk mobile.

“That’s… harsh,” Daniel said.

“Yeah, well. You know, I feel like life has thrown a bunch of limes at me over the last several months. At first, I tried to juggle them, but now I’m just struggling to keep them off the floor. Rather than help out, my parents—” Erika sneered the word. “—decided to chuck a few more limes at me and then get all judgey when I can’t hold onto all them.”

“Limes?” Daniel scrunched up his face, then tried correcting Erika. “Lemons?”

Erika waved him off.

“Are you calling your brother a lime?”

Erika shot Anna a strange look, then just shrugged.

Delilah pointed a finger at her face. “Am I a lime?”

“Yes,” Erika answered without hesitation. The Daughter was probably the larger lime between the two, but neither was particularly massive as far as Erika was concerned. Delilah survived on the streets long enough on her own, with The Daughter, that Erika wouldn’t worry over it if they ran off again.

Unaware of Erika’s thoughts on the matter, Delilah wilted with a huff, but said nothing more; no one spoke, leaving just the background noise of the city hanging over them. Erika just basked in the afternoon sun, enjoying the one cloudless day while it lasted. Venting helped with her immediate anger, but it didn’t get rid of all the actual issues.

She wondered what Delilah was thinking, whether the girl was considering running off again. Anna and Daniel too; neither spoke, but both of them just sat around, leaning on the car.

Maybe it would be best if The Fixer went off and investigated The Mummy outside Chicago, like they said they usually did. Erika had friends and allies who were willing to help her with Chicago; she could hold the line here while they got out of her hair.

Lavender had died so fast, so suddenly, just thinking about it gave Erika chills. If they had showed up with Leah instead…

The queasiness in Erika’s stomach wouldn’t go away.

“Hey, Nya is around, right?” Erika asked, not taking her eyes off the sky as she sought something else to focus on.

“Yes?”

“The Fixer said The Daughter blew herself up in… Egypt or something—I forget where.” Erika scratched the side of her head for a moment, trying to recall, before giving up with a shrug. “What was that about? How did she escape and end up here?”

Delilah snapped her head back, staring at the vacant roof of the junker. “You did what?” she asked, then went silent.

Erika didn’t interrupt the conversing. She simply drew in a breath, then let it back out, using the momentary peace to center herself a little more. Leslie, Carter, and The Fixer were all inside; she didn’t know what they were doing and, frankly, she didn’t want to think about them more than necessary at the moment. She focused on some simple breathing exercises.

In.

Out.

In—

“Okay… so…” Delilah said, speaking slowly, presumably still listening to whatever The Daughter was saying. “Nya’s previous incarnation got in a situation… like mine, I guess.”

Erika opened her eyes, finishing with a slow breath out.

She couldn’t tell if she was feeling better, but the conversation would help distract her.

“Wrapped up in some cult?” Erika prompted as Delilah stopped talking. That felt too coincidental. Delilah had been taken in to some perfectly mundane charlatan-led cult-of-personality type of cult, which later got taken over by the tattooed men working for The Mummy. The people there had been given masks like the regular cultists as signs of initiation. If that happened twice, it meant that The Daughter was specifically targeting those types of situations.

Delilah frowned, eyes following nothing as that nothing hopped off the car and walked around the small lot. “She managed to take over the cult, positioning herself as its leader, while shutting out the rest of The Mummy’s cultists so they couldn’t get at her.”

“How’d you shut them out?” Erika asked, suddenly far more interested in the story than she thought she would have been. “Like, Jack teleports around… so did the one with pale tattoos. If the monk doesn’t teleport, he can certainly move fast enough to reach Cedar Lake from Chicago in minutes. All of them seem hard to kill. I can’t imagine a bunch of regular people ‘shutting them out.’”

Delilah waited, still tracking empty space as it moved about, prowling back and forth. “The apostles never found her. She managed to hide herself before they could hone in… which didn’t happen with me,” Delilah said with a scowl.

Erika slumped back, despairing over her dashed hopes of some magic weapon that could easily fend them off.

“When my… mother—” Delilah grimaced at the word. “—first took me to Father Mould, we hadn’t been living around here. Nya thinks he was already under some influence, and moved his whole cult here, possibly because of you.”

“Me?”

Delilah nodded. “This is speculation, but an aspect of The Mummy got wind of you and started pulling assets here, a long time ago. We don’t know why they left you alone for so long, but—”

“The Fixer,” Erika answered, putting a few pieces together. “Some previous guise of theirs did something to hide me.” At least she knew why it felt like a lot of the cult was focused around Chicago.

Delilah narrowed her eyes, listening again for a long moment before turning to Erika. “Back in Egypt: The Fixer ruined everything; tracking her down also drew the attention of the apostles. Rather than let their ‘Priestess’ fall into someone else’s hands… the cult blew themselves up, and her along with them. Just with bombs or something?” Delilah waited, then rolled her eyes, but neglected to answer her own question. She continued following the invisible creature as it came to a stop directly at Erika’s feet. “As for how she escaped: she isn’t human and isn’t bound by ‘petty’ mortal constraints. Her words, not mine.”

Erika glared down at the empty space in front of her feet. She reached out, nudging the spot with her boot, but encountered nothing. “How many aspects are there?” she asked, adding, “You, the maggot thing, and now this bird thing. How many others?”

“Uncountable,” Delilah answered.

“Well, fuck that,” Erika growled. “I’m not spending my entire life hunting and being hunted, just to not make a dent no matter how many I take out.”

“Don’t worry, you… What?” Delilah stopped, baffled as the empty space moved elsewhere.

“What is it?”

Delilah continued staring, but slowly broke eye contact with the vacancy and looked to Erika. “Nya said The Mummy will likely assimilate you long before then.”

Erika opened her mouth, only to hold herself back as she realized that she might already know what that meant.

“Like the Borg?” Anna asked in her place, cocking her head.

Delilah and the empty area looked at each other before the former shrugged. “We don’t know what that is.”

“It’s—”

“It’s the masks, isn’t it?” Erika asked, talking over Anna. “When The Stalker and I first encountered some of them, we came up with the theory that the statue at the museum was some kind of magical server hub for the cultists, with their masks as antennas. The cultists ‘live’ in the statue,” she said with air quotes, “but project themselves out and take over bodies with the masks.”

Daniel leaned forward, alarmed. “That’s something we’ve got to watch out for? Getting sucked into a statue?”

As Daniel’s foot nervously tapped against the ground, Delilah consulted with Nya again. “As far as Nya is aware, no one has been assimilated in thousands of years. The Mummy is the one who assimilates, bringing consciousness into its body… and it can’t do that while chained.”

Daniel visibly relaxed, even as Erika tensed. “Then we don’t have to worry?” he asked.

Erika shook her head and answered in Delilah’s place. “We will if I keep accidentally breaking chains.” She paused, waiting for some counterargument. When none came, she groaned. “Fuck.”

Another lengthy silence settled on the group, this one far less comfortable than the last. Erika got up and started pacing back and forth, mind racing. If she ended up… assimilated, would The Mummy be able to use her to break its remaining chains? Was mind control a thing? Could The Warrior make something that would let her see through illusions so she didn’t break a disguised chain?

Daniel’s phone beeped a few times in rapid succession, interrupting Erika’s thoughts. “Ah,” he said. “I hate to throw another lime on the pile, but Beth says she found a good candidate for ghost busting.”

Anna shot him a look. “What does Bethany know about hunting ghosts?”

“Uh… Dad… let her look through his notes after she came with us to Cedar Lake?”

Anna raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Did he now?”

“Maybe? Anyway,” he said, hurrying along. “She found one that was listed as ‘too dangerous for now’, but with all our extra supernatural expertise we have, maybe it is worth a second look? And it’s in the city, so The Eclipse will be happy if it is gone… probably.”

“Great,” Erika said, cracking her knuckles as she cocked a grin. “I was just thinking I needed something to do that didn’t involve The Mummy. Let’s go make some lemonade.”

“Limeade,” Daniel corrected.