24 – Standoff on the Bridge

Erika scanned the skies over the long cobblestone bridge. As before, that crimson mist clung to the air, but it wasn’t as thick as the first time around. Erika couldn’t see well, but she saw further than before. Faint, foggy silhouettes of that hanging city dotted the skyline like bubbles, visible only in the contrast of the dying orange-red sun.

She didn’t recall seeing a sun, last time, but the fog had been much thicker then.

The change in the fog bothered her. Did this place have natural weather or had things changed because of her?

“Thought you said this place was filled with birds.”

The Adjustment stepped through the shattered portal, grinning at Erika, followed by The Art, Leslie, and about half of the SWAT team. The latter moved professionally, organized in trios who all covered one another. They even looked up, much to Leslie’s obvious delight.

If The Emperor was impressed, surprised, or had any human emotion anywhere in her body about a whole new world, she did not show it outwardly as she surveyed the misty bridge.

“When we first got here, it was much like it is now,” Erika said, barely glancing over her shoulder to answer The Adjustment’s question. Most of her focus remained on the void between the bridge and the bulb-like city. Last time, there had been chains there. “When we escaped, there were enough birds to blot out the—My truck!”

Finally turning, Erika spotted the tail of her old red pickup poking out from behind the portal. Hurrying around the assembling group, she rushed over, unable to stop her ‘eep’ of delight at seeing it once again.

Erika hadn’t expected her truck to be here. Bits and pieces, picked clean by those buzzards… or a rusted out husk left to rot in this place’s strange air. Never would she have guessed that her truck would be there and intact. The only real damage it suffered was from Carter crashing it into the bridge wall, and he hadn’t been going very fast at the time.

An oily sheen covered it, making Erika grimace as she touched the handle, but her excitement didn’t allow that to stop her. The interior was fine enough, and her keys were right there in the ignition. The engine sputtered, coughed, and rumbled to life.

“Oh baby, have I missed you.” Erika never felt attached to her truck; some of her peers named their first cars, but it always felt silly to her. After having driven that junker around for the last month, her beat-up old truck felt like a hot rod as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

Erika’s eyes shifted over to the portal. It was large enough to fit a vehicle. The Eclipse were already driving a few of their SUVs through it. For a moment, Erika considered leaving her truck here, intending to get it on the return trip, but…

“Be right back,” she called out as she hopped fully into the truck.

Leslie and The Adjustment yelled something, but Erika paid them no mind, turning the truck around to face the portal.

There was no guarantee she would be able to retrieve it later. They might be chased out like last time. They might find some other way out. The whole bridge might collapse.

In the same moment as one of The Eclipse’s SUVs pulled through the opposite side of the portal, Erika pulled out into the trainyard lot. Erika wondered what it looked like from the side, as if one vehicle simply transformed into the other, but from her perspective, she drove over to the warehouse and parked right against it, safe and sound next to the actual junk car.

Only when getting out of the truck did she notice something amiss.

A faint whistling sound tickled Erika’s ears. A familiar whistling sound, like a bomb dropping in a cartoon, distant, yet slowly approaching. At first, she thought it might have been from the assembled vehicles—the electric SUVs didn’t make traditional engine noises, but there were still motors turning and tires grinding against the ground—but the sound wasn’t coming from the ground.

Erika’s eyes widened as she realized just what that sound was.

“Everyone! Hurry!” she shouted, rushing back toward the portal.

Half the convoy hadn’t even started pulling through. The lead car was parked on the other side, people out, taking reading and blocking the way.

“My, my. Whatever could be the matter?”

Erika clicked her tongue in annoyance at The Hanged Man’s overly suave tone, knowing he was mocking her sudden panic. She turned to him anyway, knowing he was the authority here. “Can’t you hear that?”

The Hanged Man gave her an amused look, but still craned his neck like he was making an attempt.

Erika didn’t bother waiting for him to deny it, whether he was honest or not. “If these vans aren’t through in sixty seconds, we’re leaving them behind, along with anyone else on this side.”

For the briefest of instants, The Hanged Man looked like he wanted to argue with her. He stared down at her, half-lidded eyes slowly widening to a neutral stare. “I will handle it,” he said, moving to the nearest SUV. He paused at its side before sticking his head through the driver-side window. Erika couldn’t hear what he said, but the car started moving before he pulled his head back, blaring its horn as it did so.

The lead car, parked on the other side of the portal, started moving across the bridge after the next car started pressing right up against them. With a wave of The Hanged Man’s hand, the rest of the SUVs got in gear and started rolling.

“The Emperor will be displeased if I’ve broken protocol without due cause.”

Erika was tempted to flip him off, but resigned herself to grabbing hold of his arm. “I get the impression that she is displeased by a lot of things. Come on,” she said, dragging him through the opposite side of the portal, so they didn’t interrupt the cars.

Leslie and Anna approached her first, admonishing her for running off, but Erika barely heard them as she chewed on her nail, glaring at the portal.

She didn’t know how to fight that thing. From the description of his fight with the Terminator, it didn’t sound like something anyone could fight, at least so long as they perceived reality in the usual way. Maybe Erika could break it, and maybe she could break it in a way that it couldn’t fix, but she would have to hit it. In the fight with The Fixer, it had been warping all around, twisting space, time, and the rest of reality even as The Fixer twisted them to escape.

It took a moment longer than sixty seconds, but the final car pulled through. Erika was tempted to peek out—she couldn’t hear the whistle on this side of the portal—but the thought of encountering that thing had her boots locked in place.

“All personnel are through,” The Hanged Man said. “It doesn’t appear that there was a problem.”

Erika jolted at his voice, focused too much on the portal, but shook her head. “No, I suppose not. Maybe it was my imagination.”

“Then I shall inform The Emperor that your imagination now dictates our protocols. I’m sure she will be thrilled. You’ve—”

“Enough,” The Emperor said, her tone somehow cold yet her breath heated with faint, dull sparks. “I trust you have a reason for this.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Erika pursed her lips, watching the slight narrowing of The Emperor’s slit-eyes. She straightened her back. “I heard a sound I associate with—”

The clockwork angel struck the ground on the opposite side of the portal, sending gravel and dust into the air around a small crater. The Emperor, The Hanged Man, and all the rest tensed. Erika felt the shift in the air as they moved from caution to fight. Erika wasn’t immune, dropping into a lower stance with her bat at the ready.

The Terminator’s lenses swept over the group, barely seeming to notice them, before the lenses refocused on the fractured reality. Its wings swept forward, pinching together at the boundary, twisting over and over each other like knitting needles weaving a scarf.

The Emperor took an aggressive step forward, heat welling in her gullet. Erika clamped a hand on her wrist, breaking her stride into a stumble.

“Don’t,” Erika hissed.

Heat washed over Erika as The Emperor turned her gaze, like opening a hot oven on a freezing day.

“She isn’t wrong,” The Hermit said, voice airy as she idly groomed one of her many tails. Although The Emperor didn’t look away from Erika, it felt like the heat faded. “We’re in hostile territory. I advise against starting unnecessary fights.”

“It’s sealing us in,” Rick said with an uncharacteristic panic in his tone.

“I can get us out again,” Erika reassured him—and everyone else—even adopting a tight grin as she watched the Terminator.

It literally stitched the broken glass of reality back together. Erika’s mind couldn’t comprehend the exact process, but it was fascinating to watch her work being undone. The guardian’s wings pierced through reality, dragging whatever it used as thread through to the other side. The rest of the being faded from existence as it worked, gradually becoming transparent along with the trainyard, until there was nothing left but the rest of the bridge and the occasional blade-tipped wing. Even those ceased after a few more seconds.

Erika waited, making sure that the guardian wasn’t going to do anything, then slowly walked forward. She brushed her hands through the air, feeling for that film. Despite her reassurance, there was one tiny, small little fear that the guardian fixed up that shattered reality even more than before; without Carter to pop open a pinhole, Erika would have to figure out how to break it down entirely on her own.

Instead, however, it felt jagged and ruined. Raw. Now that she had something to compare it with, it was like the stitches were barely holding it closed whereas before, it was like a scar still in the healing process. Erika felt a slight nudge would open it once again.

“I can definitely open it again,” she announced, turning away. The faces of those gathered didn’t look entirely reassured.

She could tell that The Hunters, at least, believed her, even if most of them were looking around with wary, alert gazes. It was just their posturing, and the way Leslie gave her a firm nod of his head. Delilah… had those flat, emotionless eyes again, so she must have fainted.

The Eclipse’s crew were a bit more mixed in their reactions, ranging from The Hermit’s utter apathy to The Fool’s barely suppressed panic as he clung to his rock monster. Mutterings came from the SWAT team, but The Hanged Man quelled any vocal discontent with a few curt words. They didn’t lose their nervous stances. All of them jumped as The Lust—the woman dressed entirely inappropriately for a mission like this—threw herself at The Aeon with a distraught wail. From the way she sneaked a glance at his mirrored face, searching for a reaction, her distress was completely fake.

The Emperor drew in a deep, heavy breath, exhaling slowly with another wash of heat. “We are here for one task,” she announced, turning away from Erika to address the others like some king to his subjects. “Reopening the gateway now will jeopardize the mission.”

Erika gave The Emperor the flattest look behind her back, saying that like she hadn’t been about to leap at the Terminator and jeopardize the mission herself. The Adjustment said that the angel had been a thorn in their sides for a while now, but what had the plan just now been? Blast the Terminator with some shock diamonds?

Her words still carried weight with The Eclipse. Those worried quickly straightened up and the rest got them organized and ready to move out.

“If you plan to fight that thing,” Erika said softly before The Emperor could walk too far off, “please do so only while I am nowhere nearby.”

“We’re here to fight what a few of my subordinates call a god,” The Emperor said, equally quiet, “and that thing worries you?”

Erika hesitated, pursing her lips as she considered. Objectively, The Mummy scared her a whole lot more. All Nya’s talk about absorbing her, or being Tanged, as Rick put it, sounded horrifying. But at the same time, Erika always got a sense of dread whenever she saw the Terminator that The Mummy didn’t quite manage.

“The Mummy exists entirely within reality,” Erika said slowly, articulating her thoughts. “I’m less certain about the Terminator.”

“An Outsider?”

“Not exactly… All I know is that I think I might find it hard to break.”

The Emperor hummed in simple acknowledgement, took a step forward, then paused. “Oh, before I forget,” she said, looking over her shoulder. The center of her slit-pupiled eyes barely crested the top of her circular glasses. “Stop me like that again, and they won’t even find ashes.”

Erika stiffened, then quickly turned her lips to a sneer. “Oh yeah, threaten your one way out of here. I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

“It isn’t a threat—”

“It’s a promise? Miss me with your cringe lines, please.” Judging by The Emperor’s expression, few people talked back to her. That wasn’t surprising. Erika’s confidence stemmed entirely from her firebreak, even though she didn’t know if it could take a direct hit, but even most supernatural creatures she knew about would fare far worse. “Let’s just finish what we’re here for, get out of here, and go our separate ways until the next crisis forces us to work together.”

The Emperor stood, still looking over her shoulder.

Taking in the wider view, the rest of The Eclipse tensed, as if each one of them were waiting for the woman to open her mouth. Erika ground her teeth, cautiously dropping into a more stable stance as she wondered if she was about to have to test the firebreak and fight off the entire faction. The Hunters clearly caught on, shifting subtly to get better access to their weapons. Seeing even the ever-present concern on Sofia’s face shift to something calculating made Erika grind her teeth together, regretting talking back and not just taking the insult. She put them in danger just by speaking up against some useless threat.

Only The Hermit, half watching The Emperor, half drawing in a lungful from her pipe, looked relaxed. She didn’t speak, however, simply exhaling a cloud of violet smoke dotted with sparkling glitter.

The Emperor laughed a short, simple note—barely more than a curl of her lips. Whatever that meant, the tension in The Eclipse died off before she even turned back to the others. “What are you standing around for,” she said, voice level. “We have a schedule to keep.”

Erika remained where she was at the now-sealed barrier, watching The Emperor’s long jacket flutter as she walked across the bridge, joining with those at the SUVs.

She remained in place, trying to figure out what that laugh meant, right up until The Hunters made their way over, surrounding her.

“Are you insane?” Sofia hissed before anyone else could speak. “She can level buildings in seconds and you’re talking back to her?”

“Not to harp on you too much,” Rick said, sword in hand—still sheathed, “but, like, kinda agree?”

“I get it,” Erika said, raising her hands, having already come to the same conclusion. “Next time she threatens me, I’ll just smile and flip her off once she turns her back.”

“She might have eyes on the back of her head,” Sofia warned.

Erika brushed her off, turning to the newest member of their little group. “Delilah… Nya,” she corrected herself, seeing the girl’s eyes were still black. “When—”

“When the hunter arrived,” Nya answered before Erika could finish her question.

Hunter, Erika noted, was an interesting term for the Terminator. It wasn’t incorrect, given its pursuit of The Fixer, but still interesting. “Well, whatever,” Erika said, shrugging off Delilah’s state. “As long as you’re around, mind leading us?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t much to lead,” Nya said, slowly raising her hand. “Until we reach that end of the bridge, it is a fairly straight line.”

Despite the red mist having cleared away since the last time Erika had been in this place, neither end of the bridge was fully visible. It took a moment to orient herself, but based on the faintly visible city in the distance and the way her pickup had been oriented, the direction Nya pointed was not the same way she had been before.

“Oh, and I would avoid touching any liquid. The Carrion Eater does not devour the still-living, but you will find the experience unpleasant regardless.”

Erika’s gaze snapped to Nya as alarm bells started going off in the back of her mind. “Are we… Are we in its stomach?”