21 – Getting to the Bottom of Things

“You got a good look at her?”

“A good look?” Erika would have laughed if she were in a better mood. “Was kind of hard not to, what with her being all nude. Would probably have gotten a much better look if not for the stress and adrenaline and all that stuff that comes with being in a fight.”

“You into women?”

Erika turned, giving Daniel a heavy frown.

The two of them were helping her unload a large dresser from the back of her pickup while Carter watched from the sidelines. Browsing thrift shops and buying a self-storage unit wasn’t exactly how Erika planned on spending her birthday, but recent events had given her an epiphany.

She needed an armory.

It wasn’t going to be much, at least not to start with, but she could build on it as she realized she needed more and more things. At the moment, it was basically going to be little more than a collection of baseball bats, bobby pins, hammers, and a handful of other tools, all of which she could retrieve at a moment’s notice. No more throwing her baseball bat and being unable to rearm herself. She also wouldn’t have to steal the arcade’s hammer again.

“I’m into whatever gets me horny at the time,” Erika said, grunting from exertion as they carefully lowered the large dresser. “While that woman was fit, the giggling and blood and clawing were kind of a turn-off. Don’t stick your tongue in crazy, you know?”

While Daniel’s ears turned a bright red, Leah let out a light cough. “As important as it is to ensure my daughter has a healthy sex life, we should focus on the woman’s existence right now,” she said. Her tone shifted ever so slightly, transforming back into that of The Fixer’s as they continued speaking. “Describe the woman’s appearance, please.”

“Slim, large tits, arms were a bit longer than I think they should be—that could have been my imagination—tattoos all around her bod—”

“Ethnicity? Hair color? Eye color?”

“Uh… White hair? Maybe. It had kind of a blue tint to it, but the lighting in the hotel hadn’t been the best, especially after the fighting started. Wasn’t exactly paying close enough attention to her eyes. As for ethnicity? I don’t know, Caucasian? Or maybe just Asian? Neither?”

Some tension bled out of The Fixer’s shoulders. “White hair, light skin? Good… good…”

Erika cocked an eyebrow, resting a little with the dresser firmly on the ground. “Not that I’m accusing you of being racist, but what?”

The Fixer quickly shook their head. “No, nothing like that. I told you about that village my former guise and I dealt with, right?”

“Some rural Chinese place, right?”

“That wasn’t the only branch of the cult we investigated. In the deserts of Northern Sudan, we came across another village. More of a compound, really, but…” The Fixer shrugged. “Lean the dresser toward yourself and Danny, and I’ll take this end? You and Carter can take that side.”

Happy to be included, Carter hopped off the back of the truck and ran over to Erika’s side. Erika was positive she could take it by herself. She worked out, Carter did not—and he was young, hadn’t even hit a real growth spurt yet. Still, she couldn’t say no to his smile, so she made room, even if being off to one side was going to make it harder to carry.

“Anyway,” The Fixer continued as they and Daniel tilted the dresser. “We discovered an entity there. A being known as The Daughter.”

“Product of another fling of yours?” Erika quipped sarcastically.

The Fixer leveled a glare at her, leaning around the side of the dresser. “The supernatural scene in North Africa doesn’t use titles like what are common around here, so I don’t think The Daughter is like The Fixer or The Agent,” they said, avoiding addressing Erika’s comment entirely. “Rather, further investigation revealed that the cult believed the entity to be an actual daughter of The Mummy—or the version of The Mummy that was worshipped in the area.”

“Great. So The Mummy has a daughter.”

“I doubt it. The Mummy isn’t human or mortal, so the prospect of it laying with others to produce offspring is somewhat absurd.”

“Didn’t stop you,” Erika muttered. “How many half-siblings do Cart and I have, anyway?”

“In any case,” The Fixer stressed, “The Daughter—”

“Aren’t you some monster from outside the bounds of reality? Why do you even get horny for human women anyway?”

“Erika, please. This is not the time or place for this conversation.”

“And when is the right time?”

“Never,” The Fixer said as they lowered the dresser in the back corner of the storage unit.

It was a fairly small place. Erika hadn’t wanted to shell out for the big storage units. She didn’t think she needed that much space anyway. Objects significantly larger than something she could conceal on her person were all but impossible to pull out of her pockets. She just needed a place where she could drive up, drop off some stuff, and keep it there until she needed it. When she used something, she needed to be able to come back and put it where she got it from.

Her ability to transport objects was, unfortunately, one-directional.

A little self-service storage unit was perfect for that.

“Anyway,” The Fixer said. They waited a moment, as if daring Erika to interrupt again. She didn’t, focusing instead on sliding the dresser up against the back wall. “We never encountered the entity, but we did find proof that she exists. Quite explosive proof. We were never quite sure what set her off, but she destroyed the entire compound. There is nothing left but a crater in the desert.”

“Killed her own followers?” Daniel said, aghast. He paused in consideration, eyes lighting up a moment after with another idea. “Then… would she be an ally?”

“Our best guess at the time was that she had discovered our infiltration and was trying to kill us. The other cultists were just collateral.”

“Oh.”

“But this entity doesn’t sound like the same being. All depictions of The Daughter we found, including color photographs—”

“How long ago was this that you have to specify pictures in color?” Erika asked.

The Fixer ignored her, carrying on as if they hadn’t heard. “She had darker skin, black hair, and a great many tattoos, but few, if any, that were bar-like.”

“You sound relieved,” Daniel said, “but isn’t that more worrying? There are two people out there fighting for The Mummy. Some mage who leaves craters behind and some crazy naked person who thinks getting her head chopped off is a joke worthy of a laugh.”

“Nearly chopped off,” Erika corrected. “And run over by a van. And I hit her with a hammer.”

“Whatever. Better for them to be the same person, isn’t it? Then you only have to worry about one thing coming after you.”

“That could be true, but I rather hoped The Daughter ended up blowing herself up with whatever spell she cast. If that happened here, it would be devastating. A whole city block turned into a crater could kill thousands if not tens of thousands,” The Fixer said as they walked back out to the pickup. “The person you encountered last night sounds more like a mid-level cultist to me.”

Daniel shuddered. “If functional immortality is ‘mid-level’, I’m not sure I want to see a high-end cultist.”

“I’m positive I could have broken her if I had a little more time and a little less stress,” Erika grumbled to herself. “There was something weird about her, though, beyond the giggling and odd dual-toned speech. Like she wasn’t all there. Physically, not mentally. Do you think she could be another Outsider-class being? I asked The Stalker, but she seemed like she couldn’t get a good read on the woman—maybe for the same reason that I couldn’t break her.”

“Your ability to break things is not something I can mimic,” The Fixer said slowly. “An Outsider, like myself, doesn’t exactly see reality in the same way as everyone else. We can see the cracks, the little areas to exploit that other people pass right on by. It is how Carter and I manipulate time. We can see the ebbs and flows and, sticking our hands in, redirect them a little.

“You must be similar,” The Fixer continued, “albeit you see different exploits to act upon. Rather than the flow of time, perhaps something like the inherent fragility of all of existence?”

“Sounds a bit dramatic,” Erika said. “I don’t really think I see anything that different. I just… can. You know?”

“Not really. But you and Carter haven’t known anything else but the reality around you, so I suppose it makes sense.” They paused, then turned to fully face Erika. “Do you see similarities in me, like with that woman?”

Erika stared for a long moment, but she didn’t see anything except Leah. Just the same woman who had always been around. If she could notice something off about them so easily, she would have noticed far sooner than she originally had after Leah and The Fixer’s merging. Shaking her head, Erika turned to her pickup and pulled out a whole backpack with a half dozen baseball bats sticking out the top. “I think I would have to break something of you to be sure,” she said, handing the backpack off to Carter. “But I don’t think so.”

Carter ran back inside, unloading the baseball bats into one of the drawers of the dresser. Erika grabbed a plastic bag—the one filled with all her ghost hunting junk she bought before the seance—and handed it over to Daniel. She brought in a few changes of clothes, and The Fixer slung a hefty first-aid kit over their shoulder. She wasn’t sure how good any of the medicine would be if left in the non-climate-controlled storage shed, but she was fairly sure that disinfectant alcohol wouldn’t go bad.

As she started filling the dresser drawers, making sure she knew exactly where each item was, Carter walked up to The Fixer.

“What was it like?” he asked.

Erika paused, looking back. It wasn’t often that Carter took initiative, so she found her curiosity piqued. He had his head tilted off to one side as he stared intently. A brief flicker crossed The Fixer’s face before Leah knelt.

“What was what like?”

“Not you, Mommy. What was it like being outside?”

Leah frowned before standing fully. By the time she reached her full height, The Fixer was back in full. “Outside?”

“It’s a good question,” Erika said. “Back before you were… what, born?”

“Born isn’t the right word. I suppose it was… quiet,” The Fixer said, his own voice barely loud enough to be heard over the pickup’s old, clunking engine as it idled outside the storage shed. “Yet… chaotic. A shifting multitude of possibilities that lacked the spark of reality to truly come into anything but the twisted background that the rest of existence sits upon.”

“Uh huh…” Erika hadn’t the slightest clue what that was supposed to mean. “So how’d you get here?”

“Slipped through the cracks,” The Fixer said with a less certain tone. “To be honest, I’ve no idea. One moment, I was part of that shifting mass. The next? I crystallized into… me.”

“That sounds like happenstance,” Erika said as she folded a crop top and slipped it into the dresser. “But you came here with a purpose, didn’t you? Hunt down The Mummy and all that?”

“That seems to be a trait of Outsiders. We have an innate drive towards a singular task. Perhaps, when I was part of that shifting mass, I peered through one of the cracks in reality and saw The Mummy enacting something horrific that I wished to prevent. Perhaps I was summoned by another being and instilled with my task. Perhaps reality itself decided it needed a defender and called me here.”

“You don’t know.”

“Sorry,” The Fixer said. “Even The Analyst doesn’t know. She appeared with an innate drive to catalogue every bit of information she came across.”

“The Analyst is an Outsider too…” Erika said, cataloguing that bit of information before a thought occurred to her. She narrowed her eyes as she folded an old skirt and placed it in the dresser. “Do you also turn into a weird, invisible, Terminator robot?”

The Fixer chuckled. “Not quite, but not far off either. That shifting mass? You might have pictured some Barker-esque mass of flesh or just an abstract shifting noise, but it is more like… well, machinery, I suppose.”

“The underlying fabric of reality is a giant machine.”

“Not quite, but I really don’t know how else to explain it to someone who hasn’t seen it.”

“Show me,” Erika said as she turned off the engine.

“Show you outside? I’m not sure that’s possible—”

“No, no. Show me your robot form.”

“Ah. That is possible, but not a good idea. There are few things reality loathes more than things from outside its little bubble. I’d run the risk of being forcibly ejected.”

“The Analyst did it,” Erika said, affecting an exaggerated pout.

“The Analyst is a being who revolves around information and methods of acquiring information. That includes a whole suite of stealth systems. I am not surprised to find that she has developed a method to take her true form without drawing the ire of reality, but it is not a feat I can replicate.”

It was disappointing. Lots of things were disappointing, but especially The Fixer. Was this what happened when deadbeat dads came home? She hadn’t possessed high expectations for her father before this year, but somehow, the reality of it all still let her down. The Fixer wasn’t as cool as The Analyst, The Fixer and Leah had put both their kids in danger by not telling them anything, and The Fixer wasn’t even good at his one job. If she had been after The Mummy for three centuries, she liked to think that she would have made a bit more progress.

“Can I turn into a giant robot too?” Carter asked. “Since I’m your kid.”

“Now that is a great question,” Erika said.

“If you have to ask,” The Fixer said with a small smile, “the answer is probably no.”

“Lame.”

“What if we built a robot?” Carter asked. “Like in the movie?”

“Hugo?” The Fixer started to shake their head, only to pause a moment as a thoughtful look crossed their face. “If you could get some scraps from outside… but no, you’re human. Or human enough. I don’t think you’d be able to integrate anything. Not that I’d know how to take some material from outside reality anyway. I don’t even know how I got here.”

“Would The Analyst know?” Erika asked.

Again, The Fixer took an extra moment to consider. “I… doubt it. Her directive appears to be related to Chicago. I don’t think she would have bothered gathering information on how to breach the bounds of reality. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea anyway. Liable to attract Guardians.”

“Guardians? Another being classification?”

“No, if only because they’re even rarer than Outsiders and don’t last as long. They’re known among us as Reality Guardians. They’re… kind of like regular Outsiders except with less personality.”

“So… more robots,” Daniel said. “This is a very strange conversation for me, you know?”

The entire Walker family paused to look at him.

“That’s a bit reductive, but… yes. I suppose.” The Fixer frowned, then shrugged. “You referred to The Analyst as a robot,” they said to Erika, “but these things would put that to shame, for she can reason and think and barter. These have one goal: ejecting anything reality deems unsuited for existence. Me, in other words. They’re the killer T cells of the world.”

Erika stared for a long moment. There had been some miscommunication somewhere. When The Fixer said that reality hated Outsiders, she figured reality itself would just… shunt them away. Now it sounded more like Terminators would show up with guns blazing.

“Carter and I don’t have to worry about that, right? No T-800s care if we do weird shit because we’re not from outside reality.”

“Language, Erika, but I believe so, yes.”

Erika would have preferred a more definitive yes, but she supposed she could live with that. Having two whole factions chasing her down every time she needed to make an ATM withdrawal would have pissed her off. She was already pissed off enough with these Mummy cultists.

“So,” Erika said as she closed the top drawer of the dresser. It was now full of clothes, medical supplies, and ghost-hunting gear. The baseball bats went onto a small rack to the side. There were other things she was probably missing. Guns and ammo for one. She wasn’t going to store her gun here until she did a little research on whether or not the ammo could explode if left in the summer heat. Most other things, she probably wouldn’t think of until she needed them, then she would kick herself for not having the foresight. “How are we going to handle this naked chick?”

“The first step would be to figure out where she spends her time. That will let us plan how to ambush her. If she can be interrogated—”

“Way ahead of you,” Erika said with a grin. She tapped a finger to her temple. “The Stalker saw her, so unless her powers interfere with The Stalker’s to the point where she can’t locate her, we can find her whenever we want. As for ambushing her, we don’t even need The Stalker for that. All I have to do is break things, right? We can draw her to me anytime, anywhere, at our convenience.”

“That’s dangerous,” The Fixer said. Erika opened her mouth to protest—having a psycho after her was already dangerous—but The Fixer held up a hand, stalling her. “She would come expecting a fight. If The Stalker can find her, we can tail her, watch her, and figure out where she goes and who her contacts are. We can get a better grasp of the situation as a whole, maybe identify the main hub for Chicago’s cultists and wipe it out.”

“Assuming she survived,” Daniel said. As the group looked to him again, he shifted a little. “Because she almost lost her head, right? Seems… unreasonable to think she lived through that.”

“I heard her giggle after the fact. I saw…” Erika trailed off. She hadn’t actually seen the woman move about after that. The Strategist’s van crashed into her mere seconds after that last giggle. For all she knew, that had been the finishing blow.

“We’ll convene with The Stalker,” The Fixer said. “She’ll know if the woman is still alive, right?”

“Yeah, probably.” She hadn’t actually asked The Stalker if she could still see that woman, but that could be rectified with a quick text message.

“It can wait a day. Today, Erika, happy birthday.” The Fixer was the one who spoke, but Erika saw the moment Leah took over, reaching into her purse to pull out a small square box. “This is from both of us, and Carter.”

Raising an eyebrow, Erika accepted the box. It wasn’t wrapped. It was just a small leather-padded box, the kind that might hold small bits of jewelry or earrings. Erika didn’t wear too much in the way of jewelry. A few piercings in her ears, maybe a simple necklace or two when she went out. Most of her jewelry box had survived the fire, so she wasn’t really lacking anything, and Leah should have known.

Leah hadn’t gotten her jewelry as a gift in years.

So it was with some curiosity that she opened it.

It was a watch. A small watch with a black band and a black face, analog—a dainty kind of thing, not really her style at all. She would have expected a thick leather band with some studs. Not wanting to sound like an ungrateful bitch, she didn’t say that, of course. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”

Something in her tone made them laugh. “We figured something smaller and unobtrusive would be better than something thick and bulky.”

“It is certainly easier to wear, I suppose,” Erika said, pulling out her phone. Comparing the time on its face and on the watch, she frowned. “Time’s off by about four hours,” she said, reaching for the adjustment knob.

“Don’t touch it!” Carter said, running over to grab her hand.

“You don’t want me to correct the time?” Erika said, now wondering if Carter had gotten body-snatched by some other Outsider.

“It’s off on purpose.”

“When you break something,” The Fixer said, “the ripples should get captured by the watch. It won’t hold them forever, but you can use it if something like that fight happens again, keeping yourself hidden for a few hours longer. When you break something, the watch will start accelerating—the more stuff you break, the faster it will go. We weren’t exactly able to test the upper limits, but… well, it should be better than nothing. You’ll have until the time on the watch syncs up with real time to find a good place to dump the ripples, which you can accomplish early by bending time around the watch. You know how to do that, right?”

“You went and magicked up a watch for me?” Erika said, slowly grinning. Taking advantage of Carter having run over to her, she wrapped an arm around his head and rubbed her knuckles lightly into his hair. He rather swiftly escaped, slipping out from under her arm before rushing over to The Fixer’s side. “So this will hide me from The Mummy?”

“It isn’t magic, technically speaking, but yes. It isn’t perfect and it might need some additional fine tuning, especially with storing large amounts of ripples, but it should work.” The Fixer smiled a very Leah smile. “I’ve never done anything like it before. It was quite a puzzle to work out.”

“It was my idea,” Carter said. “I helped.”

“Thank you both. Anything is better than nothing,” Erika said, slipping it onto her wrist. She stared at it a moment before frowning. “Though, if I’m four hours late to everything, I’m blaming you guys.”