22 – Everything, Nothing, A Baseball Bat

Layer by layer, sense by sense, Erika felt herself peeled apart. Sound went first: the gunfire, the shouts, the screech of metal birds all stretched and warped, then snapped into a cacophonous silence. The bridge, the van, and her allies smeared into streaks of color, then into impossible geometries—shapes that hurt to look at, their colors did not exist.

Smell and taste followed, but not quietly. The spiciest curry paled compared to the taste of reality. A violent explosion of every taste at once shaved off layers of her tongue. The scents invading her perception of smell went in the opposite direction—the vacuum of space; the interior of a black hole.

Her skin prickled and crawled; her bones felt rubbery, her blood fizzled with cold and heat at once. She stretched thin, then compressed, then spun out into a spiral that had no end.

For a moment, Erika was nowhere.

Not nowhere like a blank void, or the middle of a field far from civilization, or like the silence of a mind gone blank. Erika fell through a nowhere that was a thousand somewheres, each flicking past her perception like individual frames of an old Super 8 film reel.

She saw herself from above, from below, from inside out. Carter’s hand clutched hers in one instance, while simultaneously safe and sound back in bed at their old house. The van’s battered hood and billowing smoke sped along the cobblestone bridge, twisted into a Möbius strip of stone and shadow.

A horrifically preppy Erika stepped out of the shadows, clutching a pastel handbag. An Erika cosplaying an ancient, wizened crone sat by the burning ruins of an arcade. A sultry succubus bearing a familiar tattoo on her chest seduced men and women alike. A towering, biomechanical monarch seeped caustic green slime from its fanged maw as it stalked its prey.

The echo of her own heartbeat, multiplied and scattered across a thousand versions of herself, thrummed against reality.

The very next frame of the film reel depicted Erika, bat in hand, splattering the pale-tattooed cultist over the warp to the outside. Her bat, moved one singular span of a quark further, tapped against the underlying mechanical monstrosity that made up that otherworldly realm. Erika felt the impact of her bat, not just in her hands, but in her bones, her teeth, in the roots of her hair.

She felt resistance, much like any other time she swung her bat, but this resistance wasn’t physical—it was existential. A pressure pushed back, reality itself rejecting the idea that it could break.

But it already had. Erika witnessed it.

The world’s most fragile glass met her unstoppable force.

Her arms trembled, her vision doubled and tripled, and for a split second, she saw the world’s seams—the very exploits she had been using her whole life, plain and apparent rather than cloaked behind the material curtain. The bridge was a line of code, the van a cluster of data points, and her own body flickered as a string of possibilities. Even the chaotic churning of organomechines that made up the outside aligned in an orderly fashion, presenting themselves to her.

Erika spotted the exact way to break a hole in the world and, in the next instant of her bat moving, shattered a hole from one realm to another.

The van didn’t need to move, nor did Erika, Carter, and The Stalker. The bridge in The Mummy’s prison overlaid on top of Chicago, occupying the same space. Her boots stood atop gravel of the trainyard and obsidian cobblestone at once. A simple shift of her foot and she was fully back in Chicago.

A wave of nausea hit Erika as her mind spun with the worst migraine she had ever felt. She couldn’t keep her vision steady; her eyes constantly flicked off to the side, then reset, then drifted again. She stumbled, staggered, and would have fallen to the ground.

“Got you,” The Stalker said, her words echoing in Erika’s ringing ears as she caught her. Throwing Erika up and over her shoulder, The Stalker grabbed hold of Carter by the shoulder and hauled both of them to the van.

“Not out of this yet,” The Strategist warned. Still slumped up against the back seat of the van, he raised his gun and fired, streaming molten metal at a bird the very instant it phased through the hole in reality.

“Can you close this portal?” The Warrior shouted from the front as The Stalker passed Erika off to Simone.

Simone threw her onto the seat before leaning out of the window, defending the van.

“I don’t think she’s in a state to do anything right now,” The Stalker hissed, manhandling Carter into the van behind her. “Just go, leave whatever mess to The Eclipse, right?”

“Not the best idea,” The Strategist said through clenched teeth as he tried to sit up. “You saw the size of that thing. If it can reach through this hole, it might destroy the whole city.”

“Something like that can probably make its own damn portals. Even if it can’t, we don’t want to be here when it reaches through.”

A sound, faint and distant, reached Erika’s ears even over the repeated gunshots, the approaching police sirens, and the noisy arguing of her companions. The sound started out as a high-pitched whistle, familiar, and rapidly grew louder against her pounding eardrums. It took her hazy mind several seconds to slot the puzzle pieces together, but Erika recognized that sound.

“Drive, now,” Erika ordered, words slurring off her tongue. She tried to push herself up, but her swimming vision held her down.

The Warrior didn’t argue, hitting the gas before questioning Erika, but she didn’t drive fast enough. “I can loop back—”

“No! Just go.”

“The portal—”

“Something is coming; they can handle it.” Erika, wobbling, pushed herself upright. Carter tried to stop her, but Erika forced herself anyway. It helped to close her eyes. “Do you not hear that?”

“Hear…” The Strategist trailed off as if he were thinking. Erika couldn’t see him, but opening her eyes just a sliver, she caught both Simone and The Stalker leaning toward the open window, straining.

The Warrior pointed her shotgun outside and pulled the trigger, making everyone flinch at the sudden report. “I just hear birds and cop cars.”

“Another reason to leave,” The Stalker hissed to herself.

Erika barely paid attention, focusing on quelling her rampaging headache while squinting through her barely opened eyes, peering out the open rear of the van at the trainyard and the sky above as that whistle grew louder.

She barely glimpsed it streaking through the sky before the steampunk angel crashed down like a meteor, shattering dozens of manifesting birds with the shockwave. The van rocked in response, but The Warrior stabilized it with one ratchet of the parking brake.

The birds were not picky about their targets, immediately shifting interest from the van to the new threat in their midst. If the angel cared, it didn’t show it. Any bird that neared slid apart into thin pieces as if the angel’s mere presence was enough to unravel their existence. The angel focused on the hole in reality.

Erika could still see it. At a casual glance, it looked like nothing more than the parking lot with the train tracks just beyond a fence. Focusing a little more, Erika could see the haze; the red mist seeped through and the black bridge overlaid the lot. Along its edges, she could see faint glimmers of the churning machinery of outside; the razor-thin gap between the two realms ripped apart a bird that approached a little too close.

With the angel’s presence as an aid, reality reasserted itself. The hole Erika left behind shimmered and shrank, slowly closing back in on itself.

Erika didn’t get to see the process in full. As soon as The Warrior turned the van down another street, Erika’s line of sight broke, and her headache erupted back in full force.

“Another threat?” The Strategist asked as Erika slumped off to the side, head hitting The Stalker’s legs. His voice, taut with tension carried all the weight of a verbal glower. “Something else you should mention to your allies?”

“You could see it?” Erika mumbled, keeping her eyes closed.

“I did,” Carter said, his voice a light whisper somewhere near Erika’s side. “I liked it.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Erika hissed back, opening her eyes just long enough to ensure Carter felt the seriousness of her words. “That thing attacked The Fixer.”

“Something you should share—” The Strategist started, his voice even more irritated than before.

The Stalker interrupted him with a curse under her breath, making Erika look up at her. “It’s that thing. It trapped The Hanged Man and me while we were…” She trailed off, eyes losing focus for a moment before her glare returned. “I told you about it,” she hurriedly added, sounding defensive. “Clockwork angel. That’s what The Hanged Man called it. Trapped us in some endless hotel hallway before I figured out how to get out.”

“It’s a Terminator,” Erika added, before remembering that Terminator wasn’t an actual term for whatever it was, just something she’d made up. “Some kind of reality guardian,” she clarified. “And we just broke reality.”

“Is it going to come after us?” The Warrior asked.

Erika didn’t have a proper answer for that question. “Hope not. It looked preoccupied, and it isn’t omniscient. As long as you keep driving, maybe we’ll be fine?”

“I prefer more confidence in my planning,” The Strategist said with a heavy note of disdain in his tone. “I prefer knowing all variables so I can plan.”

“Maybe you should plan on not knowing everything,” The Stalker sneered, but her voice was low enough that only Erika heard.

The van rattled over a pothole, jostling everyone inside. Erika pressed her palms to her temples, trying to squeeze the lingering pain out.

Simone, still half-hanging out the window, finally ducked back in after the jolt. “Clear for now. No birds, no angels, no cops.”

A quiet, exhausted relief fell over the group. The tension in the van palpably diminished as the danger passing slowly sank in, but Erika’s mind kept looping over that moment. Reality felt uncannily fragile at the moment, even more so than usual.

Her fingers twitched as she realized just what she had done—what she always did. Any time she broke anything, bits of reality itself fractured. That angel wasn’t stalking her every move, fixing every little thing, so reality was robust enough to fix minor breaks.

If The Fixer and other Outsiders created massive rips in reality like the one she had made, it was no surprise that the reality guardians pursued them. The Fixer’s true form wasn’t any better, breaking a much larger chunk of reality when it appeared than any single instance Erika had ever caused.

Erika cut off a nervous laugh.

“Did anyone else see that?” Erika asked without lifting her head from The Stalker’s knees. She felt The Stalker tense, twisting like she was looking around, so Erika quickly added, “Not now, but back there, when I hit that opening.”

“Opening?” The Stalker said, frowning down at Erika.

“You might have to be more specific,” The Warrior chipped in.

“I really don’t think I do.” The nervous tension in Erika’s shoulders bled out. If they had seen it, they would know. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to discuss it with them, but now, it didn’t look like it mattered. Not unless… “Carter?”

“I saw the opening, just like at the prison.”

“Nothing more?”

Carter shook his head, earning a small nod from Erika.

That confirmed it; nobody else had seen reality break, not even Carter. None of them had swung the baseball bat. None of them could swing the baseball bat. Judging from The Stalker’s quip, she hadn’t even seen the initial opening to outside—that might well be a Walker family trait, since they were Outsiders or descended from one. Erika’s mind was too fried to think over what she saw in full.

It would be days before she fully decompressed; by the time she felt able to think, hopefully she would have forgotten some of what she saw. Erika was certain she hadn’t seen the future, but some alternate versions of herself, at least one of which had turned into some kind of monstrosity.

And a preppy version of herself, complete with a sweater vest, a cardigan tied around her shoulders, and pastel colors.

The thought almost made her throw up.

Erika felt the van slow, then heard The Warrior clap her hands together. “Well—”

“Don’t fucking ask if that was fun,” The Stalker snarled.

“I was about to say what a shitshow that was.”

“They got Michael,” Simone muttered.

“And they’ll pay for that.”

“How? When?”

The Warrior didn’t answer. Peeking her eyes open, Erika saw her glance over her shoulder, back toward The Strategist. “I need to repair the van, replenish our supplies, and enchant some better tools for dealing with flying birds.”

A sudden nausea hit Erika, brought on by remembering what happened before reality broke. “Fucking hell… I broke a chain, didn’t I?”

“We did mention that earlier…”

“I had other things on my mind,” Erika grunted, pushing herself upright. “Fuck.”

“Is that giant something we need to worry about?”

“Hell if I know,” Erika snapped, her anger somehow pushing her headache and nausea aside. A thought flitted in the back of her mind; a little reminder of what the monk had said to her. “No,” she corrected herself. “The monk said they had several chains they wanted me to break. If it can free itself with just one broken, he wouldn’t have said that. But that thing isn’t the only problem… The last time I broke a chain, those maggots started invading.”

Would it be birds this time? Was that maggot invasion just a coincidence? Erika still, after everything, did not know enough.

Grinding her teeth, Erika glared at nothing in particular. That tattooed man had splattered the last time she hit him, rather than dispersing into motes of light. Hopefully, that meant he was dead. He had sacrificed himself to break those chains.

And now they might suffer another invasion. Flying metal bird things seemed a lot more troublesome for The Eclipse to cover up than maggots. Could they manage? Would they manage? Maybe their existing solution for the maggots would work on the birds as well…

Not that it was going to last much longer if The Prescient was right. The whole thing was going to collapse, a minor apocalypse would begin, and that would precede a much larger apocalypse when Erika inadvertently broke another few chains.

The Eclipse was going to be pissed off with her. The Castle too, most likely. And The Puppet…

Well, they were already pissed, but not with her.

An idea popped into Erika’s mind; it wouldn’t be difficult to convince them now.

“You guys want revenge?” Erika asked. “The Hunters and I have been planning something to deal with at least some of these people. That’s why we came around, asking about enchanted bullets the other day.”

“Proposing a little joint venture?” The Warrior asked, turning back again with a frown directed at The Strategist where he sat slumped against the van’s wall, entirely unconscious. “Might have to wait until we get him to The Healer. Are you two injured at all?”

Erika, quickly looking over Carter, slowly shook her head. “Surprisingly, no. I’ve got a migraine, but that’s already slowly going away.” Even as she spoke, she felt the lie in her words. Little stinging cuts and scrapes burned all over her body. She couldn’t recall getting injured so many times; there had been the knock to her shoulder, but that was it. Everything else came from the pure attrition of a chaotic fight. Examining herself, she ended with, “At least, we aren’t seriously injured.”

“Good. Not to kick you out, but better to avoid The Healer. She’s going to be grumpy enough as it is, and with The Strategist in the condition he’s in, we probably don’t have time to take you anywhere.”

“Lucky,” The Stalker muttered.

“That’s fine,” Erika answered The Warrior. Everything she had heard about The Healer made her sound exceedingly unpleasant. “I need to talk to The Hunters anyway, make sure they’re all on board. We probably need to move fast if we want to hit The Mummy before a bunch of shit goes down. You guys think you’d be up for a conference call later…”

Erika trailed off, patting her pockets and finding them lacking. “Damn it,” she hissed. “Where—”

“Here,” Carter said, holding her phone up.

Erika had no idea when or from where he got it, and frankly did not care. With a tight grin, she ruffled his hair. “Good job. So, phone call, later tonight?”

“We’ll probably be done with The Healer in about two hours.”

“Plenty of time,” Erika said, glancing at Carter. Opening her phone, she noted dozens of missed calls—spotting Leslie and Rick’s phones among the numbers—and promptly ignored them in favor of getting a ride out here.

Her poor truck had not made it through the portal. It was still off in The Mummy’s misty realm. She doubted she would ever get it back. It had been a junker, but it had been her junker.

“You can drop us off wherever. We’ll make our way to The Hunters. Call us when you’re done.”

The Warrior promptly obliged, pulling off to the side of the street somewhere in the middle of downtown. Plenty of people were out and about, giving Erika some confidence that nobody would ambush them five seconds after The Puppet drove off.

Most of those people were staring at the van, battered and dented, missing half its rear, every window cracked if not broken entirely. The tires, intact, must have resisted punctures because of some enchantment… or pure luck. Erika didn’t know what that silver needle was capable of, but even with it, she doubted The Warrior would have the van up and running soon.

Adrenaline fading, the cold setting in, Erika leaned up against a pizza place’s wall as she waited for the lift to the arcade. “You sure you’re alright?” she asked Carter, checking him over once again.

“I’m great. Fantastic.”

If those words had come from anyone else, Erika might have thought it was sarcasm. Carter tended toward literal speech, rarely leaving room for interpretation, and his tone was just as flat as always. “Are you really?”

“I’ve never been happier.” Before Erika could question him, he held up a hand.

In his palm, he gripped a small, baseball-sized mass of biomechanical machinery. It twisted, chugged, and churned in on itself, bending and pulsing in strange geometries, yet somehow did not pinch his fingers.

Erika, wide-eyed, took a step back. She glanced around, straining her ears for any sign of that clockwork angel rocketing towards them.

“It isn’t stable,” Carter said, ignorant of Erika’s sudden fear. He poked and prodded at the orb, the little slice of Outside, like it was nothing more fascinating than a baseball. “It’ll… evaporate?”

“Carter,” Erika stressed his name, trying to keep calm. “That angel thing might not be happy if it notices this. Why… how do you have it?”

“I think it is the part of The Stalker that she didn’t want anymore. I’m not like Dad though, so I couldn’t take it in me?” He let out a wistful sigh as he tapped his fingernail against it, each strike sounding like a different guitar chord. “I don’t really know what to do with it, but it is nice to hold. Maybe I could think of something if there were more time, but it will be gone in… one eighty-one, one eighty, one seventy-nine…”

Three minutes. Erika nodded to herself, tense and alert, but less worried. It had been half an hour since returning to the regular world and the angel had yet to bother them. Three more minutes and she could relax in full. Until then, Carter could destress with the weird ball of reality.