25 – i – The Castle

“A small group walked down the street and turned into an alley. They were an odd sort. One, a lumbering giant of a woman, a full head and shoulders above the other two. She wore black slacks and a button-up shirt with a long-tailed coat over the top. Her buttons strained to keep her shirt closed over her busty bust, trying to keep her modesty in against the world—no, against reality’s desires. It was like the suit wasn’t fitted to her physique. Man’s clothes… Men’s clothes? What’s the way to say it?”

The Butler looked down at her chest with a frown. She lifted her breasts, held them, then let them drop. She promptly adjusted her shirt. “My clothes aren’t straining.”

The Maid looked up with a cutesy grin. “It’s just a little titillation,” she said, flipping one of her blonde pigtails over her shoulders. “Got to keep the readers interested.”

“Readers? Is this an ‘internet’ thing again?” The Butler asked, wiggling her finger in mock quotation. “The Director isn’t going to be happy if you’re narrating our duties.”

The Maid shuddered, shaking her head. “No, no. I learned my lesson. I’ll keep it completely clean. No mention of hunting down escaped experiments, kidnappings, or even Chicago. Right. This takes place in… Hikag. The great, Dark City of Hikag, equal parts brilliant skyscrapers and eerie alleys, wealthy apartments and poverty-stricken tent villages…” Trailing off, The Maid glanced around, shrugged, and donned a bright smile once again.

“Hikag,” The Butler repeated, shaking her head slowly. She tried to focus forward, but kept glancing downward. After a moment, she tried sucking in her stomach, pressing down on her chest at the same time. It didn’t help much.

“Don’t worry,” The Maid said with a giggle, noticing despite The Butler’s subtle attempts. “Men like this kind of thing. Plenty of women, too,” she added with a wink.

“Do they?” The Butler asked, unconvinced. Or, perhaps, uncaring, as if her worries weren’t with who liked what.

The Maid promptly cleared her throat, holding her cellphone up to her face again. “The younger one at her side, half the giant’s height—”

“I’m not a giant…”

“Ah hem. She had luscious hair the color of a Japanese rose—as she walked past, I noticed she smelled like one too. She took her attire from the pages of a French maid catalogue, the skanky kind, with her frilly skirt short enough to see the supple curves of her ass—”

“Men like this?”

The Prescient found himself unable to keep silent any longer. “Twelve-year-olds, maybe,” he grumbled with a roll of his eyes.

“Ah,” The Maid continued, undaunted by the interruption. “The third member of the trio. Tall—though not as tall as the giant—with skin as smooth as molten chocolate—”

“Always chocolate,” The Prescient said with a sigh.

“—his face was so bland and devoid of emotion even as he nagged and whined. The perfect specimen of the uncanny valley. I think he was a mandroid. Only a mandroid, alien and inhuman, would think that a zoot suit was acceptable in the modern day.”

“It’s not…” The Prescient trailed off, shaking his head. There was no point in getting drawn into The Maid’s antics.

It was always like this when dealing with her. They had to make dramatic entrances to the corner gas stations. Simple bus rides had to be a spectacle. Bullets could be slamming into the wall next to their heads, and she would hum and haw about how sensationally close the calls had been.

Even when some creature shambled into the alley ahead of them, she did nothing but make a delighted squeal.

“There it was. The target they had sought, the cause of all the evening’s troubles. Hideous and grotesque. Humanoid, but only vaguely. Its limbs, too long, its eyes, too wide, and its maw—a massive gape in its face filled with rings of needle-like teeth. Globs of blood-filled saliva drooled down its chin, dripping to the ground—”

A loud shriek echoed off the alley as the monster, uncaring for The Maid’s narration, scampered toward them on both hand and foot.

“The giant stepped ahead of the group, ready to be the bulwark with her strength of ten—no, one hundred men!”

The Butler stepped forward. Rearing a fist back, she swung forward in an almighty haymaker.

The creature erupted, sending a spray of blood, viscera, and bone in a cone-shaped pattern all stemming from The Butler’s fist. Her follow-up strike hit nothing but air as the creature was no more.

“I… didn’t think I hit it that hard,” she said, looking at her own fist with an embarrassed frown. “Or maybe I thought it was going to be tougher. I don’t know… We were supposed to bring it in. The Director is going to yell at me again.”

The Maid gave a few comforting pats on The Butler’s arm. She plucked a little flap of skin off the taller woman’s cuff, staring at it for a long moment before flinging it off to the ground. “There, there. Maybe we can scrape it into a bucket.”

“He wanted a living one…”

The Prescient stepped ahead of the two, eying the bloodied alley around them as he ensured his shoes didn’t step in the majority of the viscera. There was more here than what was obvious. He looked around, seeking out slight disturbances. The recent rainfall had dampened the streets. An ordinary detective might have feared that the rain would have washed away evidence and trails.

His eyes spotted a small pebble near the wall, the driest side facing up. A puddle around the corner, where the monster had come from, was larger than it could have been naturally—water splashed into it from another puddle. A foot had come down there, disturbing the natural order of the world. He moved past, out toward the street. Absently, he was aware that both of the others followed behind him.

There, on the opposite side of the road, were markings on the wall. A faint dry spot in the vague shape of a hand, slapped against the wall from someone who had been running a little too fast to turn the alley corner in time.

More blood splatters. Someone died here, or was severely wounded.

The Prescient focused a little harder, locating the dry spot where a body had fallen. There was nobody there now. Scuff marks and disturbances on the ground led directly toward him.

Realization hit, making The Prescient groan as he put the pieces together. “Replicators,” he said, turning back to The Maid and The Butler. “Whoever you just turned to paste was attacked just a few minutes ago and turned into that. There is another one in the area.”

“The mandroid, befitting of its robotic nature, calculated the most likely route their quarry had taken,” The Maid said, skipping forward. “Not all was lost. A second subject, ripe for capture, lurked in the area. All they had to do was find it.”

The Prescient ignored The Maid, walking past the younger girl and into an open street. There was an older theater across the road, one with an apartment building stacked on top. More apartments, each with small shops or restaurants at the street level, lined the street in either direction. Late-night theatergoers meandered along the sidewalk. Cars moved up and down the street, heading toward their destinations without any thought for the present.

No one panicked. No one fled as if they had just seen a monster. Certainly, some looked worried. They had likely heard the noise that the monster had made. But it wasn’t at the level of someone who witnessed an attack. The Prescient stopped and looked around, eyes seeking the finer details of the street.

“The trail went cold. Could the mandroid have led them wrong? No. Impossible! Its calculations were perfect. The flaw must exist in reality.”

“Oh dear,” The Butler said, looming over a couple walking hand-in-hand on the street. The two looked at her, hardly able to stop themselves from staring at the tall woman. “Do we have to report failure to The Director?”

“The prison warden would not take kindly to the convict remaining at large. If the trio’s hunt went poorly, he would be forced to take action himself. Any who knew of the warden’s temperament would tremble at being caught between him and his target. People would die, buildings would crumble, and the mediations of the public would rise in anger.”

The Prescient did what he did best and ignored The Maid. While it was true that the excess of persons traveling through the street could have destroyed clues, thus leading to their trail going cold, delving into the deeper reality revealed strings of fate leashed from every point of change to every cause of change.

Everything in the universe was connected on a base level.

One tug on the strings of reality spread its effect outward, rippling into an unpredictable chain of events.

A dewdrop falling from a blade of grass forced the spider to repair its web. The water nourished the grass, which became food for insects. One insect, caught in the spider’s web, would feed the spider, which would feed the bird, which became a meal for a hawk. The hawk, poached by a human, would become a conversation piece on a wealthy man’s mantle, only for that wealthy man to anger a conservationist. In his death, he would be rendered as the earth upon which grass grew.

Unpredictable to all but The Prescient.

“Found you,” he whispered, looking at one apartment across the way.

He motioned for the others to follow him across the street into an opposite alley. As he moved, he pulled a card from his pocket. The Three of Pentacles. Reversed. Disharmony or… lone operations.

Split up?

“Butler, stay at the fire escape. Maid,” he said, pointing. “Front of the building. Position yourself at the main entrance and wait.”

“You’re going in alone?” The Butler asked as she fiddled with the black hair at the end of her ponytail, rubbing the strands dangling over her shoulder. He knew well that she was trying to get out of the habit of chewing on it when nervous. “Is that wise?”

The Prescient turned his eyes upward, spotting a vague silhouette in the window of the apartment. One that did not belong. “I will drive the target toward one of you. Be ready.”

“Thus, the mandroid plotted the convict’s demise and—Hey! Listen to my monologue!”

The Prescient didn’t. He moved to the back door of the alley. A rear entrance to, judging by the old food smell in the trash bins, a restaurant that sat under the apartments. It was locked on the outside, requiring a four-digit pin to open its digital lock. Identifying the smudges on the keys and the slight wear to the numbers was all he needed to determine the combination on his first attempt.

He stepped into the warm kitchens. An artesian pizza parlor. Ignoring the sudden protest from one of the chefs—and easily sidestepping the chef’s hand trying to grasp his shoulder that he could have seen coming yesterday—The Prescient maneuvered through the building to the street on the opposite side. There were smaller, less obvious doors to the left and the right of the parlor, both of which would lead into the apartments.

Glancing up again, The Prescient scanned the exterior of the building. He didn’t know the layout inside the apartments, but they were just apartments. The layout was practically the same no matter where one went. Their target had ducked through an open window. It wouldn’t be able to pass through unnoticed if there were any occupants. So he looked for the threads, the slight tugs that indicated panicked vibrations hitting the forward windows. The path those vibrations took would trail behind their target like the wake behind a boat.

He picked the left entrance, opening the door just as The Maid skipped around the corner like she didn’t have a care in the world.

The Prescient took the stairs, stepping up two at a time. He paused on the second floor, listening. There was something odd. Some change in the threads of fate. The target was… still up above, yet wasn’t at the same time?

He shook his head, drawing another card from his pocket. The Ten of Swords, upright. Painful endings, loss, betrayal.

Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the card. Betrayal? Surely not from The Maid or The Butler. A betrayal of expectations, perhaps. One of them might allow their target to escape. Or maybe he was focusing on the wrong meaning. Painful endings… loss…

He wouldn’t admit it to the others, but his gift of insight was less precise than he often made it seem. It required a vast amount of interpretation, guesswork, and plain luck.

Right now, he was getting a lot of conflicting feelings. Narrowing his eyes, he stared upwards at the sloped underside of the next flight of stairs, trying to discern one possibility from another. There was a growing panic on the floors above. Civilians. They likely spotted the monster. If it were anything like the one in the alley, most normal people would find its appearance alone frightening, let alone if it attacked.

But the target wasn’t attacking? It wasn’t moving at all, as far as he could tell.

With a scowl on his face, The Prescient drew one more card, hoping for a little more insight.

An upright Death. A signifier of endings, change, or transition—not literal death. Yet…

The Prescient took the steps three at a time as he ascended to the top floor of the apartment. It took a minute to reach the floor, and the target remained in place that entire time.

When he opened the door to the apartment’s corridor, it didn’t take long to find out why.

The target’s twisted and broken corpse sat in a puddle of its own black blood. The scraps of clothing it wore did little to soak up the syrupy liquid. Strands of brown hair clung to its face, doing little to obscure the gaping maw filled with needle-like teeth.

“нⷩiͥiͥ,̓ hͪiͥiͥ,̓ hͪiͥiͥ… Iͥᴛⷮ вⷡrͬoͦᴋⷦeͤ…”

The Prescient jerked back in surprise, eyes snapping up.

He had almost missed the thing standing over the corpse, prodding at its cheek with an elongated finger. A woman who wore nothing but thick, bar-like tattoos that wrapped around her body. Short, oddly colored hair—almost blue-white—cascaded down around her like a cloak, reaching just past her waist. Despite her striking appearance, he could very well have gone on ignoring the woman had she not spoken in that odd dual tone.

He hadn’t foreseen someone else up here—aside from the civilians. Nor had it felt it in the world’s threads. Now that he could see the thing, he could see the way the threads of the world bent around the woman, avoiding her as if they were afraid.

Flat, dead eyes looked up from the target, and The Prescient felt some of the world’s fear pierce his heart.

“Aͣnoͦᴛⷮhͪeͤrͬ oͦneͤ? ᴋⷦiͥ… ᴋⷦiͥ… ᴋⷦiͥll.”

The nude woman stood upright, but her back didn’t quite follow, leaving her bent at an angle that would make most contortionists envious. A series of cracking pops filled the air. It was like each segment of her spine slotted back into place, pushing her upright and then just a bit more. She ended up hunched forward, arms dangling just a little too long in front of her.

World threads warped as she took a step forward, bare foot slapping into the black puddle of blood.

The doors along the corridor were closed. No wonder. The Prescient would have hidden inside as well if he could have. As it was, he could only take a step backward, not daring to put his back to this creature. If he turned and tried to run, he knew he would become a twisted pretzel of a man before he could make it five steps.

The Prescient slowly, without making any sudden movements, reached into his pocket and drew another card. He didn’t look at its face, pinching it between his thumb and middle finger, leaving his index finger resting along its edge.

The woman took another step forward.

He took another step back and flicked his wrist.

The card flew through the air in an arc, calculated perfectly to slice into the side of the creature’s head. It sailed in and… missed? A few strands of silvery white hair wafted to the ground, but the tattooed woman otherwise stood still.

The Prescient stared, fingers going numb. He did not miss. That card couldn’t have missed. The woman hadn’t moved. The air currents were still. The banking angle should have had it slicing straight into her skull…

The woman took another step forward. “нⷩiͥiͥ,̓ hͪiͥiͥ,̓ hͪiͥiͥ…” she panted, face contorting into a grin.

Slight of hand had three more cards in his hand, one between each of his fingers. Three more flicks of his wrist sent the cards down the hall. One curved to the left, one to the right, and the third sailed straight down the center of the hallway.

All three missed. One fell short. One went too far. The one aimed directly at the woman veered off to the side at the last moment, following the warped threads of the world. The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water.

He couldn’t attack. The Prescient followed the world’s threads. A creature that could avoid them…

He needed The Maid.

The Prescient backed up two more steps. Instead of backing into the stairwell, he bumped into something large and bulky.

“Whoa there, friend,” a deep, slow voice said from just about The Prescient’s head.

Heavy hands landed on his shoulders, each meaty and twice as large as The Butler’s hands. He could see the thick, pale fingers in his peripheral vision. They weren’t squeezing or even holding him in place. It felt more like whoever was touching him was just trying to steady him.

He might have been reassured were it not for those black, bar-like tattoos that looped around the hand’s fingers.

The hands didn’t attack him yet. He felt a gentle guiding motion, pushing him off to one side of the hallway.

The man who stepped through the doorway could barely fit. His bald head, pale to the point of being unnatural, had a kindly smile. Thick black tattoos ran from under his chin, curving over his cheeks and up through his eyes until they crested over the top of his head. The man wore clothes, many-layered robes, but given the appearance of the woman, it wasn’t hard to imagine those tattoos wrapping around his entire body.

Between his robes and his bald head, he looked like some kind of fat monk. Or a Buddha statue given life.

He didn’t look at The Prescient, focusing on the woman.

“You ran off again. I know you’re excited to run around after all this time, but now is not the time.”

The woman grimaced under his gaze, taking a step back. She lifted her arms, crossing them over her ducked head. “S͛mͫeͤlleͤdͩ feͤ… feͤ… feͤaͣrͬ. Waͣnᴛⷮeͤdͩ ᴛⷮoͦ вⷡrͬeͤaͣᴋⷦ.”

“We’ll find you a different toy later. Come along,” he said, holding out his large hand.

The woman shook in place, shuddering back and forth. The man had to clear his throat. When he did, her shuddering stopped instantly. She took a few steps forward, still warping the world threads with every step, and held out one of her hands for the man to take.

He pulled her close with enough force that any normal person would have found their arm dislocated if not torn off. The woman didn’t even make a sound. She strained against his grip, especially once he placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

The bald monk looked at The Prescient and gave a shallow nod of his head. “Sorry for the trouble,” he said, still speaking in that glacial tone. Keeping the woman pinned to his side, he stepped back out into the stairwell.

All the strength in The Prescient’s legs decided to vacate the premises. He stumbled back, shoulder hitting the wall with more force than he wanted, but the ache in his arm paled in comparison to the ache in his ribs. Clamping a hand to his chest, he focused on calming breaths.

Some niggling thought in the back of his mind made him lunge for his phone. He quickly sent a group text to The Butler and The Maid, warning them against engaging with the tattooed people.

The second the text went out, his phone rang. Normally, he prided himself on answering the phone the instant the first ring started, beginning conversations with the name of the caller just to remind them that he hadn’t taken his name for no reason. It wasn’t that impressive of a trick these days with people’s names popping up on the phone, but it was a habit he hadn’t broken since the early days of phone services.

Now, he waited for the third ring, trying to get his breath under control.

“Director?” he said, answering the call.

A young boy hummed on the other end of the line. “I see,” he said. “The unexpected encounter. Describe it.”

The Prescient’s eyes drifted back down the hall, following the bloody footprints back to the body of their initial target. “A man and a woman, both covered in solid tattoos. Might be Grafted-class—”

“No speculations for now, stick to facts.”

The Prescient swallowed. Outside the direct presence of those creatures, no longer fearing his imminent death, he felt his usual calm returning. “The woman avoided world threads. I couldn’t see her or predict her. Couldn’t attack her either. The man showed up a minute later and escorted the woman away, calling her away. He didn’t give a name or display abilities of his own.” Pausing in a moment of thought, reflecting on the situation, he added, “The man touched the world threads.”

“I see. And the status of the mission?”

Even though The Director wouldn’t see it, The Prescient shook his head. “The Butler accidentally killed one in the alley. This one ran afoul of that woman. Doesn’t look alive. Neither body has been cleaned up.”

“Unfortunately,” The Director said after a moment of thought, “The Eclipse has begun their own securing of the area. Our window of opportunity for capturing one of the subjects has closed. I will send The Bodyguard with a specimen van shortly. Scrape the remains of the targets inside and return. Do not engage with The Eclipse if they interfere. You will all deliver a full report on arrival at The Castle.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The line went dead, no farewells or parting messages.

The Prescient pushed himself off the wall after one last breath of air. He looked around, frowning. The residents had yet to emerge from their apartments, but it wouldn’t be long before someone got brave. Unless The Bodyguard was already outside, ready to go, it would be his job to deal with them.

Before proceeding, he went around to pick up his discarded cards.

Five of Cups, upright from his perspective—failure, disappointment, pessimism. A King of Swords, reversed—misuse of power, manipulation. A Two of Wands, reversed—fear of the unknown, a lack of planning.

Finally, half soaked in the bloody footprint closest to the corpse of their target, a Devil card. It sat horizontally in the hall, neither upright nor reversed. Just the Devil.

The Prescient stared, fingers reaching but never quite grasping for the card.

A greenish moon hung above Lake Michigan. The tinted waters were thick and viscous like warm pitch. Chicago’s skyline lay in ruins with crumbled skyscrapers and burning columns of flame stretching high into the sky, wrapping around yet never touching the orange moon.

Maddened laughter and delirious screams echoed off the towers of fire. A thin whine of infants crying coalesced into a monotony of tears. The ground cracked and rocks crumbled, adding to the chaotic cacophony that signaled the end of all.

I stood alone amid the ruins, walking without aim or purpose. There was no point to purpose anymore. One moment, the seals had been in place, keeping a lid on the madness beneath them. That moment passed. The seals, torn asunder, released THEM.

A towering beast. Its legs, uncountable in number or length, propped up the boneless body of a haunted man. Cruel smiles spread across its form, encompassing the entire being in a veil of elation. Twin spires stretched and undulated, moving like tongues attempting to consume the sky. In the gap between those spires, an infinite abyss stretched to reality’s event horizon, then stretched one reality further.

And reality shattered.

The Prescient’s hand snapped back like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. It smacked him in the chin, knocking him off balance. He hit the ground and scurried back on his hands and feet, pressing up against the wall.

He curled in the corner, arms shaking and fingers lacking any strength. Cards marked the path he had traveled, spilling from his pocket with no order or reason. Chaos surrounded him as the threads of the world strained and thrummed.

“Prescient! Pres!”

Hands gripped his shoulders, shaking him back and forth.

“Colby?”

The shaking slowed as the voice turned gentle. A woman had a hand on his shoulder. Young. Blonde hair. She wore a black outfit with a white apron. Behind the girl, a taller woman loomed, head practically scraping the ceiling.

“Hey. We’re here,” the taller one said. “We’re here.”

“Did those freaks come back again?”

The Prescient blinked as recognition bled back into his mind. The Maid and The Butler stood over him, looking on with unbridled concern.

He opened his mouth but found his throat too dry to form words. He just shook his head.

What else could he do?

Speak of those unutterable sights?

No. Never. He would speak with The Mind, have those thoughts ripped from his memories. He would do it this instant if possible, but… no.

If he did, he might see those sights in this reality.

He would have to hold onto them for now. Just until he managed to warn The Director.