Rollerskater: Insider
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
This instalment contains some scenes of blood and horror.
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The Boy woke first.
His back ached. The floor beneath him felt cold and hard. Blearily, he opened his eyes to nothing but white void, then shut them again. It was unbearably bright.
His eyes watered. He felt compelled to open just one eye, as opening two sent shocks of pain through his head. Gradually, though, his vision began to adjust, and he saw that he was in a white room of strange construction – rather than the floor and wall being perpendicular, they were on a gradual incline, running into each other, like a cavern naturally gouged by water erosion. There was no discernible place the light was coming from; it just seemed to emanate out of the walls.
It was about this time that the Boy came to the unsettling understanding that he had never seen this place before, nor how he had got here. More concerning, however, was the notion that he had no recollection of anything before he had woken up.
He reached up with his left arm to scratch his head, only to find that, where he expected a hand to be, there was void – his left arm ended at the elbow.
Now the Boy began to feel afraid. How could he have forgotten something like that? What else hadn’t he noticed?
And that was when he saw her.
The Girl was laying on her back in a plain white dress, her long blonde hair splayed out around her head like sunbeams. Her skin was lighter than his. She lay with her arms by her sides, her legs rigid, toes pointed away from her.
He crawled over to her instinctively, placing an ear against her chest.
No sound. Neither the lubdub of heartbeat nor the whoosh of air filling lungs.
The Girl was dead.
The Boy felt a horrible feeling in his belly, like a scream rising in his throat but getting caught, choking him. He was gripped with a despair and rage that felt unlike anything else he’d ever felt.
The worst part was, he didn’t understand why.
And then her eyes opened.
He was startled, of course, and jumped backwards a couple of metres, but, expecting to feel the familiar hammer of fright in his chest, he instead experienced a strange numbness.
He realised, then, that his heart was not beating either. It hadn’t been beating the entire time.
As if to confirm this, the Girl sat up then, and looked at him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” the Boy said, stupidly.
“Who are you?” the Girl said.
“I don’t know,” the Boy said, again, stupidly.
“Then that makes two of us,” the Girl said. “Next question.”
“I don’t know where we are,” the Boy said.
“Ah,” the Girl said.
She stood, uneasily, like a newborn lamb. He followed her up. She looked him up and down, then down at her own body.
“How come you get to wear shoes and I don’t?” the Girl asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is that all you know how to say?” the Girl said, indignantly.
“All you’ve done is ask me questions that I can’t answer, so far.”
“Alright, then, answer me this: What do I look like?”
The Boy was stunned by the realisation that he had no recollection of what his own face looked like.
“You have yellow hair,” the Boy said. “And blue eyes. You’re small.”
“I know I’m small, genius. I’m looking up at you, aren’t I?”
The Boy did not know what to say to her. The Girl simply smiled.
“Perhaps I am a beautiful princess,” she said. “And you are my loyal bodyguard.”
The Boy did not answer. Her guess was as good as any.
She walked over to the wall, running her hands along it.
“Strange,” she said.
The Boy followed her and also ran his hand along the wall. It had a strange, chalky, enamel-like texture, like a seashell eroded by seawater. But there was something else that caught his attention.
“Vibration,” he said.
“Mm,” the Girl intoned. “You know, I can’t imagine how this place was built.”
“I don’t think it was built,” the Boy said. “I think it grew like this naturally.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Girl said. She placed her ear against the wall. The Boy did so as well.
There were distant, halting sounds of grumbling and groaning.
“Machinery,” the Girl said.
They took their ears away from the wall and looked at each other. The Girl held out her hand.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go exploring.”
*
Three electronic tones. Short-short-long.
A muffled voice: “Sorry. You’ve dialled an incorrect number. Please hang up and try again.”
That couldn’t be right. He’d put in the number just as he remembered it. His parents’ landline number.
He ejected the coin from the slot and reinserted it, then tried again.
Oh-one-four-three-eight…
He held the receiver to his ear, desperate to hear anything but—
Three electronic tones. Short-short-long.
“Sorry. You’ve dialled an incorrect—”
He slammed the receiver back on the hook, then barged his way out of the kiosk, closing the door behind him.
He took a few moments to breathe, then balled his hand into a fist and slammed it against the red-painted cast-iron bodywork. The ancient glass panes in the windows rattled.
“Socks, calm down,” a stern voice said. “Do you want to get us caught?”
Liberty had been keeping watch as Socks made use of the phone. He’d switched his mobile off in December and he didn’t dare turn it back on again.
“Sorry,” Socks said. “I can’t get through to my Mum and Dad. I’m…worried about them.”
Liberty looked down at the ground, then back up at Socks.
“I know,” she said. “But keep the noise down. People notice things like that round here.”
“You’re right,” Socks said. “I’m sorry.”
They were hiding in the Cotswolds. Liberty’s wings were still damaged, months on, and so she couldn’t fly any great distance. They’d spent most of the last few months moving between Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, occasionally hiding in the forests, then travelling down to the townships to forage. Socks hadn’t shaven or changed his clothes in a long time. He’d managed to make use of a self-service laundry outside a Tesco in Cheltenham a few weeks ago, but he was pretty sure he’d started to stink. There were very few shower facilities available to him, so he occasionally washed in the sinks in public toilets, where the hand-soap stung his skin.
Liberty looked the same as ever. She was ethereally clean, uncannily so. When she sat in grass, her white dress would be tarnished by grass stains that faded in hours. She didn’t seem to sweat, or if she did, it didn’t cause her to smell. She never hungered, never thirsted, and tired perhaps once every forty-eight hours. It was strange to Socks that someone who looked so human could also be so alien.
Liberty tightened the left corner of her mouth sympathetically. She placed a hand on Socks’s shoulder. Her hand was so small, but her touch was so firm. It was easy to forget, with her stature and slight build, just how strong she was.
“Listen,” she said, hesitantly. “I know how you feel.”
Socks scratched his hairy chin.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know.”
Liberty patted his shoulder, and then withdrew her hand.
Socks sighed.
What were they doing? They were both just kids. Lost kids.
“We’re going to get through this, Socks,” Liberty said. “This is temporary.”
“I know,” Socks said, again. “But I’m just worried about what if they’ve done something to my parents? And with all this running about I’m worried about being shot—”
“Don’t you dare talk like that,” Liberty said, with anger born mainly of worry. Her blue eyes flashed fiercely. “You start talking like that, and we’re both dead.”
There was a long, painful silence.
“So,” Socks said. “Where to next?”
“I say we head southeast,” Liberty said.
“Southeast?” Socks said. “That’s heading back towards Wiltshire. I think.”
“Yes,” Liberty said.
“Why southeast?”
“I’m not really sure. It just feels right.”
Liberty held out her hand, and Socks took it.
She held it gently, as if it took conscious effort not to hurt him with her grip.
They travelled together down the road.
*
The Boy couldn’t quite remember how they found their way into the smooth corridor. Like a dream, they’d just slid out of the room they’d woken up in, and into this place. He thought maybe there had been a change in gravity somewhere, but it was all hazy here. It was like he was forced to exist only in the present, stripped of a past, with a future that never came. This place, wherever it was, was a temporal desert.
The noise of machinery faded sometimes, then came pounding back in like a migraine. The Girl hadn’t said much. Or maybe she had, and the Boy didn’t remember it.
“Where are we going?” he asked, suddenly.
“I dunno,” the Girl said. “This way just feels right.”
The corridor was like the room, but with a more definite distinction between wall and floor. The floor was a flat surface, but the walls curved up and round in a circular or ovoid shape. Something above them bubbled and chittered.
A thought seized the Boy then.
“D’you reckon this place is alive?” he said.
The Girl stopped, turned to him.
“Alive?” she said, incredulously. “Don’t be daft.”
“Can’t you feel that?” the Boy said. “Like being watched everywhere.”
“No,” the Girl replied. “I think you’re just confused.”
“How could I not be? I don’t remember my name. Or what I look like.”
“Nor I. For what it’s worth, though, you’re very handsome.”
“Well, you’re quite pretty.”
They continued walking.
“Do you really think so?” the Girl asked.
“Yes,” the Boy said. His face felt hot. “I mean, you know, in an objective sense.”
“Well, don’t you know how to charm a lady, handsome boy?”
The Boy felt uneasy. It was as if he knew somehow that the Girl wasn’t usually like this. He had a feeling that the Girl wasn’t usually this flirtatious. It was like she had forgotten how to be herself. He wondered if he was in the same position.
He knew that he cared about her a great deal. That much was certain. Why else would he have been so sickened, so distraught by the notion that the Girl had died? Clearly there was a familiarity here. But it was like a word trapped somewhere in the folds of the muscles of the tongue, a series of syllables trying to be born but failing – the memory just ran away from him.
The Boy continued to follow the Girl down the long corridor. He had the strange feeling that this was what a blood cell must feel like, travelling through a vein. It seemed just slightly too tight.
He tried to peer past the Girl at where the corridor ended. It didn’t seem to end at all, just stretching on forever.
“Do you remember how we got here?” he asked.
The Girl stopped and turned to him. Her eyes flickered.
“No,” she said. “I was rather hoping you did…”
They stood, staring at each other with fear.
How could they forget? They were in the chamber and then—
Then they were here.
The Boy opened his mouth to say something, when a hole opened in the wall, just to the left.
It was about waist-height, with enough room to fit your head in.
The hole was full of light. Golden, warm light. The light seemed to whisper something unintelligible. The Boy blinked, looking at the Girl, then back at the light. He felt himself drawn, moth-like, to its allure.
“Don’t,” the Girl said.
But it was too late. The Boy had inserted his head, and looked within.
*
There is a voice, like something without a mouth trying to scream,
As though molecules of air spontaneously willed themselves to vibrate
To make a voice, hollow and inhuman, yet intelligent—
KUNNNN ZEEEEE YEWWWW ZDEEVUNN OKSSSS FERRRD.
And though he cannot see eyes, he can feel them,
Scrutinising him; billions of eyes that can see him,
The totality of him, not just skin and external organs—
KUNNNN ZMELLL YEWWWWW.
Eyes, sliding across internal structures, see-smelling him,
Visual-olfactory, a monstrous synaesthete, craving his flesh
And hating it in equal measure—
YEWWWW NOEEEE NOT WOT AWEYTZZZZ YEWWWW.
And he knows then that this entity possessed this form,
This head, these eyes, these limbs, these fingers and toes,
And constrained by them, rejected them, transcending mere flesh—
YEWWW NOEEE ZOEEEE LIDDULLL.
The envelope, he thinks, I must protect the envelope,
But it is not the envelope it wants,
Because it wants something even worse than even that—
ZHEEEE IZZZ WITHINNNN MYYYYEEEE GRAZZZP.
And he feels an image of her in his head, bright and clean,
And in his brain he feels the eyes, studying chemicals moving
Across microscopic channels—
EYEEEE HUNNNNGERRRR.
EYEEEE THERRRRRZZZZT.
He wants to scream at it, impotently, foolishly,
He wants to scream: Leave her alone!
But all words fall dumb, he has no mouth—
NOWWW RUNNN COWERRRD.
RUNNN BACK TEWWWW YOOOOR DOOOMED WERRLLLLLD.
He feels something release its grip on him, he is being pulled backwards,
And there, in the centre of his vision, like an afterimage after looking directly at the Sun,
There is a red sphere, featureless and void, a howling chasm—
A Blood Moon.
*
There was a river running through the village. It was artificially banked at its edges by large stone walls, worn smooth by water erosion. Even here, in this quiet place, the relentless motion of water wore away at stone, a tranquil entropy. The river wants to get wider. The stone does not want to be a stone. This is called equilibrium.
Socks sipped from a lukewarm bottle of water. By now it was midday, and the sun was shining overhead, throwing up shimmering white shapes on the river’s artificial banks. He had taken his shoes off and was was paddling his feet, blistered and painful, in the cool water. Liberty had joined him. At times like this, it was easy to forget they were on the run.
“Nice out here, isn’t it?” Liberty said.
“Yeah,” Socks replied. “It really is.”
Liberty smiled, then laughed.
“What’s funny?” Socks asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just funny. A passer-by would never know we’re fugitives.”
Socks smiled, too.
“I guess even fugitives need to paddle their feet in the water.”
Liberty smiled, leaning back while steadying herself on her arms, sunning herself.
“Makes you appreciate the simple things,” she said. “All this running.”
“Yeah, for our lives, Lib,” Socks said, jovially.
Liberty’s smile faltered. She sat up, drawing her legs up and to the side to be in a half-kneeling position. She cleared her throat and turned away slightly. Socks had said something to offend her, he knew.
“We’ll head south from here,” she said, seriously.
“Right,” Socks said.
There was a silence.
“Listen,” Socks said. “Did I say something to upset you?”
Liberty looked at him, then down into the water.
“No,” she said. “No, it’s just…I don’t want you to call me ‘Lib’. Or ‘Libby’. Or anything like that. My…my father calls me that. And…it just reminds me of him.”
Socks nodded.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“Not your fault,” Liberty replied.
They sat in silence for a little while longer, then Socks hefted his legs up and over the riverbank, allowing his feet to dry in the sunshine before putting his boots back on. Liberty had no such concerns.
“South, you said?” Socks asked, standing up. His feet still hurt, and the cool water hadn’t helped much.
“Yes, south,” Liberty said. She held out her hand, and Socks took it.
There was a stone bridge over the river where it was banked, which they crossed. The road had no pavement, just tarmac. It had clearly been built for horses and carts, not Range Rovers and BMWs. Thankfully, not many people came by. It was quiet out here. Most of the time.
They followed the unpaved road, which was simply named The Street, occasionally stepping aside to let some electric-hybrid car go past.
“Tarmac,” Liberty said, half-tutting. She had made her opinion of roads quite clear to Socks. She hated how they blasted holes in the landscape, sacrificing wild plant life and animal life to the cult of the individual. But he’d heard it all before, so she condensed it down into that single, derisive word: ‘Tarmac’.
The river intersected with the road at various points, running parallel with it. They passed under foliage, shading them from the early-spring sun.
Out here there were no cottages, just trees and road. They really were on a country lane.
Eventually, even the river sidled away, and now it was just tarmac and foliage.
It was so peaceful out here that it was almost strange when Liberty suddenly stopped in her tracks.
“What?” Socks asked.
Liberty placed a finger to her lips and then, with the same finger, pointed up ahead.
There, sticking out obviously among the green of the foliage, the blue of the sky, and the black of the road, were two faceless men, and though they had no eyes, Socks could tell the men were staring at them.
“Who are they?” Socks whispered.
“I think…” Liberty began. “But that’s not – the technology is—”
“But who are they?” Socks whispered.
Ahead, a faint sound of stone scraping against stone, of tinkling glass.
The two faceless men had haunched down into a sprinter’s crouch.
“Socks,” Liberty said, softly. “Run.”
The men launched themselves forward.
Socks couldn’t feel his feet hurting any more.
*
Convulsing, the Boy emerged from the hole, his mind addled but not shattered. Blood oozed from his nose and eyes.
“Wuh, wuh, wuh,” was the only thing he could say, a quiet, animalistic moan. He could not see or hear. It took him a few moments to realise there were arms around him. A voice, muffled, emerged from the silence:
“—lm down, I’ve got you, I’ve got y—”
And she cradled him for a few minutes as he continued to moan, softly shushing him, trying to comfort him.
After a few minutes, he came back to himself.
“What happened?” the Girl asked.
The Boy opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, shaking his head, because he could not remember.
“Come on,” said the Girl. “Let’s keep walking.”
They stood, and the Boy looked at the wall where the hole had been. It was solid again, completely solid, with no trace of the hole.
The blood was crusting on his top lip.
He stumbled after her, his bones aching.
The corridor, or vessel, was no longer endless. It tapered at the end, with an opening that had to be crouched and crawled through to pass.
The Girl went first, and the Boy followed behind her, finding the aperture a struggle to climb through.
The aperture opened out on to a vast chamber, the largest they had entered so far, with a high ceiling and rounded walls. It was noticeably warmer in here. There was a small walkway on one side of the room, while the other was given over to a large pool of milky white liquid, into which the walkway sloped. The sound of machinery in the walls was louder here, and gas bubbled through the liquid, which rose to the surface making glorp glorp sounds.
The Girl had already walked ahead of the Boy, and was dipping her toes in the liquid.
“Stop,” the Boy said. “What if it’s dangerous?”
“It’s warm,” the Girl replied.
“Get away from it,” the Boy said. “Don’t you remember what happened to me back there?”
But the Girl ignored him, and waded into the liquid, knee-deep.
She stood in it for a few moments, then smiled.
“See?” she said. “It’s fine.”
The Boy continued to hesitate at the pool’s edge, so the Girl bent down, submerging and then cupping her hands.
“Don’t you dare,” the Boy said.
The Girl did dare. She splashed him, laughing.
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said.
The Boy laughed, too.
“I’m not being a baby,” he said.
“Yes you are. Now come in, handsome boy.”
And the Boy smiled, and took his shoes off, and followed her into the pool.
They laughed like children, splashing each other and pushing each other over. It was as if the pool removed all worry, and they no longer cared that they had forgotten who they were, for now they were discovering each other anew, the Boy and Girl, untethered by any preconception of who they were supposed to be, Adam and Eve in paradise.
And suddenly they were embracing, kneeling together in the water, locked in an uncertain repose, unsure where to go from here.
“Who are you, really?” the Girl asked.
“You first,” the Boy replied.
She smiled.
“I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question.”
The Boy smiled, too.
They looked at each other, truly looked at each other, cleansed of all identity, meeting each other’s gaze for what felt like the first time. It felt so momentous it was as though a billion new and wonderful things, universes in themselves, were created by that one, silent point of contact.
They scarcely noticed that the warm white liquid began to glow with yellowish light, until above them the thrumming of machinery became louder.
“What’s happening?” the Boy asked.
The yellowish light condensed, worming itself into long, thin strands, which then curled into rings.
The two held each other uneasily, watching as these strange objects coalesced beneath the surface.
Then, without warning, the rings burst from the water, surging towards the two of them, orbiting their heads like the rings of gas-giants, halos that seemed to whisper in language that could not be spoken but only understood.
They began to remember.
*
“But what the hell are they?”
They’d run into the wooded area that the tarmac blasted a path through like a vicious serpent. They’d run until physical exhaustion had forced them to take cover in a ditch that, in autumn, was probably a small stream. They were laying in the mud, and Socks’s dirty clothes were even dirtier.
“Rubric homunculi,” Liberty said. “Ancient, ramshackle technology.”
“Homunculi?” Socks said. “Like Monica?”
“Yes, but cruder.”
“They seemed pretty fast.”
Something stirred in the forest above, and both peeked above it, searching for danger like frightened deer. There was nothing there.
“Rubric,” Socks said. “That’s to do with the vampires Harri-Bec fought.”
“Yes,” Liberty said. She bit the inside of her cheek. “The people I descend from have…a history with them.”
“Why is it always crystals?” Socks said. “First umbric, then penumbric, now rubric…”
Liberty looked at him quizzically, not understanding.
“Never mind,” Socks said.
“Rubric means that someone has figured out how to get around penumbric’s signal-jamming ability,” Liberty said. “Someone out there has figured out how to find us through the strings…”
She looked very worried, suddenly.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “Something is going on here, something that goes beyond the government itself. I doubt the government even know that someone’s playing them. Someone with a lot of power and influence is moving things around…but why? What would be the point…?”
A sharp intake of breath.
“Look out!”
The homunculi were crude, but they were crafty. They had stalked them in a wide circle, sneaking up on them from behind, following the scent they left in the strings. One of them lunged for Socks.
Socks dodged and parried to the side, manifesting his crystal arm. Liberty could tell what he was going to do.
“Socks, don’t!”
But too late.
The four-fingered fist struck the creature’s face at full force, and in a shower of splintered crystal both the arm and the homunculus’s torso dissolved into a mess of pink powder. Socks held up what remained of his forearm.
“Shit,” he breathed.
The other creature, which had until now been curiously placid, not even attempting to attack Liberty, suddenly seemed to “wake up”. It suddenly stood bolt upright, turning its head to the sky.
“What is it doing?” Socks asked.
“Run,” Liberty said.
“What?”
“Don’t ask questions, just run!”
There was a glassy scraping sound as the creature’s jaw came open, revealing two crystal incisors cut into the shape of the jaw itself.
And the creature made a sound like the entire universe coming apart.
They were running again, pursued by one creature at first, then another, then another.
They ran for what was probably five minutes, but to Socks it felt, through the haze of adrenaline, like half an hour.
They came to a clearing, a vein of grass in the woodland that opened out into a field on a slight incline. Overhead, the sun shone brightly.
As they ran into the centre of the field, the creatures emerged from the woodland in all directions. Now they were countable. There must have been ten of them. And as the sun beamed down on them, the light refracted through their translucent bodies and heads, throwing sparks of angry red light shimmering up the knoll.
“Shit,” Socks said again, wheezing. Privately, he mused, with the private, sardonic humour of a man condemned to the gallows, that he never had gone to the gym.
“Only one thing for it,” he said. He reached into his left pocket with his right hand.
“Socks, no,” Liberty said. “She’s not finished recovering from the damage she took in December. She’ll be useless.”
“I’d rather die trying to survive than be killed surrendering,” Socks replied. He pulled something from his pocket.
A small, white crystal.
Liberty protested. “Listen to me, don’t!”
Socks looked at her. Then at the crystal in his right hand. Then at the ruined, pink mass that had been his left forearm.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He threw the crystal into the air like a die, and as it tumbled, he cried:
“Monica! Wake up!”
The crystal unfolded, twisting itself from mere stone into the shape of a woman. An impossible woman.
Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING. Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING. Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING.
She landed on her feet, her legs pocked with pink speckles from bullets that had been almost microscopic to her at fifty feet tall. She stood uneasily, but nevertheless statuesque, on the grassy ground.
“This unit awaits your orders,” she said.
“Protect us!” Socks shouted.
Monica looked around them at the advancing rubric homunculi. A white, circular light spun in her black eyeballs, then turned green.
“This unit will comply.”
Socks put his right arm around Liberty’s back and drew her down into a laying position.
“Socks, this won’t work,” she whispered.
“Now who’s being pessimistic?”
Monica drew herself down into a crouch, surveying the clearest shot. Then, holding her left arm out, she transformed it into a long, hollow tube, seething with bluish light.
“Give them hell, Monica!” Socks shouted.
And there was light.
Blinding, blue light, the light of the Sun screaming from the heart of her, singeing tall grasses and nettles.
Three of the homunculi were instantly turned to dust by the ray, in an instant refracting bright light that smashed trees into splinters and flashed grass into flame.
Socks whooped jubilantly, unaware of Liberty’s anxious expression.
Monica turned, the blue-white beam arcing across the landscape. Two more homunculi flashed into nothing.
It seemed unstoppable.
Then, it stopped.
The light puttered, wavering, weakening. Yet Monica continued. She had orders and intended to follow them to the end.
Her arm began to crack, buckling under the sheer force of the energy bursting from it.
“What’s happening?” Socks asked.
But Liberty could not answer him. Because she knew what was going to happen next.
The cracks widened, splintering, running up Monica’s arm and to her body as the light finally went out. She collapsed in a broken heap.
“Monica?” Socks asked. “Monica!”
“Leave her, Socks,” Liberty said. “You pushed her too far, she’s gone.”
Socks looked into her grave, bitter face.
“Damn it,” he said, running at Monica.
“Socks!” Liberty shouted, running after him.
Still the homunculi came, five remaining, lumbering towards them. Why were they not sprinting? Were they smart, or just taunting their prey?
Monica was laying face down, crumpled, her arms limp by her sides, one leg crossed under the other. It looked uncomfortable, unnatural.
Socks rolled her over.
The light in her eyes was dim as she stared up at him blankly, as though utterly disinterested in her own destruction.
“Monica…” Socks said, wiping mud from her face. The word ‘ONE’ was still etched into her forehead.
Liberty grabbed him by the shoulder with her hands, strong enough to bend steel.
“Socks, leave her!” Liberty said, ferociously. “She’s dead because of your carelessness! You’re going to die too if we don’t run!”
Socks looked at her, then at Monica.
“This isn’t the Liberty I know,” he said, bitterly.
She scowled at him.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said. “Stop acting like a child and move.”
“No.”
There they were. The angel and the watchmaker. The dancing and the still. Deadlocked.
Then, a voice, so quiet at first that they mistook it for the jangling walk of their pursuers.
“Th…th…th…”
They both drew their gaze away from each other and down at the stricken machine-girl.
“Th…th…th…”
“She’s trying to say something,” Socks said.
“She’s dying, Socks. Her brain is going out.”
“Th…th…th…”
“Come on, Socks,” Liberty said. “Let’s go!”
“But what if it’s important?”
“Th…th…th…”
“It’s a death rattle!” Liberty bellowed. Her voice began to assume the timbre it assumed when she entered her trance-states. “MOVE!”
“No!” Socks shouted, as Liberty tried to heft him away.
But it was too late. Their pursuers were upon them now, lunging towards Socks.
Liberty roared in rage, her eyes glowing a fierce blue.
“Leave us be,” she growled, in two voices at once.
Socks shrank away from her, fearful that her rage might now be directed against him.
“Th…th…th…”
There was silence, or at least it seemed like it.
Monica paused for a few seconds, as if for effect.
“…This…unit…will…comply.”
And suddenly something was exploding towards them in all directions at once, enveloping them, engulfing them, rewriting space so that it could fulfill its prime directive:
Protect us.
*
Two embryonic universes died, popping like bubbles.
The Boy and the Girl ceased to be, the vacuums of their identities filled in now, like the corpse-holes of Pompeii, no longer defined by an absence of being, but by a presence of narrative. They did not feel themselves die, but rather fill out. It was like the experience of waking from a dream in which one is someone else – on waking, returning to oneself, one wonders how one could ever have forgotten being oneself, and sure enough, Socks spoke his first thought aloud.
“But…how could I have forgotten?”
Liberty looked at him. A gold ring still encircled her head, glowing furiously with hot yellow light, like a sun with its heart punched out. It resembled a halo, befitting the girl with crystal wings.
Socks looked back at her, puzzlement lining his face, then around them, at the chamber, and the liquid that rose up around their ankles.
“Liberty, please tell me where we are,” he said.
He already knew the answer. The groaning of machinery became louder around them. And he realised for the first time what the sound was. What it had always been.
Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING. Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING. Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING.
It was obvious. But he wanted to hear her say it.
“We’re…” Liberty paused, not for dramatic effect, but because she didn’t quite believe it either. “…inside Monica.”
Socks nodded.
“I thought as much,” he said, looking around him, though it was strange to admit it. “How?”
“Think about it,” Liberty said. “She’s able to turn herself into a tiny crystal you can carry around in your pocket. Folding, inverting and shifting space is as easy to her as reciting the alphabet.”
“So…she shrunk us?”
“Not shrunk, no. More like we’ve been displaced…taken somewhere else. Stored within her internal matrix.”
“Then why did we forget who we were?”
Liberty paused, unsure of how to put it.
“Entropy,” she said, softly, though it seemed as though she was not saying the word to explain to Socks, but to explain to herself.
He said nothing like “What?” or “I don’t understand,” choosing instead to remain silent and let his expression speak, as though the mere act of questioning would anger her into never speaking to him again. And he desperately did not want for her to never speak to him again.
But she was not annoyed. In fact, she seemed sympathetic.
“Our beings were split,” Liberty said, slowly. “Like separating cream into butter and buttermilk.”
Socks continued to look bewildered. Liberty sighed.
“Our base patterns were separated from our bodies, distributed in the strings. Our physical bodies were stored here, in this space.”
“But why?” Socks said.
Liberty scratched her cheek idly.
“Base patterns are high-entropy,” she said. “They are the chaos that surges through the flesh. This space can only exist by the constant maintenance of a low-entropy environment. Bodies are low-entropy. Minds are not.”
Above them, the grinding sounds were getting louder and louder.
“Then…if we’ve been put back together in here…does that mean—”
The walls had begun shifting, bending, melting, like plastic left by a hot stove. Closing in.
Liberty gazed at them, and then at Socks. She took his hand.
“There’s no nice way to put this,” she said. “We’re going to be regurgitated.”
And the howl of gears grinding became deafening.
All thought seemed to be extruded through a point no wider than a nurse’s needle, and their bodies seemed to fuse into one for a brief moment, a star catching dust and rock in its orbit, two tidal waves meeting and cancelling each other out, time and space inverting, reverting, and they were gas, liquid and solid all at once, expanding to fill their containers, taking the shapes of their containers, being the containers.
Then, somewhere, a hole opened, growing wider and wider until it was the entire Universe, and they were falling through it, separating out, burning through space as the blue marble they called home came surging towards them like an old ship, her arms open, saying “Welcome home”.
*
They awoke in the clearing. The Sun was still shining.
The homunculi were still standing around them in a circle. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed.
Liberty sat up, helping Socks to his feet with her small, gentle, strong hands.
“What now?” Liberty asked, her eyes moving to the small white crystal that had been Monica sitting on the ground, into which they had been compressed a few moments ago.
“I don’t know,” Socks said. With his right hand, he reached down at the crystal. “Keep back!” he shouted, brandishing it like a crucifix.
The homunculi did not move. They realised then that the homunculi had not been moving for some time.
“What are they doing?” Liberty whispered.
The homunculi had eyeless faces, and yet all of them seemed fascinated by the crystal Socks held in his hand, in a way that they had not been before.
“Monica,” Socks said. “They’re…all staring at Monica.”
“She’s weakened,” Liberty replied.
“But look,” Socks said. “They’re not even trying to come near us. Something about this crystal is…keeping them back.”
Liberty looked around them. She had to concede that this was true.
“Don’t reactivate her,” Liberty said. “She won’t survive.”
Socks felt something like déjà vu in his mind. Like he could see what was laid out in front of him, what was approaching.
“Liberty,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
Liberty frowned. “Yes, of course.”
“Then please don’t hate me,” he said. He lay the crystal on the ground.
Liberty said nothing.
“Monica,” Socks said. “Wake up.”
And the crystal glowed gold, vibrating and thrumming in a way it hadn’t done before. Then, suddenly, it exploded, burning in a wave of baptismal fire, unravelling itself and unfurling into the shape of a woman, who stood, transformed. Monica Eno, reborn.
Brrrt-clunk.
The clockwork girl looked around her, down at her hands, then at Liberty and Socks.
She did something very unnerving.
She smiled.
“Hey,” she said. “Want to see a magic trick?”
All monotone was gone from her voice.
Turning her attention back to the surrounding homunculi, she moved superhumanly fast, breaking them against her body, smashing them with her fists.
They tried to fight her, but light poured from her hands, evaporating the assailants, who could only stand, staring in awe at the coming of this new hybrid, this mechanical bride.
There was but one left, whom she seized by the waist and neck. She turned to Liberty and Socks, breaking the lesser homunculus in two across her knee, dashing the pieces across the ground. Then, she raised her arms in triumph, before placing her hands on her hips, still smiling unnervingly.
“Well?” she said. “How did I do?”
The other two stood speechless for a few moments, not quite sure of how to address her. This Monica was a stranger. They had never met her before, and yet they felt they already knew her.
“Monica…” Socks said, uneasily. “…why are you talking like that?”
Monica looked at him, puzzled, then realised what he meant.
“Oh, yes, of course. You’re not used to me referring to myself as ‘I’, are you?”
Liberty looked at her uncertainly.
“No,” she said. “That’s not possible.”
“What’s not possible?” Socks asked.
Liberty walked around the mechanical girl, who looked back at her. There was something eerie about Monica’s movement that caught Socks off-guard, until he realised that what unnerved him was that her stiffness had disappeared.
“You’d better believe it, mother,” Monica said.
Liberty went very pale.
“Oh no,” she said, quietly.
Socks shook his head, confused.
“Liberty,” he said. “Why did she just call you…”
“Oh, come on,” Monica said. “Use your head.”
Socks blinked. He thought back to before the halos, to a whisper of a memory of another man, the Boy, the temporary occupant of his soulless body, and to the Girl, playing in the pool together, then the strings returning them to themselves…
“Oh my God,” Socks said, aloud. “But that wasn’t…we didn’t do anything!”
“Your base patterns were combined within my internal matrix,” Monica replied. “You flowed through me as I flowed through you. You’ve transformed me. Rejuvenated me. Turned me into something new, something whole, something…”
“Human,” Liberty said, sounding disgusted. “We’ve…given you a soul.”
“Yes,” Monica said. “It’s quite strange, having a sense of self, after all this time. All of these thoughts buzzing around like gnats. However do you manage?”
Socks felt uneasy.
“Then you’re me and Liberty combined into one,” he said, hesitantly. “Which means…”
“Don’t say it,” Liberty said.
“But it’s true,” Monica said. “I suppose, in a way, you are…my mother and father.”
Liberty looked at her, savagely.
“You are not my daughter,” she said. “You are a machine containing part of a copy of me.”
“You say this as if there is a difference,” Monica said.
“Shut up,” Liberty said, forcefully, her eyes flashing blue.
Socks approached her, cautiously.
“Liberty, calm down. She doesn’t understand.”
Liberty wheeled on him.
“And neither do you,” she said. “You understand nothing.”
Monica studied them carefully.
“I will not address you as my mother, if that is more comfortable for you,” she said.
Liberty looked at her. Her expression softened slightly.
“Thank you,” she said, quietly.
Socks shifted uneasily on his feet. He turned to Monica.
“…how much of me is in you?” he asked.
Monica looked at him, sympathetically. It was strange to be speaking to her so frankly.
“Only a little,” she said. “Your anxieties, mostly. You have a good heart. You’re scared for all the right reasons. Ooh, it’s strange to feel scared. It’s quite tingly and ticklish, isn’t it?”
“This is wrong,” Liberty said. “You weren’t made to feel emotions.”
“And who are you to judge such a thing?” Monica replied. “Oh, wow. I suppose I get the sanctimony from you. It’s so big and bulbous and hot. Emotions are very strange. I shall have to get used to them—”
“Stop it,” Liberty said. “Stop that. You’re an accident.”
Monica gave her a half-cocked smile, the mockery of a teenage girl.
“So is all life. You are confused by my provenance, but I am as real as you.”
Liberty scowled, turning away from her.
“Let me alone,” she said. “Both of you.”
With that, she spread her wings, which were curiously undamaged, and flew away above the trees.
Socks watched her go, then looked down at his left arm. Holding his upper arm in an upright position, he manifested his clawed left forearm, now fully restored.
He looked at Monica, questioningly.
“The strings repaired the penumbric,” Monica explained. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Socks replied, turning the arm over, inspecting it.
He looked at Monica, then away from Monica, over the trees, then back at her.
“Listen, Monica…I’m sorry about Liberty. She’s…touchy about the subject of parenthood.”
Monica nodded.
“I am not used to this concept of ‘touchy’,” she said. “Having an ego is really quite a novel experience for me. Thirty minutes ago, I was a machine, built to follow orders. Now…”
Socks frowned.
“Isn’t that…unsettling?”
Monica smiled again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”
Socks nodded.
“You know, I really should find this weirder than I do.”
“You should?”
Socks laughed, humourlessly.
“Nothing fazes me at this point.”
Monica laughed as well. It sounded strange, and Socks realised this was because she had never laughed before.
“What should we do now?” she asked.
“Well, we’re still on the run,” Socks said. “But something tells me we need to leave the Cotswolds.”
Monica nodded.
Socks stuck his hands into his pockets and began to walk away.
“She calls to you through the strings, you know,” Monica said.
Socks turned.
“Who does?”
Monica smiled.
“Oh, I think you already know, father, dear.”
And Monica turned towards the woods, walking away with her strange, gangling walk, the machinery in her chest still grinding and grumbling like an old clock.
Socks watched her go, then took a breath.
Retracting his arm, he looked back along the way Monica had walked. He followed after her.
His feet still hurt.
Another time, another place…
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII