In the weeks that followed, Jesse was able to clear some hurdles and make significant progress as a fledgling Reader on the Plane. He knew a large part of that was having the Science Fair and all its drama out of the way. Not dealing with Raymond was also a relief, although he was still making threats online, mentioning he wouldn’t need his crew to back him up in another confrontation, but Jesse wouldn’t take the bait. He let it be.
Besides, Jesse was busy taking care of his brother and sister, which required a rather considerable transition that he still wasn’t sure he had completed, even after three weeks. There was cooking, washing dishes, laundry, making sure they got to school and did homework every night, making sure they brushed their teeth, getting them into bed, managing their fights, cleaning the bathroom, grocery shopping, and selling their own things to afford groceries. He was running out of valuable things to let go of, but one item remained that he had realized he didn’t want to sell: Yusef’s watch.
Then he had all of his own responsibilities on top of that. He managed to get Fredo and Marcy to help out with what they could around the house, but that usually took more time and effort than it saved. The first week was survival mode with an adrenaline rush. The second week was difficult as the fatigue and frustration definitely caught up with Jesse. By the third week he was over it.
Jesse was also still trying to track down his Tia Claudia. He had recalled Papá mentioning his hermana a few times when he was younger. All he knew was that Papá never really got along with her and he would say that she always acted like she was too good for the family. She would prioritize other things over la familia and would never be around when she got older, and he said she was selfish for trying to be a slutty college girl over staying home and working. Jesse apparently met her once, but he was too young to remember.
Since Lita never mentioned his estranged grandfather, who was somewhere back in Mexico, Jesse didn’t really have any other contacts on his dad’s side of the family. He did his best to work contacts through his deceased mother’s side in Guatemala. Everyone he spoke to expressed their worry and concern -- even though they had never met him or his siblings -- and offered their own homes to them. He kindly refused them all in his Americanized, broken Spanish, and they assured him they would do their best to contact Claudia.
Yet, the frustration and fatigue seemed to sit well in him because of all he was accomplishing amid the new responsibilities he was handling, and almost entirely on his own. He tended to forget about it, mostly, when he was back at school. Jesse was still getting his assignments done, paying attention and actually participating in class, and was really enjoying doing well, especially as more of his peers and teachers noticed and validated him.
As an extra bonus, he didn’t need to worry about Dalisay creeping around at school or on the Plane this week. She was out on an all-expenses-paid, week-long trip to Washington, D.C. The National Bar Association sponsored an annual youth leadership academy, and Dali was one of twenty finalists from across the nation who had been accepted.
Still, he credited his clearer conscience and new luck to Maria Fonseca. Jesse was walking her to her classes, chatting with her for small spurts during lunch, and interacting with her more on social media. Jesse smoothly got around to asking her out to the Winter Bash by teasing her about not having a date. She happily agreed and Jesse was in shock for the rest of that day. Then the shock wore off when he got home and realized he was going to need a babysitter for that night. He asked Dominique to see if she could request that night off from the restaurant and babysit the kids instead, but she wasn’t confident since it would be on Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest serving nights of the year.
However, there was one slightly tense moment when Jesse walked Maria to first period one morning and she brought up the poems he had written, and she asked if they were really about her.
“Uh… maybe,” Jesse responded sheepishly. “Look, I only started getting into poems and shit because I saw that you liked them.”
Maria looked up from her phone in her hand and stared back with a puzzled face.
How can she look so beautiful even with that look on her face? Jesse thought.
“Huh?”
“Your poetry books. I saw that you were reading them. So, I -- uh -- I got some inspiration.”
After a moment she exclaimed, “Ohhhh! Hahaha!”
“What? What?”
“I was carrying those stupid things around for weeks and barely read any of those dumb poems. It was for English. We had a project last semester, before you were there.”
Jesse’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“Pendejo. Your poems were cute, though. I didn’t really, like, get them, but who else gets poems written about them these days?” Maria tossed her hair and grinned. Then she brought herself closer to Jesse as they walked. “Hey, are you coming with me to the basketball game tonight? It’s a home game.”
“Ah. Nah, I can’t.”
“What? Why? Don’t you want to hang out with me?”
“It’s not that. You know I have to watch mis monstruitos.”
“Ugh. That’s right.” She went back to swiping and tapping on her phone and didn’t say anything. When Jesse texted her later that night to check in on her at the game, she never responded.
The next day she pretended like nothing happened and just said, “The game was fun!” Then she quickly talked about how much she liked the new ON$l0tt track that dropped and how Chayne Sauze was garbage now, and a Tik Tok dance she was practicing for the new song and all of the followers she was getting. He had felt dread the entire day before, sensing she was mad at him, and he was ready for a fight but instead they just moved on.
It was unreal how much his life had changed since the beginning of the school year, and just within the last few weeks. On top of becoming an impressive student, and essentially becoming the man of the house -- for now -- Jesse was also on the verge of becoming an essential part of bringing the country back from the brink of self-destruction, as Yusef had put it.
As his busy weeks went by, Jesse did his best to keep up with headlines. A shootout in a St. Louis nightclub apparently started over the Chayne Sauze and ON$l0tt beef. An increased presence of Russian forces spread along its western borders and in the Norwegian Sea. Senator Levin was gaining more support in his election bid against the President while receiving numerous death threats from the president’s supporters. Rising concerns from the World Health Organization about the virus originating from China had already begun to spread to other continents. Yet most countries, including the U.S., did little to nothing in response to the warnings.
The Supreme Court ruled on a case where an unarmed black man was murdered by a concealed-carry permitted white man in New York. The Court’s decision allowed citizens to use lethal force if they felt their lives were in danger, similar to Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law, but now in every part of the country. The black community immediately voiced their dissent, as black athletes and other celebrities rallied to decry this new federal law.
Jesse’s favorite headline was from Nevada, where a team of protestors splintered from a main group and found (or likely made) a hole in the fence of a Customs and Border Protection containment facility, while a separate and larger group of protestors created a disturbance at the front entrance to distract the facility’s security forces. The infiltrating group caused a breakout, but many of the freed prisoners were recovered, according to CBP. Still, they wouldn’t release an exact number of unaccounted-for detainees, but just described it as “very sizable.”
Jesse was quickly disheartened to learn that it likely wasn’t the facility where Lita was being held, as she was probably somewhere in California. The agency was very vague and inconsistent in responding to phone calls and emails, and now they had permission to keep the detainee's whereabouts unknown since they were awaiting “installation” of the new tracking nano-chip that was currently under massive production and awaiting distribution across the States.
With the recent escape of detainees, various militias and armed groups across the country were coordinating with federal agencies to help hunt for “escaped criminals” and “violating aliens.” Many of the groups were already well-seasoned from years of hunting and detaining immigrants who attempted to cross the southern border. Bands of civilian militants armed with assault-style weapons and tactical gear now began roving across the interior of the United States.
Combined with the recent Stand Your Ground ruling, the increased presence of armed civilians who felt empowered by the federal government’s new laws and recent court rulings, prompted a resurgence of the Black Panthers. They began appearing in a few cities, brandishing firearms on the streets in black neighborhoods. One member was quoted as saying, “We’re done dying while our back is turned or while our faces are pinned to the ground. We’re done with the America you took from us. We’ll build America, again: our own black one -- better, safer, and that actually cares for its people.”
The increase in public uproar, protests, fear, and anger was palpable.
On the Plane, this was also evident. Jesse and Yusef were coming across so many more wraiths. On some nights they had to call off their training mission for the night and navigate safer routes which allowed for Jesse to just further his practice of teleporting along ley lines, and learning where they lay, too. Other nights, Jesse was able to put some of his improved defensive skills to the test, lightly skirmishing with a wraith alongside Yusef. While terrifying, the close encounters tempered Jesse’s will and confidence, and his quick thinking. Jesse was grateful for once that he didn’t have good drawing skills, aside from his doodling, because he didn’t want any way of recreating the horrible things he saw from the wraiths.
Still, he felt much more experienced and confident now than he had upon his first encounter with Carolina. Which was important, since the big night to infiltrate Erik Peters was coming up in a couple of weeks. It would be his first attack on the Apostles. Second, if he counted Judge Thompson.
Jesse, of course, didn’t feel completely ready. But when do you ever? he thought to himself. He was grateful that at least it was going to be well past Valentine’s Day. With his mission still far away, he could be free to dance his ass off and have the time of his life with Maria, where he would be hailed as a hero.
“We are very fortunate, Mubtadi,” Yusef said when they met on the Plane Thursday night. “Mr. Peters left Texas and has come to us!”
“Wait up. He’s here?”
“It is a two-night visit. Mr. Peters is here to support a fundraiser for the Los Angeles County Sheriff, and to air a special edition of his show tomorrow and on Saturday morning during a Second Amendment rights rally. With the time change, Mr. Peters will need to get up early for his show tomorrow and now he should be tucking himself into his hotel bed. Assuming he has been infiltrated and influenced by other Readers, this is the most opportune time to strike since Mr. Peter’s den is now reset in a new place.”
“Huh. So… so I did all that training for nothing? Like, that’s… that’s what you’re really telling me right now, right? Right, my man?”
“Nonsense,” Yusef dismissed as they made their way across the apartment courtyard, Carolina growling and barking loudly from her room upstairs across the way. “Your skills and abilities have grown exponentially in the last few weeks. There is more to come, Mubtadi, after this.” Yusef reached the street and effortlessly pulled putrisomn from the cars and concrete around him, and Jesse automatically moved his arms and assisted him as they built a sleek boat in midair, but with very comfortable backrests. “We are only at the beginning of this great battle for the republic! Once we discover who else Peters is connected with, and perhaps what plans he is aware of, then we can strike and bring relief to this country. We can find a way to help save your grandmother. This is wonderful, Mubtadi!”
Jesse nodded his head as he climbed into the boat. “Yeh, alright. Let’s do this ish.”
Yusef verbally guided Jesse north on the Plane, toward Los Angeles, as Jesse used his powers to move their vessel first to the nearest leyline that ran north-south. North was new territory for Jesse since they had been getting ready for a long excursion east, all the way to Erik Peter’s home studio in Southeast Texas.
A northward leyline wasn’t far from them. A major one ran right along the entire coast, Yusef explained on the way there. The Spanish monks of the 1700s were led by Junipero Serra, a Reader himself, and he established the California mission system along this leyline. This aided his impressive control and management of the missions immensely as he was able to secretly micromanage his subordinates along the California coast. The route, of course, had long been used by native shamans for thousands of years before Serra, all along the coast from the bottom tip of Argentina to the northern wilds of Canada, where the leylines splintered off into a green-blue-violet web of minor lines. As was the custom of the European invaders, they took and used everything of value that the natives had and claimed it for themselves.
Jesse definitely felt the ancient power of this leyline when he connected to it, and even sensed it before they approached its glowing purple streaks. Yusef took control over the boat to let Jesse shift his focus to anchoring themselves to the leyline. Since this was new territory for him and he had not been to a vortex in the area, traveling along the leyline was their quickest option. An incantation was needed to move speedily along the leyline, and Jesse recited what he knew best: rap and hip-hop songs.
He found that his more current favorite songs were not as effective as some of the older hip-hop songs he knew. Yusef explained that emotion is tied with spirituality, and when Jesse invoked the intense feelings of oppression, hatred, love, and more that were imbedded deeply into hip-hop songs, as opposed to the vanity and banality of more recent rap songs, Jesse was able to pull them much faster along the leyline. It required his focus, but more importantly, his emotional presence to feel the words and sounds coming out of him in order to access this ancient power. He had to emotionally place himself into the experiences and hearts of others so he could invoke that emotion and the raw power which emanated from it.
When Yusef first performed an incantation, Jesse witnessed him sing songs in Arabic. He clearly had no idea what words Yusef was using but he felt what he was saying. He had tried to ignore it, but he had to wipe away his tears after a few minutes of listening to Yusef’s deep and sorrowful embodiment of pain, reverberating his long life of struggle and echoing the sacrifices of generations before him.
Nearing their destination, Yusef began to bear the boat away from the pull of the leyline toward a southwest direction as he instructed Jesse to end his incantation. “Sit and regain yourself, Mubtadi. We are not far from our prey.” He steered them through the cavernous streets of downtown Los Angeles. Jesse did his best to practice etching some of his sigil scribbles onto the boat but he was too distracted with what he saw around him.
Large swaths of San Vallejo and Citrus County back home had occasional unclear or collapsed putrisomn structures along the wider spaces of the city and suburbs. But unlike there, the Plane’s version of Los Angeles was crowded and seemed solid. Yet fluid. As they traversed the streets, Jesse felt at times as if he was inside a silvered and rainbow kaleidoscope. The buildings and streets were dark and gray, the edges of which were often grotesque and uneven. Windows appeared constantly and disappeared on the faces of buildings, sometimes shadowy or bright with yellow-orange light. Fluorescent signs flashed one split second and entirely vanished the next, only to reappear in a different place.
Visions of people walking on the sidewalks and cars snailing on the streets pulsed on and off. The shadows of people actively moving in the waking world trekked the sidewalks and moved across glowing windows. They lined the streets as if sitting in their carseats, hands on steering wheels, but their cars were not present here. As they flew across the city blocks, Jesse heard all kinds of grotesque groans, moans, growls, and howls from countless wraiths near and far in all directions.
“Jesús!” Yusef hissed through a forceful whisper.
He shook himself back to attention.
“I was trying to explain that you need to be ready for a fast exit back here to the leyline, in case we are separated. You must not be captured or defeated. Do not attempt to fight. It is likely that Mr. Peters has brought security with him, especially here on the Plane, if my instincts are correct. If they can trace you back home or to me then our entire operation is at great risk, and we have lost our element of surprise -- and likely an opportunity to infiltrate him again tomorrow night. Do you understand, Mubtadi?”
“Yeh. Quick escape. I got it. I’m memorizing how to get back here.”
“Take a look at that building there,” Yusef commanded with his arm jutting out.
“The one with the big tree in front and the weird gate at the bottom?” Jesse asked as they flew by. He looked back behind as they passed. “Wow, shit. I just felt that. The one with the little like, clock tower at the top?” he confirmed.
“Yes, Mubtadi. If worse comes to worst,” Yusef hesitated for a brief moment, “and you cannot reach the leyline, you can go to either the bottom floor or the penthouse at the top of that building. It is a minor vortex, and you can use it to teleport yourself back to the leyline in the least.”
“Huh. I thought vortices were like, organic and shit.”
“You mean, not man-made? No, Mubtadi. That is not always the case. But that is why it is only a minor vortex. There are more, and what you felt before as you passed is something you should remember for future encounters.”
“Oh, snap! That the Staples Center up there?”
Yusef cracked a small smile, “Yes, Mubtadi.” He slowed the boat and brought it to a stop. “But perhaps you can visit it another time, in the waking world when there are actually interesting people inside of it. The hotel is around the corner.” He climbed out and with his hand he sucked putrisomn off a nearby car and constructed his staff. With his other hand he took more putrisomn and constructed a platform that he stepped on. “I shall return. Do not move.”
He elevated the platform closely along the wall of a nearby business building. Jesse looked up and estimated that Yusef had to be about ten stories off the ground. He remained at that height for a few moments as he moved around the corners and sides of the building, and ventured out a little but in different directions. Then he returned to his first position and descended.
“The outside is clear,” he said in a softened voice. “Now I do not want any arguments from you. I am going alone.”
“Pinche--”
“Jesús!”
Jesse was silent, but stood with his arms crossed and biting his lip.
Yusef continued. “I need you to protect my rear and flanks. You are overwatch on this operation. If this turns out to be a trap or a quick escape is needed, I need you a step ahead of everything and able to help me if needed. You are essential in this position, do you understand?”
“Do I got a choice to understand?”
“It would appear not.” Yusef climbed off the platform and with his free arm motioned for Jesse to step on it. You are my eyes in the sky, Mubtadi. Protect me.”
Jesse sighed and nodded. “A’ight.” Then he stepped on the platform. “What do I do if we get made?”
Yusef extended his hand and the platform turned a dark and cloudy translucent color, like glass. “Toss this as far as you can in a different direction, and then evacuate back home as quickly as possible. With any luck you might draw security away and give me a safe escape route.”
“That’s it? A distraction?”
Nodding, Yusef already began walking away. A wraith roared from somewhere behind a wall in the alley behind them. “Mierda,” Jesse said to himself, looking around. He stepped on the platform and slowly ascended to a vantage point that hugged the side of the office building, but he stopped short of the very top so that he wasn’t visible from the skyline.
He watched Yusef, tiny in the distance, reach the hotel and then rise along the outside to the top floor. Yusef swung an arm a few times and chunks of the hotel wall peeled off, exposing a large hole. He guided the broken-off chunks and silently grafted them back onto the surrounding exterior of the hotel, and then entered through the hole.
Jesse’s eyes and ears scanned the streets and the exterior of the hotel from his observation point a hundred feet in the air. His eyes searched for movement along the windows and rooftop of the hotel down the block, but he didn’t notice anything. Minutes passed and he felt the patter of a raindrop on his hair.
“The fuck?” Jesse gasped as he patted his head and felt a small pebble slip through his fingers. He looked up at the top of the business building and saw, silhouetted against the purpled mist of the Plane’s night sky, a rounded but mechanical shape leaning down from the roof’s edge. A subtle blue glowed from its head but suddenly shined like a spotlight. The figure leapt and raced straight down at him. “Shiiit!” he screamed, lurching away from his platform and into freefall.
Panic struck and paralyzed his entire body as he plummeted toward imminent death. Reflections flashed into his eyes from the tumbling glassed platform falling next to him. He reached out and controlled the putrisomn, putting every amount of focus into stabilizing the platform underneath him. The ground rushed right beneath him and the best he could do to break his fall was angle out the landing of the platform in as much of a horizontal direction as he could, along the street below. With a loud crash of shattering glass across the rough pavement, Jesse’s body skidded and skipped across the ground about fifteen feet, spreading out the impact of his fall.
Immediately following Jesse’s erratic landing, a loud thump and cracking of cement emanated from his original drop zone. Prone and writhing in pain, Jesse looked up and saw a giant robotic-looking figure standing on two legs, crunched concrete surrounding its boot-like feet. It was bulky and armored with decorative streaks of blue and magenta, immediately reminding Jesse of the cartoonish, anime-inspired mechas he might have seen on Fredo’s t-shirts or school folders when he was younger.
He got up as fast as he could, still slightly stunned from his fall, and tried to assess his situation and figure out which direction to run. Shadows continued about their business unaware and unaffected by this intimidating, hulking figure. The mecha’s single eye, a large convex blue light, stared right at Jesse. The mecha reached an arm behind its wide waist and revealed a coiled, dark blue knotted rope. “Okay, nah.” Jesse turned away in the opposite direction and took a few running steps before stopping completely.
A white woman dressed in a skin-tight pale jumpsuit had glided down to the street. She did so with an arm extended from inside of a blue, symmetrically webbed cage. But it wasn’t as closed off as a cage, Jesse thought, perhaps more like a protective shell, or a chassis. She wore blue lipstick with a vertical streak of vibrant, magenta-pink down the middle, horizontal blue streaks of paint under both of her eyes, and a vertical streak of the same hot pink painted down the middle of her forehead. Her blond hair was cut evenly at the length just past her shoulders, and as it waved in the air Jesse noticed a streak of pink on one side and a streak of blue on the other. “Lazavik,” she called out past Jesse. The tone in her voice was guttural and harsh, familiar to Jesse from video games and violent movies about Russian gangsters. “Ponyat’ tsel’,” she commanded.
The thumping and cracking resumed behind Jesse. He looked over his shoulder and saw the mecha named Lazavik march toward him. The rope it held in its hand dropped at its side while it still held on to one end, which he now realized was a handle, and revealed the knots to actually be barbs along a thick and heavy-looking whip. “Oh, no mames,” Jesse said under his breath.
Still looking over his shoulder at Lazavik, he reached his arm out in the direction of the shattered glass along the street and thrust his arm toward the woman. Then Jesse ran as fast as he could to the sidewalk, leaping over some mounds of putrisomn cars on the side of the street, and back toward the alley where the boat was docked. As he ran to the sidewalk he glimpsed her recoil and heard her scream. The open spaces within the chassis’s frame suddenly encased together, creating a shell around her, and glass putrisomn broke and deflected off it. But he was certain at least a few pieces had made it inside.
Ungodly screams and roars echoed around street corners and from behind walls all around them as the countless wraiths in the city responded to the sudden sound of the woman’s scream and the commotion that had erupted.
Jesse reached the alley and jumped up to climb into the boat. He looked down the alley back toward the street and saw the mecha meet the woman’s shell, which was now returning to its opened chassis form. Towering over the woman, Lazavik kneeled and its chestplate opened forward and down, creating a ramp. Jesse could see tears in the woman’s suit, revealing milky skin and streaks of blood across her body and limbs. Now her makeup was joined by a streak of blood across her cheek. As she climbed into Lazavik, the chassis crumbled to the ground and began shrinking into something else. Its chest closed back up to encase her inside. Grated slots and small holes along its torso turned out to be vantage points for the pilot inside. Lazavik reached its free hand to the ground where the chassis had fallen and picked up what had now become a shield, which looked like a small buckler compared to its size.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jesse quickly stammered as he tried to focus on lifting the boat up and away, attempting a takeoff further down the length of the alley. The stomping became very fast paced and closed in on his position as the boat began gliding and cleared a couple stories in the air. Jesse heard silence and shot back a look. He only saw Lazavik’s feet as the rest of the mecha jumped underneath the boat and out of his view. The buckler shield crashed through the bottom of the boat, shattering the entire bottom of it, seat and all.
"Podtverzhdenny khit!” he heard the pilot yell out excitedly from inside Lazavik.
Jesse grabbed onto the top rim of the boat, the only thing still flying in its intended direction, and dangled. He heard the loud thud of Lazavik landing in the alley below. Its momentum gone, the boat wreckage hurled back down toward the ground, in yet another crash landing for Jesse. He cleared a cinder block wall and ended up in a separate alley surrounded by different buildings that belonged to the next block over. This landing was smoother as he was able to roll into it this time and actually end on his feet. The remnants of the boat, however, crashed loudly into one of the buildings flanking him. A low, deep growl reverberated from behind a side door, inside the building.
The pounding thuds zeroed in on Jesse from the other side of the alley, and the cinder block wall crumbled into chunks as Lazavik smashed through it, wrestling with and bending the exposed iron rods out of its way.
He heard screeching from behind the nearby door now, and scratching. Lazavik cleared the tangle of rods and wall chunks and began toward Jesse with its whip arm extended. Once it reached the side door Jesse stepped forward, which caught Lazavik off guard. It raised its shield but kept moving forward. Lazavik’s big blue eye shined right at Jesse.
With both hands extended out, Jesse grunted and used all the control he could muster to splinter the door. It fractured outward and a hellish shriek followed it. Lazavik stopped to get into a full defensive position, but the wraith already had it in its sights. Its eyes were amber and reptilian. A pointed snout, heavy with snarling and curved teeth, jutted out and led its long slender body out of the doorway. It slinked on four legs, and a bladed tail waved and curled around its body. When it emerged completely from the building it extended its scaled and horned wings, taking agitated flight. It hovered over Lazavik, scratching at it with its long sharp claws. “Pizdets!” Jesse heard the woman yell from inside Lazavik.
The wraith and Lazavik began fighting: a melee of claws, teeth, whip cracks, glaived tail swinging, and shield bashes. Jesse backed away but could already see that the wraith wasn’t going to last long. Which meant he wasn’t, either.
He focused again, this time on a nearby large chunk of cinder block that had been flung nearby. He waited for the wraith to move out of his way and to the opposite side of Lazavik, then waited for the right moment that Lazavik would be bracing with its shield. With its back to Jesse now, and the wraith about to lose this fight, he forced the cinder block to strike right behind Lazavik’s knee as it held up its buckler to defend against the swooping wraith. Its back leg buckled and Lazavik tumbled to the ground, allowing the wraith the best possible advantage.
Behind the fight and beyond the broken wall, he saw a dark cloudish figure skulk into view. Another wraith. He turned to run out of the alley toward the street and heard more screaming and yelling from the woman he now left behind him.
He was now on a different block than where he and Yusef had first deployed, but he found his sense of direction and began running northeast, toward the leyline. Jesse ran past and through more shadows of people, and had to avoid the sidewalk entirely due to numerous homeless people sleeping and projecting their hazes. It was difficult to discern what were harmless shadows of people all around him or stalking shadows of wraiths. He felt exhausted and didn’t know if he could muster the focus required to pull more putrisomn and pull himself on it any faster than he could run.
Silhouettes crept along darkened doorways and alleys. They were the projections of conscious people in the waking world. But this city was also full of wraiths. He spied an arm here, a set of eyes there as he ran through the streets for blocks. Glancing behind him, he felt something following him but saw nothing. He continued running and looked back again. This time he noticed that along the side of a building a giant spider with shiny black legs and a head full of blinking, reflective tiny eyes pattered quickly, giving chase to Jesse. The kaleidoscope of reflecting putrisomn altered rapidly as he ran.
The air in his chest felt like it got sucked out and Jesse’s eyes bulged. Now he just wanted to cry. At the intersection ahead, a small roving black swirl of cloud yelled and screamed; muffled flashes of red and white light flickered violently from inside. The swirl intensified and this wraith took form as a large, middle-aged white man. He was disheveled and disoriented, pointing threateningly at Jesse and yelling angry nonsense. Behind him down the street ahead, more dark clouds floated about. Okay, okay. Not going that way anymore, Jesse thought to himself. He turned the corner at the intersection as the man also gave chase to Jesse.
The screeching, yelling, and howls that were erupting from the chase echoed through the canyons of downtown, and panic began to overtake Jesse. He felt light-headed, and confusion set in. Over his shoulder he saw through his blurring vision that the man was catching up with him. As he looked away and back in front of him he no longer saw a middle-aged white man but his own father thundering toward him.
You can’t run. He grabbed the side of his abdomen in pain, but kept pushing forward.
You’re going to lose it, Pendejo, Jesse thought to himself through his clouded mind. Come on!
You need to be the man now. Jesse.
The spider was now skittering the building right alongside Jesse, and was pulling ahead of him.
Mamá! Another dark swirl swooped down from a nearby rooftop and joined the chase.
You’re fucked. He turned another corner away from the spider and it jumped down but crossed the street and climbed a new set of buildings flanking Jesse.
It’s just business. A tentacle stretched out from the swirling storm.
The man behind Jesse was at his heels, and he could smell the alcohol on his breath and felt his spittle as he yelled. The spider jumped down from the building and closed in on Jesse.
… day. And a new future!
The man let out an exasperated profanity. The spider hissed, and the swirl slowed to a halt.
Jesse felt it again. He looked around and saw the oddly designed gate and looked up past a tall tree and saw the little clocktower on the roof. The wraiths had stopped, but still prowled around Jesse, who was right in front of the gate. It was as if he were protected by a cage of unbreakable glass.
Breathing heavily and walking backward to keep his eyes on the wraiths, Jesse groped the gate handle and navigated his way behind it, never blinking away from the wraiths. “Holy fuck,” he burst out amid deep breaths. “What is this place?”
He stood in front of an opened room that faced the street. The floor was marbled in pale yellows and a black symmetrical web design connected the tiles together across the polygonal room. The amber-colored ceiling was a three-dimensional design that had triangular shapes jutting in and out like a frozen, pixelated wave. On the walls a few signs read “Cicada” amidst golden curtains behind glass and gold-black zigzag designs. The energy that Jesse felt was on par with other vortices that Yusef had shown him in the previous weeks. But there was something… more, to this energy he felt.
The wraiths on the street screamed. The man and the spider looked upward and then all three rushed in the same direction: back toward the direction whence they came. Jesse didn’t want to find out if the reason was Lazavik, or something else entirely.
Jesse went to the center of the powerful room and sat with eyes closed, beginning his incantation to teleport to the leyline. He heard a commotion somewhere outside, perhaps on the rooftops but it was hard to tell with the echoes from the buildings. He felt some kind of jolt in the energy around him, but it didn’t feel threatening. He refocused and after a few moments, he felt weightlessness and a sensation of getting pulled out of his own body. He fluttered his eyes open as the teleportation began. In a split second he saw the mecha pilot running up to the building. She was in worse condition than when he left her, with entire portions of her jump suit torn off and she was covered in grimy smudges, scrapes, and cuts of dirt and blood. She held a broken portion of her shield in one harm, and the end of her mecha’s heavily barbed whip that appeared to have snapped off. She looked pissed. The spider returned and dropped down behind her. It got ready to pounce as she lifted her shield and turned around to face it.
In a flash of purple streaks all around him, Jesse found himself sitting on the ground back at the leyline, but he felt like he was lurching forward still and had to splay his hands out on the street to steady himself.
“You made it! I knew you would, Mubtadi!”
Still on the street, Jesse turned onto his back and breathed heavily. The purple streaks of the leyline glistened in reflection off the sweat of his face, neck, and arms.
“Come. There is no time to lay down and get lazy, Mubtadi. We must go.”
He clambered up as Yusef gathered more putrisomn and constructed another boat. “Yusef! That was too fucking close! Like, a few times! You said it was all clear!”
The boat came to completion with a ramp and open portion that allowed for easy boarding. Yusef bowed and invited Jesse in with his arm. “My apologies, Mubtadi. These poor eyes of mine must be slipping in my old age.”
Jesse sighed. “You’ve got some explaining to do, bruh,” Jesse warned with a pointed finger as he climbed aboard and sat in the front seat.
“Oh, I sure do, Mubtadi. I sure do.” Yusef climbed up and used the ramp to seal the side of the boat. “It appears we will have to pay the infamous Mr. Tilson a visit, as soon as possible. And our friend, Mr. Peters,” Yusef said with a distant look in his eyes. “He is in deep,” he continued, “and he will have to be dealt with.”
Jesse turned around in his seat and looked at Yusef. “Yeah?”
Yusef stared back and nodded slowly with an intense look in his eyes. “For your grandmother, Mubtadi. For all those who suffer.”
Jesse returned the nod. “I want to do it.”