The sound of recess woke him up. Grismer opened his eyes, expecting to see children on a swing set and climbing on monkey bars.
Instead, he saw children playing in groups on the other side of the cavernous building. Under the supervision of an old couple standing in the center of the activities like piers in a swirling tide.
He checked his mental registry. “Chase and Janine Beathard.”
“They’re good people.”
Grismer looked to his right. Roddie sat on the floor next to him, her SR6 in front of her. It looked like she was finishing the final assembly after a cleaning. His could probably use some TLC, too.
“Hey, hey. Finally awake, I see.”
Another voice made him look down over his feet. Sahger walked up, a grin shining from his dark face.
Grismer expected to have trouble sitting up, but he made it without complaint. He stood with little effort, then put his hand out for a shake. Pretended not to see the flicker of doubt cross Sahger’s face before taking his hand. “It’s good to see you, Adrien.”
“You, too, boss.”
Grismer held his hand up. “Not anymore.”
Sahger frowned. “What do you mean?”
Roddie sighed. “His rock broke, and now he feels like he can’t be in charge anymore.”
Grismer looked down, but she didn’t return his gaze. “You reading my mind?”
She didn’t smile at the joke. “No, you talk in your sleep.”
The support he felt he had gotten back at the station seemed to have evaporated. He nodded in resignation. She just proved his point.
Grismer turned his attention back to Sahger. “You want to know who’s in charge, talk to that guy.” He pointed at Gabe Anders, who was standing with a big kid at his side. Both of them leaned over a wide table. The light of its display lit them from underneath like Halloween.
Grismer readied himself to go talk to him. Ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his suit. Despite what he now knew about the man, old habits were hard to break. As he finished making sure the middle button of his jacket was secure, he saw a small figure step out of the shadows. He hissed in breath and stepped back. It looked like a small woman made out of burnt matches.
Sahger put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, boss. That’s only Ginger.”
Grismer shook his head. “Ginger what?”
“Just Ginger. That’s not even her real name. She looks like an overdone gingerbread cookie, so…” He shrugged.
Grismer held up his hands with a nod. “Ginger. Got it.”
Roddie stood with her completed SR6 over her shoulder. “She left a black ring on the toilet seat in the ladies’ room.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Aside from the ninth-degree burns? She’s a fucking loon.”
Roddie walked away to stand by herself. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at a large grate in the center of the floor between the general’s armored truck and a series of golf carts. Then she shook her head and looked away.
Grismer studied the grate, too. Just as he decided there was nothing there, the air around it flickered. Like a twist of light in the air.
“Did you see that?”
Sahger shook his head. “See what? There’s been some shit today, boss.”
Sparks flew in an arc from the back of the building — a burst from a welder. Grismer shook his head and turned away from the grate. “Nothing.”
He walked toward Anders with Sahger in tow. “Who’s that with him?”
“His name is Gum. It sounds like a nickname to me, but that’s what they all call him. He doesn’t like us very much.”
Grismer whistled. “I hope he’s done growing. If he’s a kid now, he’s going to be a monster.”
As they approached, Gum and Anders looked up. They seemed only ten years apart.
Anders wasn’t as tall as Gum, but he was almost a head taller than Grismer remembered. Gone was the old man he had worshiped his whole career. He still had the same face, though. Unlined and square, but with the same regal air that had always looked like experience and knowledge before. Now, it looked like arrogance.
Grismer held his hand out to the big kid and smiled. “My name is Bishop Grismer. I’m pleased to meet you.”
Gum looked down at the hand and crossed his arms. Tipped his head toward Sahger. “I already shook his hand. That’s good enough.”
The kid’s eyes were all black. Specks of color glowed in the depths. Gold and blue. They streaked by with his emotions.
Just like an Astral.
Grismer pointed at Gum’s face. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
Gum shrugged. “What’s wrong with your brain?”
Grismer tipped his head. Polite reserve. “Come again?”
“I see you left your gun somewhere else. That because there’s no kids to shoot over here?”
Heat rose in Grismer’s face, but he ignored it and smiled. “I see no need for defense right now.”
The puckered scar on the kid’s forehead glowed like there was an orange LED under the skin. “Then you ain’t looking hard enough.”
Grismer was done with the courtesy. His mission was over. “You? You’re big, I’ll give you that.” He stepped into Gum’s shadow. Tipped his head back to keep the eye contact. “But if you mess with me, I’ll take you to the ground and fuck your face until you choke to death.”
Sahger sucked air through his teeth. “Damn.”
That threat was special. It never failed to end an argument, but Grismer realized he had always held the stone when delivering it. It wasn’t him or the threat. It was the alien technology he had taken as his own.
Took losing it to figure that out.
Made him wonder how Anders kept the power from eating him alive. It was all through his body. Like his bones were made of it.
A guy in the Austin office was caught smuggling stone swarf out of the machine shop. He was bleeding from his ears when they caught him, suffering from Gravity Displacement Syndrome. Fool had been eating the stuff. Had a four-pound ball of indigestible rock powder in his lower intestines.
No bowel movement for two weeks. He died of peritonitis from a split in his small intestines over his bile duct.
Still, maybe he had been onto something.
Gum was unimpressed with the threat. He smiled and crossed his thick forearms over his chest, and the scar on his forehead brightened. “I felt like you tried something, there. And now, you’re disappointed.”
Grismer sighed. “I am.”
“That’s too bad. It was a good threat.”
“Usually, it’s my best.”
“It was damn near poetic.”
“Gentlemen,” Anders said. “May I?”
Gum squinted into to the building over Grismer’s shoulder. “Hang on a second.” He dropped his arms and stepped to the side.
Grismer turned, and the flicker over the grate was back.
Another world hung over the real one. A reality made of frosted glass and stuttering movement. The ghost reality wavered before settling into a rhythmic flash. An old movie with a failing projector. An irregular heartbeat.
The grate in the other world swung up from the floor. Just enough for a figure to slide through. It was the figure from the hill. The screaming skull that burned the air with his fury.
The flames whipping from his head were the same color as Gum’s scar.
He bent over, and the quivering balloon of his intestines swelled as he pulled the grate open then slung it over to land flat.
The children saw the projection overlaying reality. They backed up as one, pressed in to form a trembling mass behind Chase and Janine. Whimpered and sobbed, but no one screamed.
They showed great restraint. Grismer had almost screamed twice already.
The burning figure looked around as if catching the eye of everyone watching, then he bent down like he was lifting a double handful of water. He flung the imaginary water over his head.
The grate erupted in a black flood.
Reptars. The UC animals the Astrals used for war. Terrifying beasts that moved through the spaces between seconds. Burned with the energy of the collective.
His fingers itched for the touch of his weapon.
Roddie shouted a warning as she dropped into her stance. The SR6 was steady as she worked her way to crouch in front of the roll-up door.
Gum lifted his fists and stepped forward with a snarl, but Ginger put her black hand in the center of his chest.
Her voice was like the growl of a small dog with bronchitis. “It is what if.”
Gum looked down at her hand as the room filled with the vapor of Reptar bodies. “What if, what?”
She shook her head. “No. What if? Like something that could happen.”
“Like a possibility?”
She nodded, her grin like a light slashed across her face. “Yes. Like that, but also different.”
Grismer pulled his arms in as close as he could. He knew they couldn’t see him or touch him, but he didn’t want to take the chance. A reptar’s shadow flashed by to intrude on the space he occupied. He shivered when heat blew across his face.
Real or imagined?
Gum shuddered as his hands dropped. He closed his eyes with his face tilted up to the ceiling.
Grismer looked at Ginger. “You mean it already happened. Or maybe will happen?”
She nodded more vigorously. “Yes.”
Grismer heard them. The sound was hollow, distant. Like from the bottom of a well. Their ripping screams. The wet purr.
The roll-up door clanged so loud, he spun to see who had run into it.
Roddie covered her face with her hands, and another reptar ran through her. Its ghost hit the door. Another clang. The reptars gathered together then hit the door in concert. The group grew. Their numbers increased, and the combined weight of the swarm blew the door off like the directed force of a Claymore mine.
They disappeared through the real door, and the burning zombie dropped back into the hole in the floor.
Silence fell inside the building like a lead x-ray blanket, heavy and suffocating.
Gabe Anders held his hands over his heart. Grismer imagined that before his great transformation, he would have found scars on his chest where the stones had been implanted.
Gabe’s gaze snapped over like he’d heard his thoughts, but Grismer didn’t care. He pointed to the grate in the floor. “Where’s that go?”
“Nowhere.”
Gum spun around. “The fuck it doesn’t. Where?”
Gabe spread his arms. “Just to our lower level. Where we do … experimentation.”
Grismer frowned. “Experiments? Why are you so guarded?”
Gabe lowered his hands. His eyes widened as he stared at something over Grismer’s shoulder.
Grismer turned, dread closing his throat.
A ghost walked through the door — a pretty young blonde girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Covered in dirt, small leaves in her hair. She looked into each corner. Every light, every shadow. Spectral rays of light sent beams over her shoulders. They cut an arc on the floor as the sun crossed the sky.
“Naomi!”
Gum ran, stood in front of the ghost. Reached for her hands. As he passed through her, she drew up and hugged herself with a shiver. He said nothing else. Just dropped to his knees in front of her and hung his head.
Naomi walked around where he knelt without looking, as if she knew he occupied the same space in a different reality. She continued to inspect the inside of the building, making her way to the open grate in the floor. Then she turned and spoke to someone unseen behind her.
Grismer heard her voice but not her words. Her voice was like music.
He followed her gaze. Finally, a titan walked in. His white head was covered in dirty scrapes. His black eyes were sunk into his skull like he was sick or starving. Even infirm, he was still an impressive specimen. He towered over even Gum, and his size was increased by the burden on his back. A man with a styled beard full of leaves and bits of mulch.
Richard Helms.
Everyone gathered to watch the three ghosts meet at the Grate. They looked into the dark of the earth.
The girl’s form was brighter. As if she was … more.
Grismer raised his hand to touch her hair.
Gum glowered as he pushed to his feet. “Hey.”
Grismer ignored him and ran his fingertips along the fall of her hair. The strands tickled him. Smelled like honeysuckle.
She jumped up onto her toes, spun in terror. Almost fell into the hole.
Grismer stepped back in embarrassment.
Gum came up to stand beside him, and his face was no longer angry. “What did you do?”
Grismer shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The girl put her hand over her heart. She looked into Grismer’s eyes. Her mouth fell open.
She could see him.
Was he a ghost to her?
Naomi said something over her shoulder. Still no words, but her musical voice sounded like comfort. She extended her hand with her palm up, like she was waiting for him to give her something.
Gabe was at his elbow. “Do it, Bishop.”
And Grismer knew.
He dug into his pocket for the fragment of the Unity stone. She was brighter because she was special. She was more real because she existed across probability. There had been two Stonecallers in this town before he had arrived.
He tipped the stone into her hand. Instead of falling through her ghostly image, it sat in her palm.
This time, he heard more than just her voice — he heard her words.
She gasped in a deep breath. Her eyes widened, and an unseen breeze blew her hair back.
Naomi looked at him in his reality and grinned. “Holy shit.”