While Henry and Faye slept, Milo hovered around the living room, thinking, wondering where Henry was going to go, where all this was leading, and how it had all become so fucked up in the first place.
Was a simple, clean death really so much to ask for? Just lop my head off, and let me welcome the black.
Two hours into their three-hour nap, Milo was roused from his musings by headlights below. It was nearly 2 a.m., and nothing outside had moved for about an hour. The snow had finally stopped, and now lay in a thick blanket over everything.
He drifted over to the window, saw that a car had pulled into the parking lot. Two men got out. One he didn’t recognize, but the other was Edward Palermo. At street level, it would be difficult to see, but looking directly down as Milo was, it was unmistakable: the man he didn’t recognize had a gun in Palermo’s back and was marching him toward the back entrance of Faye’s building.
Milo’s eyes widened, and he immediately went for Henry. Drifted through the door, concentrated on engaging with the physical world, putting his hands on Henry’s broad shoulders, shaking, shaking. “Henry! Wake up! Palermo’s here. Fucking Palermo. We gotta bail, man. Wake up!”
He shook and shook, but Henry wouldn’t rouse. Milo concentrated harder, looked around for something to smash. Maybe that would wake him up.
“Fucking Palermo’s here, Henry, get UP!” Shaking harder still… until finally, Henry cracked his thick metal eyelids. Subconsciously, Milo registered that Henry’d gotten even bigger in the past ninety minutes. When’s he gonna stop fucking growing? Christ.
“Who’s here? Whuh?” Henry mumbled.
“What part of ‘fucking Palermo’ don’t you get, Henry? He’s on his way up here right now, and some douchebag has a gun in his back.”
Henry shook his head from side to side to clear the cobwebs. He reached an arm out. “Help me up,” he said groggily.
Milo gave him a look. “Right ’cause I’m suddenly Superman and can lift small cars on my own.”
Henry grunted something under his breath, used the closest wall to gain his feet instead.
“Henry? What’s… what’s happening?” Faye said blearily from the bed.
“We have to go,” Henry said, moving beside her. “Now. Get up.” Henry was awake now, the word “Palermo” cutting through the fog in his brain like a knife and kicking his ass into operating with pure efficiency.
“Why? Tell me what’s –”
“No time, just get up, let’s go.” He put one of his hands as delicately as he could around her left arm, pulled gently.
“Shit, you’re hurting me, Henry, stop it.”
“We need to get out of this apartment right now. Palermo is coming up the stairs. He does not want pleasant things for us. We need to go.”
“OK, alright,” Faye said, rubbing her eyes. “I just need my shoes.”
Henry looked around the room quickly. “There,” he said and pointed.
Faye moved to the edge of the bed where her shoes were, put them on as quickly as her sleep-deprived mind would allow.
“OK, let’s move,” Henry said, and headed for the front door.
Marcton parked the conspicuous Hummer four blocks away from Faye’s apartment, got out, told Cleve, Bill, and Melvin to keep quiet. “Not one sound except the crunch of snow under your boots – and even that needs to be next to silent.”
They were all packing one powerful handgun each and, in addition, Bill and Melvin had sawed-off shotguns hidden under their coats.
“The nurse’s apartment is just below the top floor, southwest corner,” Marcton said. “Keep your eyes peeled for any movement as we approach.”
When no one responded, he was impressed: just the crunching of their boots.
Five minutes before they’d arrived, Palermo had described to Krebosche as best he could what “ascension” meant. Although he neglected to mention that the last time he’d seen Henry Kyllo he was a massive creature being smuggled out of a dumpster and into Faye’s building under a blanket. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d seen sticking out under that blanket, but it certainly looked like Henry’s legs were made of metal.
Just like Adelina.
What he did tell Krebosche – yet more lies – was that Adelina had achieved the highest state she could in their order, and that the gathering at the house was just an ascension ceremony – merely a celebration of her achievement. But then something had gone wrong. As part of the ceremony, words were spoken – what they thought were simply rites of passage passed down in their holy book (they didn’t have a holy book). And when the words were spoken, the very moment they were out of Palermo’s mouth, he’d looked up and she was gone. Vanished.
“So you’re a cult leader,” Krebosche had said.
“I suppose I am, yes.”
“And you brought your daughter up in this voodoo shit?”
“I suppose I did. But it’s not voodoo.”
“Might as well be. Also, I don’t believe for a second that she just vanished. What I think is that this Kyllo guy you’re taking me to – once he sees I’m not fucking around – is going to tell me what really happened.”
Palermo had said nothing to that, just let it sit between them in the car. Palermo felt the shifting winds in his bones, and thought they might both be in for a bit of a surprise once they saw Henry Kyllo.
Inside Faye’s building, the south elevator moved upward quietly. It dinged softly as it passed each floor.
“Just so you know,” Palermo said, “there will be two people when the door opens – if the nurse isn’t at work, that is. I don’t know her exact schedule.”
“Understood,” Krebosche said.
A few floors passed with neither speaking. Then:
“So you’ll do the talking?” Palermo asked.
“Um, yeah,” Krebosche said, jammed the gun a little harder into the back of Palermo’s neck.
Just as Milo, Henry, and Faye were readying to leave, Adelina appeared in one corner of Faye’s living room. Everyone was leaving; that was good. They still had a chance. But they’d waited too long.
Nothing she could do now, but watch the door. Wait to see what happened.
Milo spotted her, said her name, but she ignored him. Just continued staring at the door.
A feeling of intense dread enveloped her.
The elevator doors opened. Palermo and Krebosche stepped out. Krebosche looked up and down the hallway, saw no one. He poked Palermo in the neck to get moving.
“So what are you gonna say?” Palermo said, hoping to unnerve Krebosche, distract him from whatever plan he might have. Depending on what Kyllo had become, distracting him might be a good tactic for helping get the hell out of the way, should things get intense. And, if recent weather was any indicator – and Palermo truly believed it was – an incredibly intense situation was bound to come due sooner or later. His subconscious had felt something building for a while now, but when, precisely, the shit would hit the fan, he didn’t know. This all just felt like he was on a track of some kind, and there was no way off – and, in all likelihood, no brakes.
“You’ll see. Got it all worked out. Stay tuned, friend.”
Stay tuned, friend? A shiver went up Palermo’s back at the words. Krebosche’s tone had changed. Something in his voice was different now. Even the choice of words was strange. Not like something Krebosche – what Palermo knew of him, anyway – would say.
Their feet made little to no noise on the gray carpet of the hallway. There was a stillness in the air that Palermo didn’t like. Sounds seemed to be muffled. Palermo’s desire for flight was suddenly incredibly strong. He had to resist the urge to bolt down the hallway.
They were only about ten feet away from the door now. Sweat popped out on Palermo’s forehead. He said, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Krebosche. I’ve got this very strange feeling. Don’t you feel it? Something’s… off.”
He tried to stop, turn around, but Krebosche jabbed him with the gun, spun him around, said, “Keep walking.”
Palermo’s gut twisted. He felt suddenly ill. Under no circumstances did he want to see what was behind this door.
“Nine-eighteen, you said, yeah?”
Palermo briefly considered lying, giving Krebosche another number. Was just about to when they arrived at nine-eighteen, and Krebosche said, “Yeah, that was it. Nine-eighteen. Here we are, Palermo. Anything else I should know before we knock?”
Palermo could only shake his head. His vision was blurring. He was having trouble breathing. Felt like he was sucking air through a cheesecloth.
“Alright, then, knock on the door. And don’t speak unless spoken to.”
Palermo raised his fist, had a momentary mindflash of whipping around fast enough to punch Krebosche with it, maybe wrestle the gun from him, shoot him, flee. But it was a ridiculous action-film fantasy; he knew he’d never be able to do it. Especially not with his nerves as frayed as they’d become. Besides, he’d tried once already and failed. Knew that as soon as he started to turn, in that split second that his intention became clear to Krebosche, the man would know, react, and bullets would tear his neck apart.
Instead, the knuckles of his fist connected with the fake wood of the apartment door.
Inside the apartment, the knock sounded. Milo, Henry, and Faye froze where they stood.
Milo looked at Adelina. She shook her head back and forth, eyes wide. “Don’t answer it. Henry’s not ready for this fight. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t changed.”
Milo said, “He has changed, Adelina. Look at him!”
The knock sounded again. Someone asked very politely if he could please speak with Henry Kyllo.
Adelina continued shaking her head. “Not enough. He hasn’t changed enough. And it’s not these men he needs to worry about. It’s the ones following soon after.”
Milo had no idea what other men she was talking about, and the voice on the other side of the door was getting more insistent. He turned his attention away from Adelina, hissed, “Henry, what do we do?”
Henry considered for a moment. “No other way out besides through that door, so I guess we’re opening it.” He turned to Faye, said, “Stand behind me.”
Faye was about to protest that she could take care of herself, but quickly realized that, should there be gunfire, standing behind a giant metal behemoth was a fairly smart place to be, despite the possibility of ricochet.
Henry then realized that they basically had an invisible man at their disposal. With some effort, Milo could interact with the physical world now, but only Henry could see him. Why the hell hadn’t he – or Milo – thought of this before?
“Milo, you’re invisible!” Henry hissed at him.
“I know,” Milo said back. Henry saw the gears turning, then Milo understood. “Oh!”
“I’ll open the door. You get ready to rush them if anything looks fucked. Attacking right out of the gate will only wake the neighbors and bring unwanted attention, so I doubt they’ll want to do that.”
“Yeah, give me a signal or something.”
“The signal will be that I’ll be attacking them, too.”
“Perfect.” Milo smiled. Henry wanted to return the smile, set Milo at ease for whatever came next. But he didn’t really feel it. He felt instead the same way Palermo felt on the other side of the door. As though things were coming to a head – that if it wasn’t already a seriously deadly business, it was about to become so in very short order.
I mashed someone to baby food through my freakshow-gigantic fingers, he thought. I think I can handle a couple of guys with knives and guns, or whatever other weapons they have. Unless they’ve got close air support, this should pan out in our favor.
Henry wanted desperately to believe in this voice, but he was still so unsure of his size, the way he moved. Pulping something (or someone) – no matter how vile and repulsive an act – in a state of relative calm was not the same as fighting angry people in close quarters. And although a lot of Henry was metal, there were a lot of undeveloped parts on his body still in the process of changing, hardening. Some that weren’t even hardening to metal, but some other substance. Some kind of rock, he thought. But these many spots were still not even close to impervious.
My Achilles heels. Plural.
The knocking was so insistent now that it would certainly wake the neighbors if they didn’t open up soon.
Henry stepped forward, head scraping the ceiling. Unlocked the door, turned the knob, pulled it open.
Krebosche’s face was level with Henry’s stomach. He stepped back from Palermo, and his eyes traveled upward, met Henry’s gaze.
Henry’s rocks-in-a-grinder voice said, “Who are you?”
Krebosche took a moment to gather himself – or, rather, what he thought constituted gathering himself. He was so astonished that he wasn’t entirely sure what was coming out of his mouth. “Are… are you Kyllo?” he said.
If I’m gonna make a real break for it, now is certainly the time, Palermo thought. But he didn’t. He just stood there with a gun at his back, terrified. And ashamed of that fact. But in all truth, he had never imagined that Henry would have turned into what stood before him now. He was nearly as dumbstruck as Krebosche.
Henry didn’t answer the question. Instead said, “Tell me who you are.”
“William Krebosche. I… need to know what happened to… my girlfriend.” His mind spun. He felt nausea threatening. He didn’t know how to make sense of the figure before him. It was as though his brain was trying to plug in what it thought it should be seeing rather than what it actually saw. He felt control of the situation already slipping.
“Who was your girlfriend?”
“Adelina Palermo,” Krebosche said, running on autopilot.
Everyone just stared. Milo turned his head toward Adelina, who was expressionless.
“She’s… gone, William,” Henry said. “She has moved on. She will not be returning.”
“I know – I guess I’ve always known – it’s just that I…” Krebosche stared at the floor. He was beginning to come apart. Felt his insides burning up, like someone had touched a hot flame to them. Like his guts were being stirred with a hot poker.
Henry saw the hurt in Krebosche’s eyes, and understood it. He also understood that he had a knife or a gun – something – pointing at Palermo’s head.
“Palermo said that… that you’d know where she was. And I thought maybe if I could just see her again, let her know that… See, I just want her to know how much…” Krebosche felt his mind unravelling like a spool. His face had gone pale. He staggered back farther.
Palermo just stood for a moment, uncertain what to do.
At precisely the same time, Henry was suddenly gripped with ferocious pain. It ripped up one side of his body and down the other. He doubled over in agony, went down to his knees, clutching his stomach with one hand, his head with the other. He let out a roar that not only woke the neighbors, but probably everyone on every floor of the building.
Palermo reeled back against the hallway wall, open-mouthed.
Krebosche pointed the gun at Henry. He knew it would be next to useless against him, but on some instinctual level he still ridiculously believed in its stopping power. When Henry had doubled over, he’d revealed Faye standing behind him. Krebosche saw her, trained his weapon on her instead, said in a sleepy voice, as though waking from a dream, “Hey, who’s that?”
Henry roared again. Krebosche panicked and fired.
Faye went down.
People started poking their heads out of their apartments. Once they saw Krebosche with his gun out, however, they vanished again just as quickly. Doors slammed, deadbolts locked.
Milo rushed forward and tried to knock the gun from Krebosche’s hand, but he was holding on to it too tightly. Krebosche felt something brush by him, nearly knock the gun from his hand. He frowned in the direction of the attack, didn’t understand where it had come from, but understood that someone was after his weapon, and that was enough to focus him – it was the only thing standing between death and this roaring monster in front of him.
He held on to the gun even tighter, held it lower, down at his side, to protect it.
That’s when Palermo finally got up the nerve to make a break for it. He took off down the hall as fast as his legs would carry him. Which, given his injury, wasn’t that fast.
Krebosche watched him go for a second, then shot at him. The bullet hit him in the back of the thigh. Palermo staggered forward once, crumpled to the floor. Got back up, kept running, now with a limp. Burst through the door to the stairwell. Gone.
Krebosche then emptied the rest of his gun’s clip into Kyllo, who felt not a single one of the bullets – even those that happened to hit what he’d thought might be his Achilles heels.
All he felt was fire as he found his feet once more.
The fire burned along his synapses, rippled up his spine, crawled over his scalp, tore at his insides.
The only clear thought he had before he started growing – visibly expanding – in height and width was: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS?
And then there were no more clear thoughts for quite a while.
Like a snake shedding its skin, big chunks of metal began dropping off, clunking to the floor, tendrils of smoke rising from them as though they were meteors falling to the earth. He staggered, nearly fell, crashed against a wall, righted himself, roared again. It was just blind luck that none of his pieces crushed Faye to death where she lay unconscious. The bullet had hit her upper chest, close to the armpit, and just below the collar bone. Not immediately life-threatening, but she was losing blood.
More pieces of Henry came loose and fell off. His body beneath was smoother, sleeker than the previous incarnation. Every inch looked like brushed metal, much more uniform than before. If he were able to stand upright, he would have been close to ten feet tall, and would have measured about four feet wide across the chest. He had to go down on all fours to keep from crashing through the ceiling; hunching and ducking would no longer cut it.
In the hallway, Krebosche just stood there for a moment longer, staring. Then he dropped his empty gun and walked toward Henry. Tears glistened on his eyelids. His mouth hung open. All pretense of attack or defense was gone.
This new Henry breathed heavily and with difficulty, his esophagus pushing air along pathways still being forged. But his eyes worked well. They saw Krebosche approaching, narrowed, then Henry determined the threat – if any one man could be seen as any kind of threat to him now. He sprung forward on legs like pistons, forearms stacked on top of one another, thrust out ahead of him: two massive columns of steel that crashed through both sides of the doorframe.
Right before Henry’s arms connected with Krebosche’s upper half, Krebosche’s eyes went even wider than before, and he said, “Adelina?” Whether he could actually see her, or whether he just said her name because it was the last thing he wanted to come out of his mouth before his death, Adelina would never know.
She put a hand over her mouth as Henry slammed into Krebosche with his doublestacked arms, against the wall where he’d stood to shoot Palermo as he ran away. Krebosche’s legs were lifted and dragged under him, his legs nearly horizontal with the speed of the attack. There was a sickening crunch when his top half hit the wall. His torso crumpled under the pressure. Blood splashed upward in a gout, covering his neck and most of his face.
Part of the wall caved in, dust and plaster sprinkled down from overhead. The lights in the hallway flickered but stayed on.
Henry pulled his arms back, surveyed the corpse. Another spike of pain galvanized him and he lashed out again, ripping Krebosche’s corpse in two at the waist, throwing the top half over his shoulder, back into the apartment, flinging the bottom half down the hall.
Henry stomped back into Faye’s apartment, leaving craters in the floor with every step. The floor shuddered, threatened to cave in, but held.
Throughout it all, Milo just stood to the side out in the hallway and wondered what he could do to stop it.
When Henry went back into the apartment, Milo followed him, shouted, “Henry! Henry, stop!”
Henry did not stop. He reached the mangled top portion of Krebosche’s body, picked it up, let loose a strangled cry, and threw it toward the living room window, where it shattered the glass, sailed over the balcony, out into the night.
It dropped into a snowbank in the parking lot below, face up.
“Henry!” Milo bellowed again. “Listen to me, Henry, listen to my voice!”
Henry grunted, snorted, turned toward the sound of Milo’s voice.
“You need to stop, Henry,” Milo said, hands out in a placating, calming gesture. “Faye needs our help. Faye needs your help.” He had no idea if whatever was left of Henry inside this new machine could understand him – could even recognize him – but he had to try. “Please, Henry. Stop. Just… stop.”
Henry stared at Milo, eyes hot coals in his face.
Inhaled. Exhaled.
And again.
Inside his chest, whatever now passed for his heart beat slower. Slower still. Steadied.
Inside Henry’s mind, something resembling rational thought began to return. Outside in the hallway, sounds of panic reached his ears. People screamed. Someone yelled for someone else to call 911. Another wise soul pulled the fire alarm to get everyone out, in case the floor collapsed.
Adelina had just been standing there, motionless for the past few minutes while chaos engulfed her surroundings. Milo didn’t know what, but something seemed to snap her out of it. She said, “This time I can feel it. I’m going back now.” Then she turned to Milo, spoke his name, said, “I will try to make them see you.” Then she vanished.
The building groaned with its new load. Milo feared the entire floor would buckle, sending them crashing through.
He turned back to Henry, said, “You need to pick Faye up, Henry. And then we need to go. Right now. Anywhere but here. We have to–”
Then it happened again.
But this time, instead of doubling Henry over, the pain curved his spine backward as it stretched to accommodate another growth spurt.
Henry’s gigantic head and torso tore straight up through the ceiling into the living room above. He twisted in agony, arms flailing, knocking over the upstairs neighbor’s TV, smashing it to bits. Bashing a couch and chair against the wall under the balcony window. The middle-aged couple who lived there, who’d been woken up moments before by the commotion, were half-clothed, insane with panic, but nearly to the front door. They’d both screamed when Henry burst up through the floor, then one of Henry’s arms came back around the other way after knocking the furniture flying and cracked the woman hard in the chest. She fell to the floor, unconscious. The man fared worse: Henry’s hand – now bigger than a trashcan lid, but far heavier – glanced off the back of his head, tearing a sizable portion away, exposing skull and brain.
He fell beside his wife, and bled out. Dead in a handful of seconds. Henry swept up the man’s body with the same hand that had killed him and flung it against the living room window, some part of his brain rationalizing that this was what was to be done with corpses he had created: they were to be put out of sight. The body slammed through the window, shattered glass sprinkling outward, hit the balcony railing, and tumbled end over end down to the parking lot, landing not far from Krebosche’s half-corpse.
Henry now stood upright. He was more than fifteen feet tall and close to six feet wide.
Milo – whose view was now just Henry’s legs and part of his torso – still had only one thought: escape. But he decided that Henry was too far gone now. He needed to get Faye out of here. He would tell Henry where he was going with her – assuming his ability to interact with the physical world still held – but beyond that, he could do no more.
Sirens wailed in the distance, and he knew it was now or never. He skirted Henry’s lower half, made his way over to where Faye still lay unconscious. He bent over to pick her up, noticed that a big piece of the ceiling had fallen onto her left leg. He moved to her leg, reached out for the chunk of drywall, concrete, and steel – and watched in horror as his hand passed right through.
“Come on, come on, come on – Jesus fucking Christ, come on,” he muttered, tried again, still nothing. He closed his eyes, concentrated on the feeling of grabbing the materials. Thought of the texture of the concrete, the weight of the steel, the chalky feel of the drywall on his fingers.
Tried again: grabbed a tentative hold. Pushed on the chunk as hard as his strength would allow. It budged just enough that he was able to get her free. Her leg had a gruesome gash in it; blood pooled around the wound as the pressure of the piece of ceiling was removed.
Faye stirred at the fresh pain, looked around. “Who… who are you?” she said groggily. “What’s–”
“You can fucking see me?”
I will try to make them see you. Adelina had said.
Fuck me, Milo thought. Whatever Adelina did, it worked.
“I’m Milo. Pleased to meet you and all that shit. Look, no time,” he said, rapidfire. “We need to get you out of here. Henry’s… unable to help. Cops and fire trucks will be here very soon, and we need to not be here when they arrive. I’m going to try to lift you, take you out of here. I know somewhere we can go. Not far from here.”
“Henry…”
“I’ll tell him where we’re going, but I don’t know if he can understand me anymore. He’s entirely lost his marbles and is approaching the size of a school bus. He’s…”
Faye was losing consciousness again, her eyelids drooping as Milo spoke. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Screw it, let’s go.”
He moved his arms under her, concentrating as hard as he could on the feel of her body – aware at the same time that it was an incredibly bad idea to move an injured person, but what choice did he have? If he left her here, she would die. When his arms touched flesh and bone, he breathed a huge sigh of relief, said, “Thank fuck,” and hoisted her up.
The sirens were louder now, and the fire alarm was still going, but the sounds of panic in the hallway had receded.
No shit, Milo thought as he made his way toward the hallway, feeling the strange sensation of gravity again for the first time in a long while. Apparently, a massive rampaging metal monster will clear a building pretty goddamn quick.
Before leaving the apartment, he turned and yelled up to Henry, who was – for the moment – no longer roaring and twisting about in fury, destroying everything in his path. “Henry! I’m taking Faye to the tunnels! She’s hurt badly, needs help! I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but you know the tunnels I mean! Underground! The old subway line!”
He coughed from the dust in the air, and from shouting everything as loudly as possible in hopes that up in the next apartment, his friend would hear him, and understand.
Hey, I’m coughing from shouting and from dust in the air. I am a real boy, after all.
He picked his way through the rubble, careful to watch his step, trying desperately to remember how legs that touched the ground worked.
On the top floor of Faye’s apartment building, Henry Kyllo’s mind tried to reboot itself. It remembered the last ten minutes as a flashing haze of violence – only portions of the events remained in his head. Some of it had been purged, and only later would he learn exactly what he’d done.
For now, all his brain could latch onto was the sound of sirens, a fire alarm, what those things meant, and what he had to do about it.
He stood in an apartment he had no previous memory of being in, surrounded by rubble, blood, scraps of brain, bone, skin, and – directly behind him, near the front door – a half-dressed, unconscious, middle-aged woman. Something had happened to the living room window. It was smashed. Cold wind blew inside, stirring up the rest of the damage.
Damaged, he thought. Like my mind. What have I done? Where is Milo? Where is Faye?
He knew the names of these people, but couldn’t put faces to those names in his head. He couldn’t picture either of them.
And weren’t there other people, too? Where had they gone?
He gazed down at himself, then, for the first time aware that his legs were somehow in the apartment below. He didn’t know how to process that, so his brain ignored it for the moment. But he recognized that something substantial in his head had changed with his last insane growth spurt. Where before he felt he was losing control of his body, was having trouble operating it, he now felt like he’d “grown into it,” for lack of a better term. It felt more comfortable. More… him.
Sirens again, now very close. Perhaps stopping somewhere nearby.
Probably come here to stop me. Clearly, I’ve done something awful. That feels like a distinct possibility. Just look around.
He thought again of his friend, Milo. Dead, but not dead. Invisible. And Faye. Wasn’t there something about them both? Something–
Then the words replayed in his head in snippets, dredged up from whatever murky depths now constituted his memory:
Faye.
Injured.
Tunnels.
Subway.
These words meant something to him. Tough to know for sure right now, though. Dribbles of information were all that seemed to be allowed through. Everything else just sort of remained… over there somewhere. Too far for him to see, to grasp.
And now firemen were coming. He heard shouting nearby. Smelled smoke, wondered if a fire had started somewhere.
As his chest rose and fell with an efficiency he had never felt before – air filtering in and out of his (metal?) lungs so crisp and clean, he imagined his head as a fat steel balloon, drifting far above the clouds.
He closed his eyes, envisioned in great detail this trip above the earth, the scent of the breeze, the sun glinting off the metal of his arms, his legs…
His thoughts drifted back to the woman lying nearby.
Where shall we go, she and I? he thought. He knew his mind wasn’t functioning properly. More clearly, yes, but not properly. Everything seemed slower. Nothing seemed to make much sense.
He imagined himself and the woman together this time, floating above the clouds. Maybe they were in a hot air balloon, he didn’t know. The method of flight was not important. What was important was –
Tunnels. The word shot into his thoughts like a hard slap from a cold hand.
– the fact that they were together, and that they loved each other. Even though they’d only known each other a short time, they both felt that they’d been in love for as long as they could remember. Like they had never not been in love.
And today’s trip was –
Subway.
– was something they’d been planning for weeks. Maybe he’d surprised her with it at first, then let her help him plan it. Had he won it? Entered some contest? He didn’t feel like either of them had much money, so winning it seemed like a reasonable assumption.
He looked across at her, saw what he now felt sure was the shape of a hot air balloon above them, although he discovered he could not lift his head to see for sure. But that was OK because her eyes were sparkling in the sunlight where it dipped now, shining through her hair, nearing the horizon, and she was so beautiful. Just so beautiful that he wished they could drift up here forever. Drift across this –
Injured.
. . .
What?
His brain tried once again to reboot itself. He felt a literal redistribution of memory take place in his head, like a fragmented drive defragging, reworking itself into a more coherent version of what it once was. What it used to be.
Something clicked inside his skull.
Two firemen poked their heads around the shattered remnants of Faye’s front door, axes in hand. Cursed. Yelled for cops. Yelled for anyone who would listen, then ran back down the hall.
Henry turned himself around one hundred and eighty degrees, stared directly at the woman on the floor.
Faye, he thought. The name came into his beleaguered mind like the snap of a crisply folded sheet.
Faye is injured.
Thinking of hot air balloons, sunlight filtering through soft hair, and the scent of the cleanest air he had ever smelled – all memories of a trip he’d never been on, nor would ever go on – he very gently moved his hand under the unconscious woman on the apartment floor, lifted her up. Wrapped his hand around her, tucked her close to his side, moved his other hand over and around her to protect her from any debris.
Then Henry Kyllo squatted as low as he could, angled himself toward the back parking lot, flexed his pistonlike legs.
And launched himself through the roof of the apartment building.
When he broke through, at the top of his arc, he saw the moon hanging low in the sky, tried to capture every detail of its beauty before gravity brought him down.
The roof caved in and glass exploded outward in a shower from the windows of the car Henry landed on.
He checked the condition of the woman tucked into his body: still unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. He stepped down from the car, the learning curve of dealing with the proportions of this new body exponentially curtailed from his last incarnation. He somehow felt he’d been born in this body.
He looked around. A small crowd of people had come out of neighboring apartment buildings when the sirens had stopped nearby. Some had likely heard the original commotion.
Firefighters and police had been scattered around, running back and forth from their vehicles to the building. When he’d landed, everyone stopped. Stared. Then panic ensued, and people ran in every direction – every direction that was away from Henry, of course.
Subway. Tunnels.
Henry began walking in the direction of the old subway tunnels. He assumed the police would soon be after him in force, but the ones who’d seen him – and who could properly process what they’d seen – had their hands full right now. Someone would call it in, though. And he wasn’t sure if the force that protected the Inferne Cutis from discovery would be strong enough to play this down, wipe it clean. It would likely be too much. Too many witnesses, too scarring an event. Too strange in every way imaginable.
Probably.
But only a small portion of his mind was occupied with this line of thought. Most of his attention settled on the woman he carried. He felt as though she was Faye. The nurse. His girlfriend? She must be, mustn’t she? Wasn’t she the only woman in his life? He failed to see how it could be anyone else. Although his memories of Faye – and a lot of other memories, to be honest – were sketchy, so…
He was trudging through the dark streets, trying desperately to retrieve memories of Faye, when a strange sound caught his ear: hydraulics, or something close to hydraulics. He looked around, saw nothing, then looked down. At his own legs. The sound came from his legs, whenever he stepped. He hadn’t noticed it before due to the noise around him, but now, cloaked in relative darkness down these side streets, he heard it clearly.
But not quite hydraulics. Something similar – organic tissue mixed with hydraulics? – but different enough to be noticeable. Henry stopped walking, looked down again. Air hissed from something mechanical, like a rig after hitting its brakes. But Henry had seen hydraulic systems before, and these weren’t quite the same. These were more powerful, more efficient. Using some other kind of technology he was unfamiliar with.
The entrance to the old tunnels, he knew, was just another block away, and he still had not encountered anyone on the side streets and back alleys he’d chosen for his path. He started to think maybe he wouldn’t see anyone, would actually go unseen the entire way. He hoped so because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if someone saw him – more accurately, he was afraid of what he’d do if someone saw him. Disturbing flashes of what had happened at Faye’s apartment occasionally bolted through his head, but nothing that made any kind of sense for the person he thought himself to be. These images felt fake – like a film he’d watched, or as though someone had poked around in his head, created false memories for some reason. Some larger plan he was part of but knew nothing about.
He hoped if someone saw him before he got underground, they would just forget. Maybe panic at first, run away, but then, by the time they reached anyone to tell about it, the memory would be trapped behind a curtain of haze.
But someone did see him.
And Henry saw him.
Palermo. Limping in his direction, his silhouette stretching out under a streetlamp.
Palermo glanced up as Henry lurched into view. Palermo stopped in his tracks. He said nothing, just stared up at Henry. His creation, to a certain extent.
Henry loomed over Palermo, stared down at him, breathing. One part of his mind recognized Palermo for who he was, the leader of the Runners. His people. Another part of his mind – the part that cared for Faye, for Milo, and the frustrated part that had no idea what he was becoming – wanted to end Palermo.
“This,” Henry said. “All of this. It’s your fault.”
Palermo held up his hands, said, “Look, I just need to get back to HQ, Henry. We can sort this out. I know what’s happening to you, and we can–”
Henry felt a shudder rip through his body. He lashed out with his free hand, swatted Palermo. Palermo flew through the air, smacked against a tree, his back broken.
Something in his mind – a new voice he was beginning to recognize as not of his making whatsoever – spoke up, said, He is no longer needed.
Henry stomped over to Palermo’s twisted frame. This voice in his head now issued forth from his mouth, almost completely separate from his will: “You are no longer needed.”
Henry brought a thick metal thumb down and ground Palermo’s head into the snowy earth beneath.
Once Palermo was dead, the presence receded, backed down from Henry’s consciousness. It felt like a darkness that had been hiding in his mind all his life had been awakened, and could now slither into and out of his brain whenever it pleased.
Henry continued walking toward the subway tunnels. One block, two.
Then about a block away from the entrance to the old tunnels, four more people saw him. They stopped as Henry lumbered into view, maybe thirty feet away from where they stood.
Marcton and Cleve pulled their weapons. Bill and Melvin followed suit. Marcton said, “Holy mother of fuck.”
Then the shooting began.
Five minutes earlier, Marcton, Cleve, Bill, and Melvin had been walking quietly toward the nurse’s apartment. Single file.
Like Sand People, to hide our strength and numbers, Marcton thought, and chuckled.
Cleve was about to ask what was funny when Marcton slowed down, stopped, pointed. “Check it out,” he said.
The other three fanned out to the sides, looked where Marcton was pointing.
Melvin said, “What the hell?”
Marcton said, “Dunno, but if Palermo’s there, shit has already gone south, and we’re late to the party.”
From their vantage point, the building seemed to be buckling near the nurse’s floor. Cracks streaked down the outer concrete. Something was going on inside the apartment, but they were too far away to see what.
Then sirens flared up behind them, getting louder.
“Ah, shit,” Bill said. “Do we need to bail, Marcton?”
“Goddamnit,” Marcton said. As good as a yes, so Marcton, Melvin, and Cleve turned around, started heading back to the car.
Bill was just about to do the same when the glass of the nurse’s living room window shattered and the top half of a body flew out, drifted over the balcony, fell into the parking lot.
“Fuck me!” Bill said. The others turned around. “A fucking body – well, half a body – just flew out the window!”
“Shit,” said Marcton. “Let’s get off the street in case someone comes looking out the nurse’s window. No idea who’s up there or what’s happening, so best to stay hidden.”
When the others had already moved off the street, Marcton had to pull Cleve away by the collar, still staring up, slack-jawed and curious. “Damn, I missed it,” Cleve said, a bizarre sense of wonderment filling his voice.
Getting off the street obscured their view a bit, but they could still mostly see the corner of the target building. They watched quietly in the darkness for another few minutes, aware of the sirens creeping closer. Bill and Melvin were tasked with keeping their eyes peeled in case the cops, ambulance, or fire trucks used the street they were on to get to the apartment building.
Just then, more glass shattered and another body flew out over a balcony, fell to the pavement – this time a full body, crashing through the window of the apartment directly above the nurse’s. And this time Cleve saw it too.
“Wow,” he said. “Just fucking wow. You know?” He glanced around at the others, a big dumb grin on his face as though he were a small child watching his first fireworks show.
Marcton didn’t respond. His mind raced as he tried to put the pieces together. He stood thinking for a moment, then said, “We need to get out in front of this. Like, now.”
“What do you want us to do?” Melvin asked.
“Lemme think, hang on. Just lemme…” He rocked side to side, weighing options, possibilities, a deep frown creasing his features. Finally: “Alright, look: whoever’s doing that shit is gonna need to vamoose real fucking soon with the heat that’s coming down on that place, right?”
Everyone nodded.
“So. We position two at the front, two round back, and when the fucker or fuckers come out, we bag their asses. Got it?”
More nods, but Cleve looked skeptical.
Marcton sighed. “Speak up, Cleve, or forever hold your goddamn peace. We don’t have all day to debate.”
“Nah, it’s just… Well, that seems pretty simple. And also something they’d be expecting. I mean, wouldn’t it be better to have the element of surprise? Just rush in there and fuck their shit up before they even know what hit ’em?”
As much as Marcton hated to admit it, Cleve might have a point. “Alright, fine, two up the back stairs, two up the front.”
“We’re assuming the building has two sets of stairs,” Melvin said.
Bill nodded. “Yeah, we can’t just assume that. And what about the elevator?”
“Also,” Cleve said, “fire escape.”
“Jesus, when did you guys develop independent thought?” Marcton said. “Fine. Christ. Me and Cleve inside, rushing up the stairs – if there’s only one set, we’ll both use that one. Bill and Melvin, hang down at the bottom of the fire escape. Fuck the elevator – no one in a killing-spree rush is taking the time to wait for elevators.”
Everyone looked satisfied with this plan.
“Great, now can we go?” Marcton said, turned, and started walking toward the building again.
“Actually,” Cleve said, “is it really a good idea to split up? I mean, shouldn’t we–”
There was an enormous crash then, like a bus slamming into a concrete wall. All four of them whipped their heads around in the direction of the sound.
For a moment they saw nothing, but then a dark shape nearly as big as a dump truck passed in front of the moon. The man-shaped thing seemed to hang there for longer than seemed possible, then it fell quickly to the pavement of the front parking lot. They heard an incredible crash, but could not see what happened because a line of trees and a row of bungalows obscured their view.
The event hung between the four men for a long moment, then Cleve broke the silence, saying, “So we’re gonna run now, right? Like, toward home?”
But as much as they’d wanted to run – as much as Cleve had really pushed for that to happen – they hadn’t. Marcton calmed his men down as best he could by telling them he’d seen the creature, or whatever it was, holding onto something. Maybe someone. He said it had certainly looked like a person to him for that brief moment it was lit by the moon.
“I saw it when the thing turned to position itself for its descent. I saw something, anyway. And what if it was Palermo? What if neither of those two dead bodies that got tossed were him, and then we just fucking leave because we’re scared?”
“Well, shit, Marcton,” Melvin countered, “if that thing was holding Palermo, what chance do you think he’s got? I don’t want to desert him, either, but we have to use our heads here.”
Bill and Cleve stayed quiet while this conversation went on. They were both just jittery, looking over their shoulders every few seconds, on the verge of bolting at any moment. Somewhere nearby, someone locked their car, the horn beeping twice. Cleve nearly nearly shit himself.
But the discussion was brief, and Marcton was no longer in the mood for democracy. “I’m moving to intercept. You can leave if you want, but think on this: if you desert me out here – and maybe Palermo, too – expect to find a knife in your fucking guts the moment I get back to the warehouse.”
That had effectively shut everyone up.
They began walking in the general direction of the apartment building. Not thirty seconds later, the ground shook, sounding like footsteps – but like no footsteps any of them had ever heard before.
“Holy mother of fuck,” Marcton had said when the creature stomped into their line of sight.
And now here they stood, facing the creature down.
When they opened fire, the beast just stood there for a moment, head nearly level with the streetlight above them. When it realized it was under fire, it moved its arm inward to protect whatever was still tucked against its body.
Marcton quickly realized the thing was made mostly of metal, so their bullets were ricocheting madly in every direction, and that one of them could hit Palermo – or whomever was hidden inside the monster’s hand. “Hold your fire!” he yelled. But at first he couldn’t be heard over the cacophony. He yelled louder, his voice cracking on the first word: “Fuck’s sake, STOP!”
The guns went dead.
The beast lifted its head, focused its gaze on them. There was no mistaking the machinery of the thing, but something in its eyes felt organic where they settled on Marcton’s face. Examining him. Assessing the threat level, of course, but more than that. In fact, despite the metal exterior, there was something organic about the entire creature. Something in the way it breathed, the way it shifted its weight from side to side. Marcton would never know it, but at that very moment Henry was trying to access his memories of Marcton. They’d done several Runs together in the early years. Never became close, but Marcton would know Henry to see him – the original Henry.
Unable to retrieve any true memories, instead, weird fantastical elements of several events in Henry’s past coalesced to form a picture in his mind; these elements would become the basis of Henry’s thoughts about Marcton from this point forward. Enough of the elementary wiring in Henry’s brain had changed, been reshaped, that he would never regain his real memories of the man.
But perhaps that was just as well, because Marcton would never even know that this was Henry Kyllo.
Now, standing in the street with the gaze of a monster fixed solely on him, Marcton was astonished to find his voice. Motioning toward the person the creature carried, he said, “Who is that?”
Marcton had no idea whether the thing spoke or understood English, but it was the only language he had with which to attempt communication. The creature seemed to understand. It looked down at its cargo, then slowly uncurled its fingers to reveal a woman. Unconscious. Not Palermo at all.
Marcton’s heart sank. So one of the bodies flying out the windows was likely Palermo’s. But he couldn’t know for sure. Not without checking out the bodies himself. Or sending one of his guys to do so.
Unless he asked. Long shot, but why not?
“And Palermo?”
No recognition. The beast just growled low in its throat, covered the woman with its hand again, put her back at its side. She groaned a little, then. It wouldn’t be long before she came around.
The monster took one tentative step forward, kept its eyes on Marcton’s gun. Moved its head in the direction of the entrance to the old subway tunnels. Back to Marcton. Back to the entrance.
Something clicked in its throat. Gears whirred, ground. Something resembling human speech tried to belch its way out of the thing’s neck.
Henry, of course, could’ve spoken if he’d wanted to, but felt he shouldn’t. Felt he should let them think he was nothing remotely like them. Internally, too, he was battling with that other voice that would have just had him crush these people to death. It had gotten the better of him before, with Palermo, but now he knew about it, felt its presence curled up, ready to pounce at the back of his thoughts. Better to know where the wasp in the room was than be oblivious to its presence.
Cleve, Bill, and Melvin stiffened. Cleve took a step back, raised his gun again, said, “What are we doing here, Marcton? Your call. Letting it go? It doesn’t look like it wants to hurt us, just wants to get past.”
“Yeah, you’re right, it’s just that…” Marcton said, fascinated. The creature was hard to look away from. It looked like no machine he’d seen before. There were familiar elements, of course, and something about the way it moved was… sinewy. As though beneath all the steel were flesh and blood muscles.
It had stopped trying to push out whatever sounds it apparently thought would help get its point across, and had fallen silent.
“Come on, Marcton,” Cleve said, keeping his voice low, placing a hand gently on his friend’s shoulder, so as not to startle him out of his state. “Let’s go.”
Marcton turned to look at him.
“I think you feel it, too, man,” Cleve continued. “It’s like I’m standing on a sheet of very, very thin fucking ice here. I’m afraid to move, but every instinct I have is telling me that now is the goddamn time to do so.”
Marcton nodded, turned to the creature, stepped backward. Put his gun away, told the other guys to do the same. They did, and everyone took several steps back, up onto the curb.
The beast looked toward the subway tunnels again.
“It’s OK,” Marcton said. “You can go.”
The thing took another step forward, then another, then another. With each step, he kept his eyes glued to the four men. When he was fifty feet beyond them, he turned his head toward his destination and walked faster, the pistons in his legs – and the smaller ones in his arms, Marcton just noticed as his angle changed – puffing vapor out into the crisp winter air.
They watched him go, each lost in their own thoughts, trying to process what they’d seen.
As the creature turned the nearest corner, they saw that its destination was the entrance to the old subway tunnels. It ducked its head to get inside, then disappeared from view.
The first snowflake of yet another storm fell, touched Marcton’s cheek near his jaw, melted, dripped down his neck. He looked up, saw the moon through a break in the clouds.
No one knew it then, but this storm was the main event.
This storm would never stop.