Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (9 page)

Fucker drew blood
. I duck into a side alley behind the cafés and drape kharma about my form to make myself harder to see.  Not fast enough apparently, as he’s tracked me this far and is heading down the filthy back street, plowing through dumpsters and piles of trash.  I look ahead to a fire escape and make the jump, catching the bottom rail with both hands and swinging up onto the second landing.  My feet barely hold my weight before the dweller smashes into the rusty scaffolding and I’m swept flat onto my head with a deep, metallic
gong
.

Shaking it off, I get to the third floor ledge then scramble to the fifth and top story.  The dweller has regained his balance below and is halfway up the building, crushing the fire escape into tiny compartments as he goes.  I fence hop the ledge onto the rooftop and start running.  Without the momentum to clear the street in a single jump, I take the corner and balance my way along the edge like a gymnast on a beam.  As I make a smaller jump across
an alleyway, the faintest of my senses catch Sabetha and Bullworth approaching the wreckage of the car at the bank.  Finally.

I briefly consider outrunning the monster till Bullworth tracks me down, but I’m already dodging its flopping arms.  It’s on the rooftop behind me and gaining as I leap to a lower building top and slide on my hip down an inclined metal vent cover.  It lands close by, crashing through a brick chimney and pelting me with rubble.  The monster is within arm’s reach when I hear gun fire.  To my side is Bullworth, galloping down a parallel street with Sabetha on his back.  She’s firing a machinegun with one hand, the belt of ammunition dangling in the wind while she grips Bullworth’s fur with her other hand.  It was pure luck that she didn’t hit me with the spray, but the hailstorm of glowing bullets did manage to slow down my pursuer, or at least distract him.

As I near the edge of the rooftop, I whistle to Sabetha, pointing in front of me and then opening my hands, anticipating a catch.  She reaches behind her, gets my gun from her belt, and throws it like a boomerang into the trajectory of my fall just as I make a leap off the building.  I manage to catch the gun and continue down to the sidewalk using the top of a parked car to cushion my fall.  Rolling onto the pavement and coming to a stop, lying flat on my back in the middle of the street, I sit up enough to point my gun at the vehicle.  The red-eyed cyclops is in midair, heading for the car I half-crumpled, when I fire a single incendiary round into the gas tank.  The car is instantly engulfed in flames just as the monster lands on it.  As he emerges from the fire, smoldering, Bullworth intercepts him, slashing the dweller with his claws and biting into his blackened flesh as they tumble through the street with a shriek and a roar.

Sabetha, having dismounted prior to this, now comes over to pick me up, duffle bag still on her back, though its form is floppy and lifeless without the massive machine gun within it.  We look over to see the enormous monster break Bullworth’s hold and come after us.  Sabetha begins to fire, running into the center of the road while I try to flank towards our gazer companion.  Unfortunately, I recognize this creature’s particular interest in
me
a second too late.  It wasn’t chasing me in the car like a dog that chases the rabbit that bolts quickest.  He was – is – after me, specifically.  That reddish eye focuses in and the arms suck me up into the tumble before I can get out of the way.

In the next few seconds, I become vaguely aware that I am being slammed repeatedly into the blacktop, but there’s little I can do to stop it.  There’s more gunfire, a brief respite, more slamming, a pause, and then again with the slamming.

I open my eyes to see Bullworth on the creature’s back using his powerful hind legs and his unmatched grappling abilities to roll himself over and hurl the cyclops into a speeding bus, coming head on.  The impact contorts the top of the bus’ form to a third its length, shredding it with a terrible noise and sparks of electricity.  Before the dweller can recover from the collision, Sabetha, bleeding and covered in dirt from a skirmish I was mostly unconscious for, unloads the rest of the machine gun ammunition into the wreckage like the finale of a fireworks show.  The spray strips away the mangled black flesh of the creature like it was putty.

I let my head rest back on the tarmac in the crater I was instrumental in making and cough.  Deliriously, I ask aloud, “Why does he want to kill me?  I’m no one.”

“
V
al.  Bring your stuff.  I’ll explain when you get here.”  I hang up the phone and wheel myself into my room, Sabetha sleeping safely in hers.

After the battle, gazers from Lezar’s perimeter swarmed the streets.  We were brought to our home under their supervision and, as an apology, Lezar is leaving two gazers in the area for the next few nights at our beck and call.  None of the gazer sentinels even seemed to care that there wasn’t a creature left after the battle, a detail which Sabetha and I were more than unnerved to discover.

What bothers me even more than the lack of evidence to go on, since both our attackers’ bodies vanished into thin air, and even more than the exponentially increasing
size
of the creatures, is the fact that they are apparently intent on killing me, specifically.  Obviously I don’t like people trying to kill me, but this whole situation no longer seems like Gothica slapping me on the wrist for being a prick.  It looks like cyclic backlash.  It’s the difference between a parking fine and the death penalty.  Gothica might legitimately be trying to get rid of me.  It happens all the time to people going against big business, insurance companies, labor unions etc., but not to someone like
me
.  Sure I kill the occasional pimp and hooker, but really, I’m not threatening the city’s way of
existence
.  There has to be another answer, because if I
have
been targeted by the city… there’s little I can do to prolong the inevitable.

Very quickly it becomes apparent that I need to be asking more informed contacts in other parts of the city.  However, before I leave this house again, I must be healthy and prepared… as prepared as I can be.  Until then, Val will stay here as our early warning system.  He’s no gazer, but I have his unquestioning loyalty and if nothing else, he’s a good distraction for invaders.

It’s sunrise when Val arrives in a gray jumpsuit, pretending to deliver flowers.  He hangs up his coat in the wardrobe and then turns to face me as I sit in a wheelchair.  My leg is splinted and all other wounds are wrapped.

“What happened?” Val asks, looking at me with wide eyes.  It’s hard for him to imagine what could put me in a wheelchair.  I’m almost flattered. 

“I need you here till I get better, then Sabetha and I are leaving for a while,” I tell him.

“You sure?  Maybe you should, you know,
hide
, till you heal up and figure out what the hell’s going on.”

“Hiding won’t do any good, so I might as well be comfortable in my own home.  I’ll be ready to leave by day after tomorrow.”

“What about Sabetha?  She okay?”

“Yeah, she’ll live.  I’m having a bloody stop by after sunset.”

“Takeout, huh?  Poor interns.”

“Our voucher at the hospital is named Zoe.  I notified the puppies outside too, they’re our backup should something happen, and if I’m not up by then you’ll hear a knock at the door.  Check the camera and use the intercom.”

“Delano, I got it,” he says confidently.
 

I continue anyways.  “Make sure the bloody runs through the full procedure with a phone call confirming his ID.  Only then can you let him in.  Understood?”

“Like daylight.”

“Good.  I left a thousand on the end table by the couch for payment.”  I wheel back to my room and then, before closing the door, look over my shoulder at him.  “Thanks.”

M
y body lies flat on a mound of circular silk pillows.  Incense burns nearby, infusing the air with lavender and sage.  An army of very special candles, providing a wealth of kharma, aid me in various mental tasks as I attune myself.  After several hours I will reach a deep state of consciousness known as
séance
and when I wake, roughly a day after that, my bones will be more or less healed.

At the level of
séance
, I am essentially in a state of kharma, a second spectre-like version of myself separated from my physical form and able to fly through the city and sky, unseen by all but the most kharmatically sensitive.  This ability is invaluable for certain tasks but also unimaginably dangerous.  No one, save a captain, would ever attempt
séance
alone.
 

I drift out of my body and float over my room, the building, and then Gothica itself, though it doesn’t look like Gothica would through an ilk’s eyes.  Instead, I see it in a state of energy and it’s not easily described.  I go higher and higher, deep into the smoggy, uniform, and featureless stratus clouds which hover and swirl around the entire city.  Deeper into the gray haze, I begin to feel the essence of others, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions.  I am entering the collective consciousness, a thriving mass of energy and a replication of the city in thoughts and memories.  In my
séance
form I draw tremendous power, using it like a straw to suckle manna from heaven and heal my broken body.  

In this place, as on the physical ground below, there is a constant struggle.  Yet even for all the evil of Gothica, there is some sort of balance and order.  The chyldrin are subject to the sun just as the gazers' are to the moon.  Without some sort of balance, no matter how warped it may be, the city could never maintain its stagnation. 

Gothica has gone unchanged for a thousand years that I can
personally
attest to, and our records say it has been like this for much, much longer.  Yet the masses of undarkened don’t notice.  The ones that survive are the ones that keep their blinders on and go day to day without any real understanding of the world around them.  As for those of us
with
an understanding of the world – there are surprisingly few answers.  Lots of studies and data.  Not a lot of answers.  There are theories, probably better termed hunches, but they inevitably fall short when trying to explain Cycle. 

As for social culture, things move in perfect tri-generational pendulum swings with predictable cycles of conformity, rebellion and unabashed-consumerism.  A vague notion of Christian tradition dominates conceptions of morality, but in actuality, only serves to legitimize the whims of the individual.  Empirical academia is marginalized when it conflicts with corporate talking points and the media are merely the bully pulpits of big business.  Cynthecorp, what amounts to our central government, retains its monopoly and power over everything despite just one in ten people knowing it exists. 

I used to think,
if only everyone knew… things would change then.
  I’ve since come to believe that even if everyone did know the truth, half of them would reject it anyways.  Because what is truth?  A matter of perception.  And one of the truest things I’ve come to learn about people while studying them for just over ten centuries is this: people believe whatever they think will keep them alive longest. 

The truth is too overwhelming and so people filter it to keep some sense of control and sanity.  That’s the whole mystery of Gothica.  I’ve figured out the
why
, anyways… still haven’t figured out the
how
. 

As the day grows old and the balance shifts to night, I prepare to descend back to my body.  I have collected all the energy I need to regenerate my wounds.  But suddenly, it grows cold.  The temperature does not change in this state of existence – it’s more like the
idea
of cold envelops me.  In the distance I can see a strange green lightning flash within the fog, but just as soon as I begin to look further, the phenomenon is gone.  It’s nearly nightfall, and I have to see to Sabetha’s recovery.

S
omeone knocks on the outer door.  Behind me Val opens his suitcase and takes out a sub-machinegun brimming with tactical additions.  I hear him slap the bolt and send it sliding forward, chambering the first round.  Stealthily he slips into Betha’s room to check the monitors.

I already know who it is, but by the time I can waddle over to the door with the use of my cane, Val has emerged from Sabetha’s room with his weapon at the ready.

“Dnnahno?” comes a muffled Nigel, my secretary, from behind the door.  He can see through the walls enough to detect Val approaching.

Val is to the right of the door frame with the gun butt pressed into his shoulder and the muzzle pointed down.  He looks back and forth from me to the inner door.

“It’s okay,” I say to him and open the outer door.  “It’s my secretary, Nigel.”  A red laser sight goes from my back onto the forehead of a bloodied Nigel and dangles there for a moment.  He looks down the length of the small security room at Val’s gun and the red laser sight leading to his nose, then puts his hands up.  “Delano?”

“Come in.”  I lift a hand to calm Val.  After a moment he lowers the gun, Nigel passing by him and heading into the kitchen.