‘Wrong.’ I thought with mounting panic. ‘Everything is wrong. This isn’t supposed to be the way things are. This isn’t supposed to be the way anything works.’
The streets were unrecognizable. The cobblestones smelling less like the usual mix of sweat and nightsoil and more like an abattoir. One where the owner and all the workers had gotten drunk and forgotten to come in for over a fortnight.
The smells were those of rotting meat and condensed despair. [Predator’s Instincts] blaring like an alarm bell inside my head despite the ability’s low level.
‘Weakling!’ It screamed, as we passed another person.
A young girl weeping green-red blood on a street corner. Cradling what must have been her brother’s body in her thin arms. Her blackened veins looking like tattoos as they ran the length of her arms and down her face.
‘Dying. Tainted. Easy prey. Kill it. Kill it. Run away. Possible infection. Tainted. Tainted. Kill it!’
I gagged and moved to fight past the murmur. To help.
Sully beat me to it. Bending down and gently caressing her face.
The girl regained her color almost at once and I then saw that she was actually rather tan to begin with. The pestilence had simply made her and her brother seem half a corpse.
‘No. Her brother is a corpse.’ I thought suddenly. Red hot shame following the intrusive whisper.
Sully wrapped her in his thick arms and brought her into a warm embrace. Patting her head as she blinked in confusion. Looking lost and disoriented for a few heartbeats, before she returned the embrace and wailed in despair.
“It will be okay.” He whispered back. Not unkindly.
“I know it hurts. I know it isn’t fair. I know. I know. Better than most. Let it all out. I won’t leave you. I won’t abandon you. Let it all out. This too shall pass.”
Henry, the guy who Sully insisted was his best friend, rather than one of his first victims, approached slowly. Hesitantly.
He brought up and arm to pat the girl, but stopped himself halfway.
All the while, I couldn’t even move.
The voice now turning to the other sick people meandering about and to how all the other people in the houses either shut their doors or yelled at them threateningly. Sometimes going so far as to wave cleavers at them.
All the while, the little voice agreed.
Whispering about how tainted they were.
Whispering about how I should abandon them.
Whispering about how they were not worth the effort of killing.
Whispering…
Whispering…
Whispering…
I shuddered and tried to block it. To push it away.
The voice lowered its volume and its presence in my head. But it did not shut up.
Not for long in any case.
Sully moved on to another couple of sick people and Henry followed. Moving to help with a third and actually managing to touch them this time.
And the voice would not stop whispering.
It felt as though there was a little grumfling next to my ear like in the old stories. An evil spirit born from tainted tree roots that cursed people it didn’t like and started poisoning their minds and their dreams in order to avenge some perceived wrong. Trying to turn heroes and good folk into monsters and degenerates. Getting husbands to beat their wives and wives to poison their husbands. Getting children to burn down the house and parents to leave their children in the woods where other grumflings could eat their toes.
In the stories, a hero would seek out the help of a friendly spirit or djinn in order to lift the curse. Or otherwise enter a ring of mushrooms to make the grumfling manifest physically before then fighting it with torch and blade. But this voice was not like in the stories.
It was a psychic power. An ability that would presumably be a part of me until I died and my bones turned to dust in the wind.
‘If I ever do die.’ I reminded myself. ‘Even that’s up for debate these days.’
The thought of living forever had been oddly comforting and even empowering when I thought of how I could make the world better. How I could rid it of all the Whitmers out there. Now I wasn’t so sure it was a blessing and not another kind of curse.
Living forever meant the voice would live on forever. In some way. I might be able to combine it with something, but it would still be there in the end. I knew it. As sure as I knew the sun would rise or that Sully was up to no good. Some intrinsic part of me just knew. Though I could not say why or how.
Yet all that wasn’t anywhere close to being at the heart of the issue.
No.
The worst thing… The most troubling thing, was that the voice had always been there.
Again, I couldn’t say why or how, but it was true.
All throughout my life, there had been a little whisper helping me to survive. To run faster than the other children growing up and to heal from the beatings more quickly. To know when to flee and when to stand my ground. Some part of me just knew.
The voice was that, but louder. And it had only gotten louder and louder the more I trained with Sully and Boris and Dusty and Slab. It was there with every swing I dodged and every blow I landed. It was there when my fists connected against their ribs and when I sidestepped their counterthrusts. It was there when that slow idiot Henry tried to copy us and failed miserably. The voice was mocking in those cases. Calling him weak and coddled while also telling me to keep my distance.
But it was there.
Where before, my body seemed to know where to move and how hard to hit without me thinking about it, the voice helped me feel the flow a lot better. I could chain my Projector powers much more easily with my active Enhancer boosts and I had even managed to get myself a couple of combined abilities. Without Sully’s help.
[Battle Focus III] was a combination of [Enhanced concentration], [Sudden concentration] and [Enhanced Processing]. A mix that went really well with [Flowing Grace II].
It made everything seem slow when I kept it active in a passive way and it made everything seem as though I’d stopped time when I let Psy flow through it. And it could not keep the voice away.
How Boris and the others felt so comfortable with the power changing their minds was beyond me.
Sully, I could understand. He’d always been mad as a rabid rabbit from what I knew, but the others? How could they stand the voice in their heads?
‘Maybe it’s just me?’ I thought bitterly. Now looking to Henry.
‘He’s got a more advanced version. Supposedly. And he doesn’t seem too bothered by it.’
On closer inspection, the only thing Henry seemed bothered by was the way mucus ran down his Symbiote after he’d let go of the latest sick bloke he’d helped.
He looked disgusted. Making a face very much like the one Whitmer junior used to make whenever he saw me or the other kids from the orphanage.
Turning his nose up as if he was better just because he was cleaner.
‘And yet he’s helping.’ I reminded myself. ‘A clumsy idiot like that is still helping. Still doing his best despite there being nothing in it for him. All while I try to reign in my impulse to either run from or to kill the sick. I was supposed to be a hero and a man who’s never got his dainty hands dirty is showing me up. What does that say of me?’
I shook my head and moved to heal another person out in the distance. An older woman with cloudy eyes the color of spoiled milk out in the sun. Her flesh actively rotting off her bones as trickles of blood ran down her eye sockets. The tell-tale signs of Red Pudding.
I touched her. Calling upon Psy and channeling it through [Regenerate Other].
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The voice chided me for helping the weak. The voice chided me for being weak. For failing to heal her, despite having chosen to help.
The woman did not look all that better and her drifting sightless eyes seemed to prove the Voice’s point.
I drew in a sharp breath and my nostrils flared as a cough erupted from me. The sickness trying to come in and find purchase.
The sisters had said that sickness was how Saturn made his displeasure known. How he punished the wicked.
I’d always thought it was nonsense, but I could not help but recall those stories now. As they barged in into the back of my mind like the voice had before.
‘Maybe it is my fault.’ I thought suddenly. ‘Maybe this happened because I killed myself back in the gnome town. Back when I was up against the copy of Sully. Saturn loves life and despises those who throw it away. Maybe the voice is worse for me because of what I did. Because I threw myself from the cliff instead of getting Ryan’s sister to kill me with the knife.’
No. That was stupid. And it was so stupid that even the voice agreed.
Sully’s world was much more advanced than mine and he and his parents and his grandpa all said that sickness wasn’t caused by Saturn or sin or miasma in the air. Sickness was caused by little things that could not be seen but that could be killed by washing in water and soap often.
Everyone had said so, even back in the Warehouse, so it must be true.
‘But then how did all these sicknesses come to Greenwell at the same time?’ I asked myself. ‘How did New Boudica get infected so quickly?’
That was a much more interesting question.
The guards tended to burn away the infected areas and all the homes and factories in them whenever plagues broke out. With the vocal approval of the nobles and the king and the tactic approval of the temple of Saturn.
Fire for sickness. Fire for sin, as the priests used to say.
So how had it all gotten so out of control?
I looked around again and again, but I could not find the answer.
It all seemed so impossible that it made no sense at all.
It was all too weird. Too strange. Too out of the blue. Too…
“Hey!” The voice snapped from the side. “Earth to Charlie! You with me!”
I whirled and faced Sully. My chest heaving.
“Dammit man! Stop sneaking up on me! You know it freaks me out!”
He looked at me quizzically.
“Didn’t you ask Slab and Boris to try and sneak up on you?” He asked. Tilting his head in a manner I suspected was entirely fake. Like a mummer’s movements. Or the movements of a very life-like puppet pretending to be human.
“Didn’t you say [Predator’s Instincts] warned you when people were sneaking up on you and that you wanted to train the power? To get more familiar with it?”
I had said it.
But the voice did not react to Sully at all.
It made me shake with terror when I saw the girl his parents had adopted and the two ghouls he was friendly with and even the possessed girl his pet djinn wore like a suit made of skin. But it did not react with him.
Somehow, that made it even worse.
“I don’t think I want you to do that.” I snapped. “I don’t recall asking you.”
He smiled a disarming smile and nodded.
“Well, I’ll humor you then.” He said. Turning briefly to a weeping girl he’d just healed to give her a quick hug, some gentle words and further assurances that he was indeed human and not a gentle djinn here to save her and carry her to paradise for her good deeds.
He sent her away soon after and asked her to keep her silence.
She looked at him the way Dusty did and looked like she’d cling to him no matter what he said.
Instead, she asked him to heal her parents and Sully agreed. Promising to find her later if she kept quiet about him.
She left with tears in her eyes, though I could not say if they were tears of happiness or sadness.
“I’m sorry to have startled you Charlie.” He said when he turned to me again.
He looked around with a small hum. One which I suspected was let out solely for my benefit.
“In any case, have you decided what your answer is going to be?”
I blinked in confusion.
“My answer?”
Sully gave me a harder look. One which made me feel as he was being more genuine.
“Look at the Excursion screen.” He said softly.
I did.
Then I gasped.
Choking on empty, tainted air.
There were now 12 deaths where there had been none.
12 people had died.
I recalled what Sully did to people who went around killing other humans and looked up. Eyes wide as if they were popping out of my skull as I felt ice creeping up and down my veins.
I tried to breathe again, but felt nothing coming in. As if he’d turned into a giant again and once more placed a hand over me to press down. His bulk choking the life out of my lungs.
‘Breathe.’ The voice whispered. ‘You are not dead yet. You would not see it coming if he meant to kill you. Breathe.’
I did so. My eyes focusing on him again.
“Charlie, honestly.” He spoke in a more casual way. “I don’t need to read your mind when your face is screaming what you think. I’m wounded.”
He looked around. Frowning.
“Not as much as the 12…now 14 people who died because you wouldn’t let me do my thing and give them powers to fight off the sickness, but still.”
He looked back at me.
“I’m pretty wounded nonetheless. I would have thought you would know me better by now.”
He paused. Levelling his gaze.
“More importantly, I would have thought you would have known yourself a bit better by know. And what you’d be willing to tolerate.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. Stepping back.
“You know.” He simply said. “You didn’t kill Whitmer’s goons the first time I saw you in the vision. You didn’t even kill Whitmer junior when you had the chance. And you only decided to kill Whitmer senior and his goons when you saw what they would do to the orphanage.”
He nodded once more.
“You are willing to kill if it comes down to it. But you are not my grandpa. You’re not…”
He hesitated.
“You’re not me. You’re not willing to take things as far as either of us. So I wanted to know how you could justify sitting here and doing the bare minimum while people died around you. Innocent people that you could have saved. If only you agreed to let me do what needed to be done in this world.”
“NO!” I shouted. My voice carrying over the now empty streets.
“You promised!”
“Yeah Charlie. I did promise. And again, I haven’t forgotten. But I figured it was about time for you to change your mind. The deaths have gone up to 15 now. Pull up the Excursion window.”
I didn’t have to do that to know he was telling the truth.
“Still! We can save the town without resorting to that!”
He nodded yet again.
“We can.” He admitted. “It would take longer and a whole lot of people would die for no good reason, but we could do it before we ran out the timer.”
He stopped and his eyes grew harder. The hidden third eye opening again on his forehead so that three chips of dirty ice stared down at me.
“But what about the people who don’t live in this quaint little town Charlie? The System window says all the diseases have spread far and wide. What are you planning to do about all the men dying on the other side of this country? All the women? All the little children?”
My mouth opened and closed slowly. My mind struggling to comprehend what he was saying.
“Oh come on Charlie. You might be a bit illiterate but you’re not stupid by any means. You’ve seen my world and you saw firsthand what a crisis could lead to if measures weren’t taken to stop it. The people here are not being eaten alive by giant monstrous winged fish, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dying like flies.”
My heart jumped to my throat and refused to move down from there.
“I know you’re like me. I know you’ve always wanted to be some kind of hero deep down. To make a difference. Granted you only wanted to help the sisters that raised you and all your adoptive siblings, but the point still stands. You and I only wanted to help. To make as much of a positive influence as we could. In our own small way.”
He waved his arms about.
“Leaving a bunch of families to die slow painful deaths in their own refuse doesn’t seem like the kind of thing heroes do my friend.”
“I won’t let you control the people here!” I snapped back. Almost snarling despite myself.
“I’ve seen your help! I’ve tasted it all too well! I won’t let the people here go through that!”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Really?” He asked mildly. “So you regret being boosted? You regret me helping you kill Whitmer? You’re telling me you wouldn’t take another boost as soon as you could?”
I gasped, but somehow managed to find my breath and voice again.
“I would! You know I would! But that’s my choice to make! I choose to suffer so others don’t have to! But that doesn’t mean I’ll allow you to make other’s choices for them!”
The eyebrow rose further.
Then he looked around.
“Really now? Tell me Charlie. What do you think the people here would give in order to be free of disease?”
The words hit me like a baton from one of the guards.
“What do you think those parents in that run-down condemned house there would say if I walked up to them and offered to cure their four children? Do you suppose they would turn me down? Because it would hurt them for a few seconds?”
He looked back at me. Somehow managing to look as if he didn’t belittle me.
“Come on Charlie. You know better. I know you know better. You are putting your own personal feelings over the objective greater good. This is not what heroes do.”
“Shut up!” I shouted. Not caring if the people in the nearby houses overheard.
“I talked to your parents! And your new sister! I know you meant well but what you did was plain old evil! You made people worship you! Like some kind of false idol! Only Saturn should…”
I bit back my reply. Suddenly aware of what the (Gnome) I was saying.
Part of me expected Sully to punch me. To rip my jaw off with a casual backhanded swing that I would somehow be unable to dodge.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, Sully looked more sad than anything else.
“Come on Charlie.” He said slowly. “You know better. I know you do. I don’t take pleasure in what I had to do. Like I said, I wanted to be a hero. A straightforward hero who just helped save people from monsters and nothing else. I didn’t want it to be complicated. I didn’t want to make choices in grey areas.”
He sighed.
“But I found the world doesn’t work like I thought it did. There are many grey areas. Charlie. Many, many grey areas. I could have kept my boosts to myself. It would have made me feel better about myself. All things considered. I would have doubted myself less.”
He made a show of taking a deep, steadying breath.
“But people would have died. Charlie. Billions upon billions when the gnomes came. Even without counting them, monster attacks killed tens of thousands in every country, every year. My world had children who were born, lived and died, all without ever knowing peace. Real peace. Tell me now, do you think this is something a hero would allow?”
He stepped closer.
“Is this the kind of hero you want to be? The kind that lets his own feelings get in the way of saving lives? Of making sure more humans survived? Of the greater good?”
He stepped back again.
“Look at the screen again, Charlie. And tell me what you think.”
I did so again.
Feeling my stomach dropping.