Chapter 9: 7 minutes in heaven (Patreon)

Jeb noped out.

“Nope.” Jeb grunted. “nope, nope, nope.” He saw the rainbow colors scintillating on the horizon beyond Terry and knew they were screwed.

“It’s the Roil!” Jeb and Vresh said at the same time.

“We’ve gotta get the fuck out of here!” Jeb shouted, lunging to his feet, pausing when Vresh’s iron grip caught his hand.

“Running away is a gamble once you’re inside it’s range, no matter how fast you are!” Vresh said. “It fluctuates direction! You could be going into it at full speed for all you know! We need to seek shelter!”

Shelter…like a bomb shelter? Jeb thought, raising a brow.

“How deep!?”

“Ten feet of loose earth, two feet of stone, or six inches of solid steel!”

I’m in an Air force base, there’s gotta be plenty of bomb shelters they wouldn’t just… Jeb’s gaze drifted to the fancy hardwood desk, the nice carpet, and the Base-commander’s nameplate.

When Jeb was in the army, he’d had the occasional task that required him to go to the officer side of buildings. It always amazed him what a different world it was on the other side. CO’s got all the fancy stuff. Staircases with shiny aluminum railings, carpeted stairs, cushy chairs, and….

Private bomb-shelters, maybe? For the base commander, Jeb could see it.

“Start looking for a hatch in the ground, or something!” Jeb shouted, trying really hard not to listen to the sound crawling around behind his eyeballs.

He injected the entire fancy carpet with his Myst and brutally tore it off the floor, but found nothing.

Nope. Jeb lunged to his feet and threw the door further into the office building open, looking for places the designers of the building would think to put a bomb shelter.

Wow. Maybe the elevator labeled ACC Mission Control Center? Too fucking lucky. Jeb lunged toward the elevator and found himself going back toward the window, barely stopping himself from tumbling out into the open.

“It messes with directiooon!” Vresh shouted, her voice slowing down drastically as a wave of time dilation passed over her.

“That door!” Jeb shouted, pointing at the inconspicuous double doors before hopping backwards and slightly to the left, angling toward the door. Direction flipped again, but Jeb was ready for it this time, and adapted with barely more than a stumble, correcting himself with Myst

Vresh got to the door first and tore it open, lodging her fingers into the unpowered doors of the elevator. Jeb followed in behind her a second later, then slammed the mangled door shut. Or maybe it was a few minutes. Time was really hard to track at the moment.

The two of them huddled in the tight quarters of the elevator. The sound and strange distortions were quieter inside the elevator, but they could still hear them.

“What kind of shelter is this tiny?” Vresh demanded, glaring at him. “This isn’t going to protect us from mutating, it’s just going to make it slower.”

“Not a shelter,” Jeb said, sliding up the plexiglass on the side of the elevator and yanking down the Big Red Handle. One good thing Jeb liked about the military, they made everything stupid-easy to use, because you lose a lot of IQ in an emergency.

I can’t believe I looked under the carpet, Jeb thought, shaking his head.

When the Big Red Handle hit the bottom, Whatever breaks were holding the unpowered elevator in place were released, and for an instant, He and Vresh – in a man’s body – were suddenly weighless, falling through space.

Jeb estimated they fell about twenty feet before the emergency brakes kicked back in and slowed their descent, just enough so a normal human wouldn’t get injuries.

Jeb didn’t stick the landing, and went down, accidentally dragging Vresh down with him. The buxom enforcer – in a man’s body – landed on top of him, her breath –  and beard – tickling his face.

…Yeah, it’s not doing anything for me. ‘Jessie’ wasn’t exactly in Jeb’s strike zone.

Vresh coughed and pushed herself up, looking at the elevator with newfound respect.

“We must be thirty feet below the surface.”

“Try the doors,” Jeb motioned to the mangled double doors. Vresh peeled them open again, using her old finger-holds, revealing a short hallway leading to a heavy vault door straight out of Fallout.

Shit, are we gonna be able to get that open? Jeb wondered to himself. The electronic lock was dead, seeing as the power had been cut off since the Stitching.  The military designs redundancies, it’s not an actual bank vault, there has to be a way to manually get it open.

…on the inside.

“There should be a lever or a circular handle to open it from the inside,” Jeb said. “I’ll try and –“

“I’ve got this,” Vresh said, walking up to the door and putting her back to it.

She reached out with her hands, which simply ended at mid-bicep, with nothing but a black void remaining where her arms should’ve been. She frowned, her eyes darting off to the side as her arms wiggled, apparently feeling around.

“Ah, there it is.” Her arms began wiggling rapidly, and a moment later, there was a hiss of air as the vault came unlatched, swinging open.

Vresh drew her arms out of the void and entered the bomb shelter.

The main room was filled with dark computers. There were a couple lights still on, casting dim illumination on the EMP shielded command center. How the lights were still powered, Jeb couldn’t say. Nuclear batteries designed to last fifty years perhaps? It was just enough juice to see by, not enough to run any of the machines.

The sound of breaking concrete drew Jeb’s attention back to the massive double doors and the hallway beyond.

The elevator’s walls buckled and folded, dipping the top of the box below the door opening long enough for a bloody body to drag itself through and collapse onto the ground. once it was past, the walls sprung back up with the sound of a massive steel drum.

“Help,” Corporal Stevens groaned, staring straight up and panting like a newborn deer as he laid on the concrete. The kid was bleeding heavily from the lacerations on his back. Jeb didn’t know how he’d mustered the strength to bend the steel siding of the elevator, but it seemed like it had used the last dregs of the heavy gunner’s energy.

Any port in a reality-storm, I guess.

Jeb’s practical side advocated leaving Corporal Stevens to die right there in the hall outside the vault door. The kid was dangerous, and once he recovered, they were going to be enemies again. And he might recover pretty damn quick too, given how high his Body was. Jeb could always loot his body on the way out.

Jeb’s empathic side wanted to help the kid before he bled out because it was the right thing to do. Jeb had spent a little time with him and he knew he was a good kid, if possessed of a somewhat irrational dislike of aliens. Only somewhat irrational because his parents had died within the last six months, and – surprise – it had something to do with The Stitching. Hard not to blame aliens for that.

Jeb’s fairy side said:  ¿por que no los dos?

“Hey corporal,” Jeb said as he approached, kneeling outside of the man’s reach. He might be exhausted but the kid had just treated steel like cardboard. Not a good idea to get your neck within wringing-distance of those hands.

“Let’s make a Deal. I’ll bring you into the shelter and patch you up, in exchange, you don’t try to hurt me, and you’ll owe me a favor.”

The basics of fairy negotiation was to catch someone at their most vulnerable and really screw them over for peanuts. Bleeding out on a concrete floor was pretty damn vulnerable.

The heavy gunner nodded.

Click.

Jeb felt the Deal click into place, and he felt the sudden need to hold up his end. He used telekinesis to lift the kid off the ground and gourney’d him into the shelter, shutting the massive doors before any more surprises came through the compromised elevator.

“Hold still, this isn’t gonna hurt.” Jeb said, pulling his ring off his finger. Jeb wanted to know if the kid had any surprises in store for him.

Vresh watched as Jeb blew into the ring, encompassing Corporal Stevens in roiling grey Myst, which sank into his bones and lit him up from the inside for a moment before it leapt back out, forming a screen and giving Jeb a simple breakdown of his Class and Stats.

Steven Stevens

Heavy Gunner, level 26

Accolades: Mongo’s Strength, Codole’s Mysticism

Body 35

Myst 5

Nerve 12

Abilities: Anti-Material Rounds

Nothing out of the ordinary there, Jeb thought, nodding. He wanted to make sure his grunt was just a grunt and not secretly capable of poisoning their food or controlling their minds. You never know anymore.

“Okay, I need a first aid kit,” Jeb said, throwing a side door open and checking it out. He glanced at Vresh. “It’s usually a plastic box with a big red cross on it. Or something like that.” Jeb ditched the broom closet and moved on to the next side-room.

They found the emergency supplies in a matter of moments. Thank god for uniformity. It was like walking through a ghost of his memory. Everything was almost exactly where Jeb expected it to be. Jeb turned their gunner over and put all his effort into stopping the bleeding. With how high the kid’s Body was, nothing short of massive trauma and blood loss would kill him.

Getting your back mauled by glove-grenades was pretty traumatic.

Inspecting the wounds, Jeb was relieved to see that the cuts hadn’t gotten any further than the muscle. He’d be walking again in no time. The kid’s body was like hardwood, though, and Jeb was forced to get power tools and wire to stitch him up, since the needle kept bending.

Vresh was fairly interested in the process, and Jeb was glad to have her on assisting. If the corporal got violent, she could restrain him. Hopefully.

“I don’t think you need to worry about infection too much,” Jeb said as he put on the finishing touches, setting aside the bloody power drill aside and bending the final suture with a pair of pliers before clipping it. “Your body is magically enhanced and bacteria are not. Don’t ask me how it works.”

Jeb didn’t wanna fall down that rabbit hole. Everybody had that bank of gross facts to draw from, and Jeb remembered the one that only ten percent of your body is human and the rest is microbes.

How do those symbiotic microbes get empowered by the System? If you raised them out of balance they would be more damaging than anything else.

Nope, not falling down this rabbit hole.

Jeb just needed to buy a microbiologist and a chemist. Have them figure it out.

“That’s reassuring,” Corporal Stevens groaned into the table. At least local anesthetics still worked so the kid wasn’t thrashing everywhere. “So how long are we going to be here?”

Jeb glanced at Vresh.

“The Roil should be past us in a few hours. It rarely stops.”

“How do you know that, Jessie?” the corporal asked. “You an E.T. lover like Jeb?”

Vresh smiled. “Something like that.” She glanced at Jeb “I’m going to go get changed. Do you think this place has some spare clothes?”

“Probably not in your size.” Jeb said, shaking his head.

“I’ll have to improvise then. This is getting stuffy.” ‘Jessie’ motioned to his body.

“The heck are you on about?” the corporal asked, watching Jessie saunter off.

“I swear to god that guy is gay.” Stevens said as soon as she was gone.

“I hope not,” Jeb said. He had been secretly hoping to catch the transformation, but again: professionalism.

The corporal frowned at him from his spot on the table.

“So what’s your name anyway?” Jeb asked, despite having already read it. It was the polite thing to do.

“Steven.”

“Steven Stevens?” Jeb asked incredulously.

“I was the youngest of four brothers. I think my parents just didn’t give a shit anymore at that point.”

“Well Steven, you just stay put and I’ll go grab you something to eat…assuming this place has anything.” Jeb set his hand down on the table and created a trigger that would make a ton of noise if Steven tried to sneak around.

Okay, now all we need to do is grab some grub without walking in on Vresh. Jeb had seen enough Walking-in-on-a-girl-half-naked tropes to avoid them.

KSL:

Knock, Speak, Listen.

Jeb went over to the storage room where he’d seen MRE’s earlier while looking for first aid equipment. “Vresh, if you’re in there, sound off,” Jeb said, nice and loud before listening for a moment. Nothing.

Jeb opened the door and had mixed feelings about finding the room empty. He grabbed an MRE, some bottled garlic sauce and two cans of refried beans, heading back to the main room, where Steven was sprawled on the cleared off computer desk.

“Keep your back as straight as you can, you could probably pop those sutures with a cough,” Jeb said, helping Steven sit up to eat.

The kid sat up and Jeb handed him a can of refried beans and a spoon from the MRE.

He gave Jeb an incredulous look.

“I learned this one from my sergeant, who learned it from his, in a line unbroken since World War Two.” Jeb said, popping the top of his bean-paste off. He took a big bite of unflavored beans to clear some room, then dumped a healthy amount of sauce into the can, stirring half the scrambled eggs from the MRE into it.

“He called it The Fumigator.”

“Why?” Stevens asked.

“’Cause the gas will kill insects and small animals.” Jeb said, taking a bite. “Tastes good though.”

Steven looked doubtful, but he copied Jeb, eyebrows raising as he consumed the egg-bean-garlic sauce mush.

“That’s not bad.”

“Give it an hour or two.”

Steven chuckled at that, shoveling the mixture into his mouth with the enthusiasm of a grunt. The biggest keys for making a Fumigator taste good is starving the person for a day or so beforehand, and them being young enough to not have had anything better.

“So before she gets back, I wanna warn you not to freak out.” Jeb said, taking another bite of his Fumigator. “I’m pretty sure she could kill you without breaking a sweat when you were at your best. You’re not at your best right now, and she’s got no incentive to keep you alive, so mind your manners. Understood?”

“No. What do you mean by ‘she’?”

Vresh chose that moment to return. She was back in her original body, six and a half feet tall, reddish orange, with wicked curves in her horns, long black hair and wearing a XL men’s uniform.

“Gods, that’s better,” She said, drying her hair and stretching out. “Good news, the showers work, but they’re cold.”

I can tell.

“Swallow your food, Steven,” Jeb muttered. Steven swallowed.

Jeb could see the entire spectrum of emotions cross the kid’s face: surprise, intrigue, lust, anger, fear, lust, betrayal, some more fear, a glance at Jeb, then cautious neutrality.

“So you’re not human.” Steven said.

“I never said I was.” She answered with a hint of a smile.

“Hah!” Jeb slapped his knee, picturing it in his head. Can you imagine if ‘Jessie’ went up to them and said, hello, I am a human named Jessie? Most people don’t need to prove they’re human. Until recently, anyway.

Steven didn’t seem to find it as amusing as Jeb.  “But you knew the entire plot of The Stand. You said The Dark Crystal traumatized you as a kid!”

“It’s amazing what some interviews and a little self-study will do for you.” Vresh said, tossing the towel onto a nearby monitor.

Steven scowled. Whatever his opinion, he kept it to himself, which was probably for the better.

******

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Lagross’s Power.

Body 21 (18+3)

Myst 71 (48)

Nerve 26 (23)

Abilities: >>FATAL EXCEPTION. Ability missing or corrupted. Awaiting resolution by Administrator.<<<

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Jeb had the presence of mind to check his stats that evening. He’d grown just a bit stronger and collected a handful of points in the exchange. Either from the general, from Stevens, Vresh, or possibly a royalty from Guiding one of his orphans.

Two days went by agonizingly slow.  Needless to say there was a lot of tension in the air. It practically wafted off Steven as he sat in the corner of the bunker while they did things like playing checkers and passing the time with famous stories.

The Roil had rarely ever stayed in one place for two days before, to Vresh’s knowledge.

During that time, Jeb learned why Vresh was so clumsy: She spent a good portion of her time shapeshifted and undercover for the emperor, which jumbled her proprioception all up with bodies of different sizes and shapes.

They told each other stories about high school, too. Jeb had gone to a grimy backwater school whose primary charm was nobody ever shot nobody there.

“Well, it was more of a problem after I was already out of school,” Jeb admitted.

Vresh went to an incredibly privileged school for the young elite, made entirely out of marble laced with faradan additive which kept dirt and grime from touching it. Literal ivory towers made from the teeth of beasts that barely fit in the oceans they were hunted from. She said it was boring and dry, but Jeb could read between the lines. She went to fancy rich-person high school.

And from every perspective, the students could see the emperor’s castle, which rose high above the white city of Mestikos.

“Mestikos. It’s known for its healers, right?” Jeb asked. “I got a Vivicant Cane in the Impossible tutorial that mentioned something about it.”

“The Mestikos it was referring to was Old Mestikos,” “It was a keegan city lost to the desert during the Age of Legends. Its destruction marked the transition from keegan being the dominant power in Pharos, to the rise of the kitri dynasty.”

“Oh.”

“An object that can heal is beyond modern medical magic,” Vresh said. “That relic is a collector’s piece, and exceedingly valuable for it’s utility as well. You could probably buy half a city. Five thousand Bulbs, minimum.  What happened to it?

“I lost it saving a girl and her baby.” Jeb admitted.

Vresh blinked, then patted him on the shoulder. Her hands were so warm he could feel the heat radiating through his shirt. “They were worth it.”

“I tell myself that,” jeb said with a shrug. “but I haven’t seen them in –“

“Hey guys,” Steven said, frowning. “You feel that?”

Jeb and Vresh raised their heads and closed their eyes.

The oppressive weight above them was gone. It was hard to say how long it had been gone, but it seemed as though The Roil had finally decided to move on.

Maybe it had to stop and pick its teeth. Jeb thought sourly. He didn’t know how many other people made it to bunkers, but it couldn’t have been many. The Roil had been well fed on Nellis.

Jeb wasn’t sure why he felt like the storm was a living thing. Just a hunch.

They carefully opened the front door and went out to the elevator to listen. None of the strange noises or subtle shifts in air pressure that accompanied the Roil.

“Did you have to break the elevator?” Jeb complained as they tried to straighten the metal box out. The emergency brakes were clamped down and some of the siding was rubbing against the wall, making it even harder to pull them up.

“Yes.” Steven said, trying to shove a dent out and having moderate success. “The top of the elevator is shielded, for obvious reasons.”

“Here,” Vresh said, sliding past Jeb and putting a hand on the tilted ceiling. With a grunt, the enforcer shoved upward, popped the ceiling back up and straightened the elevator enough to move.

“You get the brakes, I’ll pull us up.”

Jeb didn’t argue and reached out and tugged on various parts outside the elevator. He couldn’t see with his Myst, but he could feel movement. With some practice, Jeb was pretty sure he could figure out how to visualize his environment with pulses of Myst. Like a bat.

But for now, he just fumbled around, tugging on things until he found the brakes.

“Got’em,” Jeb said, when he found them and pulled them open.

Vresh reached up toward the ceiling, and her arms disappeared, then she tugged herself up like she was climbing a rope. She rose up into the air, then lifted her legs and braced them on the ceiling, seemingly crouching upside down. Her face was about even with Jeb’s, but gravity drew her hair down to his knees and conspired to block his line of sight with her shirt.

With a soft screech of metal on metal, the elevator started rising as she pulled.

“I was half-certain we were going to have to cut our way out,” Steven said, eyeing Vresh on the ceiling, hauling on something hand over hand, minus the arms.

They rose, slowly but surely keeping their ears open for any sign of The Roil. Finally they made it to the surface again, and Jeb redeployed the brakes.

They cautiously stepped out into the open.

They were greeted by familiar blue skies and harsh, beating sun. The land, however, was wildly altered.

Beams of metal were bent and twisted, and a thick coat of faradan covered most surfaces, almost six inches deep in places. It appeared the Roil lingering in one place led to thicker stone. Nellis was buried under tons of force-creating rock.

Well, almost all of it.

What was left of Terry was strewn across the outside of the Base Commander’s office building, a twitching heap of flesh that by some unfortunate turn of events, was still alive. There were folds of Terry stacked on top of Terry, like he’d tried to crawl out of his own mouth again and again. A drug-induced nightmare made real by The Roil.

Now that it had passed, there was no way for him to wake up. Jeb didn’t dislike the guy that much, so he decided to extend an olive branch.

“Hey Terry,” Jeb said, kneeling down beside the twitching mass of flesh. “Can you understand me? Blink twice if you can understand me.”

The multiple eyes blinked twice.

Steven sprinted back into the office building and threw up in the corner, and Jeb winced. The prospect of being conscious in that state was unnerving.

“Terry, I’d like to make you a Deal. It’s gonna be a long, hot day, and I have no idea how much longer you’re gonna keep on suffering here without intervention. Could be hours, could be days. Maybe even longer. Here’s the deal. I’ll put you out of your misery in exchange for your Class Ability. I figure you’re not going to get much use out of it.”

Vresh frowned and gave Jeb a sidelong glance.

“One blink for yes, two for no.”

one blink.

Click. Jeb felt the Deal settle in his chest.

“Okay then,” Jeb said, beginning to feel around the temple of Terry’s original skull. It only took him a few moments to locate the squirmy thing attached to the side of Terry’s head. Still intact despite The Roil passing through. The storm might have less presence on the Fate dimension.

“Can you hand me that thick electrical wire jutting out of the building there?” Jeb asked, pointing at some thick copper wiring. Vresh yanked it out of the wall with ease and handed it to him.

Jeb slid the thick copper wire through the tiny portal into the fifth dimension, then wrapped it around the invisible worm-like Class Ability attached to Terry’s skull, only tangible to the wire itself.

Jeb cut the stitches and freed the eel-like Ability with a yank, then funneled his Myst through the ring as a catalyst.

There was a flash of light, and suddenly the unreal became real. There was an odd, blue-skinned eel in Jeb’s grip with oversized fangs that jutted out down beneath it. It looked nearly identical to Jeb’ s Class Ability when he’d pulled the thing out of his head, save for the coloring.

Moment of truth. Jeb’s biggest concern was that the book that spawned out of the creature would be blank for him. Hopefully the Deal he’d made with Terry would influence that.

You belong to me. Jeb thought. This time, he didn’t freak out or drop it. The creature wiggled, struggling in his palm for a moment before biting him, injecting its venom. Jeb winced before the ghost-like memories of a long-dead master of Myst flooded Jeb’s consciousness, battering up against his own will.

Knowing what to expect, Jeb sank into a cross-legged posture, maintaining his sense of self well enough to not act out the old keegan’s daily routines as his consciousness mingled with an ancient echo.

In a few minutes, the tide of memories pulled back, leaving him with nothing but a lingering sense of familiarity. In his palm, the eel stopped struggling and died, before its spine straightened, stiffening in his grip. Its skin stretched, and pages emerged to fill the new cavity.

“What. The fuck?” Vresh asked.

“Waste not, want not,” Jeb muttered, standing. Jeb formed blades of telekinetic Myst and diced the former human into tiny pieces. Once he was sure Terry was completely dead, he paused to read the cover.

Sonic Mysticism 101

That might come in handy, Jeb thought, tucking the scaly blue book under his elbow.

He’d had the idea of taking ability books from other people rattling around in the back of his head ever since he’d pulled his own out a couple months ago, but a good opportunity hadn’t come up. He didn’t want to hurt someone he cared about without testing it first, nor did he want to hunt people down and pry their ability from them like a psycho, so he kept the idea on the backburner.

Maybe he wouldn’t be able to do much with this one book, but if Jeb got enough of them, he could expand his knowledge base and begin to peel back the mysteries of the nature of Myst itself. Eddie was more interested in approaching it like an extension of physics, but Jeb had his suspicions that would only carry so far.

I mean, how the hell does a fifth dimensional eel turn into a book, anyway? Riddle me that, Eddie.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Steven said, looking down at the diced flesh of his former co-worker. “We had the monolith. The Roil wasn’t supposed to come here.”

Jeb met Vresh’s gaze, and the two of them turned to look at the distant monolith. The massive pale blue spike of pure faradan was peeking above a distant hangar, seemingly undamaged by the reality storm that had just swept through.

“I think that’s worth a look-see.”

“Agreed.” Vresh said, nodding.

The three of them jogged over to the monolith, their steps buoyed by the faradan’s odd force effect that pushed them away.

If the monolith really had been what was keeping The Roil away from them, then there might have been some kind of sabotage, some jagged tear in the stone with sparking wires that might suggest who or what had killed so many people.

When Jeb and Vresh arrived, there were two figures standing at the base of the pale blue stone. Each of them was seven feet tall, dressed in flowing robes, and extraordinarily pale. Keegan.

The one on the left had a sword’s sheath peeking from under his robes, and a goddamn Barrett over his shoulder!

The one on the right was tapping on a field of bright blue symbols that were scrolling down the front of the monolith, seemingly typing.

Neither of them were facing Jeb and co. Maybe they could –

“What the fuck do you E.T.s think you’re doing!” Steven shouted, beating the faradan off his gun and leveling it at the two keegan.

Or we could do that, Jeb thought sourly.

The one with the rifle whispered into his companion’s ear. Keegan had sensitive skin on the side of their head like a frog, not ears per-se. This contributed to their skull-like appearance.

“Eh?” The typist stopped and turned to look at them.

“Ji-ban, Gutei seeshi tsigeza, Vresh Tekalis. Ist zhe Xen shi Mestikos . Jzesh ki sho uotos, nos ji’ish shieban, esheikutz? ”

The odd keegan performed an elegant bow.

“You’re an Enforcer? I thought you looked familiar.” Steven said, his finger twitching on the trigger guard.

“You understood what he said?” Jeb asked.

“You two need to run.” Vresh said, a bead of sweat forming on her brow.