FORTY-ONE: Chaos

Everyone kept moving after the dad and his kids were gone. Alden didn’t know what the plan was, and he couldn’t understand ninety-five percent of the conversation around him. But it made him feel better that the scientists were taking action.

They stayed in the warehouse for a few minutes, examining places the demon bugs had touched, calling out information to each other. Alden watched them intently, trying to understand.

They always examined the damaged spots from at least a foot away. So maybe even touching the residue left behind by the things was hazardous. Alden followed Thenn-ar around, peering at everything she peered at and always straining his eyes and ears in an effort to detect the flying black dots before they approached.

There were always one or two where he could see them now. They didn’t have anything like a standard flight pattern. One would spiral toward the ground. Another would drift like it was caught in an invisible breeze. The one that scared him the most drifted for a while and then, inexplicably, changed direction and shot through the air rapidly for a few feet before drifting again.

They didn’t just leave holes in things. Though that seemed to be the most common result of them banging into an object, some of the spots the scientists examined weren’t places that Alden would have recognized as damaged at all. A rough patch of metal, a fine smear of ash, a shiny puddle like a drop of resin on the pavement. If Joe’s assistants understood anything from these signs, Alden didn’t know what it might be. After about five minutes, the examination ended with them all gathering around to stare at a single tiny hole in the floor.

Alden stared at it, too, noting the way the edges were jagged and sharp on one side and crumbly on the other. As if part of the concrete had started turning into chalk. After looking at it, the scientists all turned and left the building. Alden followed after them, nervous and confused.

If the things punch through metal, then buildings aren’t that safe. But if they only punch through sometimes, then it’s still better to have a barrier between us and the outside, right?

The scientists looked out over the marleck fields. The man said something to Thenn-ar and gestured toward them, but she shook her head and led the way down the packed dirt of a narrow road. Alden’s best guess was that they were going to the group of farm buildings he’d seen on his first evening on Moon Thegund.

They’d been on the other side of the enormous field. It was a long walk, and he understood why Thenn-ar didn’t want to go through the bushes. It would be hard to see the small demons coming; they could drift right through a patch of leaves into your face. Even if the road wasn’t as direct a path, at least the visibility was good enough.

It was always the same dull yellow overcast sky every time Alden was on Moon Thegund. Nothing ever appeared from beyond the dingy, low-hanging clouds. He wasn’t sure if the fact that he’d never seen anything like darkness or dawn was happenstance, or if the moon had extremely long days. Maybe there was no night on this side at all.

He hoped that was the case. Being here in the dark would be a hundred times worse.

It’s not quiet anymore, he realized as he followed the scientists down the road. Moon Thegund had always been eerily silent. But now, in addition to their footfalls, there was a low drone.

And the more he looked, the more of the tiny demons he saw.

Any time one approached, the scientists dodged it. Alden saw one emerge from the ground a couple of feet ahead of the man in front of him. He shouted and pointed, and the guy stepped away from it as it buzzed around a few inches above the dirt.

The scientist grimaced, but he didn’t look surprised.

Of course. If they go through things randomly, that includes the ground. He had seen the hole in the floor of the warehouse, but he hadn’t put it together. And maybe it was even worse than that. He’d had a passing thought that a larger than expected percentage of the things were rising up from the grass.

What if they were? What if the demons were coming from beneath them instead of falling on them from above? How could you dodge something that might just fly right through the bottom of your foot?

I want my movement trait.

He clenched the putty ball he’d gotten the girl to give him tightly in his left fist. He still had Joe’s ring on that hand, and the hand was in his pocket. One more layer of protection. If he dropped it while his skill wasn’t active on it, the magic ring would hold it against his palm for a second. If he dropped it while his preservation was active, interfering with the ring, then his pocket would still be holding it. That should be enough.

One of his real victories in his nightly lessons with the professor had been mentally weaving around the “loss of contact breaks entrustment” rule that came with the skill. To start with, he’d had to hold his item directly with his hands or another body part. But that had felt limiting and not quite right based on his understanding of what the skill did.

After all, he was pretty sure his sense that he was touching the objects with his hands was itself manufactured in some way by the skill. He didn’t think skin-to-carried-item was really what was going on, so a rule requiring apparent skin contact was just a needless complication.

Despite his initial enthusiasm for altering his perception until he could do earth-shattering things with the skill, Alden had since modified his expectations. He hadn’t been able to make many significant changes to the skill through the perception route. Joe assured him that it was an important thing to work on, but it was also clear to him now that it was never going to be some universe-breaking loophole for skill use. Instead, what he could manage was wriggling away from one reasonable assumption about the scope of the skill to another reasonable assumption.

And then practicing it until it clicked.

He thought he’d had fairly easy success with the “loss of contact” rule because it already felt like a point of confusion. If he preserved things by carrying them, then how could entrustment just end when he shoved a thing in his pocket? He was still carrying it, wasn’t he?

He’d gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, and now he could tote preserved items around inside other things. As long as he didn’t let the ball rest in his pocket while his lab coat was dragging the ground, he’d still be bearing it with no help. The carriage wouldn’t cease, so the entrustment wouldn’t break.

And as long as it didn’t, his trait should work. Where’s that switch inside me? That one that activates Azure Rabbit?

Days ago, he’d been almost positive he could turn the trait on and off without the System’s help. At first, he felt around inside himself, but after a couple of minutes he decided it must not be the right tactic. Perhaps it was unnatural to look for such a literal ON button inside his own mind and body.

If I was about to leap over something or duck or take any other action, I would just do it. Let’s try that.

He focused on the feeling he’d had running to the lab that first day. The long, long jog that ate through the miles, the tiny adjustments to the way he moved until he got better at it.

Take a step like one of those steps. Tweak your center of gravity. You remember what it feels like.

It was hard. The demon bugs kept drawing his attention. And when he focused on his body, it made him hyperaware of the physical effects of his own fear. His pulse was too fast, his breathing shallow, his hands cold and clammy. There was a tightness in his chest like a rubber band that was about to burst.

Alden Thorn—Dead of a Heart Attack at Age Fifteen.

In a way, though, cataloging the tangible signs of extreme stress made it easier to deal with the emotions. He couldn’t stop his heart from pounding like it was trying to escape from his body, but at least the feeling was solid.

It gave him a different perspective to approach the problem from. If the fear was something chemical and unavoidable happening to him thanks to his own animal response to danger, then all the effort he was putting into mentally crushing it with willpower and a can-do attitude was wasted. You didn’t will a physical reflex out of existence. You didn’t feel guilty about it.

You just dealt with it.

Easier said than done, but it was better than it had been. His mind was a little clearer.

I am extremely terrified of dying on Moon Thegund, he admitted to himself. I am probably not going to stop being extremely terrified anytime soon. I’m a mess, and the trouble’s only just started. That’s…something I’m going to want to unpack. But not here.

Not until I get back home to Aunt Connie and Boe and Jeremy.

Now I just need to move.

He turned his attention back to how he was walking. Get the feel of it right Make the power click on. Somehow.

After a few minutes, Alden grew too invested in the effort, and one of the demon bugs approached him without him realizing until it was only a couple of feet away. He leaped away from it, and there!

The trait was active. He’d felt it happen, like it had fallen into place through a combo of effort and adrenaline.

He moved out of the demon’s path and re-checked his surroundings before trying to figure out what he’d done.

It was like something that had been wound tight had loosened up. He tried to place the feeling inside himself, but that didn’t seem quite right. The effect was very close to him but more peripheral. Less of the “switch in the brain” feeling he’d had when the System activated the skill for him and more of a…

Huh. That’s very weird.

Alden tried to come up with a metaphor for the sensation of the trait’s activation so that he could make it sensible and repeatable, but the best description he could manage for himself was that it was the opposite of a feeling he’d had before. That creeping sensation when you walked down a dark alley and felt like someone was watching you…activating the trait himself was somehow giving him the opposite of that.

Why is it so different? And I didn’t even know that creepy feeling had an opposite. What would you even call it if it did?

The opposite of feeling like you’re being spied on? The opposite of being at risk? The opposite of a privacy violation?

Security? No…having more personal space maybe?

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That doesn’t have anything to do with movement. What is this?

Not quite trusting his own senses, Alden took several steps. Azure Rabbit was definitely working, exactly the same as before. Somehow it made the ground feel more solid than it had been a second ago.

But the way he’d gone about making it function seemed illogical…and he was the one who’d done it.

And what was even weirder was that he still had a faint sense of the un-creepy feeling.

I guess it’s nice, he finally decided. Almost like it’s just a little easier to exist than it was a second ago. Finding existence slightly easier is good right?

Plus, he was faster now. He was falling into using the trait well, just like he had before. It was a relief to know that if one of the zippier chaos bugs pelted toward him, he’d have that much more time to dodge it.

The group rounded a curve in the road, and the buildings Alden had seen before appeared in the distance at the edge of the marleck field. The buzzing sound was louder now. The number of bugs was increasing.

Soon, it would be impossible to avoid them.

How long is this going to last? How bad is it going to get?

As if in answer to his thought, the last few symbols on his interface flickered and vanished. For the first time in two weeks, Alden saw the world the way he’d seen it every day of his life until he became an Avowed.