"Oracle Jack"

The fire had gone out during the night, but I ignored the pre-dawn February chill as I paced about the cabin, not even bothering to right the upturned furniture and clean up the signs of a struggle. They had her, and if I didn’t figure out where they were taking her soon, I’d never get her back.

Wakened by my noise, Mallory wandered down the stairs. She took one look at my haggard pacing around the lamplit desk and went over to the hearth to re-light the fire. “Anything?” She asked, though she had to know the answer would be no. I saw her struggle with the matches and the kindling, failing to get the fire going twice. In the dim light, you could almost not see the bruise on her cheekbone. She was a city girl, tough as nails but no good at roughing it.

I ignored her, and tried again. She didn’t have a clue how it worked, but she’d seen me do it before - get a reading on something I shouldn’t know. Frankly, I never really bothered with “how” or “why” much myself. What she didn’t know was that it worked best when I was relaxed, calm. This time, it was life or death for Helena. I couldn’t be calm, no matter how I tried.

Around the time that the sun was threatening to come up from the south-eastern horizon, William appeared as well, staggering a beeline to the kitchen tucked off to one side and making coffee. By that point, Mallory had managed to get a fire started. The first waves of warmth drifted through the small space, reminding me how cold it was, especially over by the desk and the front door.

William passed around mugs of coffee, and leaned over the desk as I paced. He wasn’t like me, not quite, but he’d been my friend for so many years that I’d long since wondered if he’d picked up some of my tricks through sheer osmosis. He spent a few moments staring at the paper, blank in the center but with a myriad of seemingly arbitrary glyphs, symbols, shapes, and meandering lines filling in the margins. The outermost edges of the paper were almost black with the ink from my pen. Most of the time, it took far less effort to reach my answers, far fewer lines of ink, but I wasn’t calm and it was making the answer I needed somewhat... unclear. It’s hard to explain, as you might imagine.

After staring for some time, William nudged me. “Jack, this line here should go through the center.” He pointed to a horizontal sweep that formed the base of a formation of shapes.

He was right - it protruded farther toward the center than anything else around it. But I’d already seen that. “Yes. But there’s a lot of center, Will.” I replied, sipping the coffee.

“Then maybe it will help if I do this.” William grabbed my pen and, before I could stop him, drew a single stroke on the paper.

“No!” I cried, lunging to stop him and spilling hot coffee all over my hand, but it was too late. One wrong stroke of ink from an incautious hand would destroy everything I’d set up so far, put me back to square one, corrupt the whole process and corrupt the answer.

Surprised, he stepped back and offered me the pen. “Sorry, sorry.”

I snatched the implement from his fingers. Forgetting my coffee-burned hand except to hold it away from the desk, I leaned over the desk to check the damage. I was surprised to see that all he’d done was extend that horizontal line by about an inch, protruding it into the paper’s empty center. It didn’t look corrupted. In fact -

William, probably seeing the look in my eyes, stepped away from me and went over to sit with Mallory near the fire, hoping I wasn’t paying enough attention that their quick kiss might be awkward. They’d been married for two years now, but I think that Mallory still felt like a little bit of an outsider whenever William and I were in the same room.

I was following with my eyes the invisible lines of potentiality that I could see on the page, extending from William’s stroke in all directions. I could see the answer, lurking there in the lines, I just had to follow them with my pen until it was clear. I sat down, placed the pen to paper, and started tracing. A graceful arc here, a line across intervening space, a sharp curve down toward the bottom of the page, and on and on, one step at a time.

“I got it!” I jumped up just as the upper limb of the winter sun appeared over the trees on the horizon. It was clear now, so clear. Where Helena was being taken, and how I’d get her back. The fourteen hours or so of lead they had didn’t matter if I didn’t need to follow their trail - I just needed to go right to its endpoint. There was one detail there I didn’t yet understand, but I suspected it would become clear. Get there and - well, I hadn’t got that far yet. But I couldn’t bear to imagine leaving Helena to them any longer. “I have to go downtown right now.” I ran to the coatrack and grabbed my coat.

William met me there, donning his own. “I’m coming with you.” He said.

“Look, it’s going to be dangerous. You know the sorts of people - ”

“And that’s why I’m not letting you go alone. Mallory, stay here, stay out of sight. We’ll be back.”

“What? Will, you’re out of your mind. I’m coming too.” Mallory stood. “I can help. Besides, they’ve been here once while you two were away. They could come back.”

I looked over to my friend. It was his wife, so I wasn’t going to speak on the matter.

“Fine.” He agreed, conceding her point. “Let’s go.”

Mallory nodded quickly and hurried upstairs to change. She was back in moments, bathrobe gone, in jeans and a sweater.

I grabbed my keys out of the mouth of the pewter toad on the mantle, but William stopped me. “My car is faster, Jack. I’ll drive.” I was about to argue, but I realized he was right - my beat up old truck would be better on the downslope out of the mountains, but his smaller, newer car would be more likely to make the whole trip without overheating and delaying us. It would also be easier to drive in the city.

We piled into the car just as the sun’s bottom edge came up, and William headed down the winding road out of the mountains, avoiding the hazardous dirt-road shortcuts. There weren’t many other cars on the road, so he didn’t use the brake much, speeding and gambling that the cops weren’t patrolling that far out. We knew from experience that they rarely did. Within twenty minutes we hit the highway, and turned towards the city.

That part of the trip, those ninety minutes of featureless road, were nerve-wracking. Mallory and Will were grimly silent, so I was too, though I fidgeted uneasily with the radio several times. I realized I’d left my piece of paper in the cabin, but I remembered it clearly - I didn’t really need it. We were still going over the speed limit, but William kept his speed low enough to avoid the attention of the cops. We didn’t need that kind of delay.

When the first signs for the city came into view, William broke the silence. “Where to?” He asked.

I sighed. “All the way downtown. The bank.” He’d know I meant the headquarters of my former employer, back when I could hold a job. If there was a dead center to the city, that building was sitting right on top of it.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Jack.” William knew as well as I did what a risk that was. But I was certain. Why it was there, I didn’t know. I just knew that it was.

We picked up a tail as soon as we got off the highway and onto the city streets. It was a black car with tinted windows. Pretty obviously one family or other flagging Jack’s car as being associated with me. They were pretty content to stay a few cars back for a while, but as soon as the second car appeared they both got really close. I didn’t know if they were rivals or allies of each other, but it didn’t matter. They were all my enemies. I watched the cars inch up closer behind us. The one in front was going to make a move. “Here they come.” I warned William.

“Dammit.” He made a sudden move, cutting off a driver to his right, and then turning immediately. The cacophony of squealing brakes and blaring horns followed us down a narrow side street, but one of the black cars extricated itself from the sudden traffic jam and moved to close the gap. We turned back onto a main road, and two more black cars pulled out in front of us. Someone rolled down a window in one of them and leaned out.

“Get down!” William urged, then threw the wheel to one side. There was a burst of crackling gunfire, but I don’t think any of it hit the car. Maybe they were firing at each other. I could never tell what set the two families’ cars apart, if anything did. Gunning the engine, William doubled back and tried to circle around the cars. At every turn, it seemed there was another black car screeching to a halt and turning to follow us. It was hopeless, I could see. They were out in force. Probably to counter each other more than us, but that detail didn’t help the situation.

Eventually we got a cop on our tail as well. Maybe he was on the payroll, maybe he was trying to pull us over for the legitimately dangerous stunts William was pulling. Either way, it was death to stop. William gunned the engine, and took off, and those flashing red and blue lights followed. One cop became two, became four. Some of the black cars stayed with us too, but they shadowed off to the side and tried their best not to look involved.

Then something in front of the car clicked with what I’d seen in the diagram. It wasn’t the main answer, but a detail I remembered, the one that hadn’t fit. “There.” I pointed to a street that was blocked off with construction barricades. William didn’t need to be told twice - he took the turn hard, wheels skidding, and smashed through the barricades.

The splinters cleared from the windshield just in time for William and I to see the demolished state of the bridge across the canal. There was no way to stop in time, no way to turn off. William slammed on the brakes anyway, but we went over the edge with a lot of speed left.

I felt not fear, but rage, frustration. No, I thought, it couldn’t end like that. Helena -

I gasped and sat up with a start. I was lying on the floor of the empty cabin. The morning sunlight was scattering through the crystal vase on the windowsill, painting a tiny square rainbow on the wood paneling in front of my face. I jumped to my feet and ran to the window, hearing the sound of an engine turn over. I was just in time to see the rear of William’s car disappear down the drive. Beyond it, the sun had just cleared the pines on the horizon.

It took a moment to register where I was. When I was. I didn’t know how or why, but I could see the pieces coming together. It was impossible to get to Helena the way we’d tried. Impossible. The families were too powerful.

I stood over the desk, staring at the piece of paper and its otherworldly abstract patterns. Potentiality had not shifted. I was seeing it clearer. I took up the pen and made a single stroke alteration, connecting William’s pen stroke to one of mine. The picture shifted. The detail that had been bothering me was gone. The answer was the same. The path to the goal was different. More circuitous.

I grabbed the page and the keys to my truck and left. We hadn’t locked up the first time, and I didn’t bother now. I had to estimate how far we were ahead of me, so that I wouldn’t show myself to them on the downslope. When I came to the steep dirt-road track that cut the neck of a long switchback, I took it without hesitation, driving dangerously fast on that narrow road to get to the other end before William’s car. I was reckless, and I should have crashed, but I didn’t. I made it there. It was impossible to know, when I pulled back onto the road, whether or not I was in front of us, but I assumed I was.

The highway passed in a blur. I took it far too fast, but the cops didn’t appear behind me. I estimated that I had about an hour’s lead on William’s car when I pulled my truck off the road just inside the city and got in a cab that was waiting at the curb. “Head into downtown. I don’t know the address but I’ll show you the way.” I told him, handing him a twenty.

The cabbie got the car moving, and I directed him toward that construction site. I got out a block from it, told him to keep the change, and loped around the corner. The barricades we would smash later were intact, and the bridge was obviously missing. Stacks of metal I-beams stood on the other side next to a crane, but no-one was around.

I stepped up to the edge and looked down. The water, about twenty feet below me, was mostly frozen and likely deadly should someone drive a car into it. I didn’t have much time.

That was when I saw the barge, not far upstream. It was moored next to another construction site, an apartment building going up. It was laden with huge bales of something wrapped in shrink-wrap. I ran down the canal and picked my way down to get a better look. Yes, perfect. Insulation. That puffy pink fiberglass stuff that might, just might, stop a car. It was all I had, and time was running out. I pulled the mooring lines out, expecting at any moment someone would yell for me to stop, but no-one did. I walked along the canal, letting the current out toward the bay push the barge closer to the partially completed bridge. Just before it was in position, I tied the mooring lines around the concrete pilings that had already been laid. The barge stopped, right in the middle of the gap. It would have to do.
 

Just then, I heard sirens in the distance. Lots of sirens. I ran down the length of the canal, and back up to street level, putting the commotion behind me. Likely most of the families’ goons were clustered around the police chase and its inevitable conclusion, but that window of opportunity was closing. Luckily, it wasn’t far. Ten blocks or so. I could see the all-too-familiar skyscraper ahead, towering into the chilly February sky, glass faces reflecting the late morning sun. Once, I’d worked in there, and I had never thought I would return - but that was exactly what I was doing. Saving Helena, or dying in the attempt. A second time.

This story written based on a prompt from the Short Story Competition on rpgcrossing.com.

"The Big Reveal"

The conference was all abuzz, at least, as abuzz as an archaeology conference ever gets. Every conversation I passed seemed to be on the subject of Dr. Brennan’s “big reveal”, which started in two hours. The organizers couldn’t have been happy with the last minute addition to the schedule, but Johannes Brennan’s name was big even in those days. It hadn’t been ten months yet since he’d claimed to have found references to Atlantis in a collection of walrus-tusk inuit scrimshaw from Canada.

It had been some years since I’d seen the man myself, and given the manner in which we’d parted I would have been perfectly happy to leave it that way even despite his “big discovery”. He was a media darling, letting the rigor of his scientific conclusions slip in order to make headlines. Sadly, most of the community was doing that sort of thing in those days, because headlines sell better than dry, accurate conclusions. We’d argued over that, and it had become heated, and what had before been a close partnership had fallen apart in moments.

I wasn’t at the conference because I cared what Brennan was about to show to the world. I was there because he’d asked me to meet him there, he’d sent a note that said he was sorry and that he was wrong. I frankly didn’t believe the written apology, I suspected he wanted something from me. I had been nothing but a professor for a decade by that point, but I still had influence with some of the more established museums and collectors that Brennan had never bothered to cultivate for himself.

There was a large, burly, decidedly not archaeologically inclined man standing in front of the doors leading to the backstage of the main auditorium, which at other times of the year was used for orchestral performances. I showed him my badge, and he let me through. I noticed that he was keeping about a half-dozen people with cameras and notepads at bay - reporters. I didn’t then and don’t now think that archaeology should be groundbreaking enough for reporters to come in person and shout questions. Our science should be slow gradual, like the forces that make it a challenge.

The backstage area was poorly lit, and a heavy curtain shielded it from the main stage. I walked in cautiously, hands in front of me, trying not to make a fool of myself.

“Allen!” Johannes’ voice called out from somewhere to my left. More than three decades hadn’t taken the youthful enthusiasm out of his voice. I turned, and saw a shadowy figure that fit what I remembered of my old partner. “You came after all. I’m glad. Come over here.” His arm on my shoulder guided me through the darkness to a chair, and bid me sit. A matching chair creaked a few feet away as Johannes Brennan sat down.

“Johannes, what’s this all about then?” I asked. I’d have preferred to be more formal, but he led off with my first name and habit took over. “Why’s it so dark in here? My old eyes aren’t up to this. I have no idea how yours are.” I dug into my pockets for the penlight I was in the habit of carrying.

“I didn’t want to shock you, Allen.” Johannes said as I was searching for the light. “Let me answer your first question before we address the second, okay?”

My suspicions rose. I didn’t think Johannes capable of doing me any harm, but I saw in this the makings of stage magic, and I didn’t want to be conned. “No, Brennan. Everything on the table. I must insist. No theatre.”

He sighed. “All right.” I heard him get up and walk off, and there was the sound of a switch being thrown. A pair of large fluorescent lights overhead began to warm up. I saw that in addition to the chairs, there was a hard-shell suitcase not far away. I heard him rummaging through some things, as if looking for something. “I know you didn’t believe me about the apology, Allen. And you were right not to.”

“So you do want something from me.” I called back.

“Yes, but the apology was sincere. I have... perspective now. I was wrong. Becoming famous through sensation... it’s cheap. I hope you’ll forgive me for my past mistakes.” He sounded sincere, but dismissive of his own past arguments, as if the greatest dispute in my life or his meant nothing to him now.

“How much time do you have?” I guessed. The only way I knew to give a man that kind of perspective was a terminal diagnosis.

“What?” He called back, confused. “Oh, no, Allen, I’m not dying.”

“Everyone’s dying.” I replied. “At our age especially.”

The rummaging stopped for a moment, then continued after a few heartbeats.

“What are you looking for?” I asked after a moment’s silence.

“Wanted to see if there was a mask in their stage props.” He replied.

“No theatre, Brennan.” I replied, getting creakily to my feet. “Or I’m leaving.”

“All right. Don’t say I didn’t try.” A lid slammed shut and I heard Johannes’ footsteps returning.

“What is it you want from me then?” I asked, sitting back down.

“I want you to demonstrate something for me on stage in two hours.” Brennan replied from the other side of the pile of chairs. “Among other reasons, because people know you’re no fan of... well, theatre.” He seemed to hesitate a moment before stepping out into the open.

If I’d have been standing, I would have fallen over. Johannes Brennan looked as if the intervening years hadn’t touched him. He looked just as he had on the day we’d parted ways, when we were both in our early thirties. His hair was as black as it had been, and there were no creases in his forehead. I assumed it was makeup. “Brennan, what the hell is with the facepaint?” I asked. “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re as old as I am.”

He laughed, and shook his head. “It’s not makeup, Allen.” My old colleague bounced up onto the balls of his feet like a schoolboy getting ready for a footrace. “I found it. No-one else believed it existed.”

I frowned, not knowing to what he was referring.

“The Fountain of Youth, Allen!” Johannes practically ran over to the suitcase and started fiddling with the combination code. “I’m not going to be sensationalist about this one. I don’t need to. I just need someone to walk out on stage and demonstrate it for the camera, and then I will come out and answer questions.”

I put two and two together. “And you picked me.” I realized he probably considered that more of a kindness to me than a favor to him.

“If you’ll do it.” Johannes didn’t look up. “I could dupe any of the stodgy old professors here into it, but I’d feel bad about it.”

I didn’t bother telling him that what he was proposing was still sensationalism of a sort, or that everyone knew that there was no such thing as the fountain of youth. He would dismiss both of these things out of hand, and I realized I was willing to dismiss the latter as well, after seeing him. “Supposing I agreed. What would I have to do?”

“Walk out on stage, sit down, drink this, then eat about half your body weight in an hour.” Johannes held up a tumbler-sized metal container. “I told them to get me catering for thirty, just in case.”

“I can’t eat half my body weight in an hour, Johannes.” I pointed out. My teeth were still originals, at least, but my stomach simply wasn’t up to it.

“I didn’t think I could either. But it happened. You’ll be very, very hungry.” He set the tumbler down and closed the case, then turned back to me. “Total irony, you know. The place where I found this was graveyard. People who found the place drank it in the middle of the jungle, and their bodies starved trying to reverse time... wasting away...” He drifted off into the past for a moment and I saw a flash of something far older than Johannes looked crossed his face. It lasted only a moment though. “Anyway, I went in as if the stuff was hazmat, got my samples, and got out.”

“How does it work?” I asked cautiously.

“Magic? Super-powerful homeopathy?” Johannes smiled and shrugged. “Actually seems to be nanites. Got a sample analyzed. The lab said there were metallic particles in suspension of irregular shape. I need to rent an electron scope to learn more.”

“You don’t know how it works, but you drank it?” He had always been impulsive, but that sounded uncharacteristically stupid, even for him.

He nodded. “Once the lab said it was probably safe to drink, I gave it a try.” He gestured to himself. “And it worked out.”

I put my palm to my forehead and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe any of what I was seeing and hearing, but I was beginning to.

“I’ll show you everything. The place even. It’s... rather remote.” Johannes urged. “But in ninety minutes the people out there want to see what I’ve found. No showmanship. Just the facts.”

“Just me growing... thirty-five years younger. On stage.” I clarified.

“Yup.” He replied simply. “You get to be young, I get the reveal nobody can question.” He set the tumbler on the floor. “What do you say?”

“Johannes, you’re insane.” Was the only response I could manage.

“That’s not an answer.” He countered.

My mind crept backwards. I saw the events of my life in reverse - my professorship, my days at the museum, then my days in the field scraping layers of dust off of pottery at dig sites. Ellen, the only woman I’d ever loved, walking out on me, then the good times when we were together. Everything that I could do again these past thirty five years or so. A second chance. Hell, as many chances as I wanted if Johannes could find the place again. Not just for me, either. Potentially, for everyone, at least eventually.

I sighed, and bent over and grabbed the tumbler. “I’ll do it.” I finally said weakly.

“Attaboy, Allen!” Johannes reached across and clapped my shoulder. “I’ll go see about the food.” He jumped up and practically pranced out of view. I heard a door slam in his wake.

I held up the tumbler, feeling the weight of a change bigger than any I’d ever known, and swirled its contents a little. “I’ll do it.” I repeated weakly.

This story written based on a prompt from Klazzform's Short Story Competition on rpgcrossing.com.

"Last Stand"

I stood alone on top of the wall, watching them soar past. A tiny part of my mind told me I couldn’t get them all, my defense was futile. I was the last one left, everyone else had fled, but still the steady stream blew past me. Each one I missed would land, and spill its pallid, infectious taint on whatever it touched. And from each landing, that taint would spread.

The spores were fragile, at least. They had to be, to float on the wind like that. I’d ditched my gun for a splintered, five foot length of plastic that had once been a flagpole or a tent strut or something. Shooting the spores was hopeless, but at least I could break them with the stick. And each one I got burst in a shower of gray goo, that goo pelting me and slicking the concrete under my boots. I was tainted beyond hope of a cure, I knew that, but perhaps I could do just enough to buy time for the rest to get clear. Perhaps I could save some of the fleeing colonists before I succumbed to the taint. Perhaps it was hopeless, but I had to try.

I swung again, and a whole swath of the floating spores, clumped together into ponderous globs, fell to pieces. I tried not to think about the rest, the hundreds that drifted past me even as I cut down dozens and scores of their number. It was hopeless. The colony was lost, I was lost, and if anyone escaped, it would only be a matter of time before they were lost too.

I swung again, and more of the spores popped into showers of deadly pus-fluid. All I could do now to slow the spread I was doing, and it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough...

“Peter, come down from there this instant!” I blinked, and the mottled, whitish spores faded to transparency, laced with rainbow ripples. My tattered uniform and boots vanished, and I was barefoot, feeling the wall’s rough concrete against my skin. I was covered head to toe in slimy soap scum, and so was the wall I stood on. “You’ll fall and break your neck!” She stalked over to Johnny and roughly yanked the bubble wands out of his hands. Johnny, not quite three, whimpered a little, and she picked him up as well.

“Aww, Mom!” I dropped my broken broomstick as the last of the bubbles drifted over and past me, to land in the grass beyond. “But that was my last stand!”

Mom’s worried, angry face softened a bit. “The way you were going, it would have been.” I hopped down, picked up my stick, and walked over toward the porch. “Go clean that off. Dinner’s ready.”

Disappointment lessened by the promise of food, I dashed into the house, heading for the bathroom. A fresh change of clothes and a towel were waiting for me, so I turned on the shower. The alien taint proved no match for the pounding spray, and it reluctantly sheeted off my skin to spiral down the drain.

This story originally written for the Literary Maneuvers Challenge on writingforums.com.

"Darkness"

I found the stone as the sun dipped below the trees on the western side of the cemetery, and the electric lights pointed at the nameplates of the gaudier graves began to come on. Grass was grown up around it, and lichen had begun its slow work on the lee side. My cane found the earth in front of it soft, not packed down by the feet of regular visitors. 

The name on it was one I’d not seen nor heard in two decades, but which had lived in my memory ever since. It was the name of the woman I’d failed, all those years ago. The woman who had turned to me for help in a dark hour.

“I’m sorry.” I said, echoing the last words I had said to her, all those years ago. This time, the meaning was wholly different. Around me, the shadows of the trees deepened, and the last few other visitors headed for the gates.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the twenty years roll back, to the day the grave was filled, the marker set in place. A priest in black intoned in the local language, while the shadowy figures of the assembled friends and family huddled against an oppressive gray drizzle. I recognized none of them, but I could see the empty space where I should have stood, a hollow spot off to one side, a place in the soggy grass where there should have been a pair of feet standing. But I was at work that day, probably, not even knowing what was going on.

There were footsteps behind me. I turned to see a bent-backed man with an electric lantern heading my way. As soon as he had my attention, he waved and said something I didn’t understand, but I picked up the meaning - he was the groundskeeper, and it was time to go. 

I turned back to the grave one more time. I knew I wouldn’t be back, not ever. I had to come at least once. “I’m sorry.” I repeated, at a loss for what to say. After a moment’s silence, I turned and followed the groundskeeper towards the gate, as the darkness outside grew to match the black guilt within.

"Sewer Boss"

“Oy, Boss, got joydivers at the north bend.” The voice that crackled out of the makeshift intercomm was Galen’s - breathy and raspy as always. “Two of ‘em."

Damn. I cast a forlorn look at the dented pot bubbling on the cookfire, then reached over and keyed my own receiver. “Armed?"

“One big rifle, both have sidearms, I think that’s it. Looks like cartridge guns.” Galen was never that good at identifying technology at a distance, of course, so I didn’t completely trust that guess.

I sighed. “Keep clear, I’ll be right up.” Shielding my hands from the hot metal with a bundle of rags, I moved the pot off the fire and covered it before grabbing my lucky axe and heading out of my hut.

Some of the others were already milling about near the north side of the village when I got there. Axe haft resting comfortably on my shoulder, I beckoned for them to follow, knowing that no command that they go home and let me handle this would do. Moving through the group, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was nearly a foot taller than the tallest of them, and broader. Pretty soon, I’d have to go looking for a bigger axe blade again.

I broke into a run when I got into the tunnel, slowing only when the intruders’ light reflected off the walls before me. The winding passage was a sewer in better times, but that was over eight hundred years ago. For the last decade that I’d lived in them, only rarely did I ever think of them as sewers rather than caves or catacombs.

A few of the others kept up - Zeke and Boudan as always, my self-appointed personal retinue, as well as the newcomer that everybody called Ironsides. Everyone else fell behind, not surprisingly. My longer legs could cover more ground than most with each step than theirs.

Slowing to a creeping pace, I held my axe before me and listened. As usual for joydivers, they weren’t being particularly subtle.

“...what I saw in the service, this ain’t so bad. Just old tunnels.” A male voice filled with bravado was saying.

“Okay, I’m impressed.” A second voice, female, slightly nervous, replied. “Let’s go, we shouldn’t be here.”

“You kidding Mera? All the way down here and no sport? That’s stupid?” The male replied. “Let me bag one rooch. Everyone’s better off the less of ‘em there are.” Cowards to boot. Rooches, the duck-sized beetles we ate for food, were about as dangerous as the lichen they lived on.

I grimaced. In the darkness, I tapped on Zeke’s shoulder three times, to signal that we’d run a scare on this lot. They didn’t seem dangerous enough to ambush. Well armed maybe, but more stupid than skilled. Zeke glided away to pass the signal on, leaving me alone.

I stood up silently, balanced my axe on its handle, and folded my arms on top of that, letting them come to me.

The beam of the woman’s wristlight played over me almost as soon as the pair came into view around the wide, sweeping arc in the tunnel. She cried out in alarm and stepped back, tripping over loose rubble and falling prone. The man, hefting a rifle four or five sizes too large for him, turned at the sound, but focused on his fallen companion rather than on me, probably because I wasn’t lit anymore. She stuttered and pointed, finally getting the man to shine his own light in my direction.

This beam of light found only my legs, then angled slowly up. The barbed teeth of my axe drew crazy shadows on my uncovered arms and chest. The shadows did nothing to hide the pallid, cancerous lesions that passed for my skin.

“Augh!” The man choked. I sized him up, unimpressed. He was tall and slim, maybe six foot two and two hundred pounds, but still I towered over him by eighteen inches at least. “S-stay back!”

“Go home, upworlders.” I said simply.

“Let’s get out of here, Kos.” The woman, recovering her feet, pulled on the man’s sleeve.

“No! Some Corrupted freak’s not going to tell me what to do. I have the gun.” He seemed to gain confidence from this. “Get out of the way, mutant, or I’ll shoot you.”

“So you can shoot my food supply?” I asked simply. “No. Leave now.”

The man pulled the trigger, and there was an echoing blast. Impressive sound, and quite an impressive effect - the exploding round punched right through the blade of my axe and deep into my chest, blowing a significant cone of flesh out of my back when, most of the way through me, the charge detonated. It hurt like hell, and damn near knocked me over.

Several seconds of silence passed as the man and woman stared at me, expecting me to fall over, but I knew I wasn’t going to. This was why I hated running scare - it so often required me to get shot. Blood and whitish fluids seeped out of both ends of the wound, but not very much.

“Was that a warning shot, or a first strike?” I asked calmly. My voice bubbled a bit - the man had nicked one of my misplaced, repeatedly-regrown lungs.

The man, forgetting that he was there to impress his companion, knocked her back to the ground in his haste to run away. “Kos, wait!” She called, scrambling to her feet, but he was long gone before she had taken two steps. When she realized that there was nothing between her and me, she whirled, fumbling for the pistol at her side.

“Go home. I’m not chasing.” I suggested to her. It would take some minutes for my leaking lung to seal, in which time I would be winded rather easily. Even if I wanted to chase her if she ran, I couldn’t.

“I’ve heard what your kind does to girls like me.” She said, glaring and stepping backwards.

“From people like him, no doubt. You don’t know the way back, do you?”

She didn’t answer, which was all the answer I needed.

“Boudan!” I called behind me.

He loped into the light seconds later. His contorted spine and overlarge shoulders and arms made him look primitive, monstrous, like the mythical gorilla of worlds past. “Yeah Boss?” Looks, of course, were deceiving. Boudan was as clever as anyone, and he had a good head for finesse. This made him sneaker than he looked.

“Make sure that idiot gets out of here and doesn’t suddenly get brave and circle back.” I told him. Boudan nodded and loped past the woman, down the tunnel. I knew my big compatriot was stealthy enough to avoid the notice of a panicked joydiver with a giant rifle.

“And this one?” Zeke said, suddenly at my side. The light did nothing to make his huge, bulbous arm and leg joints look any less bizarre - he looked as much like a bipedal spider now as ever.

“Apparently lost.” I shrugged, mind already on my dinner, which if I was lucky would still be salvageable when I got back. “Who’s on bag lot?”

“Err, you are, Boss.” Zeke smiled nervously.

Dammit again. “Someone better have a meal waiting for me when I get back.” I told him before turning back to the upworlder woman, who was still holding her gun pointed in my general direction. “Oh, put that thing away. You haven’t hurt anyone yet, but things go bad for you if you do.” I might be relatively bulletproof, but that was unique to me. Zeke, I noticed, was keeping himself from presenting a target, staying behind me. Upworlder or no, our rules were simple - murderers died.

The woman, named Mera if the other idiot could be believed, seemed dumbfounded, and her aim dropped. “You’re smart.” She said simply.

“No, I’m a moron. I come out here to let idiots like your boyfriend shoot me.” I pointed down the tunnel. “Come on. Let’s go.” I limped forward slowly, mindful of my bubbling lung, hefting my axe and trying not to let on how much that explosive shell had hurt. Not enough to pose a threat to my life, of course, but a lot. Zeke meanwhile started herding the rest of the group, which had been waiting in the wings in case something went poorly, back toward the village.

“He’s not my boyfriend. I just met him last week!” She protested. “...How are you not dead?” She asked after a few seconds. “Kos said that gun will stop a tank.”

“Regrows too fast.” I said simply, and turned my back to show the now-itchy, depressed pink blotch which had been a giant chunk of missing flesh ninety seconds before.

Mera looked away, shuddering. I got that a lot, so it didn’t bother me. It had been some time since you could call me easy on the eyes. “What are you?”

“The loser of a genetic lottery.” I replied hotly. Of course I was Corrupted. Why else would I live in the old sewers? Did she think a physique like mine was something normally found in humanity’s natural state? “That’s all we are. Most of us even have all the education you do. But of course it’s easier to think of us as savages.” Given that the vast majority of us were sterile, Corrupted were almost always those whose genetic defects had manifested in childhood or early adulthood while they lived above. There were no infants in the village.

“You’re practically immortal.” She replied, cautiously.

I stopped, and turned around. “At what price, this immortality?” I shot back, annoyed. When I thought of all the things I’d lost, and it made me angry just at the idea that she would think me superior because of my handicap’s fringe benefits.

“Uh, sorry.” My charge backed up a step. “I didn’t mean...”

“I know you didn’t.” I dropped my shoulders. “Come on. This way.”

Mera was silent for the rest of the walk, and within the hour we stood at the base of a rusted ladder leading up. The bottom two rungs were missing, but the rest were pretty solid. I’d dropped joydivers at the place several times before, but I usually did it after they were rendered unconscious.

“There, up you go.” I rapped the ladder with my knuckles.

She stepped up to its base, looked up, then turned back to me. “What’s your name?” She asked.

“The others call me Boss Troll, or just Boss.” I shrugged.“Most any of the Corrupted you’ll ever meet will know my name.” I’d been around, traveled most of the labyrinth of sewers years before, back when I was still small enough to use the crawlspaces.

“No, I meant, what was your name?” She pointed up. ”When you lived up there.”

I hesitated, not wanting to say at first. My disappearance, owing to the position I’d held at the time, probably caused quite a stir, assuming the authorities didn’t fake my death or something. Still, ten years was a long time. I sighed, and told her.

Ten years was not enough time that I had faded from memory. Mera’s eyes widened. “Really?” She gasped. “But you - he - was...”

“I don’t want to know what they said happened to me.” I cut her off. “That’s not my world anymore.”

Mera nodded and undid the clasp attaching her holster to her belt. “Here.” She held the firearm out to me. “It’s not mine, it belongs to Kos. But it’s better for everyone if you... keep it for him.”

I reached out one oversized hand to let her drop the handgun into my grasp. “I... I don’t know what to say... Thank you.”

“Should be better than that axe anyway.” She grabbed onto the lowest available rung, hanging at about her shoulder height, but didn’t ascend quite yet. “What does your family know?”

Family? It had been some time since I’d had anything like that, so I assumed she meant my relatives in her world. “Nothing. And I’d rather you didn’t change that. Whatever story they were told is better than the truth.”

Mera looked doubtful, but agreed. “All right.” She turned to the ladder. “You come here often, Boss?” She gestured to the way up.

“One of us does every time we have to ditch a fool joydiver.” I agreed. “Like Zeke said, it’s just my turn."

“All right.” She seemed to be planning something. “I’ll get out of your hair then.” Mera hoisted herself up to put her feet on that first rung. “It was nice meeting you, Boss.” She said, then began climbing in earnest.

I waited until I heard her step off the ladder high above, then headed back. My metabolism was screaming for calories to replace those lost patching holes, but my mind was elsewhere, high above, remembering the world I’d lost all those years before.

When Ironsides dropped off the next joydivers at that exit, he brought me back a letter, addressed only to “Boss Troll”, that had been stuck to the bottom rung. Despite having had my arm nearly blown off by some yahoo with a rail rifle, I smiled as I broke the seal.

This story written based on a prompt from Klazzform's Short Story Competition on rpgcrossing.com.