adrenaline. If anything, it was closer to electricity.
Barry stared her dead in the eyes, a cheek muscle in his unnaturally pale face pulsating with hate.
'I don't think you fully appreciate the situation. All of us here are accountable, in one way or another. These girls here are accountable to their boyfriends. Their boyfriends are accountable to me. I'm accountable to Mastix, and he's accountable to someone higher. And all of us,' he said, leaning over the table and taking a pinch of the tan-colored dust, 'are accountable to this.'
He let it slip between his fingers back onto the pile. Was that a spark Elra could see on the window blinds?
'You, Elra, are accountable to your mother, and she,' he snarled as he roughly grabbed her mother's shoulder, 'is more accountable to that stuff than anybody else here.'
'I'm sorry Elra, babe,' her mother sobbed as Barry's fingers dug into her shoulder. 'I couldn't...'
Elra cut her off by slamming her fist on the table, sending the tan dust and the apparatus flying in the air. Barry screamed.
'You fucking moron!' He bellowed. 'Do her, Dean!'
Elra felt so betrayed. Not by her mother, no: she was a victim to her circumstances just as much as Elra was. Rather, she felt betrayed by life itself. She saw the inevitable, banal hopelessness of her life situation; her living in passivity, endlessly buffeted by social forces beyond her control.
The world may be broken, but I won't let it break me.
As Barry bellowed, her mom cried and Dean struggled with the gun's safety catch, Elra saw the air behind the table rip.
Seven
The rift seared and stretched until it consumed the entire back wall and window, revealing a familiar desert bleached by a fierce, glaring sun. The image wavered, and then changed to sandstone courtyard with the same quality of light. The rift crackled and hissed, as if the air had been cut with a red-hot knife.
Time seemed to dilate. Cali reeled in shock, Barry spun round to see what was going on, and the three girls screamed. Elra's mother face was etched with silent horror. For a moment they all looked at this new development dumbstruck, confusion and fear in equal measure rapidly mounting within all of them.
Through the tearing and crackling sounds, another more human sound could be heard. Was it talking? No, more like shouting, in an unrecognizable, harsh language. Seconds later the speaker became visible: a short man with dark tan skin, dressed in a red and gold robe. He stood in the courtyard in front of the rift, looking equally amazed as the group on the other side. But unlike them, his amazement was overlaid with joy, not with terror. He gesticulated wildly to people as yet unseen, pointing through the rift directly at Elra.
Dean and the three girls bolted. They knocked aside the chairs and scarpered through the door. On the other side of the rift, more people came into view, their forms distorted by the rippling of the event horizon. These were tall and thin, bearing what looked like long-bladed pikes; their faces covered by red masks and their stature increased by the ornate curving headdresses they wore.
Elra stood there utterly transfixed. She felt Cali look at her, fearful. Barry turned away from the rift and met her gaze, with an expression the likes of which she'd never seen before. Utter incomprehension.
It quickly disappeared as one of the tall soldiers in headdresses stepped across the event horizon and into their world, and skewered him right through the throat with their blade. Everyone, including Elra, screamed.
Two more soldiers stepped through behind the first, as the first kicked over the table and violently dashed Barry's corpse to the floor. With their headdresses they appeared over seven feet tall, making them appear to take up most of the kitchen.
Elra's mother was right in their way. She cowered, paralyzed by their alien presence. Cali darted forwards and grabbed her under the arms, clumsily dragging her back. Elra saw one of the masked soldiers raise their longblade: she too dashed forward, and grabbed both of them. They staggered back in a huddle, and promptly tripped over a broken chair. They all fell down in a manner that would have been comical in a more light-hearted situation, but as it stood, they were all on the floor holding on to each other out of fear and panic as a seven foot tall masked killer towered over them ready to strike.
The blade swung downwards, right over Cali's head. Elra winced and braced against the coming impact. This is it, she thought. At least she was dying in good company. She didn't know why these people were trying to kill them, but she was certain it had something to do with that time in the school playground, all those years ago. That desert: it means something. Too late now to find out what.
Then a very strange thing happened. The blow never came. Elra chanced a peek and saw the blade disintegrating as it cut through the air, leaving the soldier with just the long, patterned handle to strike with. It still hit Cali, of course: right on the side of the head. It drew blood and knocked her out cold.
The other soldiers seemed to be more interested in the rift than in the group. In fact, they seemed to be trying to climb back through, and failing. The rift... was changing. To Elra's immense surprise, the sandstone courtyard shimmered out of existence and was replaced by a school playground on a hot summer's day. Her school playground. For the briefest of moments Elra saw dozens of kids staring in her direction, their jaws hitting the floor. Then the rift vanished, taking the other two soldiers with it.
The soldier with the disintegrated longblade threw it aside and clenched his gauntleted hand into a fist. A spike shot out of his sleeve.
Elra saw what was happening and fought to get to her feet. She couldn't manage that, however, so settled with just throwing herself at the man's legs. His free hand caught her mid-lunge.
He held her down with his foot as he plunged the spike into her mother's stomach.
Elra screeched in anguish and fury, grabbed the man's armor and pulled at it with a strength she didn't know she possessed. Her mother was silent. She looked down at the metal rod in her belly with wide eyes, and then back up at her red masked assassin. Her lips moved, but only the softest of whispers came out.
The man fell under Elra's vicious assault. She swung herself on top of him, pinning his arms with her knees. With both hands she ripped off his mask, only to find that 'he' was in fact female.
The warrior woman met Elra's gaze. 'Kele mbaye o Manu.'
Elra felt unadulterated hatred. 'Why?!' she screamed at the woman, hitting her in the face again and again.
'Kele mbaye o Manu!' the woman replied. Her dark eyes were fierce with an intensity Elra couldn't quite place. She struggled to throw off Elra's weight and shot a pining glance back towards where the rift had been.
Elra looked over at her dying mother and her unconscious friend, then back at the woman. She was crying. 'Kele mbaye o Manu! Ke sannau!' No, pleading.
Even though her rage was fiercely burning, Elra couldn't bring herself to kill the woman. What was she to do? Put her hands around the woman's neck and squeeze? Beat her to death with the patterned hilt of her weapon? She couldn't bring herself to do either.
Out of nowhere a spurt of crimson erupted from the woman's temple and her head lolled to one side, lifeless. Elra was too tired and distraught to be surprised.
'Well, you made quite a mess,' a voice exclaimed behind her.
Eight
Elra turned. Standing in the doorway was a young East Asian man, early twenties at the most. He had long straight black hair, a series of geometric tattoos on his neck and hands, and a thin dark jacket that hugged his slim figure. His face was brightly handsome, and lightly flecked with blood.
There was a silenced pistol in his hand. Hang on, was that Dean’s pistol?
He carefully stepped over a broken section of table and inched towards the dead female warrior, holding the gun like he half-expected her to jump back to life at any moment.
'Who the hell is she?' he asked, seemingly to himself, frowning.
'More to the point, who the hell are you?' Elra countered.
'Kai
,' he replied, as if that sufficiently answered the question. His gaze passed over Elra, especially over her bare forearms, and his frown deepened.
'So you have... inner Body Knowledge? It's rather rare to see that nowadays.'
'Pardon?'
'You don’t have any marks on your hands. Did you do a type of scream?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Or is it Change Knowledge? Not many people can do what you just did. In fact, I don’t even know of any others.'
'I have no idea what you're talking about.'
Kai looked at her oddly, and then surveyed the wreckage of the room. His gaze lingered on Barry's bloodied corpse; Elra's mother body, her eyes still wide; and Cali's unconscious form. 'So what happened, then?'
Elra began to cry. It was so ludicrous.
'We were attacked... by a memory from my childhood.'
'Care to elaborate?'
'My friend and I were confronting my mother and her boyfriend...' she began.
'Some confrontation.'
Elra looked at him darkly through her sobs. 'And as I felt my anger peak, a sort of... portal opened over there,' she said as she pointed at the far wall, 'and we were all attacked by these soldiers. They killed my mother and her boyfriend, and they may have killed my friend.' She wiped her eyes and pulled herself together.
'No, your friend's alive.' Kai clarified, almost casually, giving her a very strange look. 'Would you mind doing something for me?'
'What?'
'Get undressed.'
'What?'
'Quickly. The police are almost certainly on their way by now.'
Elra hesitated.
Kai rolled his eyes. 'Oh come on. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'
As Elra removed her clothes and eyed his gun, she began to come to her senses. Her tears were replaced by a keen awareness of the danger she was in, inexplicable occurrences aside. Was this Kai person with the gang? Had Dean made a phone call after he left, and was he playing this whole charade so he could execute her cleanly, to dispose of witnesses? She undressed slowly, to give herself thinking space and time to plan an escape.
Make a dash for the door. But that would require being faster than his reflexes. Make a dash at him. Marginally better, but charging someone with a gun is never really a good idea. Delay through undressing really slowly? Better than first two, but not a real solution, and anyway, she was doing that already. Delay by talking to him until the police arrive? Slight improvement, best idea yet, but still not very promising. Well, it's worth a go.
'So what were you talking about... inner knowledge, or something? What is that?'
'I'm trying to find out if you know.'
'By making me undress?'
'Exactly. Oh, and on that front, please hurry up.'
She was taking her clothes off too fast: but there's only so long you can take to remove a t-shirt. 'And what do you mean about screaming? There was a lot of that just now,' she continued.
'Just hurry.'
She was down to her bra and panties. She stopped.
'If you would be so kind,' Kai said, gesturing at them.
Oh god this really was it. She removed them quickly, resigned. The scene was quite surreal, her standing there in her nakedness, surrounded by carnage.
Kai's eyes were wide. He stared at her skin, the color of milky coffee, with an expression of either intense lust or intense surprise; it was hard to tell which. 'You're unmarked,' he managed.
Elra remained silent. Now may be her chance. She tensed herself, ready to jump.
'You can put them back on now,' Kai announced all of a sudden, snapping out of his rapt focus. He stepped over to the window and scanned the street outside. The faint sound of sirens grew in the distance.
Elra scrambled back into her clothes, shaking from shock. Maybe she wouldn't die today after all.
'We need to leave,' Kai stated. 'Come on!'
'What about all this?' Elra replied. 'What about my mother and Cali?'
'Her?’ he said, waving the gun in Cali’s direction. ‘Oh, the EMTs will take care of her. We can find which hospital she's in later. As for your mother...' He grabbed her hand and looked her in the eye. 'I'm sorry. But right now, there are bigger things afoot. Let's go.'
Nine
Kai pushed open the fire escape door and led her around the side of the building. The sirens were closer now.
Fear, doubt and exhaustion coursed through Elra’s mind. ‘How can I know I can trust you?’ she asked, reasonably.
‘Trust me, you can,’ Kai replied pithily.
Elra sighed. Did she have any other choice but to follow?
Kai ran across the road, looking up and down the street agitatedly. ‘Bugger. Which way to the main road?’
‘I’ll tell you if I know I can trust you.’ She wasn’t just going to run off with this guy, no matter how reasonable he seemed. ‘How did you get here? And what do you want with me, really?’
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Kai announced. The sirens were getting nearer.
‘Yes we do.’
He was standing there, in the middle of the road, giving her an annoyed stare. Elra’s mental grip started to loosen, stressed to breaking point by recent events and the irrationality of her current predicament. She felt tears forming in the corners of her eyes again. She willed them back, but it didn’t work. Realizations hit her, each consecutive one like a load falling on her shoulders.
Her kitchen had been being used to process drugs.
Her mother had been an addict.
A PORTAL had opened in said kitchen.
She had been attacked by god-only-knows what, and she was damn near certain they were after her, and her alone.
But they’d killed everyone anyway, including her mother.
Her mother was dead.
She couldn’t go back home now, not unless she wanted to be arrested, questioned and cross-examined by all manner of policemen, detectives, psychiatrists and Drugs Squad officials.
Oh god, her mother was dead!
Elra felt her knees give way, and she crumpled into a heap on the curb.
Kai's expression softened instantly. His intensity faded and something seemed to register within him; he gave Elra a tired smile and walked back over to the curb, just as an ambulance blared into view and shot right past them.
'It goes on,' he said, as he crouched down in front of her.
Elra looked up at him from the watery depths of her despair. 'What does?'
'Life,' he finished, warmly. 'Right now the world may seem like a meaningless and hateful place, but in a few months things will be clear again. The hurt will fade, and this day will make sense, even though it doesn't right now.' Leaning forwards onto his knees, he took her by the shoulders.
Her tears resumed with vigor.
They were there for a few minutes, crouching and sitting respectively, locked in that awkward semi-embrace. Kai could see he'd clearly misjudged how to handle their exit, and now felt a wave of guilt. He understood what it meant to lose a parent, in his own way, but to see your mother killed was something quite different. One could argue she was taking it rather well, all things considered.
A police car scanned into view. It wasn't in a manic rush, unlike the ambulance: it seemed to be moving in a strangely inquisitive way, snooping almost, as if drawn to the scene out of morbid curiosity rather than a desire to help. Elra sensed it too.
'I'll explain everything as we walk,' he offered. 'But right now we have to leave. Once you've heard what I have to say, you don't have to come with me if you don't want to.'
Elra nodded tearfully, pulling herself together piece by piece. Kai offered her his hand, but she got up on her own. 'The main road's that way,' she pointed.
Ten
The two of them walked down Sylings Road, towards the main road. Elra’s eyes were dry now. The weight was lifting.
‘I came here from London. Me and some other people like us have a sort of hideout there,’ Kai explained.
‘Peop
le like us?’ Elra quizzed.
He gave her a knowing look, as if he was relishing keeping information from her. ‘We knew something like this was going to happen here, at this time. We knew for years.’
‘What? How?’
He gave her another look. ‘Right, this is going to take some explaining. So, about nine years ago an event happened. It left a huge amount of energy in its wake, a kind of special signature, that certain people like us can understand. You know, like when someone burns toast in a kitchen, and you can tell, even hours afterwards?’
‘I suppose,’ Elra said, unsure.
‘Well, the energy pointed to an exact time and place, more specifically, to the very council flat you were living in, on this very day. The event nine years ago... well, you’ve probably guessed it. It happened quite near here.’
In Elra’s mind the penny dropped.
‘My primary school...’
‘Exactly. Nine years ago some form of rift opened in your playground, and for the briefest of moments it linked to right here, right now.’
‘So that’s how you found me?’
‘You got it. Trust me now?’ he grinned.
It was insane. There’s no way he could have known about the playground incident, unless Cali had actually taken her story seriously and told someone. But even then, Elra knew she hadn’t. Yet here he was, this Kai, talking about rifts and portals as if they were perfectly ordinary topics of conversation. She knew what she’d seen, even if nobody else did. But now there was someone else: what had once been an irrational, fantastical private memory of her childhood was quickly becoming consensus reality. It was a very strange feeling. One thing was gnawing at her, however.
‘The only thing is, I don’t remember seeing this, the present, through the rift when I was in the playground all those years ago. I only saw the desert.’
‘Ah,’ Kai mused, ‘it’ll take a wiser person than me to explain that one for you. Thankfully you’ll probably meet one shortly.’
‘Do you know who those red warriors were? That woman...?’
‘No idea. Maybe they can tell you that, too. All I knew was that something big was going to happen here, today. I was told to come and find out what the hell was going on. And I can tell you now, something big is going on.’ He gave her an odd, excited look again. ‘Seriously, I can’t believe this is happening.’
‘Tell me, for goodness’ sake!’
He just smiled. ‘Not yet.’