New Cthonic 6

VI

The Mountain Prophet was the only station broadcasting from close enough to be listenable these days. The Forestry Service’s horseshit radar grid rendered everything else static from dusk to dawn and scratchy at best during the day. Not that Moose minded; the music was to his taste, and Walton Ennis’s voice was like comfort food for the ears, smooth, rich, and reliable – just what you needed when times got rough.

Moose took a series of deep breaths and weighed the medicinal patch in his hand, working up the courage to slap it on. Every US Armed Forces Regenerative Agent was its own special breed of nightmare, and RA-9 was no different.

Sheila huffed from the passenger seat, “Are you okay?” Her ears twitched with worry.

He shot the hulking Tibetan Mastiff-Husky mix a pained smile. They were parked by the side of the road next to the Game Lands, the back of the Jeep crowded with gear. “I’m alright. Just medicine – you know how it is.”

“You should put peanut butter on it.”

“Yeah. If only we had some.”

She barked her agreement.

Fuck it – wasn’t going to hurt any less a few minutes from now. At least it wasn’t The Juice; he’d have preferred death to riding out a dose of that again. Literally, he’d added a stipulation to his living will that if the only available treatment was RA-17, then they were to let him die.

That was a good point, actually. Moose had taken bags of Juice before; what was he doing dreading a measly patch of RA-9? He pressed the wet side of the regenerative agent onto his forearm, right above where he’d shot through it to kill the tunnel wolf, and turned the music up before his muscles started to seize.

“Sing me through it, Chris Isaak.”

Moose pulled the lever of his seat and leaned all the way back. Thirty minutes and he’d be fine, he reminded himself. Just half an hour of hell, and vengeance would be his to take.

Sheila whined in distress at his pain as the burning started to come on, laying her head on his lap. As happened every time he used one of these patches, he marveled at how distinctive the sensations were, like microscopic, electrified needles being inserted slowly millimeter by millimeter up and down the nerves from the point of contact. There was nothing quite like a USAF Regenerative Agent for fucking your whole day up. Even after the pain dissipated, he'd be nauseous until tomorrow, and, of course, there would be the sleep paralysis – another long night with dead men standing at the foot of his bed.

It was a bit concerning that there could be no doubt he was using real-deal RA-9. Moose didn't know where Troyer had sourced the highly controlled compound from, and he didn't want to know. Whatever the explanation, it was a problem firmly outside of his tax bracket. Either Troyer had a legitimate source for the patches, and he was an active-duty spook, or he'd bought them from the black market. It called for willful ignorance either way. A man didn't live long and well in this world by asking questions.

“Ooh! Voice of an angel. That was Blue Hotel by Chris Isaak, and you’re listening to The Mountain Prophet, the second most popular Appalachian shortwave specialty station in the country—”

“Y’all still ain’t cracked that number one spot? Well, hell, no justice in this world, I tell ya.”

Moose let out a sigh of relief, the jovial banter taking some of the edge off. The aged speakers of his Jeep could do nothing to diminish the rich baritone of Walt Ennis and the pleasant Kentucky drawl of his guest. He loved when TomTwain was on; the man oozed charisma.

Walt chuckled. "That's right, folks, you already know that voice! We have a very special guest hailing from the hollers of Kentucky but calling in from West Virginia today, ready to fill us in on the rash of Mothman sightings. It's medium extraordinaire, Licensed Special Responder, novelist, private investigator, and sometimes field reporter, Thomas Clemens, better known as TomTwain—"

“Don’t forget mediocre poker player and excellent lover; the two things every man ought to aspire to be.”

“Why, those go without saying, don’t they, Thomas?”

“Shoot. Probably right about that, Walt. But just in case, if there’s any ladies or card sharks that would like to call in and let the people know, the number is 582-6—”

“Hey! That’s my personal number, Tom!”

“Is that—” Both men burst into laughter. “Oh, man, it’s good you stopped me, Walt. That was not a bit; I would have said the whole thing. My bad. It’s been a long week of investigating and interviewing, in my defense.”

"Quite alright, Tom. If leaking my phone number is what it takes to hear that delightful drawl, then I'd take it every time. It's a pleasure and an honor, sir."

“Please! The pleasure an’ honor is all mine. I’ve been listening to your dulcet tones since I was a wee lad, wanderin’ ‘round, throwin’ rocks at wasp nests. The thought that I can share these airwaves with one such as yourself is a real treat.”

“Tom, you would have been twenty when I got my start in radio.”

“Yes, sir, but I was young o’ heart back then, as evidenced what by the throwin’ rocks at wasp nests and all.”

“Back then? No longer young of heart, eh, Thomas?”

“Alas. I’m old everywhere save up top. That’s right, folks, breakin’ news from the Mountain Prophet, your man TomTwain’s got a baby brain. Ya heard it here first.”

Walt chuckled. “Speaking of breaking news, I believe you have updates for us from the scene of these newest Mothman sightings.”

“Listen to you wranglin’ me back on topic; that’s why you’re a pro, Walton. But that’s correct, and unfortunately, it’s bad news.”

“Oh, Heavens, really? So there’s a calamity on the way, then?”

“No, no. It’s bad news for you and me, what with us bein’ huge Moth-heads. It’s great news for West Virginia! I ain’t finished doin’ my business, but it’s sure lookin’ like a bad case of mass hysteria down here. Me and you, though, we’re just goin’ to have to keep on believin’, ‘cause far as I can tell, we won’t be gettin’ any hard or fast confirmation on whether or not the Big Dusty One is real. Not this time, at least.”

“Ah, rats! Well, got to take the good with the bad, hm? Break it down for us, though. What exactly have you found so far?”

Moose tried to keep listening, but the burning needles had made their way into his inner ear, making a crackling sound as the compound worked to heal whatever lingering damage was left from the fight in the cave. He kept himself from checking the time. The clock would only confirm that he was far from the zenith of pain and would stretch the experience into subjective hours. Instead, he sank his hands into Sheila's thick fur, kept his eyes closed, and tried to make out what he could of the radio. Frankly, it was just nice to hear the chatter of the two men; it could get lonely out in Dudlin, more so than ever now that half the town had moved away, and the Helcats had killed most business at the Hunting Lodge.

He had to force himself to lean forward and turn the volume up when the topic turned to Salem Cooper, though.

“Am I correct, Tom, in that you’ve confirmed with the Cooper family that they want you to look into their missing son here in Dudlin?”

"Yes, sir. Wish it was under better circumstances, but I will be headin' up to the gentle, rollin' hills of Pennsylvania soon as I'm done down here. There is a…minor complication, guess you could say. The Bulletin to look for the young man has been taken up already. Now, that's fine – I wasn't lookin' to get paid for the work. It's just a bit of a professional faux pas to edge in on another LSR's job. People get hurt that way. Too many chefs, see."

“Oh. Wow, I thought it would be months before that happened.” As did Moose. “Do you have any information on who took the Bulletin?”

"I do, and that's why I said it was only a minor complication. She seems like a pretty stand-up lady, a firefighter out from California way, name o' Lift-Off. Major league super, big, big-time heavy hitter, got a whole bag o' tricks. And I don't know if you've been close to a wildfire, but it takes a special kind of person to make a livin' out of them. Anyway, our powers don't got any overlap, so I can't see her puttin' up a fuss about me, but regardless, Dudlin's in good hands, I'd say."

“Gosh, I’m sure the town’s breathing a sigh of relief hearing that. You mentioned her powers – I don’t suppose you could elaborate on just what she can do.”

"Hey, for you, Big Walt, no problem. Got the LSR database pulled up right now. Let's see—"

Moose tore the keys from the ignition and threw his door open with a growl. Lift-Off may or may not have been territorial, but he was. Like hell, was he about to let some Californian tourist avenge his dogs and Salem Cooper before he could.

It took so long to suit up in his current state, partially paralyzed with paroxysms of pain every few seconds, that halfway through, Sheila ended up pushing him over and laying her body over him until he stopped trying. That was fair; he'd been being stubborn. She was a good girl.

Once the thirty minutes on the patch were through, and all he had to deal with was the near-crippling nausea, Moose pushed her off him and returned to putting on the elaborate, multilayered Japanese all-terrain warfare armor he’d had the Guns&Ammo in State College order for him. He would have moved on the cave sooner – there were an uncomfortable number of amateurs poking their heads in – but he wanted to wait for this specifically. It was slashing-resistant, piercing-resistant, reinforced around his spine and knees, chemically sealed from the neck down, came with a built-in harness, and could regulate his body temperature so long as it was charged. He’d spent over half his savings on it. He might have asked Troyer to pick up the check, but technically Moose was supposed to be convalescing at home for another week.

His arm still hurt. According to the doctors, it was a miracle it was still attached, but he was sure it would be fine. The Rangers had asked more from him than this, and the RA-9 had already taken it to mostly functional. There was some loss of dexterity, but Moose could shoot and fight with both hands. He’d make do.

There'd been a Code Orange in the night, and there was currently a Code Red, yet he could still see fresh signs of people everywhere he looked. Unbelievable – Sheila informed him that there were at least five still out here soaked in sweat and stinking of construction equipment. Did no one in Dudlin have a survival instinct? He could only hope that none of the locals had found the new entrances into the cave system that he and Sheila had yesterday, but that was probably wishful thinking. Rednecks could be dangerously competent when properly motivated.

Moose couldn’t say why he cared about being the first to explore the cave, only that he did. Perhaps it was a psychological effect from his superpowers, or perhaps it was masculine pride, but either way, he had to do it. He’d told Dale Cooper that he’d find his son or at least give his wife confirmation of his death, and until he did – him, personally – then his failure the night of the boy’s disappearance would haunt him for the rest of his life.

A brisk hike took him and Sheila to the other side of the hill where the 'formal' entrance to Salem's Cave sat. Did it make more sense to breach the cave system through there? Maybe, but he wasn't eager to set eyes on that accursed statue or the way she guarded again. Besides, the Army had made him learn to trad climb; he might as well get some use out of the skill.

The 'informal' entrance to the cave was a gash in the earth at the bottom of a sinkhole. Coming through it, was a faint blue glow and the occasional dull flapping of bat wings belonging to the creatures Sheila had sniffed out to lead them here the first time. He hadn't been able to see how deep the cavern below was – even the sinkhole had been too treacherous to attempt without gear – but Moose had brought two hundred and twenty feet of rope with him. If it was deeper than that, then, well, he'd just be back tomorrow, he supposed.

"Alright, darling," he said after triple-checking everything was in place, "find somewhere to hide if a Helcat comes, but otherwise guard the hole."

Sheila huffed an affirmative. Many dogs didn’t take well to compound orders like that, but she was a clever girl.

Saying a quick prayer to a God he couldn't say either way if he believed in, he got to it. He tied off the first anchor point through the thick roots of a living tree. That probably wasn't going anywhere, but for good measure, once he was halfway down the sinkhole, he stuck a friend in a crack in one of the freshly exposed boulders and clipped himself to that as well.

Fear wormed its way into his head as soon as he hit the bottom of the sinkhole. A surprising number of soldiers had died rappelling before, and here he was, about to do it into a one hundred percent cursed cavern that he hadn’t inspected in the least.

“Come on.” He slapped his cheeks a few times. “You’ve got this.”

……

Beginning his slow descent, the first thing he saw upon entering the cave was a curtain of glowing silk strands that hung from the backs of long, segmented, armored bugs pressed flat against the stone all around him. He noted with horror that some were longer than he was tall, and all had mandibles that looked like they could take a finger in a single bite. The gash was not wide, either; any serious swaying in one direction or another would see him entangled with their silk. And, if these were anything like the glowworms of Australia, then the droplets he saw clinging to the strands were not dew, but poison.

He contemplated briefly firing on a few of the bugs, but they weren’t reacting to him in any way, and if there was to be a defense response, then he didn’t favor himself while surrounded on all sides as he was. Instead, he opted to leave the patient predators alone for now. Holding his breath, Moose delicately – very delicately – lowered himself the miserable twenty feet it took to get clear of the worst of the strands.

“God damn it,” he said, getting his first real look at the cavern, “it’s gorgeous.”

It was like something from an old adventure movie. Mist came wafting up from the swampy forest below, lit irregularly by holes in the ceiling, the glowworms, thousands of bright red blinking fireflies, and some of the trees and shrubs themselves, which emitted a golden light from beneath their branches. The place was massive and overfull of life, sloping from where he knew the formal entrance was into what appeared to be an underwater lake on the far other side. Moose was less than a quarter of the way to the lake, which was very lucky; he wasn’t sure his rope would have reached the bottom had he entered at the lake-end, and the swamp seemed denser the further you went. Below him was a thatch of oaks and maple trees, their seeds presumably having entered here through the hole he was now dangling from, and the last of the stepped terraces that made up the start of the cavern.

The further down he went, the luckier he realized he'd gotten with his choice of entrance. It was not the trees and shrubs that were glowing gold, but the beehives built on them. Fortunately, the oak under him had been spared – though that did make him a little concerned as well. The red fireflies seemed to cluster around it more than they did most of the other trees, and definitely more than they did near the beehives. Maybe they competed with the bees in some way.

Once he was at the top of the oak, he was relieved to see that other than their size, about the length of his palm, and color, the bugs seemed as harmless as their surface cousins. They did seem to like flying directly at him, but they either bounced off and trundled away in a different direction, or landed for a few seconds before taking off again. He did his best to ignore them, reminding himself again of the glowworms ringing his rope above.

As he descended through the branches to land on the muddy soil at the base, he confirmed that the fireflies competed with the bees for space, at the least. They had laid their bright red eggs underneath the boughs of the oak. The curious, nature-loving child in him wanted to collect a few of the eggs to bring back to the surface, maybe to send to Penn State, but he was ill-equipped to do so. He'd come prepared for a fight, not science.

That brought to mind an important question: What exactly was he here to do? Before he'd seen what it looked like down here, the plan had been simple. He would kill as many monsters as possible while trying to find any evidence of Salem Cooper's passing. But what the hell was he supposed to do about all this? There was an entire ecosystem down here, and worse, it was a swamp broken up by labyrinths of stalagmites and full-on thickets of mangrove-like trees – it could take weeks, if not months, to explore this fully.

Moose carefully unclipped from the rope and started in the direction of the entrance to the cave. There was little chance the boy had made it into the swamp, little chance even that he’d made it past the crack that had taken Welly and Decker, his birding dogs. It made more sense to work in reverse.

He sniffed the air – smoke and burning rubber. Looking down, he saw that the bottom of his boot was smoking; there seemed to be a slimy fuel clinging to it, burning with the same bright red color as the fireflies.

“Shit.”

Moose wiped the sticky flame off on a rock, watching as the substance continued to burn for a good while. Thankfully, his shoes were hardy and new, as armored as the rest of his gear. As long as he avoided whatever had set them alight, they would be fine.

He had a bad feeling about what that something was, though. Taking one of the fireflies that had landed on his chest between his thumb and forefinger, he flicked the thing hard at the same rock. His eyes went wide. The moment it splattered against the stone and the sac of glowing fluid on its abdomen was exposed to the air, it burst into flame, leaving a fiery trail as it ran down the side of the rock.

“They’re…they’re full of napalm,” he said with a strangled voice, calmly observing the thousands of the bugs gently bobbing through the air around him. They’d seemed cute just seconds ago.

Napalm!? Fucking napalm? Really?

He took a deep breath and started slowly walking away from the oak. Panicking in this situation would only get him killed. At least this had clarified his mission for today.

Moose was here to assess dangers – recon, essentially. He would get as much information as he could, and then he would get the fuck out of here.

The former ranger got no further than fifteen feet before encountering yet another quandary. In order to get to the entrance of the cavern, he had to traverse the stepped terraces, which were full of water and life. Lotus flowers and other water lilies obscured much of what lay beneath the surface, but he could see tons of little fishes swimming underneath the pads. There were stones throughout the pools that he could step on, but they seemed…suspicious. He couldn't put a finger on why, but they were oddly uncanny in a way, like they'd been planted there deliberately.

Nothing to it but to do it. Moose reached his foot forward and tapped the closest stone. It felt firm and stable, but still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness.

His boot couldn't give him the tactile feedback he needed. Leaning down, he patted the stone with his gloved hand – still normal, still off somehow. He felt around its sides, his thumb breaching the surface of the mostly still pool, small ripples scaring away a few of the smaller fish.

The instant that happened, the very second he had disturbed the peace of the fish, the stone he'd been touching surged up, holding aloft two massive pinchers in defense of its chosen home, and snapped one down on the center of his hand.

“Agh, shit!”

Moose retracted his arm, but the thing clung on, the crushing force of its pinchers putting the relatively thin armor on his gloves to the test. He caught its other pincher with his left hand before it could likewise latch on, slammed the crab to the ground, and placed his boot on top of its shell for leverage. The thing felt more like a stone than ever. Stomping on it did nothing, and trying to pull himself free was like testing his strength against a table vice.

Quickly opting for another strategy, he moved his boot to the crab’s free pincher, pinning it to the ground, and drew his pistol, a reliable nine-millimeter loaded with sub-sonic rounds this time so as to not deafen himself again. The first bullet dented – dented – the body of the crab, ricocheting off with a dull metallic clang. He directed the next bullet at the joint just below the pincher crushing his hand.

That did the trick, severing the pincher cleanly. Moose kicked the crab away, sending it just eight feet away, where it landed with an enormous splash in the next terrace up – a terrible, terrible mistake, he realized.

From the small pool he’d first disturbed had emerged eight or nine of the stone/metallic crab monsters, all of which were currently scurrying at him, claws forward. From the larger pool behind them came dozens of the things, the largest as wide as his torso. That number included the one he’d shot twice, its shell notably dented from the point-blank shot.

He took one look at that, turned around, and sprinted towards the oak, practically throwing himself up the first branch he could see without red eggs on the underside. The tide of crabs was fast behind him; once they finished gathering around the base of the tree, he would have to jump over them and make his way past them and the terraced pools. Moose was willing to bet he’d be fine as long as he didn’t disturb the water or the tiny fish again. Hopefully, there would be a way out from this enormous cavern to the surface there, or else he’d have to stall until he had the space and time to loop back around and clip into the rope.

The first crab reached the tree, paused, turned around, picked up the nearest crab, and lifted it above its head. Another crab swiftly climbed up the other two before it was locked into a rigid position by the one beneath. A fourth struggled for a moment to climb up before two others came from behind to give it a boost.

“Oh, what the fuck, man.”

Of course, the crabs could work together down here. Why wouldn’t they? Everything in this goddamn cave existed solely to torment him.

Still not panicking, he made his way as quickly as he could to a bough nearest to the rope. There was no time to properly loop the rope through his belay device and the various safety measures, but Moose could do a hundred-thirty-foot rope climb up thin nylon while being pursued by intelligent monstrous crabs – surely.

Any small hope he had of juking the crabs was immediately lost the moment he was dangling from the rope. The tide turned as one to pursue, using a similar strategy to chase him up the rope. The first crab grabbed the rope with one claw and then picked up the crab at its side, lifting it up so that it could grab the rope and lift it in turn.

“Fuck you, God.”

He raced up as fast as he could, muscles burning with effort, but the things were, somehow, just slightly faster. Moose had a lead to begin with, meaning that they caught up some fifty feet up. One immediately latched onto his boot, but these were not like his gloves; they'd been specifically made for fighting the various mutated sharks that littered the waters of Japan's coasts. The claw cut through the rubber and cloth shell but was halted by the steel wire mesh underneath.

Moose instinctively tried to kick it off him or to at least knock the tower of crabs it was on top of down, only to realize his error when the rope began to retract upwards on its own. Sparing a glance up, he saw that in the commotion, it had tangled itself with the strands of silk hanging from the back of a giant glowworm. The man-sized bug was now pulling its silk into its body slowly as it began to stir from its slumber. If that thing took its mandibles to the threads of the rope, then he was about to go crashing down fifty or sixty feet through an oak tree filled with sacks of living napalm.

Biceps burning, he hung from one hand, drew the nine-millimeter once more, and made the greatest shots of his life. He fired once up, striking the thin and thankfully relatively unprotected body of the glowworm. It had mostly finished pulling in its silk, so when it died, both it and the rope dropped. As it fell, the few inches of silk stuck to the rope caused the whole thing to jerk as the glowworm's body momentarily caught there before ripping free. Then, while the corpse of the bug was still falling and the rope was now swinging wildly, he fired again at the crab on his boot. The second bullet struck the crab at the seam of where the top and bottom of its shell parted for its eyes and mouth, killing it instantly at the same time as the glowworm was splattering against the branches of the oak.

Moose held on with his thighs as the rope swung into contact with another dozen silken, poisonous strands. The singular positive was that the crabs were more impacted than he was, the chaotic movements pushing their tiny brains past the limit. He had to imagine they’d evolved the ability to climb in response to tunnel wolves pilfering their underwater gardens, not to chase men up ropes. They froze, clinging to each other and the rope as best they could, unable to react to what was happening.

That gave him an idea. It was awful, but it was the only one he had. Holstering the pistol once more, he took advantage of the crabs’ confusion to continue sprinting up the rope, something that was made easier by the fact that multiple glowworms were now slowly pulling it up. Their gooey poison was dripping down sporadically, occasionally landing on his head, rendering whatever it touched completely numb. But thankfully, there was still plenty of Regenerative Agent still in his blood – he had to trust that he’d be fine. There was no room in this situation to also worry about the poison.

Nothing to it but to do it. He could feel the toxin working its way through his scalp and into his bloodstream, but all he could do was push himself harder in response. The crabs were making minimal progress, at least, freezing each time they moved a little further up – perfect.

Above him, the slow pull of the rope stopped as the silk strands of multiple glowworms became tangled up with each other. The silk didn’t stick to itself, but the wild swinging of the rope had looped the strands together. The bugs seemed to realize this at a staggered pace, awakening from their complete stillness to crane their segmented bodies down to examine what had occurred.

The first bug to realize that it was competing with its neighbors for a meal reacted mercilessly. Before the others could react, it turned and cleanly severed the head of the one next to it, yanking it off the stalactite with a quick jerk. It didn't fall, however - too many of its strands were still entangled with the rope. Instead, it simply dangled like a weight from it over his head.

Christ, okay, if he was going to pull this off, it would have to be now. Moose reached down with one arm, grabbed a hold of the rope beneath his feet, and started to swing it deliberately. Above him, two glowworms locked their jaws and started to wrestle one another, trying to drag the other off from its perch. Below, the crabs came to a complete stop, simply holding on.

They were heavy, but he had adrenaline and momentum on his side. The seconds felt like hours as each swing got closer and closer to bringing the section of the rope with the crabs to the curtain of silk ringing his exit. Finally, with one great heave, he did it, whipping the rope up over his head and into the glowworm threads in the immediate vicinity of the hole. As one, they began to pull their silk up almost exactly as one of the two above him put a mandible through the other's brain. It joined its brethren in dangling over him, rendering the climb up now fully impossible.

He'd counted on that, though, and was already shuffling over, one hand at a time, toward the other side of the rope. There, the crabs had ceased their pursuit and were battling instead with the poisonous silk they'd been captured by, as well as the creatures lassoing them in. The fight seemed equally matched. When a crab could orient itself properly and get an idea of what to actually attack, it would more or less instantly kill the glowworm on top of it. But that was a rare occurrence; most were simply trying to attack the strands and seeing their pincers get glued together for the effort. One of the glowworms was already gnawing at the eyes of a still-wriggling crab.

In the chaos, Moose was able to get fairly close to the hole, the rope now anchored at a number of points around it by various glowworms. Luckily, none had taken to attacking the rope itself. The one that had killed its neighbors seemed to have sussed out the nylon wasn't good eating and was mindlessly cannibalizing the corpses dangling from it instead.

Unfortunately, this was the part of his plan where he now had to swing off the rope to dyno onto one of the loose stones around the exit or else fall a hundred-plus feet to his death – not something he would have considered himself capable of prior to now. But there was no room for doubt; he had to believe in himself, or he was as good as dead.

Like sent from heaven on high, as soon as he had the thought, another rope came through the hole, this one thick and old, hempen and potentially hand woven as unbelievable as that seemed. He was grabbing it before his brain could finish recognizing that it was real.

"Heave!" came a thunderous and deep voice from above. It was like a dark mirror of Walton Ennis' – the same baritone and the rich timbre, but somehow cold and imperious where the radio man's was warm and welcoming.

Four pale, gaunt Laponte men hauled him to safety. They wore tool belts and were covered in dirt and wood dust, clearly having just finished a hard day of labor.

They rolled him onto his back and let a happy Sheila greet him. He pushed her away before she lapped up any of the poison covering his face.

Charles Laponte leaned over him, a half-smile on his face; more joy there than he’d ever seen the man wear before. “The Lord is not finished with you yet, Finneas Blyde.”

One of his younger sons added, “There are stairs down, moron.”

……

A gentle hand on her shoulder dispelled visions of ancient vistas and returned her to the land of the waking. In her dreams, she had found a nameless breeze that once carried the spores and seeds of the early forests of Appalachia and the Scottish Highlands, which were one and the same before the continents had split. It showed her through its eyes the swaying canopies of those woods, so dense that the night lived eternal beneath them, and the jagged, wind-blasted peaks that towered above.

As she adjusted to the sterile light of a med bay, the dream faded. All Marina could recall was a feeling of satisfaction to have helped spread life across the land, and a longing to be known and named.

“Sorry to wake you,” said an elderly black man wearing a small smile. The name tag on his lab coat read, ‘Dr. Soto.’ “Or rather, sorry to not have woken you sooner. I didn’t realize you wanted to avoid your power-based healing; our system’s been unreliable. We’re right next to one of the pylons for the Forestry Service’s radar grid. I wasn’t able to access your files from the California database until a few minutes ago. Your metrics – the hyperoxemia and VO2 consumption – were well past the point where your records indicate I should have intervened, though I couldn’t say for how long you’ve been that way.”

Marina blinked off the haze and looked around confused, her brain split between piecing together her memories, trying to comprehend what she’d just been told, and cursing the infernal beeping of the monitors around her.

“Where am I?” she asked groggily.

“Camp Susquehanna Gold. How much do you remember?”

She rubbed at her eyes, wincing and hissing in pain as she touched her right one. “Ow, shit. I was in the helicopter…”

Dr. Soto nodded. “I’m not surprised; you had a pretty severe concussion. The soldiers you saved opted to let you rest instead of waking you for the landing. When you were still out of it after touching down, they brought you to me despite,” he added with a grin, “your insistence that you were fine. Your bruising was already going down by that point, so after checking you didn’t have any cerebral hemorrhaging, I put you under observation and let your body get to work. Again, sorry about that.” He paused, fighting against and losing to his curiosity as he said, “You opened all the windows and doors while you were unconscious...”

“Yeah. That’ll happen.”

“In the entire camp, as well as the checkpoints down the road.”

Marina frowned. “Huh. My bad.” Her injuries must have been worse than she thought.

She’d commanded her Breezes to not try and heal her, drilled it into their minds that they could do more harm than good, but spirits of Air were notoriously fickle, especially when roused by concern. Dr. Morris had told her that every time her powers put her back together, she became less human and more alien. Wind was not meant to cure or heal; it only worked for her because of her dual nature, and she still came out the other side of the experience a little wrong every time. Her eyes had been hazel once; now they were an almost crystalline shade of sky blue. But the real issue was the mood swings and insidious mental changes. Therapy had put a stop to the worst of those, but if she didn't want to end up as temperamental and flighty as your average Sylph, then Marina needed to rely on human medicine over elemental magic. In time, perhaps at the end of her natural lifespan, she might give in and shed her humanity, but until then, she wanted to live the life she'd been given.

“How long was I out?”

“Just under two and a half hours.”

“Should be fine, then.” She clenched her jaw as she scooted herself up to a sitting position. “Agh, that’s a broken rib.”

“That’s three broken ribs, Lift-Off, and a fractured hip.”

“Oh, great.” What a delightful topper to a truly miserable day. “Hey, the military’s got fancy medtech, right? Think I could hop in a sound pod or something?”

"As a matter of fact, I wanted to discuss that with you." Soto pulled up a chair and sat down next to her bed. "Ordinarily, I would give you an ointment for your hematomas and prescribe you a mix of oral steroids and immune-boosters to cut your recovery time in half. That's standard for any active-duty member. However, Colonel Swilling is currently working to add a Department of Defense Commendation to your LSR record. It should take a month or two to go through, but it'll be retroactively applied to today. That opens up options we keep in reserve for our Special Operations Forces."

"Like a sound pod?" She'd always wanted to try one of those, but they'd been outside her budget in LA. The side-effect-free stem cell growth they stimulated was considered the gold standard for skincare amongst celebrities.

Soto shook his head. “Unfortunately, this camp doesn’t have access to the breadth of medtech or contemporary Regenerative Agents that a larger base might have, however, I do have three bags of USAF-RA-17 on hand, maybe better known as,” he did finger quotes, “‘The Juice.’ Personally, having seen the nature of the Bulletin you’re responding to, I would recommend you allow me to administer a full bag. But I will warn you, the hours in which the IV is attached to you will be some of the worst of your life.”

She shrugged her left shoulder. “A kid’s missing; I don’t have much choice, do I?”

Dr. Soto put up a hand. "I tend to agree, but I must insist on explaining the side-effects before you make your decision. During the IV drip, every bone in your body is going to throb and itch intensely at about a nine on the pain scale, you will have a high fever and a migraine, you will feel an urgent and overwhelming need to urinate but will be totally incapable of doing so, and you will go blind. For twelve hours after that, you will suffer from a complete inability to sleep and an acute sensation of dread, the worst you will have ever felt. For three weeks, you will have a voracious appetite that you will have to indulge, or you will lose vital bone and muscle mass. Also, about half of patients report leafy greens tasting of ammonia for about three months after the dose, a quarter report being unable to enjoy music for ten months to a year, and five percent will continually forget their own names for years. The other symptoms are more or less guaranteed.”

“Jesus Christ, Doc. Tell me there are some positives too.”

The man chuckled. "It's great for your skin. You'd look three years younger if the stress of the treatment didn't age you by four. But in all seriousness, RA-17 is a total Regenerative Agent. By the time your vision returns, you'll be in fighting shape, and by the time you can sleep again, you'll be completely healed of any injury, even old ones. If you have any chronic pain now, you won't afterward."

She ran a hand down the left side of her face; the right side throbbed with pain. “I took the Bulletin, doctor. There’s no way I can be out of commission for the month the steroids would take. Give me the Juice, I guess.” A part of her felt that this was Karma rebalancing the scales in a way. Oh, you shirked your calling to do high-end pharmaceuticals in Los Angeles for six years? How about you sit in this one for twelve hours – something like that.

“Understandable; I admire your dedication to your mission. I’ll get the bag out of the freezer. Colonel Swilling will want to speak to you before we begin, as well.”

Ten minutes later, a squat man wearing fatigues with a horseshoe of thinning but well-groomed white hair strode through the door. He had a file under one arm and reminded her of the men in her grandfather’s generation, the kind who showed affection by not looking annoyed at your presence.

“Lift-Off.”

“Colonel Swilling?”

“Correct.” He nodded at the chair still at her bedside. “May I sit? I’ll be quick.”

She raised a brow. That was a level of respect she never thought she’d earn from a military man. “Of course, sir—”

“None of that.” He took the seat. “Call me Swilling, or Colonel if you must. You just saved my ass, as well as five soldiers’ lives and the American taxpayer a forty-million-dollar helicopter.”

“That’s the job. They made me do a lot of tests and paperwork for the privilege of working it.”

“No, ma’am, it is not.” He opened the folder he’d brought and fished out a pair of reading glasses from his front pocket. “You are a contractor. I believe your job at the moment is to explore a cave in Clinton County in pursuit of a missing teenager.”

“Yeah, well. Between you and me, Colonel, I needed the win.”

“Believe me, Lift-Off, I can relate. Which is why I came to ask if you’d allow me to retroactively contract you for the rescue services you performed today. You’d be doing me and, in my opinion, the American people a service.”

Marina furrowed her brow and tried to parse the request. “What…does that mean? What would I have to do?”

“Nothing. You’ve already done the job.”

“I don’t follow, Colonel.”

Swilling took a long breath and fished out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Smoke? They’re a supposedly non-addictive nicotine substitute. Grandson asked that I quit tobacco for his birthday, precocious brat.”

She eyed them warily. Part of the journey of self-discovery she was on felt like it demanded she leave her chemical vices in Los Angeles. “Probably shouldn’t…but yeah, alright.”

It had been a long day, and change didn’t have to happen overnight, right?

The old warhorse lit them a pair of faux cigarettes, and she idly commanded a current to wick both the acrid smell and ash through an open window. Marina had never in her life imagined she'd be in a hospital bed sharing a smoke with a surly colonel, but it felt right in its novelty. This was precisely the sort of unpredictable twist she'd wanted out of her life when she'd dreamed of adventuring.

“If I told you that the country was in danger of Ottomanization, you would tell me,” he said, gesturing to her.

She smiled warily. “I’d probably try to politely extract myself from the conversation.”

“And if there was no need to be kind?”

“Then I’d tell you that the Cold War is over, old man.”

"Rightfully so. But let's ignore the connotations that the Cold War inflicted on that word for now. We don't need to discuss ideology or politics to discuss the process to which I'm referring. When I say the country is in danger of Ottomanization, I'm not slapping my desk, pointing to the camera, and demanding we oust sympathizers from our government and media – I'm telling you that there is a blueprint for the rise of an American Emperor that we must forever be wary of. It goes like this," Swilling started counting off on his fingers, "Balkanization – America splits into independent nation states – followed by various supers seizing control of cities and regions as feudal lords, and then finally the rise of a super capable uniting them under his or her banner. Would you agree with that assessment?"

She shrugged. “Sure, plenty of megalomaniacal lunatics in the world.”

"Exactly, you've cut to the heart of it. It doesn't matter if a super is actually capable of becoming said Emperor; all that matters is that they believe themselves to be, and they will inevitably work towards that goal. What's worse, in my mind, are those that are cunning enough to know that while they couldn't reign at the top, believe themselves capable of carving out a Satrapy in the ensuing civil wars."

Marina felt herself disassociating. She'd once told a disastrous first date that she would rather throw herself through glass than talk about politics, and she'd meant it.

“Colonel, with all due respect, I’ve got three broken ribs and still wouldn’t care about this if I didn’t. What does this have to do with me?” America was just somewhere Marina lived; her loyalty was, in order, to her family, her friends, and the Elemental Air.

“Fair enough. I did say I’d be quick. I have a proposal for you, Lift-Off. First, are you amenable to the rescue Bulletin I mentioned?”

“Getting paid to do something I already did and would have done anyway? Of course.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

Swilling handed her a sheath of papers from the folder and a pen. The pages were cramped full of legalese that she didn't know where to begin to engage with. It was daunting at first – normally, the agency handled all the paperwork for her – until she realized that since she'd already done everything in the contract, all she had to do was initial and sign. Still, it emphasized the importance of finding someone competent to replace Danielle; she didn't trust that bimbo with reading the back of a cereal box, let alone anything as dense as this.

At the end of the contract was a line-item report for what she would be paid. Her jaw dropped. “This…has to be a typo. A million dollars?”

Swilling wore the smug expression of a salesman who’d just hooked his prey. “Welcome to the wonderful world of military contracting, Lift-Off. There’s a high base pay, but the bulk is the percentage of the cost of the equipment you protected. We do that to incentivize against collateral damage. You know how some supers get.”

“This says I saved both helicopters.”

“It’s up to my discretion to decide what was and was not protected. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that both gunships were in imminent danger.”

“Not that I’m complaining, but doesn’t that leave a lot of room for corruption?”

“Again, welcome to the world of military contracting.” Swilling leaned forward. “Here’s my proposal. Our operations in Appalachia have been an experiment to solve what would typically be an LSR problem without the LSR system, half because of the lack of rural supers and half because there are elements within the government who have staked their reputations on being able to do so. I am strongly opposed to letting the latter get away with that – this mission has been a catastrophic waste of money from day one. If we had simply put a tenth of what we’ve spent hunting Big Momma on a bounty for her, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, a dozen lives, and this would have been a wrap months ago.”

“Hence why you need me to sign this?” asked Marina, waving the stack of papers.

“Yes. I need it on record that without an LSR, we would have lost ten lives and two gunships. But that isn't my proposal. How would you like to be paid to do an aetheric survey of this area for the next year at a similarly exorbitant rate? Let's say, a twelve-month seasonal aetheric survey of the Elemental Plane for the purpose of correlating cult activity at no less than two hundred thousand dollars a month."

“Sir, I have a high school diploma from a public school in Eugene, Oregon.”

Colonel Swilling chuckled. “You’d be assessing how the region’s connection to the Elemental Plane changes with the seasons.”

“Oh. You want to pay me to just hang around here for a year?”

"No, of course not, Lift-Off. Congress forbids such open-ended and do-nothing Special Response Bulletins. You would be doing a very academic-sounding job for hours a day—"

“Twenty-four hours a day, actually. I can literally do that in my sleep.”

“Is that right?” He made a note. “I can probably push that up to three-fifty a month, then.”

She blew out a long breath – Jesus. Four million dollars just to fly around and do nothing, talk about a come-up. And unlike with LA, it didn't feel like a trap either. There was no world in which the siren call of rural Pennsylvania ensnared her with its promises of glitz and glam, and what it did offer was not for her. She'd never cared for 4H club or any of that outdoorsy shit growing up. The horse girls at her school had bullied her out of it at an early age – autistic mean girls, every one of them.

But still, it felt wrong to take the job. She was meant to be getting her life together and finding meaning again. Taking advantage of military contracting for the tune of millions while doing fuck all was about as far from that as she could think of.

“It might sound silly, Colonel, and not to be too Hollywood, but I’m kind of on a journey for purpose right now.”

"There's nothing silly about that, young lady. It's commendable to see, especially from someone of your youth and power. But I'm not simply trying to enrich you as a reward for saving my soldiers. We're over budget, and the mission has been a black mark on our record – Our plan is to leave the region the moment Big Momma has been dealt with. If that happens on a Monday, then we will be gone by Wednesday. The Forestry Service's radar grid is working, even if it is making enemies out of everyone with satellite internet and television. Now that we can track her movements at night, and have confirmed that the Winchester Annihilators can harm her, I predict that the Helcat will be dead in under two weeks."

“Now,” he continued, “I could talk your ear off about how the failure of the LSR system in underpopulated areas of the country opens us up to autocratic expansions power, but I’m sure your head’s throbbing enough as is.”

“Sorry,” she said.

He waved her off, stamping out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. "It's fine. What's relevant for you is that once we leave, every bad actor we've been suppressing with our presence is going to come out from the shadows like a hungry rat. I believe that simply having an LSR of your strength in the area might be enough to stem the worst of that tide. You will be in a dangerous position, but I'm willing to ensure you are compensated adequately. The Bulletin I'm suggesting will be paid quarterly. If you feel that after three months, you have had enough of Central Pennsylvania, you will be free to take what you've been paid and leave. In the meantime, there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to pick up other Bulletins in the area. One way or another, you'll be leaving PA with enough to allow you to engage in whatever charity, pro-bono work, or travel you desire without fear of financial difficulties. And, more importantly, you will be bringing hope to the hopeless. These people need help, Lift-Off; they need someone to believe in."

Marina wobbled her head back and forth. She knew he was trying to sell her on his idea, and was framing it in a way that he thought could get her to bite, but it sounded…ideal. Three months to clear her head and meditate on what she wanted out of life was probably called for, regardless of anything else. Was there a good reason not to spend those months somewhere with clean air and no noise pollution, while being paid to protect the underserved from a host of monsters and villains?

Before she could answer, Dr. Soto’s voice rang out loudly from the doorway. “Colonel Swilling, why does my patient have a cigarette?”

The colonel cleared his throat and stood up quickly. “Think about the offer, Lift-Off. We can speak tomorrow after you’ve come down from your treatment.” He smiled ruefully. “Your first time taking the Juice is a harrowing experience. I’ll leave you to it.”