V2Ch26-Miasma

The Rodriguez camp managed to forge further forward despite the marshy terrain and the unpleasant miasma that hung over it.

After Ramon’s return from scouting, the family gathered and resolved to remain together and try to hide in the swamp, rather than scattering to better evade the cultists. Almost everyone except Chava was on the same page there. Although the family members respected his pragmatic reasoning, they uniformly preferred to live or die together rather than apart.

“Thank you so much for taking us with you guys,” said Charlie Roebuck, one of the escaped prisoners, almost in tears. “I feel like it’s our fault that Rostov is chasing y’all!”

“Now now, none of that!” Cliff Rogers exclaimed. “Since you’ve joined us, you’ve all contributed just like everyone else. No reasonable person would blame you for this.”

That’s a nice thought, Cliff, but really more something for a member of the family to say, Ramon thought. And weren’t you blaming our situation on the person who rescued them before?

Following that family meeting, the first night in the marsh passed peacefully enough. When Ramon came off his shift on guard duty and slept, though, he had a strange dream.

The details were fuzzy when he woke up, but he remembered that James, of all people, was there. He gave a warning that the marsh was dangerous, but he called it something else. Something more specific, like a formal name for the place. The information was lost when Ramon woke up.

Ramon had to explain to dream James that the family had fled from the cultists into the swamp outskirts, and per his last scouting expedition, the cultists were still stalking the outskirts of the swamp. If they wanted to leave, they’d have to go through the Moloch worshippers.

James seemed to understand at that point, and Ramon’s dream returned to its regularly scheduled programming.

The next day dawned, but the sky remained grimly hazy, full of the same swampy miasma that had permeated the previous day. The air smelled fetid, like rot. Possibly worse than it had been the previous day.

And there was something both strange and alarming.

Are there fewer of us? It felt like one or two of the people who would normally be out walking in the morning air were either sleeping in or simply absent.

Ramon looked around. Maria and Hector were circulating through the camp, quietly talking to people with looks of concern on their faces. The couple didn’t have either of their teenagers with them, which was unusual. They’d been fairly protective since the System appeared.

When they came to Ramon, Maria asked: “Have you seen my Jessica or my Jaime, Ramon?” She tried to curl her mouth into her usual friendly smile, but the corners of her lips kept falling.

Ramon could only shake his head.

As the morning went on, it became clear that Jessica, Jaime, and Chava Rodriguez, plus Moishe Rose, were all missing.

No one could precisely trace where they might have gone. The camp was on guard against the possibility of cultists entering the marsh from the forest, but no sentries were posted against people leaving. The only theory that seemed to make sense was that they had walked deeper into the swamp for some reason or other.

No one wanted to say it out loud, but the grim reality was, besides Moishe, the missing were all among the physically weaker members of the camp.

Why would they wander further into the swamp? They have to have known that they would only get themselves into some kind of trouble. There must be monsters that live here.

Only Moishe’s disappearance made some kind of sense. The Assassin could take care of himself fairly well, Ramon knew, and he might have simply wanted to do more damage to the cultists.

Still, I wish he’d stuck around, Ramon thought. The camp feels less secure without him. I can’t keep them safe well myself, and I don’t like relying on that Cliff. And he had hoped that Moishe, who he knew had been a Rogue before undergoing Class Evolution, might teach him a thing or two.

At lunch time, when the family gathered to eat their rations, Camila suggested to everyone that the family move their tents closer together. It would be more secure. They might also want to consider posting guards on the marsh side of the camp as well as the forest-facing side.

She tried to be calm and gentle as she made her suggestions, but Ramon could hear her voice tremble as she spoke. It was clear that she feared for her family.

—

Jeffrey Ross dreamt.

Though his day had been stressful, the dream was soothing. He was a young teenager, still living in his parents’ house. His father was showing him how to lift weights for the first time again.

“Christ on a cracker, kid, you’ll hurt yourself like that!” Jackson Ross frowned and took the barbell from his son’s hands.

Jeffrey suppressed a smile. Just like in real life, he messed it up on purpose. He just wanted his Dad to show him how to do it again. He wanted attention, and this was one of the times he could get extra attention without any distractions. His baby brother and kid sister were too young for weightlifting, and they weren’t awake now anyway. Dad’s training regimen always started before sunrise.

Jeffrey watched his Dad demonstrate the proper technique once more. Then he took the weight back from him and performed a barbell curl correctly. Jeffrey’s Dad nodded, and then Jeffrey continued contentedly lifting the weight. Up and down. Up and down.

Until he realized that the garage around him had dissolved.

Jeffrey was still a teenager, still holding the barbell, and still standing in front of his father. But everything around him was different.

“Say, where are we?” Jackson Ross looked all around, a confused expression on his face.

They were in the Orientation forest, in the Rostov camp.

The teenagers from earlier that day were there, bound and afraid.

“Please, Officer,” one of them pleaded. “You have to do something, they’re going to kill us!”

And Officer Jackson Ross turned back to them. He had switched from his workout clothes to his police uniform while Jeffrey was looking at the teenagers, but that detail didn’t seem strange.

“I’ll cut you loose, kids!” He turned back to Jeffrey, his expression worried. “Son, you have to help me! I think something terrible is going to happen to these kids if we don’t get them out of here.”

Jeffrey was paralyzed. I can’t, he thought. It’s their lives or ours! Dad, I… He tried to play out the conversation in his head, but realized that no matter what combination of words he used, there would be no possible way teenaged Jeffrey could explain this to his Dad.

And then he looked down at himself and saw that he was a teenager no longer. He was an adult, wearing his police uniform, armed with his pistol. His Dad still stood there, looking at him beseechingly.

“Son, we have to do something! Hurry!”

“Dad,” Jeffrey said softly. “I can’t do anything for those teenagers. Catherine and I—my wife and I will be killed if we help them.”

“Boy, I didn’t raise you this way!” Jackson Ross looked and sounded more upset than angry. “What did my life even mean if you’re willing to sacrifice these innocent kids to save yourself? All the time we spent together? Where did I go wrong?” His voice dropped. “What would your poor mother say?”

“Don’t,” Jeffrey said. “Please don’t.” His eyes filled with tears.

Then he felt a hand on his arm. He turned his head to the side, and there was Catherine, smiling, beautiful.

“It’s alright, sweetheart. Just think about our kids and how happy they’ll be to see us alive.”

She pulled him into her embrace. He wrapped his arms around her tightly.

For a moment, he felt a measure of peace.

Then he noticed that his hands felt strangely moist and sticky. He pulled them away from Catherine, and he saw that they were red with fresh blood.

“Gah! What the hell?!” he exclaimed.

He pulled away from Catherine, and he saw that she was bleeding. Streams of blood trickled down from the crown of her head, her wrists, her hands, her feet, and the place just above her heart.

“Catherine!” Jeffrey cried. “What’s happened to you?!”

“Don’t you think the children will be happy to see me, sweetie?”

“Ahhhhhh!!!”

Jeffrey Ross sprung awake, sweat trickling down his forehead and his back. The darkness and the firelight of the camp site immediately reminded him. It was just a dream.

“But what the hell was that dream?” he wondered aloud. He turned his head and looked at his wife. Catherine’s expression was beatific, as if she was dreaming of blissful reunion with their children.

Just my conscience, I guess, Ross thought. I wasn’t cut out for this stuff. I wasn’t raised to sacrifice other human beings. He thought of his father. You would be ashamed of me, wouldn’t you?

There was a slight commotion outside of the tent, and he perked his ears up. If it was a confrontation, he should probably involve himself. He rose to a crouch and began dressing.

Then he froze, one leg in his pants and one out.

Why should I get involved? he thought. What the hell is wrong with me? When did I become such a good little soldier? What happened to the guy who was just looking for the first opportunity he could find to backstab Rostov?

He turned back to his wife and smiled bittersweetly. Then he kissed her forehead. He finished putting his pants on and stepped outside.

Six figures stood in a circle, four of them kicking and punching and stabbing with swords at a figure on the ground.

“What’s all this?!” Ross inserted himself into the conflict confidently, loudly announcing himself.

Two of the figures bent to grab hold of the person on the ground, whose face was concealed in shadow. One of them, Hilda Rohm, turned to see Ross. She smiled tensely.

“We were very fortunate this evening, Officer,” she said. Her expression looked as if she was unhappy with this good fortune. “We caught Moishe Rose. He returned to our camp to try and do some more damage, but he set off the Prophet’s defensive wards this time.”

“Well, then, the Prophet will want to be part of dealing with him, won’t he?” Ross frowned. “Or were you all about to carry out some vigilante justice?”

A man whose face had been concealed in shadow turned to Ross. He saw it was Kassim.

“You won’t hold it against us that we got a few hits in on him, will you, Jeff?” he asked. “We already know what the Prophet will do, and of course, none of us object to making this man a sacrifice. But he killed people we knew. He deserves the lesson he’s getting.”

“Maybe so,” Ross said. “Have you woken the Prophet?”

“I’ll go ahead and do that,” Kassim replied with a forced smile.

Kassim’s more loyal to Rostov than anybody. Interesting that he’d do this behind his back. Rostov wouldn’t even disapprove, but to not even bother waking him is…

It was clear the Prophet’s hold on everyone’s loyalty was slipping.

Maybe, despite what Catherine had said, this was the moment that Jeffrey had to seize.

As Kassim walked away, Jeffrey looked down at Moishe Rose. Perhaps you could help me figure out how to kill Rostov and get away with it.

Aloud, he said: “So, was it worth it coming back here again, shithead?”

Moishe looked up at him with defiant eyes.

“I already got a couple more of you,” he said. “I call it worth it.”

Already? It almost sounds as if he thinks he might kill more of us.

He noticed Moishe’s palm tracing a pattern on his chest, and something prickled in the back of Ross’s mind. The movement was too similar to the symbol he remembered Moishe traced when he used his ability.

At speed that would have been impossible when he was a normal human, Ross slammed a fist down into Moishe’s skull.

The Assassin collapsed instantly.

“Phew!” Ross exhaled.

Then he noticed the others were staring at him.

“He was about to use some kind of ability,” Ross explained hastily.

“Sure he was,” said Carl Ronson with a snicker. “You wanted to get your lick in, too, Officer, there’s no reason to deny it. No one would blame you for a punch.”

“Just make sure his hands are bound,” Ross said contemptuously.

I don’t know how I thought for a second that I might be able to work with that guy. Regardless of what kind of ability he was trying to use, he knew he’d die after he used it. He came back here fully expecting and planning to get himself killed, just to take as many of us with him as possible. Even if I can’t stand how things are going right now, I’m not suicidal.

He felt certain that he had at least a few allies in the camp who would help him deal with Rostov and his loyalists. Ross would just have to choose his moment and his co-conspirators carefully.

He turned to walk away, then paused and turned around again.

“Hey, the person he attacked before was bitten by a venomous snake. Did you guys kill that thing?” Ross asked.

The five who had captured Moishe Rose looked slightly alarmed at this announcement. Then Hilda silently shook her head.