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Part 4-1: Version
I’d actually lost count of how many times I’d stood in this cursed hallway, staring down a plain office door, steeling myself to move inside and face down the clock and whatever nastiness it had in store. Half a dozen now? Maybe less?
“Alena, what do you spy?” came a whisper in my ear.
Deluxe spoke to me from a jail cell, into my real ear, as Alena The Ghostwalker stood inside the John B. Zachary Centre for something like the fifth time.
“Clock tower said eleven fifty eight,” I said back. “But I’m going to check the puny one too.”
“Should you be there alone?”
“Too late, already in.”
“Snap back, first sign of threat,” said Deluxe, as she dug a row of fingernails into my palm. An anchor for me. I appreciated it, because I felt on the brink of a chattering panic attack. A clawing notion that felt like sleep deprivation plus too much coffee, but was actually probably sleep deprivation plus too much abject trauma.
“Aye, cap’n,” I said, and returned my tweaky attention to the door. I pictured my blue rapier, lost at some point during the battle at the Walkerby’s but never too far away, since it was made more of thought and will than steel and iron.
It popped into existence with a sharp fuzz, sending its bright hue down the lengths of the colourless grey hall. It snapped and flickered, and I wondered if it reflected my jittery soulquake.
“Alrighty,” I said, and walked into the door.
My face bashed off of it, and I stumbled back.
Blinking, I tried the handle. My ghost hand could hold it like normal, or pass right through it like you’d expect a ghost hand to do, depending on which way I focused. But it wouldn’t turn.
“Locked, seems,” I reported to Deluxe. I took a swipe at it with the rapier, causing a quick-to-fade streak of light and nothing else. I tested the normal doors, and found I could move through them and their walls at will. Eden’s room was closed to me.
“Perhaps you must be corporeal for access,” suggested Deluxe. “Let’s go, get out of there.”
“One more thing,” I said, driven by a bit of angry curiosity. I pictured the alleyway, conjured up the throat-acidic feeling of seeing that punk with the gang sign tattooed under his eye.
Easy as pie, I was there. The actual gang thugs were there too, smoking and being menacing. I had not anticipated this and informed Deluxe by way of a sharp squeak.
“Alena!” she hissed. “What’s wrong, what’d you do?”
“Nrrm,” I said, in a painful arm wrestle with what all my senses told me (danger: run!) and what I knew to be logically true: I was super invisible to all of them. Sudden and welcome amusement over the notion that ‘super invisible’ equated to ‘logically true’ came to the rescue and put the budding panic back into a low grade buzz. I blew out a few quick breaths and said, “False alarm, forgot I was a bitchin’ mutant super-heroine for sec. Ran into some normies.”
“Location?” she asked.
“Alley.”
I wanted to eavesdrop, but that hardly seemed like a good use of time. It sounded like they were discussing a mobile app game anyway. Shouldn’t they be planning vandalism or misdemeanors instead of wasting gang time on apps? Kids these days.
Skewering them all with misplaced judgment, I ghosted into the ‘normie’ entrance of the building—the stairwell. I wanted to see if The Secret to Living was still tucked under empty space at the bottom. To my utter surprise, it totally was still there, right where I’d left it.
“Mmm, what’re you up to?” I asked it, and knelt a little closer. I hadn’t the energy nor patience to open it and chat with my lovely enemies, but something about its inert, unassuming presence made me suspicious as—
“Ah, of fucking course,” I whispered, as I got close enough to read the front.
It was The Secret to Living, alright, but this version claimed to be written by Dack P. Vines.
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