Auf Wiedersehen Boy

He smelled pork, wanted to look up. The butt of the musket kept his head down. He wanted to ask where—this didn’t seem right, not right at all—but then a pair of black boots stomped in front of him, and he knew who it was.

Blood.

“Aye,” said the man. “I’ve found ye, Mister Justice, as I told ye I would.”

The ocean crashed against the shore in the background. Rip Justice refused to raise his head, his eyes boring into the sand. Blood was already in his mind, but it didn’t mean he could get very far. Don’t look, he told himself. Just don’t look.

Someone screamed, further on down the beach. There was a shouting. He heard a gunshot. Laughter. Someone else roared and cursed, swearing vengeance, but Rip knew the truth. There would be no vengeance, not for them. Nobody stops Blood.

Nobody.

Something’s wrong

I’m Victor

Victor Grette

Victor Grette

“Not my crew,” he wheezed. Someone had looped a rope around his neck, preparing to tighten it. “Not my crew, please. I'll do anything.”

What is this? Fuck. Mind-control, maybe?

The rope pulled back. Head jerked up. Pirates. He was looking at pirates. There was a pig on a spit. Looked like a luau had been interrupted. Why would someone be making pictures of pirates in his head? Why would they mention Rip? Who was Blood, and how did Victor know him?

Someone is fucking with me.

No, Victor.

We’re not.

Blood grinned.

Had to be Blood, of course, with that crimson cape, the handsome grin, those ruddy cheeks. Tall, strong, handsome, and dominant. But familiar. Too familiar. Whoever was digging around in Victor’s head had to be pulling up memories that he himself couldn't recall. Faces, names, dates—things long forgotten, discarded, no longer needed but still there.

“I see you,” said Blood.

“I see you hiding in there.”

“You need to come back now. If you'll do anything, that's what I want you to do.”
 

-----

And then Colin was escaping the fight, doing everything wrong and no, oh god, what was he doing, this was going to cock it all up. He had to fight, had to impress them for reasons Victor only barely remembered through the haze inside his mind. Something was wrong. Someone had just committed a psychic incursion.

Colin. Shit. Had they done the same to him? Was he alright? Victor looked around wildly, rewrote the instructions his brain was sending to his organs, telling it to filter out any poisons it might have picked up. He amped up his body’s electrical system—dangerous, in some situations, but a useful method of blocking, or at least dampening, psychic incursions. He’d have to get to Colin too, do the same thing to him, at least temporarily.

Victor’s gut told him that things were about to go very, very wrong, so he told it to shut up, snaking his way through the increasingly-restless crowd and outside where Colin looked like he’d just been through hell. Which, well, assuming Colin had been attacked in the same way, it made sense. Colin shouldn’t have been in a position to lose. He was too strong for that.

Seem human, he told himself. Be human.

The smile on his face was warm, brotherly. Ready to take on the world together.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling the world wasn’t about to let them win. He told himself he wasn’t angry, but he was, just not at Colin. For Colin, no, he was worried. Concerned. The boy was practically his protégé. Victor would be to Colin what Rip had been to Victor.

Shit. Someone had tried to get him to think about Rip, but that was the last thing he wanted to think about.

It hadn’t ended well.

“What was that about?” Victor asked, to Colin as much as to whoever had been toying with his head.

654/13/13

Victor stepped back, unsure. Saw the pain in Colin’s face. Watched the boy move past, back in the building. He wanted to call out, say something meaningful, something to fix… to fix…

Fix what?

Colin was gone, but Victor was not alone.

His head snapped up almost as quickly as the black tendril struck him. A further mass of black threw him across the alley, then caught him just as deftly. Tendrils coiled themselves around his body, sunk into his flesh, just beneath the surface. Victor struggled to change, but nothing came. It felt as though he was drowning, his very skin unable to breathe. Wriggling and squirming, Victor did his best, but nothing changed.

In that moment, he felt his single defining attribute, his ability to change shape at will, submerged down, down, down into human consciousness.

He wanted to scream, to make some noise, to do something, but nothing came. Then he felt it, a strange tugging at the back of his head. Felt something wet… heard a crunch. Something just broke bone. Then he realized something had covered his eyes, and it was just beginning to pull away. The way it tore reminded him of drying tar being pulled apart, turning gummy and stringy as it went.

A figure stood before him. The weather had changed. Angry clouds, more black than grey, gathered above. The figure looked female, but it wasn’t human; couldn’t be, not like that. It had no face, no defining physical characteristics. Instead, it was… as if someone had molded the material that had grabbed him into this thing. Where Victor was a human who could shape himself into other things, this looked like a thing trying to shape itself into a human being.

And then it spoke.

“I had hoped you would remember. On your own. That you would give us what we want.”

Victor tried to tell it he didn’t understand, but it held him fast, refused to let him say anything.

“I understand what he wanted, but what he accomplished, only he could do. You understand? You don’t.”

It drew closer. Slipped through shades of black webbing and brought its face in close. Smelled familiar, Victor thought, pleasant. Inviting. At odds with its appearance.

“He built you to carry a secret. Not a person. Not human. You are a thing. Made.”

It paused. Head twitched, this way and that, searching the air for something. Then its face swam towards his. The pressure on his head was immense. Bone started to crack.

“I’m going to break you open. I need to know the truth. Have to see it for myself. Wish you would just tell me.”

Light began to fade.

Then she crushed his skull.

“It’s not over yet.”

457/9/22