Quantum shift, p.33
Quantum Shift, page 33
part #1 of Phase Shift Series
Each school contained an Omega, as well: a queen spider that was a bit bigger than Troias and could shoot its webbing. The first Omega dropped on Troias from above the moment he entered her lair, bearing him to the ground and biting him on the arm. The wound began to tingle almost immediately, but Troias felt nothing more than a brief lightheadedness from the poison the creature had injected and managed to flip himself over after only a moment, knocking the Omega loose. Annalise drove it back with a hail of gunfire that cracked its hardened carapace, and Spencer lit it up with his flamethrower spell. The Omega tried to retreat, but between the fire burning any webs it tried to make and Annalise’s rounds slamming into it, it couldn’t escape, allowing Troias to unsheathe his glaive and bury the blade in the creature’s head.
When they cleared the second school, Troias made sure to go into the final, center part of the web with his glaive up. He’d hoped the spider queen would impale itself on the point, but apparently it recognized the danger. Rather than dropping on him, the Omega tried to snare him with a line of webbing, aiming for his face. He swatted it away with his weapon, which stuck immediately to the adhesive thread, then yanked hard, pulling the Omega out of its overhead perch and down to the floor. Once it was in easy range of Adrian and Spencer’s flames and Annalise’s shotgun – she’d come prepared this time, with her shotgun loaded with slugs instead of shot – it fell quickly enough.
While the boys’ fire abilities had been effective, Troias realized that there were hidden dangers and downsides to using them. While the magical flames didn’t burn hot enough to set the schools on fire, they did scorch the floors and walls and started numerous smaller blazes that the group had to put out. All of that damage significantly reduced the number of build points he got for capturing the locations, for one thing, and waiting for the fires to burn out – or extinguishing them – made the whole process take much longer than it would have normally. There was also the issue of oxygen: despite their magical nature, the flames sucked all the oxygen from the air. Adrian had nearly passed out more than once, and however strong Troias had become, he still needed to breathe. Still, the boys had done their job well, and Troias figured that if the nearby graveyard ever did spawn zombies, their fire would be just the thing to deal with them.
Between the daily training, working with the Brigade on how to use and improve their Facets, and clearing the areas to their south and west, Troias found those days to be some of the best he’d had since the Shift. He and Annalise had become a well-oiled machine; he could count on her to have his back, and she could count on him to keep threats at a distance. In between combat and training, they simply spent time together and talked, finally opening up a bit about their pre-Shift lives.
They’d just finished their daily firearms training – Troias still didn’t like using a gun, but at least now he could if he had to – when Annalise broached the subject, almost hesitantly.
“Do you want to tell me more about what you did before…all this?” she asked slowly. “Before the Shift, I mean?”
Troias glanced at her, startled. She’d assiduously avoided any topic that might lead to a discussion about life before the Shift; it took his mind a few moments to shift gears before he could answer.
“Well, I think I told you the important stuff already,” he said cautiously. “I was a martial arts instructor, primarily judo and jiu-jitsu. That’s pretty much all I did.”
“That can’t be all,” she smiled. “After all, you didn’t learn how to use that – what do you call it, a glaive? – teaching judo, did you? You’re way too comfortable in combat to just be a teacher, as well; I know the difference between those who teach and those who do.”
“Yeah, I used to fight full-contact MMA tournaments,” he agreed. “No-holds barred, kumite rules: you win by knocking the other person out or making them tap out. It’s not the same as fighting for your life, but it helped me get into the right mindset for what we have to do now.
“As for my weapons, a few buddies and I used to fight mock battles with medieval-style weapons.”
“I’ve seen some of that online,” she grinned. “Isn’t that kind of a nerd thing? You know, a bunch of dorky kids with cardboard armor and plastic swords?”
“That’s LARP’ing,” he corrected. “I tried that once and couldn’t get into it. No, this is actual combat, just with blunt weapons and padded armor. It was fun and great exercise, but it was mostly useless in the real world. I mean, could you imagine how people would have reacted to seeing me walking down the street with my glaive a month ago? Or even a sword? I’d have been arrested in a heartbeat.”
“True,” she snorted. “And now, a dorky habit is a necessary life skill. Who would have guessed?” She gazed back up at him. “Do you think about your friends a lot?” she asked softly. “Or your family?” Her face grew alarmed, and she quickly added, “You don’t have to talk about it if…”
He waved her words aside. “It’s okay,” he said, his face set in a grim smile. “I don’t really have family to worry about. My parents both died years ago, and I was an only child. I’ve got aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on, but I wasn’t ever really close to them. I never married, no serious girlfriend, no kids.”
“What about friends?” she asked.
“Yeah, I worry about them sometimes,” he admitted. “Mostly about the school; I wonder about the kids who were there, or Liz and Oscar – the instructors I left to run the place while I was on vacation.”
He sighed. “I can’t think about it too much, though. It’s something beyond my control, and if I worry about it, I’ll drive myself crazy. Instead, I’m putting it to the side until we get back to Chicago and I can deal with it, then.”
She nodded, biting her lip. “I’ve kind of been doing the same thing,” she said softly. “I told you I have a sister, but I never told you much about her, because I’ve been trying not to think about her. I don’t want to see her…” She broke off and bowed her head.
Troias nodded. “I get it. The woman who was running the dojo for me, Liz, is an old friend, almost like a little sister. I can’t even think about something happening to her, but I don’t want to assume she’s okay, because I don’t want my hopes shattered, either.”
“That’s it. The thing is, it makes me feel guilty, like I’m pretending I don’t care, when really, I do care, and I wonder if not going to check on them makes me a horrible person.”
“No, it just makes you a person, I think,” Troias shook his head. “There’s no good way to handle all this, Annalise. This is something outside of anything humans have experienced, as far as I know. I think we each have to handle it the best way we can; there isn’t a right or wrong.”
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing; I think the idea of what makes you a good person or bad person had to change with the Shift. I mean, a month ago, what we did with Elias would have gotten us arrested for mass murder. Now, if we hadn’t done it, no one would have. It’s a matter of survival, not of right and wrong.
“I think it’s the same thing; I think putting all of this aside is part of being able to survive in the Shift, you know?” She took a deep breath. “But I can’t put it aside forever, so…can we head over there when we get a chance? Maybe after Green Bay?”
“Of course,” he nodded. “We can handle that, no problem.” He glanced at her. “You want to talk about your family?” he asked gently. “You said they had a bit of a falling out…”
She snorted. “That’s an understatement,” she replied, looking out at the targets at the far end of the range. She took a deep breath. “To get it, you have to understand my family, I think. My dad’s a retired Marine – not a former Marine, because there are no former Marines, as he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen – and he raised my sister and I to be self-sufficient. We learned to shoot as soon as we were old enough to handle the recoil of a .22. He used to take us hunting for family trips when we were young, and he had us both doing competitive shooting through the 4-H club back in elementary school.”
She sighed. “Robert and Melissa – my sister – never got along. She didn’t like him, he didn’t like her, and neither of them could seem to tell me why. Then, after we got married…Robert changed. He’d always had a temper, but he’d also had it under control. The first time he…well, he seemed terrified, and he swore it would never happen again, and I wanted to believe him, so I did.
“Melissa didn’t. She threatened to tell Dad, and he probably would have killed Robert – I mean, literally killed him and gone to prison, and I’d have lost both of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I told her to stay out of my life, and she told me to keep Robert away from her family. We just…stopped talking.
“Robert didn’t stop, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt so helpless, when my dad had raised me to be strong and take care of myself. Melissa wouldn’t speak to me; she told me that she couldn’t stand who I’d become. So, I just…endured, I guess. It made me feel weak, and helpless, like I wasn’t good enough for anyone.
“But I finally decided I’d had enough, and I told Robert that if he touched me again, I’d leave and go live with my parents…and he was terrified of my dad. So, he was getting help, and we went on this trip to try and rebuild things. And then…” Her voice trailed off.
“Well, I think your dad and your sister would be proud of you,” Troias said after a few moments. He turned and looked at her seriously. “I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t have done back then. I’ve never been in a situation like that. But I can say that anyone who thinks you’re weak is an absolute idiot, because I haven’t met many people who are stronger.
“There are lots of different kinds of strength,” he said quietly. “My mom had the same kind that you do. She could endure, sure, but she had a talent for overcoming things that other people would have run away from. Even when she got cancer, and we all knew that she was going to die, she overcame it. Not the cancer, but the depression, the fear, the worry that consumed the rest of us. She found a way to accept it and push through it, to make the best of the hand she’d been dealt.
“I think that’s what you were doing. You got dealt a crappy hand, and you had the choice to fold it and walk away or to play it the best you could. You chose to play, and you played it as well as possible.
He smiled at her, meeting her startled eyes. “I also think that your kind of strength, and the talents that you have, just weren’t right for the situation you were in. They’re perfect for this new world, though. From what you said, I’d bet everything I own that your dad would be amazed at who you’ve become, and he’d tell you that everything you went through and all his training were just to make you a better warrior. The kind that can not only live through the Shift but will spit in its eye after.”
Troias fell silent, not adding that he kind of wished that Robert had been able to meet the Annalise of this new world. She’d been traumatized and needy when Troias met her; now, he thought that if someone like Robert took a swing at her, she’d put him down in a heartbeat, with no hesitation or regrets. The Annalise that had coldly executed rapists without a hint of remorse was decisive, unafraid, and strong, and he couldn’t see her tolerating mistreatment from anyone anymore.
He wondered if that was because, like him, Annalise fit well into this new world. In the old world, her greatest skills languished from lack of use. The only person who was a danger to her was someone she wasn’t willing to shoot, so she’d never had any cause to use the talents she’d been given outside of competitions. Now, those skills were vital, and having them had saved not only her life but the lives of dozens of others many times over. In this post-Shift world, Annalise had come into her own.
She sniffed, wiping her eyes, then suddenly turned and embraced him. “Thank you,” she whispered, her head buried against his chest. She hugged him fiercely for a moment before letting go and stepping back, cleaning her face with her shirt sleeve. “Well, that was incredibly awkward,” she grinned at him. “How about we go kill something before I break down into full tears, huh?”
The awkwardness hadn’t lasted long, but something about that moment of sharing had pulled them out of their comfortable lassitude. They’d fallen into something of a routine, and while the normalcy of that was comforting, neither one of them was ready to put down roots. The town had been mostly pacified – by this point, there were very few major spots they hadn’t claimed within ten miles of the stronghold – and, really, there was no more reason for Troias and Annalise to stay. Nothing that needed to be done had to be done by the pair; Lydia had everything under control.
That night, Troias decided to organize the first meeting of what he felt was his advisory council. He summoned Lydia and Spencer to the stronghold and contacted Jonas by radio; along with Annalise, that pretty much comprised everyone whose opinions mattered to him.
“So, I’ve kind of called everyone together tonight to hear how things are going and see what you guys need from me before I head south again to Green Bay,” he told the assembled guests. “I’ll start with you, Jonas. How are things going up in the UP?”
“Not too bad,” the old man’s voice buzzed through the radio. “We’ve secured most of the town at this point; enough, at least, that we’ve stopped seeing many dogmen in the town limits. We also grabbed all the places we could south toward your cabin, and we’ve had people out there hunting and up in the lake fishing – although I told them to stay off Grand Island. Something bad is up there, from the animal and dogman bodies we’ve seen torn up on the shore, but whatever it is seems to be staying on the island. It leaves us alone, so I don’t see any point in bothering it, yet.”
“That’s probably the Force Vortex that’s calling the dogmen, then,” Troias observed thoughtfully. When he saw the confused faces, he quickly explained about vortices. “So, whatever’s up there is probably a lot stronger and tougher than anything on the mainland. It’s probably best to leave it alone for the time being.”
“It might not keep leaving them alone, though,” Annalise pointed out. “That Death Vortex was surrounded by those panther-things. I’m sure the Vortex up there is creating something like that. Plus, you’ll want it cleared eventually, and the longer it’s left to hunt, the stronger it’ll get.”
“Yeah, we were thinking the same thing,” Jonas sighed. “I’ve had the townsfolk practicing with their Facets – turns out your totem can give you really good advice on that, if you just listen to the fool thing – and once we’re strong enough, we’ll mount an expedition to clean the island off, too.”
“How are Gertie and Nick doing?” Troias asked quietly.
“About the same as they were doing when you left,” Jonas chuckled. “Nick stops by every so often to see if he can hunt or fish with us, but of course, we have to turn him down. However, we’ve got no problem if he wants to hunt or fish near us, so he’s stayed safe, and they’ve stayed fed. It won’t last long, though; his gear is starting to look really bad, and his gun’s going to go one of these days. Just hope it doesn’t take him with it.”
Troias’ mouth twisted, but he put his concern for the pair aside. They’d made their choice, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Is there anything you need up there?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Nope, we’re doing okay. I’ve been saving up points to update a snowplow or two come winter, so we’ll keep the roads clear. Most people have moved out of the station and into homes, but they report back every morning to get assignments for the day, so we need to keep travel within the city open, at least.
“We saw a few traces of the convicts in town, but they tend to stay away from our areas and haven’t bothered anyone in a while. Rumor has it that there was something of a falling out among them; one of the boys who used to be friends with someone in their group has had a couple of supposedly secret chats with him, I guess. Whatever it was, there was a change of leadership, and their new boss doesn’t want them antagonizing us. I don’t know if they’ll make it through the winter without help, but if they do, come spring I’ll bet they’ll be in the mood to play nicely.”
Troias snorted. It sounded like someone had figured out that being strong didn’t make Ricardo invulnerable. He wondered if it had been one of the boys he’d met in the supermarket, or if they’d convinced everyone that Ricardo wasn’t the best leader for them. “They might, at that,” he agreed. “Thanks, Jonas, and let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“I will, but you know us Yoopers. We’re not much on asking for handouts or help.”
“Now, there’s a world-class understatement,” Lydia murmured with a smile. She turned to Troias. “My turn, I take it?”
“Yep. Do you want me to ask you questions, or you just want to tell me how things are going?”
“It’ll be easier if I just tell you. We’ve managed to secure all three bridges between Menominee and Marinette, so we’ve got more or less free passage across the river. One of the men who’s a vet figured out how to set up your howitzer out on Stephenson Island to cover two of those bridges, so even if one of those dinosaur-looking things comes back, we’ll be bale to keep it off at least both of those.
“Between the places you two already secured and the buildings we’ve claimed for you, we’ve just about managed to clear out everything in about a five-mile radius. Spencer and the Brigade patrol the streets during the day, so we haven’t had an issue with hodags or werewolves returning. We’ve had some giant snakes and frogs come out of the bay, but that’s about it, and they’re not too dangerous if you just stay back and shoot them. They’re decent tasting, too.”
