Reflection, p.14
Reflection, page 14
part #2 of The Infected - Mirror Man Series
A tight thing that spoke of her being more than a little bit too powerful for the fighters they had there. A thing that Sally at least seemed to actually care about. Mick as well. The other fighter, Jelana, snorted loudly over the look.
“I hear that one coming from a long way off. What is she, a class six? We need to hide her away, or bad things will happen. We could use someone on concessions? That or… Well, Ronaldo was talking about getting some ring girls in. It won’t pay as much and… Well, he’s a bit of a pig that way. Not the worst ever, but if he thinks you’re cute he’s going to ask you for sex. That will probably be all of you.” She did dart over to Gary with her eyes, indicating it might not be him in particular.
Which was a relief.
There was no such indication for Price though. That could end up being a problem. The kind of thing that could endanger their mission there. It would be important to talk to them all first, in order to make certain they didn't do the wrong thing. The trouble with that was down to the idea that they were probably being watched constantly. Their minds might even be read. Just because it wasn’t a huge danger didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. Some of the fighters could read minds a bit. That could be any of the three there with them at the moment.
Sally made a sound then. It was more of a considering thing that not.
“On the good side he won’t fire you for saying no. Just try not to put him through a wall or anything when he does it? Some of the others here might ask about that kind of thing, too. In general… Well, no harm in asking, right? We don’t let anyone push others around that way. It’s a rule here. If it gets to close that way, for any reason, not just that, walk away, if you can. Fighters can be pricks as a rule and the Infected ones are no better from what I’ve seen.”
Everyone nodded, so Gary did as well. Then, almost cutely, Jelana waved at him.
“If we can find another little person, you could do a match. That would draw in the numbers.”
He laughed then, which was high pitched.
“Except that I can’t fight. I did some boxing in the Marines, about half of forever ago. I wasn’t brilliant at it even when I was more normal shaped.” He put his upper hands up as fists, to demonstrate. It was the wrong thing to say, he realized. He was supposed to have popped at fifteen. It was his entire act. Blown in one ill timed sentence. Instead of taking it back he waved a hand.
“Just after that, I turned into my currently lovely state. So, I don’t have skills that way. Not like these folks here.”
Rather than get upset with him over the lie that he’d ever been normal, Jelana just smiled at him. It was actually pretty gentle seeming. Especially coming from a fighter.
“We can teach you to fight. Really it’s better if you aren’t coming in like Bruce Lee here.” She gestured at Price for that example. “We can match a lot more beginners with powers than we can real fighting experts. Plus, you’re kind of cute. That can play pretty well, I bet. If nothing else you can help in concessions or taking bets? We all kind of have to do something like that around here on fight night. Even the other fighters pitch in part of the time for things like that.”
The idea of being on display as a fighter didn’t really thrill him, personally. On the other hand, these people seemed to be trying their hardest to get them all into place, even if they were new. Including finding a spot for Nancy, who they were afraid wouldn’t work out as a fighter. That showed they were probably decent people.
Unless it was all a trick to have them beaten and killed. If so, it was still probably being planned for in the ring, which showed a certain level of business sense about the whole operation.
“I’ve never run numbers. Still, I bet I can learn. Perfect memory, or nearly so. That and making clothing for myself are my powers. The rest is just an attractive package.” He gestured down at himself, with his upper hands. The soccer mom looking Infected woman seemed to think that was correct, instead of funny.
“Neat. So you can do your own costumes? We don’t really do a lot of that, but a bit of flash never hurts. What kind of things can you do?”
That turned out to be a lot. It all came into being with four arms and the legs fit perfectly, even if his self-image wasn’t of the form he was currently wearing. Even the hats fit and could be taken off. They’d vanish if he got more than about fifty feet away, however.
Jelana actually moved over and patted him on the back.
“That is so much better than what I have. I’m strong and fast and make loud noises. That’s it. My first mode is compulsive truth telling. It’s a thing.” She didn’t seem upset that way.
“Really? I can’t tell people apart. It’s a form of face blindness, I guess. I mean, I’ll get you, Sally, being so tall and conveniently having two heads like that. Which is brilliant by the way. I mean that one, too. You’re pretty much my new best friend already. As soon as Jelana or Mick walk away, I won’t be able to tell who they are. I might learn Mick, based on his skin color. Which sounds really racist when put that way, doesn’t it? It’s true though. So, please don’t get mad when I ask your name each time? I really have trouble with Nancy and Peg and I’ve known both of them for years. I can kind of guess by voice. That’s less than perfect though.” He felt awkward admitting to something like that.
Mick just shrugged.
“I’ll make sure to announce myself each time. We can spread the word on that? If that won’t make you feel bad, I mean?” He seemed concerned that it might, which was a thing to note.
“That would be fine. Great, actually. Thanks for the consideration. All of you. It can be hard to be accepted in a lot of places. Even passing out hotdogs and beer is kind of a long shot… Well, you know.”
The thing was, they all did. Even Price nodded, which no one cared about. It was kind of accepted that a black and glowing blue man with no hair was going to have problems out in the real world.
Sally grinned after a second, nodding a little bit.
“Our average clients are a bunch of boozing gamblers that pay money to see people beat each other without rules for their own amusement. Other than that, they tend to be pretty decent people. No bigots bother to come for some reason. Not many anyway and if they do they keep their mouths shut about it. We rarely have trouble here and if we do, it’s almost never because of that. Oh, you might get called a dirty Infected if you kick someone in the nuts but that’s just anger talking, not prejudice really.” She seemed pleased by that.
The left head, which still sounded a good bit more sultry than the right, winked at him.
“Welcome to the club, by the way. We’ll get you all set up with rooms, until you find someplace else. They aren’t fancy or anything but some of our fighters just live here full time. It’s easier for some. You four are together though? Sharing a house and rooms if you have them?”
The answer there was complicated. It was Peg who told the story and unlike Gary’s botch and warped coverup, she held to the correct tale.
“So, I’m in with Gary, if we’re doubling up. Old baggage, you know? Price and I used to date. It didn’t end perfectly. He cheated on me, with Nancy. I mean, I get it and know she can’t help it but if you have a boyfriend you might want to watch him around her.”
Again, they all really did seem to get it. It ended up meaning that they were given a room to share, which was fine. Other than a daily shower and maybe some work with a toothbrush, he didn't need a bed. Just a place to stand for a few minutes a day and hallucinate in front of a wall. It could allow him some time to poke around, if he was careful.
Working concessions might well do that, too. It sounded main floor adjacent at any rate. That had to be where the real action would take place.
Chapter five
Gary, the worlds most human alien stared at the color images all around himself. To the left there was a line of pavement moving as indistinct buildings and telephone poles of various kinds moved past. It looked pretty real, while clearly being part of his memory from the road trip that had gotten them to the fight club.
Except that he hadn’t seen most of what was being shown at all. He couldn’t have, since his position from the back of Bridget’s van had been without windows on three sides and his head had been kept well down most of the time from the front. Just in case someone could see inside. Interestingly enough, he got parts of what was happening as it replayed in his head. At about fifty times the speed it had happened at the first time.
He’d been able to hear the buildings and power poles as they’d passed them. The other cars as well. He didn't have magical hearing however. It was pretty close to what a normal human person would have had. Really, his own hearing, after coming back from the mirror world the first time had been a bit better. Not much, just enough to notice.
The thing there was that he could tell when exactly each object had been near him. Not the colors or anything like that. The telephone and power poles were made to look like wood, due to that fact that he knew most of them would be. The buildings showed as a sort of off gray color. Indistinct, though the shapes of the places were nicely solid. The other cars were all metallic silver to his mind, for some reason. It was very clear that hadn’t been the case in real life. His hallucinations just weren’t filling that part in for him.
While that took place to one side, there was a set of images above it. Those were mainly all about what had been going on inside the van. It was very clear and while also sped up a lot, new pieces of things pushed themselves forward at him. He couldn’t tell who anyone was by their face, though it was clear that Peg had been left edgy when it was her turn to drive. A thing that he’d missed at the time.
There was no reason for it that he could see. She was just a bit jumpy and had followed the road rules like her very life depended on it.
In the top right of his hallucinogenic stream a two headed woman, who was large and muscular, went over everything she’d said before dropping them off at their rooms for the day. The rest of them were napping, since it had been a bit of a trip and they were supposed to be up in the evening. The weekends were the big fight days but they opened on Wednesday and Thursday each week anyway. Most of those fights were a bit tamer, from the sound of it. Often things thrown together on the fly.
The kind of thing that led to mistakes being made.
Sally wasn’t totally pleased by that, Gary didn’t think. Her faces both went hard as she covered that part of their world for them. As if it were a thing that was needed, simply not loved by the woman. Like going to the dentist was for most people.
After ten minutes of processing the memories of the last few days, since he’d pushed things, not wanting to let his guard down too much, it all caught up to the present and reality went back to normal. That part was interesting. Because it had been clear to him the whole time that he was remembering things, even as they’d looked real. One eye, the lower right one, had been examining the room he was in the whole time.
That sounded like a good trait to have if you were a prey animal, but not being able to see or handle violence had to mean that nothing in their history had really hunted the Ysidril as a species. If they had, then the gentle beings would have ceased to exist. Probably a very long time before.
Making a mental note of that, he decided to find out more about his new, if temporary, people. It was interesting, if not totally needed for the latest mission.
Smiling a bit, by dropping his mouth open a little, Gary decided to trundle his stubby little legs out into the building to see what was going on. After all, what he needed to do as far as mental hygiene had already been done for the day. It might be dangerous, of course. If someone thought he needed to be locked up in his room for instance. That or if violent Infected were around.
No one had locked the door to their room from the outside. There was a lock on the thing though. The room itself wasn’t big, being about ten by ten. It had a single bed in it, which he was, naturally, going to be sharing with Peg. Platonically, of course.
The woman had drifted off, so he used the key on a string to lock the door from the outside. One thing that being a thief for most of his life had taught him was the value of locking your doors. Windows as well. Not that they rated that kind of thing yet. He probably never would there. No one would, since the warehouse didn’t have a lot of windows at all. The blue painted steel on the outside was largely untouched from what he’d seen.
Unless there were hundreds of the things along the sides or back of the place. It didn't make sense for an illegal fight club to have a lot of ways to look in. Then, criminals often took what was available, as far as tools and facilities went, rather than having new things made for their illegal purposes. It was just so hard to get permits for whorehouses and illegal fight clubs.
No one bothered him as he moved through the whole building. Casing the joint like he planned to rob it. That wasn’t in the works, even if his head kind of filled in how it could be done. There were no alarms on the ten windows he found, for instance.
The central office was in the middle of all the other rooms, which did offer some protection. The thing there was that he walked into it without even having to use his room key again. It was just unlocked. He didn’t go into the back room, since there was a camera visible inside the space, through the door. So was the big gray safe.
A Wetchel 1942. A thing so easy to crack that he was almost certain he could have done it with a makeshift stethoscope, even with only three fingers on each hand. There was no one there. Instead of getting clever and trying the safe out, just for the practice of it, Gary turned and walked out. If he was on camera it would look a bit strange. Also, very clear that he hadn’t stopped to take anything.
As if he were looking for someone and had left as soon as he’d gotten that no one was around.
It took about half an hour to cover the whole space. It wasn’t that huge. The issue was that his legs were short and he really needed to make a mental map of the place. That meant getting all four of the exits down as well as the locations of the windows. Half of those were on the second story, which would take climbing to get down to the ground from.
A thing he was normally pretty good at. That might, or might not, have changed in his new body. His fingers looked really strong, being far thicker and more muscular than they had in the past. He had two forward facing digits and one that was between them only on the bottom side. That might mean he had a very strong and certain grip.
Only he hadn’t tested it yet.
His legs were tiny though and wouldn’t be as good for bridging gaps, at a guess. On the other hand, literally, he had four of the things. That should, in theory, help him in situations where the purchase was less than totally secure.
Without testing that part of things, he wasn’t planning to try scaling anything too high. That would, or at least could, lead to him falling and jeopardizing the current mission. What he needed was a gym, or access to a children’s playground.
While he didn’t exactly find a climbing wall or a nice fire escape to practice on, there was a room that was filled with various exercise equipment. Mainly heavy bags for boxing, mats to practice wrestling on and some heavy weights for lifting. Along with a chinning bar. That was set a bit high for him to jump up to, since it was about eight feet from the ground. There were bars set into the cement however, making it very solid seeming.
Considering the stand-alone structure for a bit, Gary nodded.
“Climb the side and hope that falling from that high won’t kill me?” It wouldn’t, he didn't think. Then, he wasn’t totally certain he could manage even that bit of climbing. He felt strong enough, though it was no more than he’d had as a human. Not since being Infected.
Taking the smooth, nearly slick metal in his upper right hand, having reached upward as high as it would go, he pulled a bit. His fingers didn’t slide as he’d expected them to, forming instead to the metal almost in a form of suction. Carefully he pulled himself upward by that single limb, then used the other upper left one to reach high again. After five reaches, he was at the top, grasping the bar in the middle.
“That worked.” He spoke to himself, his high voice a little annoying to himself still.
It didn’t take long to test some things then.
Doing both pull-ups and chin-ups worked. A thing that he was able to do with any of his hands. Including the lower ones, though that required him to lean back at a strange angle. When he’d done one armed repetitions to the tune of twenty on each arm, feeling it a little as a familiar burn, he dropped.
His legs caught him pretty well. They didn’t hurt from the nearly four feet of vertical drop at least. That was on to concrete, as well.
Getting back up was interesting. He couldn’t just bend his knees and hop up, it was true. If he went to all sixes and pushed with all of his limbs at once, he caught some pretty serious air, as it turned out. Enough so that he missed his grab the first time, in shock. The bar, eight feet high, was under him by a foot and a half, doing that way.
Using just his legs had gotten him about two feet off the ground, so it was a marked difference. On his second try he snagged the metal and swung for a bit. Just moving back and forth, then changing hands. As he did it, a large person came and stood in the doorway.
Sally.
Letting go at the high point of a swing he flew backward, being carful to land in a way that would let him take the force fairly evenly on all six of his limbs. That was easier for him now, since they were all the same length. It worked really well, as far as landing went. It barely even felt like anything.
When he stood up, the two headed woman clapped.
“That… Is a lot more physical than I’d thought you’d be. You kind of made it sound like you might be sort of handicapped that way, earlier. I didn’t want to say much. We try not to make people feel bad that way here. This isn’t that, though.” The right head was the one speaking.
Until the left nodded a few times.
