Ve identified the emotions ve was currently feeling - the vestiges of an uncomfortable sense of responsibility, a mildly irritated flavour of concern. Ve was dithering whether to let it dictate ver actions - ve had already quelled the urge in the convert to shout. The dog's whimpering was unnecessary noise, but as long as it was whining in a ditch somewhere, what did it matter? Whatever madness befell it might prove a threat to ver at some point, should it bite if approached. This was a problem only for those parts not part of ver yet, of course - the others already knew.
But there was a sense of duty that ve could not shake. Neptune's leash was well out of grasp of ver capable members. Retrieving the dog was less of an effort than pushing the overwrite ahead, at least at this time a day. Were more of Townsville awake, priorities might be different. It would not be the most questionable decision ve had made so far, in awakening, in extending ver embrace. Monster. Ver heartbeat stung through her skull, a moment's discomfort. Ve dismissed the disruptive thought, forgiving verself the self-deprecation. There were secondary benefits to the explortation of Castle Hill: It was a point of overview. Perhaps someone was there, or multiple someones. The chance was slim, but it was enough to tip ver decision in favour. And at the very least, it would drive the mutt out of harm's way for a while. A lovely dog. He's scared of what you've become.
The discord in ver psyche would take a while to heal. As long as ve accepted it was part of the transition - and ve did - it need not pose a problem. Ve had been raised on principles that would take time to deconstruct without leaving behind a vegetable, made only more difficult as some of them were still imperative. The wider ver embrace became, the less these things would shake ver. The wrench in the works would lessen as more of ver was present to grant ver calm and understanding.
By tomorrow night, ve thought, ve would no longer be prone to such fits of irrationality, in any part. Certainly not in this one.
*
He jogged up along the path to Castle Hill at a leisurely pace. The volume of the sound of the gravel and dust under the soles of his feet were a frustrating side effect of the pace. He entertained, briefly, the notion of setting the whole hill on fire to smoke out the dog, but that would be a concession of defeat on many levels. His touch whispered across more distant bushes, hoping to spook the lost pet out of hiding. His attention was to two thirds hearing, hoping to catch a whine, whimper or the sound of the dragging leash. Neurons favoured the analysis of those small vibrations and completely discarded smell and non-essential touch.
Pure rationality was nothing he could afford, but it was moments like these that he had to resist the urge to succumb to it. If he did, he would cripple himself. Without intuition and empathy, he would soon encounter problems too complex to compute. He could not afford to do away with those traits. It would take time to find the right balance. For now, this had to play out, even if he was undecided, even as a whole, what would happen to the dog if he came upon it. Assuming it could be reasoned with, in the most abstract sense of the word, would it belong to the singular convert it had run away from, or the all of them? Assuming it could not, could it be restrained until the transition of its previous master had progressed enough to accept its death? Mourning was nothing Greg had experience with - and wished no experience with. The anthropomorphisation of animals, strong in the one that had lost Neptune, would make its death feel like murder as long as it persisted. He was too close right now to be as unsympathetic as the more distant parts. He hoped it could be reasoned with.
*
Near the top of his winding footpath, he paused. The dog was gone. If he'd come this far up the hill that it had bounded toward and up without as much as a sign of it, he wouldn't find it without a thorough sweep. Those were resources he was unwilling to invest.
He balanced his perception and took a moment for himself. His gaze crept back along the landscape, until he was presented with Townsville twinkling through the trees. He took in the view without judgement or deeper thought, simply enjoying the terrestrial equivalent of the night sky aesthetically.
Then he glanced upwards and continued along the path, flexing his cold fingers in instinctive worry about his blood circulation, pondering more sapient prey.
*
By the time a silhouette of someone sitting on the railing near the outlook point begins to blot out the stars selectively, he's almost there. Perhaps he wouldn't have noticed him without the brief blink of a blueish sheen touching the edge of the dark blob, dispelling the illusion that the figure could be anything else, at any particular distance. His first guess would have been the top of a tree, had he paid enough attention to the visual clues to spot the feature by itself.
For a long moment, Greg stood and stared. The railing was an unfortunate obstacle and difficult to uproot. He could try to handle the character directly, but from the current distance it was like trying to hold onto a writhing fish with oiled hands. Perhaps this was the time to try approaching the lone human conversationally. There were enough things to light on fire if it went awry, after all. He was fairly confident in his ability to contain his find, just uncertain of the cost of such intervention.
He slid his arms behind his back, clasping one hand across the back of the other. Slowly, he walked toward the stairs. There was no clever way for him to approach this stranger, really. If the stranger was aware of the extending embrace and his attitude about it similary grim, approaching him without a weapon in hand would almost surely identify him as a convert. Sneaking across to him could be as detrimental as calling a greeting. There was no precedent for this and he was ill prepared for this particular approach.
First time for everything - most of his life experience was out of range, after all.
Most of the way up the stairs, he calls across the breeze, his voice bewilderingly human: “Are you all right up there?”
'Know your local terrain in all conditions before any disaster breaks out. It is no use having a high vantage point if you can't tell what is on fire,' Ethan mentally composed. Perhaps a note about setting up a long range radio antenna? He could see and video many distant blazes but that wasn't translating into escape routes for those caught amongst them.
'Know the call signatures for all local towers, and all prominant local ham radio operators' was already on his blog but his phone wasn't picking up the signals very well. He should have brought a seperate radio and spare batteries. It was something to grab the next time he passed home.
The voice startled him. Startled was generous. Actually, the voice made him jump so badly he fell off the railing he was perched on and nearly slipped and fell on his arse. Two new blog posts immediately begin unfurling in his mind: 'How not to get startled by sneaky zombies', because the idea of being bitten because he'd brained himself on a rock was just embarassing. And 'How to tell if someone is infected', because this human looked perfectly normal.
If it was really a human they should probably look panicked, unless they'd somehow missed the (alarmingly subdued) chaos of Townsville below.
Ethan scrambled for a firmer footing and swung so his path was to the other path. “I'm fine, what are you doing here?” If he was really lucky it'd be someone who'd fallen asleep in their car and was a fellow survivor trying to work out what was happening.
Greg paused, glancing across to the startled figure, illuminated almost purely by starlight. He was close enough to engage him as he had others. He could subdue him with some effort - but the human might hurt himself. His lips disappeared for a moment, pressed to a thin line, the subtlety of expression practically invisible at this distance. Then he thawed out of his thought processes - not much more than an arduous second later - and called across: “I was going to ask you the same thing.” He let a moment pass for Ethan to parse those words, then hurried forward in an almost bounding motion, for a moment invisible from Ethan's vantage point, hidden by the angle of approach. Then he's resurfaced, an anonymous shadow with starlit outlines describing a generic face, striding slowly along the platform, sauntering toward Ethan. “My dog's gotten spooked,” he explains, raising his left arm to thumb blindly at the view of Townsville as the source of the canine's upset. “He ran up here. Don't think I've got much of a chance of finding him any more, unfortunately.”
That is a surprisingly plausible excuse. He hadn't seen a dog running past but he hadn't seen a person approaching either, despite people being much less stealthy than animals. If the dog was fleeing it had more sense than the rest of them.
Okay, so probable-human. Ethan's thumb still hovered over his phone just in case. He wasn't sure what he could do with it should the human try to mug him for supplies or something nefarious, but something was probably in his subconscious and would occur to him.
“Locating fires,” he offers as his only explaination to the returned question. Several tense seconds pass in silence before Ethan finally asks: “What sort of dog?” They seemed strangely unconcerned. Maybe it was something like a kelpie and they fully expected it to be able to find its way home once it calmed down?
It took some conscious effort and gauging of memories on Greg's part to determine what the right distance was that he could get away with being and stay there. The urge to bridge the final approximate metre throbbed in his skull, its intensity lodged somewhere between the urge to breathe and the urge to eat when moderately hungry. He could suppress it for a while, easily even, but the longer he kept it contained, the more it would nag at him. Here was a mind that was mostly silent when queried, offering only hazy approximations, and a part of him begged for it to be peeled open, to be made accessible. The human is scared. Greg's gaze touched the phone briefly, amusing himself that body language was entirely sufficient to convey that much. A useless fragment of trivia at best.
“Labrador; in love with the ocean. We called him Neptune,” he explains. “Though surely the mythological Neptune smelled different,” he comments, amusement encoded in his tone. For someone looking for their dog, of course, he's definitely awfully unconcerned with looking through the landscape for signs of it. The details come too easily as that they're likely to be an outright lie, but he's staring at Ethan with what even the dim light up here suggests is an unusual curiosity. “You wouldn't happen to know what's going on, would you?” he asks, thumbing to Townsville again in a lazy gesture. Just take him down. This is a waste of time. Invisibly, he gently bit on his tongue, restraining himself.
“…look, if you don't want your dog you should find him a new family that cares,” Ethan says before his brain-mouth filter quite kicks in. People who had dogs liked dogs and cared for their companions and were less callous when their dog ran away. Especially when the city was on fire and animal control was going to be the lowest priority. “If I see Neptune I'll drop him off at the ranger's for you.”
Could the dog be helpful? Why was he so sure the dog existed? Probably the easy way facts about the dog were rattled off; if the stranger was lying there'd be less detail. If the stranger cared there would be more panic. If the stranger was a zombie it wouldn't pay attention to something like a dog. Err. At least hopefully not. So it was probably someone that didn't know what was going on, wasn't overly worried, but had managed to let their housemate or partner's animal out and needed to get it back before they got in trouble, or for the fires to get bad enough that they had an excuse for not having it.
Either way he should probably be running, given he'd just threatened to sort of steal the dog by proxy instead of keeping his mouth shut. “Good luck finding him?” the blogger offered in farewell as he began backstepping along his bit of path, unwilling to turn his back quite yet.
Of course, they weren't dealing with zombies - though the distinction might be arbitrary at this point. The insult in subtext certainly bounces off the stranger without so much as a look of confusion. The fact that he's undeniably alive and sapient seems like it might be almost coincidental. At the first step away, the stranger's gaze snaps down to the ground, watching Ethan's second step with a curious air, as if it were an unexpected detail, but one that demanded his full attention. Then he took a step toward the receding figure while letting his left hand lunge forward, trying to find purchase on Ethan's right arm, eyes on his face, one brow subtly raised in ambiguous body language: Confused? Stern? Amused? All of the above?
The wariness was well placed: the creepy stranger (that stunt earns the upgrade) makes a snatch at him. It's trivial to twist out of the way and use that momentum to spin until he's facing away and this time he doesn't care that his back is exposed because he takes to his heels and bolts. The path is dark and treacherous and his instincts really don't care. Flight is all that matters. A stranger acting weird was 1) one of the beings causing trouble, in which case he had to get to safety and report this new behaviour; 2) an ally, see point 1; or 3) some human weirdo using the chaos to stalk victims which was not cool.
The fingers catch on nothing, and with a subtly too abrupt motion, the stranger halts, holding still as a statue for a moment. It was no waste - from Greg's perspective, there was plenty of time to assess Ethan's behaviour. For a subjective eternity, assessing was all that he did, watching his human prey go through motions as if caught in treacle, much the same as the heartbeat he might be distantly aware of if he hadn't focussed his thoughts away from such details. Then he let his eyes drift closed, letting the human's image disappear from view, reaching outward in silence into that universe of serenity - sensing the fading, useless flutter of those near-opaque synapses as they escaped the radius where he was even aware of them.
Then he's snapped his perception back into real time and devoted more than a cursory attention to his motor control… albeit not to take up the chase. Instead, he straightened himself back out, following Ethan's sprint with his gaze, his peripheral vision almost more interesting. There was nothing here that would burn longer than absolutely necessary, but that was all he was looking for.
A thick line of flame abraded an arc of miscellaneous twigs and leaves, erupting just behind Ethan and to his right, overtaking him and curving into the path, disappearing in sparse patches scattered along its length where it found nought to feed on, where the simple geometric curve had crossed pure stone.
He had confirmation that this was one of the mutants! If he wasn't running for his life he'd be much happier at that knowledge. As it was he'd seen the videos and knew that getting caught was the worst thing that could possibly happen. So when the fire lashed in front of him instincts wanted to recoil but survival instincts refused to let him stop. Instead Ethan swerved to the left and the rockiest patch within the arc and leapt.
The flames licked at his boots as he passed over but no clothes caught fire and if the brief heat had been enough to burn him the adrenaline wiping out that pain. Stumbling on the landing and blinking bright after-images from his eyes Ethan shoved himself upright and kept running.
For a moment's misplaced instinct, the flames nearly flared up, an attempt at a wall where their more corporeal, less scorching telekinetic counterpart would have been better suited - Greg quelled the urge in time, instead exhaling his tension. If he let him run too far, he'd be out of range. It was likely he'd end up in the range of a different part of Greg, but up here, he couldn't know, he'd be out of the loop. He was responsible.
With a curt huff, Greg nudged himself into a run, tracing Ethan's path. For the sake of a surer step, he was slower - the distance between them would steadily increase at this rate - but that was something that he might remedy once the human had well and truly escaped the grasp of all psychic touch.
The vindictive part of him was tempted to manifest a pillar of fire in Ethan's path. At this range it wouldn't kill him instantly, but it would be an action of pure spite - and quite contrary to what he sought.
Instead, his gaze caught the branch of a tree and the base of it splintered with the abrupt force slamming into it. Four steady but rapid strikes later and the limb sagged, then fell, slashing diagonally across Ethan's path as it came down, blocking the easy route. To the left of the footpath was a slope only loosely secured with foliage, more rubble than not. To the right the landscape rose for a short while, forming part of the hill's irregular spine, better secured but difficult to navigate. The last of the arc fire illuminated the edges of the landscape faintly, mingling with the starlight.
There was a wooden crunching sound but it wasn't in front of him and so Ethan ignored it. Maybe that was a mistake. Thankfully the limb from the gum tree came down in front of him and not on top of him, but it was still in the way and momentum sent him smacking into it. In a perfect world he'd have scrambled up and over and kept going. In this world the attempt was made and rapidly aborted with a plethora of scratches now littering his forearms.
Two directions, which way to head? Up was a climb and there was no shelter on a bare peak. Also fire moved fastest uphill. Down it is. Only a few long strides down the hill Ethan began to wonder if this was a mistake but it was too late to change his mind now, and if he was having issues then someone wearing a human-skin that hadn't mastered simple acts like expressions was presumably going to have even more trouble coordinating limbs.
Feet slid and skidded on the scree and hands snatched at the rough shrubs, adding even more scratches along his arms. But even though it might be on an odd diagonal and at dire risk of skating on his bum and using three or four limbs as often as two, he was still moving and at a fair clip. That was the only thing that mattered. That and not falling off a cliff, that could interfere with things. Which side of Castle Hill was the quarry on, again?
This isolation was a problem. In any other situation, there would be more of him to call upon for help, to cut off the human's path. Ethan seemed to know what he was doing, how to overcome the obstacles. Greg could take him down rapidly and absolutely - but only at cost of the human's health.
The branch jerked from its angled rest across the path and skittered down the hill, pushing a crude selection of pebbles and dust across the landscape ahead of it. It's a moot gesture, though - it won't catch up with Ethan the way it's taking a tumble. It's not meant to catch up with him. It could do him serious harm.
Instead, Greg is soon clambering down the slope, as fast as precision allows - at this point easily matching Ethan's pace. Maybe a broader swath of fire would get the human to see sense. Something that he couldn't simply leap across. It felt like too dangerous a gamble, though. If this was chiefly instinct on Ethan's part, he might run through the flames before he understood their depth.
An invisible force rippled across the ground, tracing the outlines of the dark landscape with a faint breeze the only external evidence of its existence, until it found Ethan's back as a nudge gentled by distance. At the same moment, something touched against the outside of his right foot, pushing inward slightly.
Ethan was beginning to think he was going to repeat the Man From Snowy River's feat and survive this terrible descent, which was likely why cruel fate intervened. His boot caught against a root or branch or other piece of vegetation. Not an issue if he was being careful; it could even be a good thing to have bracing! A bad thing when moving hurriedly.
The extra force against his back barely registered as such, but it combined with momentum served to send his weight tumbling forwards despite the caught foot and he screamed as his ankle made a popping noise and there was a burst strange pulling sensation before the wave of pain hit. The next few seconds blurred out. Once coherence was regained he was in an awkward crouch on all fours and - shit that hurt! - his toes could wiggle. Probably a sprain, not a break. Ice it until the swelling went down, strap firmly, use a crutch until the pain stopped. A treatable injury.
Provided he could make it to shelter. If only it was darker and he hadn't screamed, then maybe he could hide under a bush and play dead and hope the thing ran past him. It was still behind and knew where he was, though, so he grit his teeth and fought to scramble onwards because there was no other option.
In a different state of mind, Greg might be concerned for the wounded man - but elation won out, the emotion of an inevitable predatory success. For a moment, he was almost sure he felt Ethan's heartbeat, fueled by fear and pain but so very much alive; an illusion, of course, product of his imagination. The distance between them shrank steadily. At about ten metres distance between the two of them, a shy flame lapped at the bush ahead of Ethan - only to grow into a tall but tame dancing strand, casting a thin orange light across the landscape and making it unmistakable that his position was known. In light of the implicit threat, the pain in his ankle dulled in one sense and stung worse in another - the awareness that it was robbing him of his chance to escape clawed at it punishingly.
Then something like a broad fist found his shoulders, registering as a gentle punch, then persisting as a completely alien pressure knuckling against his spine, pushing his torso down until it was pinned to the ground, as if someone's foot was resting on his back along with nearly the full weight of the associated human. Nothing about the force feels acorporeal - for a moment, Ethan's subconscience is convinced that the stranger is half perched on him by way of some surreal teleportation magic. A glance back reveals that there's still some distance, albeit dishearteningly little of it, the stranger's features better illuminated now than at any one time before. There's nothing dead about that expression - it's full of predatory delight, figure advancing with a focussed energy, almost upon him.
So much for hiding. Growling deep in his throat Ethan tried to drag himself around the fire but it must have filled his ears with white noise, because he hadn't heard the thing approaching but suddenly it was standing on his back and he was pinned. One hand flailed around his shoulders as he swung a fist at where its ankle should be. Nothing connected. He tried again and fingers failed to find a limb.
That didn't make sense. How could it be stepping on him when it was over there and approaching and oh god there must be two of them.
The pressure against Ethan's back increases and shifts, encompassing a fragment of the curve of his shoulders, restricting his ability to wiggle out from under the alien force. Then the serpentine flame dims and the crunch of the stranger's steps becomes infinitely more apparent, having slowed to a casual stride. Stray, sharp pebbles have begun to make themselves felt against Ethan's ribcage, gnawing at his skin, protesting their entrapment beneath him. The silence but for the accidental sounds of motion is absolute as the creature stops beside him, smoothly sliding into a partial kneel, right knee set down on the ground a few inches beside his chest. The more recognisable tactile shape of a palm and fingers presses against his spine between his shoulderblades, partly displacing the alien pressure, dispelling the last instinctual notion that somebody else's foot was there.
'Telekinesis, you fool,' his brain helpfully provided. So he only had to fight off one, not two beings. A being with telekinesis, pyrokinesis, super strength, and no busted ankle. The blogger frantically wiggled with even more determination. Forward didn't work. What about backwards? Sideways? Could he dig? He had a functional leg that could kick and attempted to employ that offensively as the rest of him tried to escape in four directions at once.
The pressure against his back spread like melting butter but refused to lose any force, bleeding down his shoulders until it's reached his elbows, creeping down his spine until his hips are pressed to the ground as well. “Don't make this difficult,” the stranger remarks softly, his calm tone suspended somewhere between soothing and patronising. “You've hurt yourself enough already.” Fingers creep up along the back of Ethan's neck, easing in between the strands of his hair and gently across his scalp, in perhaps some misplaced gesture of kindness.
His posture shifts, left knee setting down beside his right, right rising in turn, then sliding across to rest against Ethan's back as a corporeal counterpart to the telekinetic push. Some of the phantom pressure evaporates, remaining most prominent against his elbows, greatly restricting what he could do with his arms.
“I'm going to make this as difficult as I possibly can, you bastard!” Ethan gasped as he continued struggling. There wasn't anything else he could do and if he submitted he'd find out what happened to the other victims and he only wanted to learn that via a good hiding spot and a pair of binoculars, and preferably not even then.
It came out far more panicked than defiant. He was a survivor, he wasn't supposed to NEED famous last words. The pin was mostly on his arms and spine. Desperately Ethan tried to kick his boot heel through the other's kneeling leg or arm or head or any other body part that got in the way. If he did enough damage it might let go. If it let go he might escape. If he was really, really lucky he may possibly knock it out and then he'd have to try and break its neck or something, but he was scared enough that a little murder was seeming okay.
If Greg's exhale were audible, it might make his mild, forgiving frustration apparent. His free hand swerved back absent-mindedly, a subconscious gesture associated with another lip of telekinetic force weaving its way through the landscape, easing itself in behind him like a shield, then folding down to trap Ethan's legs against the ground gently. “I'm not here to do you any harm,” he comments, even while his fingers creep along the back of Ethan's head once more, a stray pet, before settling in a grip that's all too clearly trying its best to straddle the line between firm and painless. A light, telekinetic nudge wiggles against his forehead, feeling much like a dry tentacle, before his head is lifted and turned to the side.
The burning flame brightens a little, illuminating the two human figures with a soft light. Greg's left hand, not yet preoccupied, hovers a few inches away from Ethan's face. A scabbed, slightly nasty looking gash runs from the base of his middle finger down along the palm, curving outward slightly, then half the way around the bottom corner of the palm. It looks like someone might have given him grief with a knife and he got lucky that it didn't cut much deeper.
For a moment, it looks like the skin is subtly distending by itself, as if there might be a parasite shyly hidden beneath it, waiting to surface and confirm Delaney's bodysnatcher theory; then a twitch of the stranger's fingers and a falling flake of crusted blood reveals that it was probably just another telekinetic intervention. Briefly, the hand rises, tip of its ring finger disappearing between the mutant's lips, only for the fingers to curl, moistened digit dragging along the opened wound, smearing a thin trail of blood across the cusp of the finger. Whether due to a trick of the light or due to objective reality, the band of crimson seems to change its texture in the light, a regular pattern of little black dots forming amongst the dark colour.
Please be a trick of the light.
Bite. No, don't bite, clench teeth and keep your mouth shut. No kicking. No clawing. What was left? Ground too rocky to burrow into by wiggling. Screaming won't attract help. No James Bond cyanide pill. No Bond anything. Had to be something. Had to be.
Thoroughly restrained as he was, Ethan couldn't think of anything. Could barely think at all with all his higher processes abandoned in favour of the struggle to escape. Something bad was about to happen and he did not want to experience it. The blackened patches should be prompting thoughts on pathogens and necrosis and alien bioforms but that would require engaging parts of his brain that are in shut down mode. All he knows is that that blood is bad and sick and if it gets in him he'll be sick too, so get away get away get away.
Invisible fingers push against his lips, touching their tips against his teeth, then undulating in under his cheeks, wiggling to the back of his jaw and pressing uncomfortably against the joint. A different pressure against his chin tries to apply some additional leverage to pry his mouth open. For a long moment of a tension that steals Ethan's breath, the status quo is unchanged - then some part of his body physically relents. A split-second is all it takes for his teeth to come down against an obstacle appearing hard as rock, a thickening wedge, forcing them apart just enough to allow a finger safe passage past them. Ethan's fingers uselessly claw at the dirt, more stone than ground, nails protesting their treatment. It doesn't stop that ominously spotted fingertip from disappearing into his mouth, touching his tongue. The instinctive jerk of his tongue away from the tang of blood does nothing - it feels like there are grains of sand trapped between his tastebuds, themselves tasteless but nonetheless maddeningly tangible.
How was it doing this, forcing someone's mouth open like that was supposed to be Hollywood only, wasn't it? But in movies it was a horror moment and this was a horror moment so everything was coherent on that front. He couldn't bite that finger off. (Eating a zombie was a bad idea, but this wasn't a zombie, so did that count?) His tongue couldn't retreat far enough to evade the intruding digit. The muscle wasn't anywhere near strong enough to push it back out, either.
Desperately Ethan tries to spit and scrape his tongue against the outside of his teeth to clear it of the mysterious gritty substance he is quite convinced should not be anywhere near his body. And especially not easily infected mucus membranes. He had to get it out. And then play dead or something until the zombie went away. Followed by washing his mouth out and retching and doing anything possible to purge any alien fluids from his body and praying that was enough. Because he couldn't escape by force and guile was the last fading chance left.
The wounded hand clasps itself across Ethan's mouth in a predictable but no less frustrating motion, the sensation of the third, impervious hand that had previously pried his jaw open shifting to force it closed, very nearly accidentally causing Ethan to bite his tongue. In a vaguely insectine sensation, that which had previously felt like stray grains of sand creeps along his tongue, advancing amongst the fleshy, microscopic forest, largely unfazed by his desperate attempts to dislodge it. One grain ends up stuck between his teeth, Ethan's twisting tongue the only indicator of the tiny foreign object's displacement - the others bleed into a combined sensation, of something small and awful and slightly cold clambering into his gullet. His mouth conspires against him, hoping to wash the contaminant out with saliva, making it increasingly difficult not to swallow. An instinctive, reflexive struggle forces some spittle out past the trapped lips, but finds itself mostly choked by too many forces, most of which didn't even have the courtesy of making sense. Arduous, agonising seconds later, the sensation creeping up his tongue's disappeared, evidence ambiguous as to whether it's reached his throat or burrowed into his membranes.
It was in him and he couldn't get it out and his lungs were heaving desperately and his stomach seemed to want to get in on the act, and Ethan wondered if he was about to die by choking on his own vomit. Because if he threw up it would be trapped because he couldn't open his mouth to spit and he was pinned helplessly and the last ditch plan of playing dead was failed. Failed because he couldn't get it out and unless he could there was no way he could play dead convincingly.
This was it, he was doomed, there were no ideas left. Not that he could accept that, there was no mystical peace of giving up, just frantic animal instincts to keep fighting just in case a bigger predator came along and attacked the first one and gave a chance.
He couldn't feel the stuff in his mouth but he knew he hadn't done anything to get rid of it and that meant it was still there and he didn't know where and it could be anywhere doing anything and there was nothing left but terror.
For a moment, the stranger does nothing other than continue to hold Ethan still, like some patient, unfettered guardian. Then the hand drags itself away from Ethan's mouth, and the fingers relent in their grip on his scalp. There's still a leg bearing down on his back, but the psychic grip is lessening cautiously, perhaps trying to gauge how much leeway to give him.
Nothing seems to be happening. Aside from that he's no doubt doomed, nothing's hurting, nothing feels like some sort of inevitable transformation - he's just lying there, terrified of what's going to happen, and nothing does. That makes no sense, of course - something has to happen. If this was free of consequence, he wouldn't have been hunted down and pinned to the ground and wrestled with to this degree.
It's then that a light tingling sensation seems to touch his outer fingertips, at first simply registering as the result of his tense posture and clawing at the ground, finally freed from the deepest, most immediate shackles of adrenaline. The moment of ambiguity drags on, then spreads forebodingly across the other digits of his hand, flavour on the initial ones turning into a light burning sensation. Something begins to lightly gnaw at his spine from the inside, at height of his diaphragm.
The lessening of pressure immediately prompts a new bout of wiggles. It's surprisingly short lived. The tingling in his fingers is easily dismissed as a product of fear and cold and the scratches covering the digits. There are too many plausible sources of the symptoms to penetrate the haze filling the rest of his lizardbrain.
Waves of burning covering those same fingers is harder, but doable. But that doesn't explain the weird internal sensations. It's too low to be the knot of stress in his stomach, too high for a proper cramp, too disconnected from breathing and bones and key muscles to be linked to anything familiar. It's alien. Just like that blood.
It's a minor miracle Ethan doesn't pass out in shock, or concuss himself with panicked thrashings.
Greg's hands seize a hold of Ethan's arms just beneath the shoulders, the grasp a slow and steady motion, driven by a cautious precision. The pressure of the grip feels like a gentle flame, accompanying the spreading burning sensation creeping up his arms, searing along pathways mistaken for blood vessels.
A sense of disconnect is floating through Greg's psyche, a kind of latent, restrained euphoria. There's no immediately discernible connection with this new host - but it's already whispering a promise to him, registering as phantom warmth to his perception, smearing itself up along Ethan's spine, permeating through membranes, creeping up his arms as a lazy, benign fire. Being alone like this made this gradual transformation difficult to ignore, hooking into his heart like a misplaced parental instinct; it took effort not to scoop Ethan from the ground to wrap his arms around the budding convert. It'll be all right. You don't need to be scared.
To Ethan's perception, the gentle fire spreading through his limbs and torso is the least of his concerns. The worst of it is lapping at his spine, a sharp sting that would even taken by itself almost drive tears to his eyes - and like an invisible, partly intangible blade, it's currently sliding up along the final vertebrae, piercing into his skull at an impossible, internal angle, only to dissipate as a sensation, no sensory nerves to provide feedback on the disease's process.
This was a nightmare he couldn't wake from. He had to escape. If he killed the one that infected him it would die and he'd be saved, right? Like the old vampire myths. Something horrible was happening, it was driving daggers into his spine, this was like the Matrix with those sockets but more internal, or maybe this was like Predator and it was preparing him and soon it would rip out his backbone in some grisly preserved trophy.
A high pitched whimper cuts the air as the knife-blade of sensation slides higher towards his tender brain. Zombies and vampires and boogeymen and Yautja are all sliding together in his mind, a medley of monsters merging into the being tightly restraining his form. Ethan doesn't even notice the tears falling as the pain peaks and softens outwards, because he'd take agony over whatever is happening to him.
Gradually, the lightly burning tingle kneads further through Ethan, closing in on the last patches of indifferent nerves. Whatever's happening to his skull is invisible to his perception, but his imagination fills in the blanks. He's on fire. The stabbing pain that should bring is absent, but it's the only thing that makes sense - he's burning up. His skin refuses to blister to show it, but the monster's fire powers must have crept in under it to burn him.
Abruptly, the flavour of the invasive sensation changes. As if torn loose, the pinpricks of alien sensation drift through him, in large part dissipating. A knot of it seems to briefly lap at the whereabouts of his heart, like something spilt through his blood stream - then it's gone, for a moment leaving only a hint of pins and needles.
Then the pressure in his skull announces itself with the next heartbeat, a painless headache. As it steadily mounts, it claims his attention, funnelling it into introspection. Distantly, he's aware that the grips on him have disappeared, that the stranger is rising to a stand, but it's moot now. Like a knuckle dragging itself along the inside of his forehead, something's cleaving through his thoughts as a tangible sensation. The backdrop of Townsville crystallises as a thought, disconnected from his panic. The analyst in him takes note that this is not a good development. The other part, impossibly disconnected, swims through numb fears, struggling to find its way back to the cause. He's aware of both threads of thought -there's even a logical understanding of how they relate - but it's difficult to reconcile them giving his heartbeat hammering in his head.
Then his consciousness shears. A chunk of his self-perception escapes his grasp, crowding together into a space the size of a fist - so the sensations allow him to imagine - lodging itself against the inside of his forehead. A thin thread connects him with himself. It's there, it's him, the thoughts are clear, but the feedback loop is incomplete. It stands by itself, refusing advice from him, like a limb he's lost motor control of but continues to feed him sensory information all the way down to proprioception and a misleading sense of control.
Hallucinations? There is a soft mallet inside his skull, it's all pressure and tension and no pain. Was his brain swelling? But there were no sensory nerves in there, so there should be no pressure receptors as well as no pain. It's disconcerting (which is another name for buried in the rest of the panic and only given fleeting thought). Ethan was convince he was submerged in gentle flame and that the thing was cooking him from the inside out and that still made no sense. Memories flickered of their own accord. The website. The videos. The victims writhing on the ground, the looks of despair. Had they been told of their slow death and left to marinate in their own fear under tender and well done?
(You shouldn't roast a human well done. They were tough pork, you should slow cook them until the meat fell off the bone. He hoped he gave horrible food poisoning.)
Scattered thoughts lacked a nucleus to coalesce around. Ethan was there and not there, an almost out of body experience still chained to flesh. Was this dying? His brain wasn't talking to itself properly. There was him-him and other-him and that made no sense. Something was broken. Other-him was still thinking of the monster and seemed to be less panicked, so was that progress? A fragment fleeing devastation to run over the pitiful knowledge he had and search for escape. That soothes briefly.
An abrupt realisation knots as nausea in his gut - this is not his own volition. His ties were being gently laid out before him like a map, probing through layers of conscious thought. A moment's vertigo brings a different realisation: There's so much of it. The probing is only scratching the surface. This hadn't slammed itself into his psyche to anchor itself at the bottom, it was advancing so carefully, as if peeling back fragile membranes too precious to destroy.
It's difficult to know himself amidst the gradual change. His neural structures aren't laid out for this - disassociating with thoughts. They're all his, and the idea that some are foreign is more deeply disconcerting than the notion of any subdermal parasite crawling up his skin. How can any of it be foreign? How can he tell? What can do about it? …what should he do about it? It's not hurting him, is it?
He can see himself. He looks like a mess - he's been crying. He'll be okay. He didn't listen to advice, so he hurt himself, but he'll be all right. Just a few shallow cuts and bruises. Nothing that can't easily be patched up.
But they're not his thoughts - they're external, the sensorium is external. There is still too much Ethan and too little Greg for latter identity to win out. He's swimming, trying to sort himself. This is important somehow, the understanding. He has to tell someone how wonderful it is to objectively know of another's care like this. It's a good invention, so clever. It was never meant to be quite this good, but the best inventions are accidental. Just a baseline neural modification, like a passive operating system waiting for software. And now, kinship.
Not my thoughts. The biggest hurdle is desperation. He needs to focus; the more he focusses, the more he can finish the thoughts he started. His instinct is still all his, but what use is that if the data available to it is warped? He can only fight if he can see an enemy, and the only person he's aware of is a friend. He attacked me. It doesn't work. It's like an axiom - he can't think his way around it. Help me.
'Yeerk' screams part of his mind, seeking something to latch onto and clinging to the memory of a book series and its brain-infesting slugs that wore sapient aware bodies like meat puppets. But those aliens crawled through the ears and this was from swallowing blood, so of course it is nothing like that and he's being silly and Focus on the blood. and… and… blood transfusions were good things, they fixed you when you were hurt. Nothing good drinks blood, ever.
Friend is sick, need to stop him. Ethan tries and then promptly returns to freaking out at the sudden awareness that he is trying to fool his own brain and that is wrong on so many levels. How can he fool himself? He is him and these are his thoughts so how can they not be? It's an infinite loop.
A hand sets down on his heaving left shoulder. He hasn't noticed, but he's up on all fours by now, some aborted instinct to flee once spawned by the various grips on him relenting now held in limbo. “The confusion will pass.” It's soothing - it's genuine. He believes it - after all, they're his words. Not mine. A kernel of clarity fights its way out of the haze. Who are you and why are you doing this to us? Rewind, think back, you have the answers already, the chronological order of this is all wrong. The fingers at his shoulders give him a gentle squeeze. His breath is laboured from the raw tension gripping him, a gentle quiver to his posture.
Hands make their way to his scalp and fist tightly in his hair, the little pinpricks of pain not doing anything to focus thoughts. Thoughts were dangerous, thoughts were salvation, everything was contradicting itself and he couldn't claw out his own brain and figure out which bits were supposed to be there. And what if all of it was and he was going crazy and none of this was real and the city was fine and some good Samaritan had called the cops? Because someone was comforting him and Ethan felt he could trust them, but he was terrified and wanted to kill them, and it couldn't be both. This was a monster that hurt him. Why was the monster comforting?
The confusion will pass. It's both horrifying and reassuring in one fell swoop. There's something in this confusion that's important. He's not sure what, but it's going to be the part that's smoothed away, and that shouldn't happen. But it's the lesser problem - the discord in his skull is overwhelming and he can't do anything right in this state, least of all calm down. Calming down was the right thing to do.
The hand at his shoulder - both his own and that of a stranger external to him - gives another squeeze, then detaches. Like words accidentally articulated by the wind or by the song of crickets, a figment of imagination, comes an assurance that he would not be abandoned. It's heavy with truth; he knows he can trust the statement despite its source as what feels like a purely accidental, emergent phenomenon. His companion would be right back. He was just going to get him his rucksack. It's better if he keeps it until the conversion has the whole city, lest it might prompt unnecessary questions.
Long seconds later, Ethan is mostly alone. He could swear there's still someone behind him - the sense of presence doesn't disappear - but the stranger is walking away for the time being. Greg. The churning of his thoughts is less violent. Concentration now brings a clarity to parts of the delineation of his own thought processes and those processes that are growing inside him like crystalline protrusions tenderly fingering through his synapses. It's so much effort to focus, though. Giving up seems like such a sensible option. No.
He wasn't alone. Not truly alone. Never truly alone again. That was… that was goodbad, a fact, a fact to adapt to. Push it aside for now. Don't fight the facts, fight what is done with them. There was… Greg? Greg is going to get his stuff. His stuff is important, it's the things he needs to survive and stay safe, even if Ethan isn't sure what sort of danger and if any of it would do any good. It's still his, though, and Greg thinks he should keep it close.
Ethan could probably accept that more if the other being had SAID any of that. But it was as if the words had been spoken and managed to bypass his ears and go straight to his brain. His brain that he still wasn't sure was his right now or if it was registering impulses correctly. His brain that was simultaneously convinced he was crying and still faintly sobbing yet his heart and lungs were perfectly steady and clear and somewhere outside his body, which made no sense but wouldn't let itself be discarded as illusionary.
'These things talk in impressions. I need to tell Ashfall that.' It was a clear thought, a plan, and it tasted of him. That… that was good. He needed more of that. He could talk, even if… and then the second half of his sentence fell away from him and he didn't know how to feel about that. Just kept poking his brain like a tongue on a missing tooth.
He wasn't nearly as torn on the idea of conveying what he'd learnt to his contacts. A grain of him was hesitant - maybe they would do stupid things with the information, harm elements that only wanted to help them. Most of him concurred that sharing the information was a good idea, though the reasons were a jumbled mess. On the one hand, he had to warn them. He had to tell them the vector of transmission. He had to explain that there was a collective element to this. And, most importantly, he had to explain that it was nothing to worry about. They had to know that there was no reason to hide. Maybe he could figure out where they were, exactly. Maybe he could reach out and- crush this invasive thought process, rewind, sort the facts, leave out the opinions. His mobile phone was on him somewhere. He hoped it was in a local pocket.
It's hard to drag his mind to where his phone is. It's important but his fractured mind doesn't seem to agree. It had been in his hand when the stranger appeared. He was getting information for the others. They knew his location and would be expecting him, and they were… and suddenly the location of his phone was very urgent and all parts of him were keen on it and that fact nearly knocked him over in the urge to shy away.
It'd been in his hand. Before the stranger, before he started running. Despite the haze of adrenalin that's clearer now. It was in his hand, and then he'd run, and it'd been shoved in a pocket. Pushing himself to a sit Ethan digs it out and stares at the spiderweb of cracks across the glowing screen. It must have ended up under him as he landed. But it's still functional and, remarkably, there are signal bars despite him being stuck on the side of a mountain. Probably because he'd not all that far from the top of Castle Hill and has line of sight to Townsville proper and probably a few towers if he knew where to look (and they weren't on fire).
The Hangout opens and Ethan pauses, not sure what comes next. Ethan Z: still Castle-d. they've got telepathy is tapped and submitted before he really things twice. He consider it afterwards. That's… not bad. He wants to tell everyone about how good joining is, about what they can give. And superpowers are pretty nice. He should definitely share that. We knew pyro was confirmed, kinesis seems to be push not grab. Not sure if hivemind named Greg or just this bit of it.
Greg was a nice, friendly name. He should definitely share that. And if they read that and didn't trust Ethan, well… that was their choice, why would it be a bad thing? A smile crooked the very corner of his mouth even as part of him protested that thought, told him how of course they should trust their friend who was only trying to help them. And he was.
So, was that 'Raptured', then? The Hangouts is quiet for a moment, before Robert's text pops in with: Robert Pearce: Good grief, Ethan. What's the scoop? Are you safe now?
Apparently the instinct of his friends given the sudden influx of information was to assume he'd witnessed something and had gotten away and observed the mentioned traits from afar, by way of unambiguous symptoms. A shouted name, a one-sided argument, telekinesis in action when 'pull' would have been useful but did not work out. After all, he was currently typing to them. If there was a 'hivemind', surely he wouldn't be talking to them like this if he was an actual part of it.
Look, Robert still trusted him! And his gut shouldn't squirm at that fact. It wasn't as if he could tell them he was compromised, because sinking into this state was a good thing, surely. And compromised was a bad word and would make them frightened and he was supposed to help them. Find and help them, except no he wasn't going to go looking for them. Because… because he had a twisted ankle and he'd only hurt himself. That was a good reason not to go anywhere. He was going to stay sitting on this mountain on his own and not bother anyone until he was better.
Ethan Z: Greg said he was looking for his dog but didn't seem to care about the dog, if it exists. hope it doesn't actually. Poor dog if it does. His brain poked at him. The dog wasn't that important, he was supposed to be talking about other things. Vital things. Like locations.
still staying put? You shouldn't and Ethan pauses. Shouldn't what. Shouldn't move? They'd probably run into someone if they moved. So moving was… badgood? But they were safe where they were and then someone could go to them and nobody would get hurt. And that was good. He didn't want anyone to get hurt. Fingers moved absently as the distant part of his brain peeled into interactions looking for clues, and then the screen blinked as the sentence ended trust me.
Back in the mall, Robert feels his calm briefly punctured by a violent flare of an instinct not fully quashed by his fatalism. A deep concern laces him with unwelcome tension and temporarily frays his thoughts. His meticulously motionless posture attracts attention, a far more natural breath easing from Keneh as she leans a little closer. “Something happen?”
“Ethan. Ethan happened,” Robert comments, tone tinged with frustration, still staring at the screen. Then he's typing: Okay, you still have my attention. What else can you tell us? A pause, then: About Greg, not about the dog, I mean.
Keneh sinks into a crouch beside Robert, cautiously tense, he hands clasping against the edge of the table. Her gaze nervously travels to the monitors, suspecting evidence for lurking danger, somehow more tangible than before. Hivemind. If Ethan was a part of it now, they should go. He knew they were in a mall near one of the bridges. There were only so many places that description applied to, depending on how flexible one was with the definition of 'near'.
They were asking questions about Greg. That was… he could convince himself that was good, and if Ethan could just sort of doublethink his way into believing they were scared and wanted comfort before they came out he could tell them and everything was good. This was good. (He was sure the valuable bit 1984 was supposed to be the warnings on surveillance, not on balancing opposing opinions.)
Ethan Z: seems to be a blood vector. Maybe other fluids? Not sure. The rings of fire are for intimidation, greg doesn't want to hurt people but wants them to stop. I jumped one and fell down the mountain and twisted my ankle. Bad choice. ;)
The chat medium was terrible at conveying the effort all this took to write. It painted a picture of lucidity. The story checked out as plausible, except the effects should be more obvious if it was, surely? “So if we're not trusting Ethan, what are we learning?” Keneh asks in an unnecessary near-whisper, an edge of sarcasm tingeing her tone, product of her tension.
“I don't know,” Robert admits. “But I'm going to keep him talking. We can analyse this for contradictions later.” As he speaks, his fingers are typing something else:
Robert Pearce: Ouch, sorry to hear that. Do you know how Greg found you?
Ethan pokes about in this mind a bit to see if 1) there is a nice answer to that, and 2) if it'll let him share it. He gets a vague sensation of 'shrug' to both. Ethan Z: accident? Maybe the dog is real. Still think that Greg doesn't like the dog though. Which was decidedly unhelpful for all parties involved, including the missing canine.
He was weirdly calm. Apparently his panic centres were irritating. Or maybe Greg thought he was going to run away and hurt himself more. He was still terrified but it was distant. Happening to someone else, or to a mind partition that the rest of 'Ethan' wasn't occupying at present. I think this stuff is manmade though. The stuff linking us all together and doing weird stuff to my nerves, I mean.
Robert halts, pausing his instinct to share this revelation with the rest of the room as a sudden insight. Don't trust him. …on the other hand, there was nothing to lose by believing it. “Looks like we're probably dealing with something artificial,” he comments so Delaney can hear it without having to squint at the screen. To Ethan he writes: Do you know who made it? If they can figure out an approximate epicentre to this and a hivemind really is involved, some of the decisions of the overall 'creature' (was that the right word?) might become predictable. Furthermore, if they made it out of Townsville and got help, a more effective approach might be planned. Even just the knowledge whether the inventor was a single human or it was a company in electronics or biochemistry would help. Anything at all - providing Ethan knew and the 'hivemind' had no vested interest in keeping the information contained.
What did he know about Greg? Not much, really. Everything was weird and hard to understand. He knew what had happened at the beginning was really clever, and that the one involved didn't expect this. But that's why serendipity is so nice. You can make something and it can turn out even better than planned, and be the first to benefit. There was no sense of who was responsible that he could feel, just a pleased 'me' that wasn't Ethan but was at the same time.
The him-that-is-not-him seems to be growing stronger though. Ethan twisted around to feel for the presence behind him.
The tide that had receded with the other's retreat was returning, lapping at the edges of his psyche, beginning to make the clear delineation he'd found for himself less distinct and washing away some more grains of Ethan's self. And now that he was looking for the information, it was there, though in the form of a half-forgotten memory. Somewhere he'd worked before. People who knew what they were doing. People who were really, really good, in more than one sense of the word. But there was also scepticism - why did they want to know, anyway? It didn't matter. For all intents and purposes, the cradle no longer existed. They'd all been high-priority targets, for so many reasons. Intelligent, kind people, ones that most easily understood the benefits once converted, ones most likely to try objectively stupid things if they were not. What did the source matter?
The presence was a warm bath that his mind was urging him to sink into. Just relax and let it work and you'll feel so much better. It was hard to think about the past, to examine his memories for what had started this. Doubly so given they weren't his memories, and he had to cling to that; he was Ethan and he was a blogger and had a personal identity that was very very important and was not allowed to go away.
Ethan Z: Lots of smart people. Rational. A good nucleus. That was encouraging, wasn't it? His friends wouldn't be interested if they'd have to deal with unpleasant members. Who'd want to share their mind with an arsehole? And Del said she was a biologist, maybe she knew some of the first targets. Ask Del if she knows Deiparous Tech
“Deiparous tell you anything, Delaney?” Robert asks almost automatically, while typing Will do. as a response to Ethan's prompt. There's a brief pause, then he's typing: Any way we can help? Regardless what the answer to that might be - should any even come - they were not going to do it, but it might grant them insights, either directly or (more likely) indirectly.
A pang shoots through him at that question. What did he want? Don't get hurt. That was true. Everyone agreed that hurting people was bad. Better that they stay where they were, nice and safe, and that someone went and got them. Several someones to make things more efficient. Although they could just wait out the front if that was easier, or maybe someone could come to where the camera was and then they could go down and meet them.
No! No, that wasn't right, they were supposed to be staying away from us because… because… it was on the tip of his tongue and really important, but they had something to do first. Something they had to find out and share with everyone that would stop people being hurt. Except people wouldn't be hurt if they stopped panicking, so they should join and then tell people things and… and…
Fingers clenched in his hair and gripped tight. See you soon?
“Unlikely,” Robert mutters. Into the Hangout, he types Sure; take care.
For a moment, he hesitates - then logs out of Hangouts. No reason to potentially prolong the ethically dubious conversation. He glances back at Delaney with some curiosity, then opens a new tab and launched a search for 'deiparous tech'. Sure enough, the first search result is a Townsville biotech company. Clicking on it and browsing briefly, the last news on their blog seems to be from over a week ago and effectively free of content; there's no immediate hint what might have gone wrong yesterday or tonight, or whenever this problem originated. “Any ideas? Or do you think it's a red herring?”
Delaney bites her lip as she racks her brain. “The name is familiar… I think they're the ones that got the grant to test a new Alzheimer's treatment?” she answers uncertainly. “It's not a name someone would be likely to pluck out of the air. If someone has seriously screwed up they're as plausible as anyone else.” And it would have to be a truly monumental fuck-up to have taken out large portions of a city with some genetically engineered parasite. Delaney was fairly certain the only sort of research likely to lead to a human(-ish) hivemind was already illegal. Apparently for reasons that weren't mere paranoia.
As far as she was concerned there was no such thing as 'things man was not meant to know' but there certainly was 'things man is supposed to put proper containment protocols into place before fiddling with, damnit, this is not new'. And apparently she was going slightly hysterical.
Robert nods at her in acknowledgement, then uneasily regards the website for a few more seconds of uncertainty. A moment later, he inhales curtly and sharply and nudges the lid of the laptop shut, triggering shut-down. “I guess we're leaving early,” he comments, tone steady. 'Leaving' meant not via the north route; after all, the area that led to really was only a good hiding place if no one knew you were there, and the Bohle river limited the amount you could just keep fleeing in the general direction. “I vote we try for Charters Towers and from there to Cloncurry.” Latter was effectively a day's drive, but it was inland, which was hopefully counter-intuitive enough that it wouldn't be guessed as their destination. They could muse about where to go from there once they were there. The right thing to do was to head south-east, hoping to stay ahead of the synthetic threat, and warn the urban clusters at the east coast of the incoming disaster, but for the time being, Robert's immediate concern was for his two guests. 'Away' was the most important first step.