Chaos Calling, page 15
Sarita gives a shriek that reminds him of bathroom spiders discovered on summer mornings and staggers into him. Dave scrambles to support her. Just before she collapses into his arms, Dave receives a sharp memory from his mum’s thoughts.
It’s summertime. Sarita’s outside in a garden—probably Mrs. Lin’s rose garden at their Dovercourt house, but his mum is looking at her friend’s face so Dave can’t tell. Everything else is out of focus. They’re young, perhaps in their early forties, but hardly much older than he and Anna are now. Mrs. Lin is holding a wineglass and swirling the red liquid beneath her nose; the conspiratorial smile she shoots Sarita above its rim is mischievous.
“Don’t worry about David, Sarita,” his mum’s best friend says, her lively dark eyes full of secrets. “He’s exceptional and exactly where he needs to be. You watch: one day, he and my twins will do great things.”
The memory vanishes as Sarita slumps against him, leaving him inundated with a mix of bafflement, curiosity, and dread. Dave leans against the kitchen island, cradling his mum as the memory washes over him. She knew, he thinks, utterly stunned for the second time in twenty-four hours. Auntie Lee was right. Mrs. Lin knew the whole time. Why didn’t she say anything?
He wants nothing more than to take out his phone and call Leona, but his mum groans softly. Dave shifts his grip to carry her to the couch. He sets Sarita down among the lacy cushions as gently as he can. The air-conditioned den is chilly, so Dave grabs a quilted blanket off the back of her rocking chair and wraps it around Sarita. His mum’s face is motionless and pale, which reminds him of visiting Mrs. Lin in the hospital during the final wretched weeks of her illness.
Mum’s startled, not sick, Dave tells himself sternly, but his grief for the woman who was like an aunt to him still knots his throat. Oh, Chun-Mei. What I’d give to talk with you tonight.
Sighing, Dave sits down on the other end of the couch. As his mother breathes, the den’s soft lamplight catches on the fine gold threads around the collar of her emerald housecoat, a gift from Mrs. Lin after their family trip to China so long ago. She’ll be fine, he tells himself.
A muscle flexes in his chest. Rubbing his scar, Dave leans back against the cushions. What’s the most productive thing you can do right now? How often had he and Halina asked each other that question during their eight years in business? Too many times to count.
Dave pulls out his cell. As if summoned by his thought, there’s a text from his co-founder:
What’s it going to take to get this paperwork done?
Stalling changes nothing but our reputation.
Rune’s not a shop that breaks client deadlines.
You saw to that.
Snorting at the perfect mix of guilt and command, Dave deletes her text. Your paperwork is the least of my worries, Hal, he thinks as he calls his aunt’s phone. Voicemail. He tries again, dialing her house this time. No answer. Come on, Auntie Lee, pick up. What good is being a telepath if you don’t answer my calls? But she doesn’t pick up, so he leaves a message asking her to call him immediately. Next, he sends a text to Ryan to ask if he’s seen Leona.
Feeling unsettled, Dave opens Facebook. Over three hundred notifications pop up, most from international friends and business contacts demanding to know if he’s okay. There’s no concerned message from Halina. Surprise. He scans his feed: Toronto is losing its collective mind. He ignores the wilder conspiracy theories about the attack. He posts a quick “I’m safe, thanks for all the kind thoughts” note before logging off.
People are going to find out. Hal will know. And Charles. And everyone at Rune. The realization shouldn’t feel like a bolt from the blue, but it does. I’ve got to give Dad something. He’ll want specifics. I should have asked Kalos exactly when the next attack will come. Dave sighs. Kalos is even better than me at ignoring other people’s demands.
His email pings. Dave’s heart leaps, hoping it’s Leona. Instead, he finds Jason’s flight itinerary.
“Yes!” Dave cries, pumping his fist. “Finally, some good news!” Beside him, Sarita stirs. He pats her feet through the blanket as he skims the rest of the email, on which both he and Anna are copied. Jason’s asking to be picked up on Wednesday afternoon at Hamilton International Airport, a mere hour down the highway from Toronto.
Riding that victory, Dave picks up the TV remote. Showing Mum what Anna did may make it easier for her to accept. The channel’s already set to CBC. He sits through a cycle of talking heads before they return to the SkyDome footage. As he watches, something fast, pixelated, and incomprehensible to his eye rockets into the frame. Skyworm. Heat climbs Dave’s back. It looks like a camera glitch, not a monster. Xhen curls around his fingers, pooling in his palms to clasp his hands like a lover.
“Is that Anna?” his mother asks in a weak voice.
Dave turns to Sarita as she struggles up against the couch’s pillows, doll-like in her robe. “Yes,” he tells her as she reaches for his hand. Letting go of xhen, Dave takes her cold fingers in his as they study the TV.
On screen, Anna’s xhen arcs into the sky to strike at the skyworms. In answer, elation blooms in Dave’s body. “That’s xhen,” he cries, pointing. “The energy we summon.” He demonstrates. His mum blanches. “Sorry,” he says, releasing it.
Sarita’s mind whispers something in Hindi.
“What?” Dave can’t tear his eyes from the TV. Why can’t we film them? He’s tempted to text Halina. She’d have a theory by morning. He rubs the back of his itchy neck. It felt the same way when he glimpsed a gap in the market during customer meetings. He’d rush back to the office on fire with his new insight, not caring that he couldn’t yet see all its permutations. In the early days, he and Halina had pulled dozens of all-nighters after meetings like that, conceptualizing new features for their products. Or new products altogether. As he studies the news footage, Dave feels that same sense of expansive possibility for the first time in three years. This is a hell of a problem to solve.
“David, how can you be so sure that these monsters are real? That picture does not look like anything. This is all so crazy.”
“This part of my life has been crazy for a long time, Mum. I just didn’t tell you when I was younger.”
She sniffles.
Dave glances over. Sarita’s face is streaked with tears. He gently thumbs them away. “Aw, don’t worry about me.”
“I will cry,” his mum insists, pushing away his hand. She scrubs her palms against her eyes. “And I will worry. I am your mother, and it is very upsetting, everything that you have told me.” She retakes his hand, her grip tight. “Can someone else fight these things, these sky monsters, David? Why must it be you?”
“Because, Mum.” Dave’s smile is there before he can stop it. “They’re coming back.” He gestures at the screen. “And we’ll need everyone we’ve got to stop them.”
She sniffs again and gives him a hard look. “Does your father know?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you had better tell him.”
“I will. Just in my own time, okay?”
“He is not answering my texts,” Sarita says, leaning back against her cushions to give her son a reproachful look. “I will not tell him if you wish it.” She sighs. “What would I even say?”
The blue-white light of the TV flickers over their faces as they sit in silence, watching Anna Lin defend their city.
Interlude: Frenzy
The moons rise and set before the veil begins to pulse with our hunting party’s return. After the first three victorious scouts crouch low and lift their mouth tentacles, the dazzling power they bear makes our scales even more lustrous. We cast a shimmering rainbow across the cliffs and the ocean waves. Again, the swarm flexes against our coils, keening their delight. This time, we are generous.
We spread our maw wide to extend our mouth tentacle between our jaws and spray the swarm with the barest mist of our new skal. Snapping and biting, they wrestle to catch the drops, no matter how minute. Not one falls upon the sand. Absorbed into their scales, it will quicken their speed and sharpen their attacks upon both greyfish and enemy scouts from other nests.
Our frenzy lasts long into the night until the cliffs echo with our celebration. Yet, when dawn comes, the three remaining scouts have not returned. As we watch in stunned surprise, the veil’s pulse slows and then ceases, signaling the end of this crossing.
More loss, observe our mother-sisters. You cannot afford such sacrifices.
Scouts are feckless, we insist, refusing to show concern, lest we alarm the jubilant swarm. They fell to discord among themselves.
We shall search the nest memory, whispers the eldest of our mother-sisters, her withered voice as soft as wind through sea grass. This skal tastes familiar.
Search as you wish, we reply. But this power shall not escape our grasp.
Never, our mother-sisters agree, echoing our irritation. Send the black hatchling from the last clutch to lead the hunt. If the stars are bountiful, when they succeed, you shall have the skal you require to arm your hunters and breed a new clutch.
Annoyance curls our tentacles. Our nest has not boasted sufficient skal to produce a clutch in several seasons. The veil puncture is too small for any but scouts to cross.
The hatching is a runt, insist our mother-sisters. It has grown to its full size but remains narrow enough to pass through the veil. Send it to bring focus to this hunt.
We call the hatchling forward to inspect it alongside nine more scouts. It is indeed the smallest black we have ever hatched. Some defect of its egg formation has left its body unnaturally narrow and short. It stretches not a third the length or width of its dark brethren, who boast the longest tails of our swarm. Shunned for these deficiencies, it bears old scars of acid and flame. Yet it swells with purpose as it raises its head to return our regard.
Bear the scouts to battle, we command it. Return in might.
Part Three
Queen’s Park
Chapter 16
Malcolm — Partner
Toronto, ON: Wednesday, August 20
Malcolm sprints along Lavender Creek Trail north of their Junction neighbourhood. I’m not tired, he thinks, exulting in the feeling of complete effortlessness. This is so goddamn weird. His jogging route through the area’s interconnected parks varies between ten and twenty kilometres. The rapidly approaching street means he has less than a kilometre left. The trail is empty, and the sun is only a glimmer through the trees. Eager to brush the edges of his new abilities, Malcolm pushes his speed.
Is this how Olympians feel? he wonders as he streaks down the path before slowing to a stop as the trail meets the newly opened Stockyards Shopping Centre. He’s sweating, sure, but not a lot. And he’s not short of breath. His muscles feel fresh and his body light. I could turn around and sprint it again. Despite his concerns for Anna, their family, and his job, which drove him out of bed at 4:30 a.m., Malcolm grins. As benefits go, this is pretty great.
Keeping a less conspicuous pace, he jogs home. After Dave left and the kids went to bed, he’d spent the evening testing his strength in the basement, trying to drive images of Marissa Chang and the other dead teens from his mind. He’d loaded his modular dumbbells with increasingly heavy weights. Each time, he’d been certain that the next set would mark his limit. Yet he’d easily done deadlifts and bicep curls. He’d been tempted to go outside and see if he could lift the back of a car. He might have tried if Nancy Coleman hadn’t been skulking around her yard, a long-suffering agent from the gas company in tow. Malcolm had gone inside, surprised to discover his hunger rivaled Anna’s. We’re going to spend a fortune on groceries.
He jaywalks across St. Clair Avenue West, careful not to slip on the gleaming streetcar tracks still shiny with dew. The neighbourhood’s early-morning emptiness reverberates against the eerie feeling growing inside him. Why is this happening to us? Why have those creatures come now?
Yesterday, keeping a stoic face in the presence of his colleagues had left him more exhausted than this run. They’re bound to know more by the time the task force assembles, he thinks. If only Edwards had lived. We could have figured things out together. Malcolm lets out a sigh as he turns onto their street, feeling another wave of sadness. Kalos said there will be others. How am I supposed to know who they are? Do I find them? Do they find us?
Disconcerted, he unlocks the front door. As he comes into the kitchen, Malcolm immediately spots Erin and Tim on the other side of the playroom’s French doors. Erin is sitting outside the fully extended walls of their toy castle, surrounded by a horde of Duplo farm animals, dinosaurs, unicorns and pegasi. Tim kneels inside, carefully placing action figures in defensive positions along the parapet. Malcolm tears a paper towel to wipe his face and pours a glass of water, listening. An only child, he finds their ability to play in relative harmony a great source of joy. He nudges the door open.
“No, Erin,” Tim’s saying. “The animals aren’t the bad guys anymore.” He makes the action figure of Jasper Rigg—yet another gift from Dave—walk the nearest rampart and point an arm over the wall. “‘We’re fighting flying snakes now, team!’”
Malcolm nearly chokes on his water as Tim twists a model boa constrictor through the air over the castle. Dropping the snake, Tim takes the action figure up again and pushes a button on its back. The knight’s orange-and-black fist punches the snake’s mouth. “‘The Valoi Knights win!’” he intones. He gives his sister a superior look. “Just like the lady in black.”
“She’s not a Knight,” Erin says with the scorn of a true fan. “You made her up.”
“She’s new,” Tim says loftily. “I saw her on the news.”
A lump rises in Malcolm’s throat. Jesus, he thinks. When do we tell them what’s going on? Do we tell them?
Anna enters the kitchen, still limping and dressed in khakis and a short-sleeved white blouse, her straight black hair pulled into a ponytail. “Mommy and Daddy have to work this morning, sweethearts,” Anna calls to their children, oblivious to both his dilemma and the nuances of their game. She holds out two backpacks. If he concentrates, he can feel the ache of the injury dragging on her consciousness like poor aerodynamics on a badly designed car. “Pack up the toys you want for today. Camp is still closed, so Daddy’s taking you to Auntie Sarita’s house.”
“She tells the best stories!” Erin crows, taking her backpack. “Even better than yours, Mommy.”
Watching Anna as she cajoles Tim into packing up his things instead of continuing the game, Malcolm tries to reconcile this picture of domesticity with the creatures Anna slew. It’s not going to make sense for a while, he decides as Tim debates which toys from the castle game to take. Incomplete information always creates uncertainty. Stop expecting the fog to lift.
As if aware of his thoughts, Anna glances up. “You going to have a shower?”
“Yeah,” he answers. “I’ll be quick. Chris texted to say he’s working from home, so I don’t have to pick him up.”
“Good. The kids ate. I’m taking the subway to MaRS Discovery District to meet Walter at 8:15.” Seeing his frown, Anna pokes his chest with a finger. “Stop your worrying right there. Dave’s going to meet me at Ossington Station. We’ll meet you around 11:30, maybe noon at the latest.”
“All right,” Malcolm says, spreading his arms to offer her a sweaty hug. Squealing about her clean clothes, Anna accepts the briefest kiss and then ducks under his arm. He looks back at her as he heads to the stairs. She seems happy, her injury notwithstanding, as she helps Tim to pack up the toys. She’ll be fine, he tells himself. She can handle it.
He hurries through his shower, not pausing to enjoy the heat against his back. When he comes downstairs in his office clothes, badge and gun on his plainclothes holster and his police vest tucked under one arm, Anna is indeed gone. Her absence chafes at his mind, throbbing like a scrape. Ignoring the itch to go after her is an act of will. “Let’s go, kids.”
Traffic is comparatively light as he drives to the Montcalms’ house. Despite his best efforts, his background awareness of Anna continues to nag at his thoughts. Sarita is waiting for them at the screen door, dressed in designer sweats in a deep, cheerful pink, her wrists covered in jeweled bangles and her braids whiter than the last time Malcolm saw her.
“Welcome, dear ones, welcome,” she says, stooping to hug Erin and Tim. “You are in luck,” she tells them. “Since you were here last, I found some of David’s old toys in the basement. They are waiting for you in the den. Go and introduce yourselves.”
Grinning, the children drop their bags, kick off their sandals, and run into the house without so much as a look at Malcolm. “Thank you for taking them,” he says, picking up the backpacks.
“It’s a pleasure,” Sarita says, plucking the bags from his hands and tucking them away under a bench. “They are the closest I will come to grandchildren until David stops his stubbornness and finds a sweet, kind woman to marry.” She smiles, showing the dimple in her right cheek. “He will be a wonderful father. Just like you.”
“Mmm,” Malcolm says, feeling the tips of his ears flush pink. “Well, I should—”
“Will you stay for chai?” Sarita asks.
Malcolm shakes his head, inching toward the door. “I have to get downtown.”
“Of course,” Sarita says. She takes a paper bag from the bench and presses it into his hands. Malcolm starts to thank her, wondering if she knows about their strange bursts of hunger. Sarita waves off his words with an elegant hand. “No thanks are necessary, my dear.” She pats his wrist, regarding him with knowing eyes. “Having a partner in public life is an uneasy thing.”
“Public life?” Malcolm echoes, his brow creasing.
“Inevitably,” Sarita says. “With time, she will understand how much she is asking of you. How much they are asking of all of us.”
