Dahl's vision narrowed and rotated by 45°. The jungle blurred and then her vision snapped back, stomach threatening to explode as a strange dizziness stole her strength. She swayed forward, over compensated and landed on her ass, half in/half out of the bushes.
She peered ahead, squinting and trying to focus on the distorted figures in the clearing. It looked as though a warped pane of frosted glass had popped up between her and the men in the distance. The barrier that came down in front of her and Eve was also all around them. An eerie, disconnected silence cloaked the outside world as a translucent bubble trapped them.
Dahl extended a hand, slowly uncurling her slender fingers, and touched the obstruction. Its frigid surface sent a convulsive jolt up her arm, bristling the tiny hair on her body. She yanked her hand away, trying to shake away the pins and needles feeling. It had become a distressing ice cold and her uncooperative digits refused to move. Horrified, wide-eyed, she held it up, seeing through it as if it were smoke. Then, another jolt rocked her body and her hand became solid again. Fingers flexing, warmth returning, and she sighed in relief.
A man's voice filled her mind. "If you would like to keep that hand, I suggest you don't do that again." Déjà vu overcame Dahl. The speaker's voice was foreign and familiar. She rolled onto her knees and vomited in the underbrush.
Undaunted by the strange warning, Dahl drew her knife and used the butt to rap against the surface of the bubble. This time there was no sound, no electric shock and no knife. Gone. The orb absorbed the blow, muffled the sound and… and what? Absorbed the knife. But that wasn't quite right, because she could still feel it in her grasp. She squeezed, but couldn't see it. She squeezed again and her hand blurred out.
"Drop it now," the strange voice commanded, and her hand opened involuntarily. She felt the invisible blade fall. And when it struck the ground, an explosion sent up a soundless cloud of debris as if a hand grenade had exploded between her feet. When she uncovered her face, the smoking blade stuck straight up in the bottom of a small, burned-out crater.
"Dahlia Johns, you are as much a pain in my ass in the past as you will be in the future."
She made a soundless off-color statement that made the voice in her head laugh. She crawled to the crater, grabbed the knife, and almost dropped it. It was freezing. She pulled herself upright and slid the sub zero knife back in its scabbard.
"Kearyn," Eve said.
Dahl turned to her, realizing her smile was not for the sudden good fortune protecting them, but directed at the blonde-haired man standing in their midst.
The air inside the bubble prickled with an uncomfortable static charge that brought the tiny hairs on Dahl's body to attention once more. The energy radiated off the man in waves she recognized. For a moment, her golden hair stood on end, and she looked like a dandelion readying itself to release its seed into a strong wind. But then her hair fell back into place as the charge ebbed away. She stepped away from the bush, rubbing her tingling forearms as if they had fallen asleep. Then, as if the bubble had filled with even more energy, every nerve in her body came to life, stinging and vibrating. Like before, the energy came in rhythmic waves, just like when the Hunter Gratzner toppled over and she thought he did this.
An overwhelming feeling of being watched reached out and seized her, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up again. "Eve," she said, looking towards the figure standing in their midst. "We need to move. It's happening again."
They were not alone. A cloaked man stood at the center of the bubble. Dahl turned towards the blonde-haired man in the clearing, and reeled back, squinting through the barrier at the same man. She turned back, confusion contorting her face, and found Eve walking straight for the Purifier with outstretched arms.
"No," Dahl shouted, darting forward and hauling her back. "What are you doing?" she demanded, whipping Eve around and shaking her rough. "He's one of them."
Eve shook her head and pulled her arm free from Dahl's grasp. "Kearyn is not one of them and hasn't been for a long time."
"Kearyn," Dahl replied, thumbing a gesture over her shoulder at the blurry figure no longer standing in the center of the clearing. "You said his name is Purifier."
Dahl drew her knife, pointed it at Kearyn, and punctuated each word with a jabbing motion. "How'd you get in here? And why do you look like him? And what the hell is this prison cell?"
"This cell,... As you put it." Kearyn said, waving around at the orb concealing them. "Is how I get around. Although, it is rarely this size. Under the circumstances, I thought it best to expand it to cloak you, too."
"Let us out." Dahl demanded.
"I think not," Kearyn replied, with no ill will in his voice. He turned to Eve with a raised brow that asked if her little friend was serious or just foolish. "Perhaps you could explain to Dahlia that there are far worse things outside this orb than there are inside."
Dahl let out a resounding laugh tinged with doubt and sarcasm. "Who? Him.., you."
"I can assure you, there are beings out there far more dangerous than he or I."
At that moment, a screeching metal on metal sound like a rusted lock being forced open filled Dahl's mind. She fell on her hands and knees, seizing her head in both hands, and screamed in pain. When she looked up, she watched Kearyn's ancient glamor peel away one layer at a time. As Dahl rose from the ground, fumbling for her knife and wanting him to get out of her head, the image of death bore its way into her splitting skull. This man was no man at all. He was death incarnate.
At first, it seemed as if time had sped up around Kearyn. Although he did not age at first. Then, as if passing seconds became hours, weeks, years, eons, millennia. His once smooth blonde hair grayed, became coarse and kinky, then thinned and fell out. The skin on his bald head became blotchy and spider veined, then darkened into a withered shoe leather helmet. Moments later, a frail, pallid corpse, shriveled by the relentless passage of time, stood before her. Unblinking eyelids gone, lips receded, revealing blackened, rotten gums.
But that's not where the transformation ended. With every passing moment, his once beautiful and vibrant cloak faded to a careworn, filthy gray. What was once majestic fabric looked as if the wind could blow it into tattered shreds. Then, when Dahl's brilliant blue eyes met his milky white, lifeless gaze, she shrieked in horror and turned away. She could not look at the corpse standing in front of her. Its glowing, mirrored eyes blazed with an internal energy. This ancient thing encapsulated all the pharaohs of Egypt. The lifeless corpse stood in the spot where a young, handsome man had been only moments earlier, pretending to be alive.
"Dahl," Eve said, turning to her with no sign of concern or fear. "I'd like to introduce you to my creator." Eve said. "This is Kearyn Fry."
Dahl thought Eve couldn't see him for what he was, but then, it became obvious; she saw him and didn't shrink away in terror. But Eve was under this mummy's spell. Dahl's mouth fell open in shock and she thought, this is way worse than a spell. Disbelief robbed her of the ability to speak.
"I believe you meant to say, my re-creator."
"Sure. That too." Eve replied, gesturing for Dahl to come closer.
Dahl held both her ground, open-mouthed and pale, knife held at the ready. Maybe she couldn't kill this unholy abomination, but she could still spill its guts. Then she looked at the withered husk standing before her and doubted that in his current state of total dessication, she could do any damage. She shuddered at the thought of what lurked beneath his cloak.
"Dahl," Eve said, giving her a look that said, get over here and stop embarrassing me.
"This is the guy?" Dahl blurted, still staring in utter disbelief. Her sudden shock turned to an instant and unexpected rage none of them saw coming. "He's the one who rescued you from the Necromongers? Rebuilt your wrecked body? Gave you a new life? This guy? This thing?" Dahl lowered her knife, took an angry, I'm gonna drive this blade into your genitals, step forward, and added, "And I suppose he's the one with all the Goddamn answers why half the people I love are dead? He's that guy? Right? Aren't you? Are you that fucking guy? The guy who murdered my friends? My family?"
Kearyn said nothing.
"Dahl," Eve said, looking at her as if she were embarrassing her. "This is Kearyn. He's my-"
"I don't give a damn who he is, Eve." Dahl shouted, cutting her off. "I've had enough of this happy horseshit. And I'm sick of not knowing what's going on," she raged, brandishing her knife in Kearyn's direction again. "This shit stops now."
Kearyn laughed. He couldn't help it. He didn't want to laugh and knew it would only infuriate her more, but Dahl had always made him laugh when she got mad. It was sort of her go to move; he remembered. Anger over fear. It's what kept her sane when it hit the fan. And right now, he rightly figured, it was hitting the fan pretty damn hard. "If it were only that easy."
"You think this shit is funny?" she screamed, and hurled her knife at his face. It tumbled once, straightened out, and then just before it sank home. Drilling into the dried flesh between his eyes. Kearyn vanished, leaving behind nothing but a faint popping noise followed by the sound of air rushing in to fill a void. The knife flew into the dense bush behind him as a savage, guttural scream of frustration escaped Dahl's lungs.
"Boo," he said, popping up behind her.
She reeled around, fist missing the side of his head as a pop/whoosh sound signaled he was standing 20 feet further away. She was right.
"Don't worry," Kearyn said, tossing her knife at her feet and gesturing over her shoulder at the figure standing on the other side of the bubble. "If you were wondering. He can't hear us. We're cloaked. I've seen to that."
"Listen, asshole." Dahl snapped, her red face burning in Kearyn's dead eyes. "Do I look like I give a ripe shit if he can hear us? Or anything other than kicking you in the nuts?"
After a quick moment, Dahl sensed Kearyn was grinning at her. He wasn't, of course. Dead lips can't grin; or smile; or anything else, for that matter. Then she realized something. Dead mouths can't speak. He was in her head, thinking about grinning.
Dahl bent down, maintaining eye contact with Kearyn the entire way. She picked up her knife, slid it back in its sheath and said, "Has anyone ever told you that you're a dick?"
The impression of Kearyn's invisible grin intensified, and he said, "Like many, I too am a product of my environment."
"Then find a new environment to live in."
"You are a smart ass, Dahlia Jane Johns. There's no denying that. You always have been," he said, shaking his head at her as if she were a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
Dahl matched Kearn's grin and said, "It's a family thing."
"No doubt," Kearyn said, leaning to the side to see something behind her.
Eve looked at Dahl, rolled her eyes, and turned to Kearyn with an apologetic shrug. "We've had a difficult day."
"Difficult day!" Dahl screamed. "My friends are dead and I'm trapped in this lunatic asylum. And you fucking call this a difficult day."
A sympathetic smile passed from Keary to Eve, and Dahl stepped away from Eve, a glut of distrust building in her stomach. "Who are you, both?"
"I thought it obvious," he replied, gesturing from his face to the man in the clearing. "I was him. Or perhaps I should say, he may yet become me."
"Are you insane? Even if you were him… or are him.. or he's you… or whatever. How are you both here at the same time?"
"We are the same person on different points of the same path. He is young me, and I am this," he said, gesturing at himself.
"Don't say that," Eve said.
"Never shun the truth, my child. Even if it is difficult to hear."
Dahl reeled on Eve, and Eve stepped away. "You said nothing about knowing the assholes that are trying to kill us. Or their leader."
"I don't know them," Eve said, her voice steeped in anger.
"No," Dahl replied and turned to Kearyn. "Does she know the asshole standing in the clearing?"
"Not exactly," Eve replied. "She knows me."
Dahl regarded her with a dark frown, suggesting she'd caught her in a lie. She turned to the corpse. "Does she, or not?"
"Yes."
"Care to explain?"
"Not particularly," Kearyn replied.
Dahl drew her knife out and shifted it from her right hand to her left, and Kearyn laughed. "Young lady, you've always had spunk. I'll give you that much."
"Keep talking like you know me, and I'll give you something else to remember me for."
"Long ago, I came upon two sisters. Twins. Tiny little things, crouching beside the corpses of their parents. I saved them from those who sought to harm them. People who wore armor like those on the other side of your cell."
Dahl turned to the men with a look that spoke of hatred and a great need for vengeance.
"I brought them to their uncle. Wiped the memories of their parents' deaths. It was then I realized some people can see through my glamour. And how my true appearance affects them," he said, lowering opening his cloak to reveal a desiccated mummy beneath.
Dahl stepped back, mouth falling open, and she turned to Eve with a questioning expression.
"Eve does not suffer from my pox," Kearyn said. "I am a unique sort of monster. One who created himself."
"What are you?"
"I am a mix of being born into the wrong family and a myriad of resulting bad choices. I am selfish, more than a little arrogant and hypocritical. And those are but a few of my more endearing qualities."
"If you're trying to win me over with honesty," Dahl said. "Try harder."
Kearyn nodded, shrugged, and sighed. Eve looked like she was going to say something to Dahl, but he waved her down. "Because of my many faults," he continued. "I became this piteous creature that stands before you."
"I suppose you didn't deserve this?"
"Long ago, I would have agreed. Cursed the powers that be and all that nonsense. Today, I am open to the idea I choose this."
"Well, aren't you enlightened?"
"Coming to terms with the truth that I am an eternal corpse damned to wander the time streams in search of a redemption that will never happen has been a process." Kearyn replied.
"Well, fucking process this," Dahl said, turning towards Eve with a distrusted.
Eve held up a hand. "Just listen." The tone in her voice carried a subtle but unmistakable pleading.
"Those scarce few who I call friends defend my abominable actions by citing a misguided youth and walking a path not of my creation. While they are not mistaken, those are feeble excuses for my genocidal behaviors. As a boy, I was angry, naïve, impressionable, and cursed with powers I neither understood nor knew how to control. Even so, my choices… all of my choices… were my own. And they were always..." Kearyn paused, fixing Dahl in his riveting gaze. "selfish, to say the least."
"Oh, boo-hoo," Dahl replied, glaring at him as if he were a bug squashed under heel. "I'll sympathize with your ass when you return, my friends, and get us the hell outta here."
"Your friends are alive," he replied. "But no one is safe as long as he lives."
Dahl assumed Kearyn was lying because she believed Moss and Lockspur had long since died. One from stomach injuries, the other from falling over a cliff.
She was alone in a world she did not understand and never wanted to come to. She took the job because it was a cushy intel run and not a retrieval job. They told her it was safe and easy. But everything had gone to shit in a hurry. She fixed Kearyn in a stare of her own and said, "Sell your bullshit stories of heartache and woe to someone who gives a shit. Because I ain't buying 'em. My friends are dead and I'm getting the impression it's your fault."
"His fault," Eve blurted, gesturing at the Purifier.
Dahl locked eyes with Kearyn. "Same difference, right?"
Kearyn nodded. "After my unexpected transformation, I was ashamed of my appearance and hid the monster beneath the man. I believed then, altering my appearance would help me feign normalcy. In the end, it didn't work. My glamor was no more effective at hiding the real me than dousing a bloated corpse in perfume conceals the putrid belly, rotting inside."
"How sad for those around you," Dahl snapped. "Every time your mask slips, they have to glimpse the real you."
"Exactly," he agreed, pausing long enough to gesture at himself before going on. "It didn't take long to realize no one would accept my true form or the mask I hid behind. So, I disappeared. I have certain gifts to help me evade detection. How should I put it? I walk between the land of the dead and the world of the living." He gestured around. "In fact, you find yourself there right now. Inside this bubble you are in my world, and therefore, capable of seeing through my glamor. All of my glamour. "
Dahl looked around, offering a sarcastic sneer, and said, "While your world seems like a nice place to visit, I'd like to get out now."
"And yet here you will remain until we have concluded what we came for."
"What did we come for?" Dahl asked, giving out an explosive laugh. "I came hoping to find a missing family member, not to follow a bunch of nut-job-strangers to some long forgotten artifact of doom."
"You came searching for one family member and found another," Kearyn countered, throwing up a hand to silence Dahl. "Because you are an integral piece in a clock that began ticking long before this galaxy even came into existence. You came here because it is your destiny to be here to witness what is to come. To be part of it. Like it or not. I came to set you on the path."
"Fuck your path," Dahl snapped. "Why are you really here?"
"I am the monster that set the clock in motion. Thus, it falls to me to stop it before we are all damned," he answered, holding up a gloved hand to wave off Eve's growing need to protest.
But Eve would not have it. She would have her say no matter what he wanted. "You can't change what happened in the past. None of that was your fault. You're like us. Just another piece in the clock."
"I am not a piece of the clockwork. I am the clock. And the fault of my choices.." He gestured towards the bubble behind Dahl. "His choices. The monster standing at the outer edge of this bubble."
Dahl reeled around, came face to face with the cloaked man who should have been standing in the center of the clearing, only to find his hand pressed against the other side of the bubble. She jumped back.
Kearyn walked to the edge of the bubble and stood facing the man. It looked as if he stood in front of a full-length mirror. On one side stood death; on the other, stood the young, vibrant man he once was.
"He is you," Dahl said.
"Admitting that here and now means I must concede there is only one of me. Even a coin with two sides is still a single thing. Whichever side the coin presents, it is still just the coin."
Dahl stared at Kearyn, thinking his mask looked and sounded familiar. And that growing realization made her uneasy. She wasn't sure where she knew him from, but she was certain she knew him from somewhere. And it was not the death of her parents.
"Yes," Kearyn said.
"Yes, what?" Dahl asked.
"You were wondering where you knew this face from. His face. It will come to you. But I warn you now. You will never speak to anyone about what you remember."
"And why's that?"
"Because if you alter this timeline. No matter how imperceptibly, you will destroy us all."
The sound of ripping cloth came from behind Dahl, and she reeled to find Eve had transformed. Eve ran over, threw Dahl over her shoulder, and raced to a spot behind Kearyn. As Eve plopped her down, the tearing sound stopped and a deep slash formed in the bubble. Outside, the cloaked man in the clearing stepped through and the slash sealed up behind him. Everyone in the clearing remained frozen in time.
Kearyn looked over his shoulder, saw Dahl pull out her knife and said, "You have zero seconds to choose a side. His or mine."
"I thought you said you were just different sides of the same evil coin."
"I did," he admitted, stepping between her and his alter ego. "What you have to decide is which side is the lesser of two evils."
"Those are my only options? Side with a killer I know wants me dead or the killer I don't know."
"The choice is yours. Choose or he'll do it for you."
"Kearyn." the other side of the coin said, in a sickly sweet voice. "I see you look…"
"The same," Kearyn said, finishing his taunt. The Purifier smiled and Kearyn added, "And I see you are still using our father's gifts to serve your master."
"Our master."
Kearyn's desiccated mouth stretched into a terrifying sneer, revealing yellow/ green teeth, and the flash of fire behind his dead eyes warned all who saw it.
"I see the body has receded, but your spirit remains the same."
"Pity I can't say the same."