Book 2: Chapter 26 - I Recommend That You Don’t Bruise Her Ego

Maybe serial killers were all evil in the old world.

But things have changed!

Callings. Talents. The mist. We can’t apply normal logic or old world morals
to people who grew up with all of this to contend with.

What I’m trying to say is simple.

Violet Asher did nothing wrong.
—Van Andrews, Online Message Board

Iris was frozen. She was confused, and she was angry, and she was in sudden grief. Above all else, she was terrified. But she wasn’t dead. Not yet. Whoever had done this—whatever had done this—was speaking to her. 

“You and your friends are not on my priority list at all. I don’t give a single shit about whatever you were up to out here. I don’t want to be here, and frankly, I was a terrible choice for this,” the girl said.

Iris had hooked her radio to her hip. She couldn’t stay still and respond at the same time. But if the girl wanted to talk, Iris needed to talk. If she was talking, she wasn’t being killed. Her arms trembled as she moved, but she planted her hands on the ground. Her right hand slipped the first time, but she replaced it, dug her nails in, and pushed herself up to her knees. Her eyes didn’t want to open. She was afraid. She wanted to remember what her friends had looked like that morning. That was the only image she could handle of them.

But something gripped onto her eyelids. She didn’t understand what. It was too narrow to be fingers, and it somehow lacked real depth. It had a grip. Somehow, it clung to her skin just by making contact. And it pulled her eyes open. 

“It’s rude to keep your eyes closed when someone is speaking to you,” the radio reprimanded.

The first thought Iris had was strange, alien. Like music heard over a broken speaker.

It looks like some kind of dessert. Swirled sherbet, maybe.

The thought made her stomach churn. The red covered the orange walls, floor, and ceiling. It was in erratic spatters, and it really did evoke the image of something to be eaten, if only for a moment. Then, she saw the bodies. Or… pieces of them. They’d been shredded. As if a wild beast had torn its way into camp. Kyron was… well. His body was still recognizable, she thought. She didn’t know where his head was. He was the lucky one, though. She couldn’t quite identify which of the remaining pieces belonged to Audrey or Gal.

She forced herself to climb to her feet. Her legs were shaking, and she wanted to vomit. But she needed to talk.

“I know. Disgusting, right? It’s not how I would have done it, given the choice. But I guess I wouldn’t have come here at all, if it were up to me,” the radio said.

Iris reached to her hip and pressed the button on her radio with her thumb. “Then just… leave,” she responded.

As soon as she released the button, the radio crackled again, and she thought the voice on the other side was sighing. It was hard to tell.

“I want to. I do. I might be in a better position than you, sure. I mean, I’m going to be alive at the end of the day, so I guess it’s kind of rude to complain to you. Like, shit, read the room, right?” the voice replied with an awkward laugh. “But even so. This whole ordeal just exposes me. It’s way too risky. Reckless, even. It gives that asshole even more power over me than he already had. And there is nothing I can do about that. I fucking hate giving people leverage over me. I can’t stand it. It feels like drowning on dry land, you know? Or like a muscle ache that just won’t go away. I fucking hate it.”

“Then why are you here? Why did you…” Iris trailed.

“Because that self-important fuckhead cheated. It doesn’t seem fair, right? A contract talent that is binding, even if a different talent pushed me into agreeing to it? That’s ridiculous. I know he’s a violet, but come on!” the voice explained. “He gave me a little wiggle room, at least. That’s why I had to come here. I was supposed to kill you in the city. And I probably could have, one at a time. You were all stronger than me, but that’s nothing a little planning wouldn’t have fixed. But he’d have found a way to record it or something stupid. The only way to win and maybe avoid giving him leverage? Kill you here. Four-one-one, as the lowest degree in the room. The stupidest time to comply with the contract is the only time he won’t have someone in place to watch me do it and use it against me. So, uh, anyway. That’s why I’m here. Sorry about that.”

Iris was having trouble keeping up. There was only one person the voice could be describing. But it didn’t make any sense. Why would Cyan Asher want her and her team dead? Why would he send someone who was supposedly weaker than them? That didn’t make sense, either. Whoever had done this had killed Audrey, Gal, and Kyron all at once. They’d need to be yellow to do that, and at least degree five. But she was claiming to be weaker than a single orange five?

“I’d appreciate it if you'd fight back, though. I think I made a mistake with the first three. They all died so… pathetically. It was such a waste. I’m gonna need you to put a little effort into it,” the voice continued.

As her radio spoke, Iris found herself growing angry. She was standing in the blood of her friends. She was terrified. And this faceless voice was just so… casual. Like the girl who’d ended these lives barely cared. The murderer had implied she didn’t want to. But how could that be true? Why taunt her, in that case? Even if it were true, what was the point of saying so? It was just… cruel. For cruelty's sake, as far as she could tell. Fury started to feed on her fear like fuel, and she ripped the radio from her side so she could speak directly into it.

“Please stop fucking pontificating!” she snarled. “We get it, you found a thesaurus and you want to show it off! But what’s the point? If you want to kill me, come and fucking try! I won’t make it as easy as you seem to think.”

The radio was quiet for a long moment. Iris’ heart tried to beat out of her chest. Adrenaline wanted to force her to move. To attack. To do anything but stand among the dead. But she couldn’t move first. Not when she didn’t know what she was dealing with. She had to wait for the girl to attack. 

Instead, an amused snicker came over the radio. “Uh, what exactly did I say that you’d need a thesaurus for?” the girl laughed. “I wasn’t using a lot of complex language. I genuinely don’t know what I said that confused you. ‘Pontificating’ is the biggest word either of us has said, and you used it wrong. Like, what were you trying to say here?”

The humor in the girl’s voice was sickening. Iris took a few wobbling steps forward. There was meat, and blood, and sinew all around her. The voice on the radio had turned her friends—her home, however temporary it was—into steam and gore. And the girl was laughing at her over vocabulary.

“Why? Why are you talking to me? Why not just finish the job?” Iris growled into the radio. 

“Well, first of all,” the voice replied, “it’s disgusting in there. I’d prefer for you to come outside where there's less of an… aroma. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll handle it if you refuse to come out here. But I’d really rather not. That’s not the main reason. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t feel a lick of clarity when your friends died. Not a single spark. I suspect because I had strings attached to my arms when I did it. It doesn’t really feed my calling to bark when a master says to bark, or to bite when he says to bite. Just another reason I am pissed I had to do this. Three oranges, and I only feel worse. It’s grotesque. This conversation, on the other hand? Well. It’s helping a little. And I appreciate you for that.”

Iris’ hand trembled as she held her radio. The voice was telling her this… for fun? Well. She was done with that. If the monster who’d done this was outside, Iris would face her outside. She was done entertaining the girl with her radio. She was going to fight. She didn’t even care if she survived. Or if she was arrested. She would ruin this… child at the same time. She walked toward the middle of the room, where the safety device was still transmitting. The mesh casing on the cylindrical machine was bloodied, but it continued to vibrate. Iris found the switch and flicked it off. She tried not to think about whose blood made the toggle slick. It didn’t matter. They’d be avenged shortly.

She also pressed the button on the side of her radio and turned off the jamming and encryption. With both devices powered off, hedron and lancers alike would be able to find them. For different reasons, perhaps. But they would find them either way. The hedron would make it first. No one mobile that could receive radio transmissions would be nearly as close as the monsters of the mist would be. But it didn’t matter. She’d kill them both, most likely. But at least she’d kill the voice.

“My name is Iris Hepburn. I am inside the third orange nest enclosure. There is a killer here with me, and a horde of hedron too high in category to be contained. Please. Send anyone,” she said over the radio. Then, she ran out the far door and into the mist.

She’d thought she’d need to look for the girl in question. That her enemy would be hiding to ambush her. Instead, her enemy was standing a dozen paces away with her arms crossed and a disappointed look on her face. She was young, as expected. Maybe eighteen at most? Messy purple hair fell around her shoulders and all the way past her waist. She had a large, impractical scythe of orange crystal. Above all else, she looked too weak to kill the three people inside the nest. 

“That’s going to make it difficult to get out of here, you know. That was impolite, Iris,” the girl complained.

“Who are you?” Iris begged.

The girl held a finger to pursed lips and thought. “Does that matter to you?” she finally asked. “You’re about to die.”

Iris started moving before the last word was spoken. This was her chance. She poured her clarity into her Haste talent. She ran like a bullet and sent the rest of her clarity to her Reckless talent. This made her faster than almost any orange, and it gave her attacks an unpredictability and impact that could kill anyone in her category with a single hit. The recoil would leave her wounded nearly as badly. But it would leave both of them for the hedron or the lancers. And it was going to work. The girl’s eyes widened in surprise at the sudden movement. Iris felt her fist make contact with the exposed skin of the teenager’s belly. She felt bones crack in her own arm, but also in her enemy’s ribcage. She didn’t care who this was. The question was a distraction. And it had worked.

Except—her fist was pulled away in the middle of the follow-through. Her swing should have broken skin. It should have torn through the torso of the murderer. Her fingers should have felt warm gore and cool air on the other side. She’d hit hard enough for it. She was certain of that. It was impossible that she could be moved away before that happened. She’d moved too quickly. It had happened in under a second, and she’d felt the shattering bone.

It took her mind a moment to catch up to the cause. There was someone else. Something else had attacked her at the same time. Nearly the exact same instant. A flash of yellow told Iris the entire story all at once. Her initial plan had backfired at the worst possible moment. A yellow hedron had found them, and it had attacked her while she attacked the killer. At the exact moment of contact.

Her left arm and her own ribcage shattered. Her blood joined the stains on her clothes. She crumpled in the dirt like a broken doll, and skin ripped from her face as she scraped across the ground. As blood filled her mouth, she tried to focus on her surroundings. Her arm blocked her vision at an impossible angle. A bone protruded from it, making her sick. But she didn’t care. She was at peace with the pain. The scythe had been orange. Which meant the killer had been as well. A yellow hedron meant her first plan had worked. They would die together. And Iris could accept that.

She closed her eyes and waited for the end. She waited to hear the screaming of the other girl. She waited for anything but what finally happened. The same force that opened her eyes grabbed her by the splintered arm and violently yanked. Blood erupted in a too-bright red from the protruding bone, and it blinded her as she was forced onto her back. It shouldn’t have, but her eyes had been forced open again at the same time. 

She must have been in the room at first. This is the same talent, Iris thought. It was an odd thing to focus on. But nothing else made enough sense to process.

When she finally managed to make out the world around her, the girl was standing over her. Mist surrounded her like a cloak, and three separate hedron joined her. They were apes of some sort, as far as Iris could tell. It was sometimes hard to tell with the crystal claws and fangs. They were standing peacefully next to the murderer. And suddenly it made sense that one orange had managed to kill all of her friends.

“You fucking bitch,” the girl snarled, spitting her own blood onto Iris’ face. She stood at an awkward angle and held her badly bruised side with her left hand. “How the fuck am I going to explain this to a healer? God, this is such a shit day. You know a kid died last week because of you? A child. While you were here relaxing, and joking, and taking the clarity meant to save his life. You think I’m a monster? Fuck you. You deserve every instant of pain I’m going to inflict on you.”

The girl looked genuinely angry. Iris could only laugh. It hurt everything to do so. But it was all she could do. She’d lost almost entirely. But that rage… it was something. It was a small victory. But at least she’d ruined the kid’s fucking day.

She couldn’t form a response. Not all the pieces were still in place to form words. But she wouldn’t have been allowed to anyway. Shadows wrapped themselves around her neck like overgrown ivy. They coiled themselves around her arms and pulled them to the earth, broken or otherwise. They held her still, but they didn’t strangle her. She wasn’t certain why. Not at first. But they left her just enough room to breathe.

Then, the first hedron bit into her stomach. She watched cloth and flesh tear from her as it pulled its bloody teeth away. It looked disturbingly like taking too large a bite of chicken from the bone. Except it was raw, and she could feel it. The parts she couldn’t feel were almost worse. The bits that were pulled from her and eaten in front of her. They didn’t all have nerve endings, she realized. Some did, and some didn’t. And it hurt to not know what would hurt.

The small victory hadn’t been worth it. She was jealous of her friends. They’d gotten the kinder deaths.