Portland, Maine. Kindle
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VOOMBeams of orange light streaked down the dusty hallway, burning flesh and skin from a monster running around the corner. They didn't hit anything significant, so Emil slung
Sunrise over his shoulder and ran down the opposite end. The thick drum of his boots on the old floor was all he could hear, no noises behind him, no one being eaten alive. He didn't know exactly how many of them were in here and he damn sure wasn't about to find out the hard way. These things had flesh and bone which meant they were either particularly stout Apparitions or some kind of Abominable created in droves. Neither of those ideas made this easier when he anticipated there being
several. Emil withdrew an old hand radio from his jacket and held it to his ear. The crackling was behind him, and felt like it was coming from the floor. The
Mixed Signal wasn't getting much, until Emil turned a corner and practically glided down a set of stairs.
"A crack in the glass! It's raining tonight in sunny Portland," the radio whispered, cryptically.
He expected this to just be a routine hunt. He got a tip from some agents that there'd be something going on here. What, he wasn't sure, since they were discrete about the whole thing. They encouraged him to show up and work something out with these beasts, but this place was crawling with danger. His radio warned him something
bad was going to happen, and that was
after he set foot in the building and immediately got caught out by some fucking shark
thing."Alright..." He slipped the radio away and pulled out the
Wormblade. Emil stopped in front of a pair of double doors that led out into a production line. The windows were grimy and dark, he couldn't see shit.
He creaked one of the doors open slightly, and whispered something in Cyrillic to the dagger. Then, he hurled it through the crack as the blade went
flying in wide arcs. It held the spirit of a dragon that Emil had killed, composed of wind and clouds, and would always some back like a boomerang when it cut something after instructed. Emil swung the door open wide after grabbing Sunrise again, pointing it ready to fire. The room was clear, and he caught the dagger as it came back. There were a pair of large, cylindrical vats protruding from the floor, no ladders but Emil reached into his backpack for a grappling hook. He used it rappel up the rim and then monkey bar his way across pipes that led from from it to feed in chemicals in another time.
He swung all his momentum into forward and landed on top of a cubicle that overlooked the area, then climbed down into the broken window it had. In here were computers and phones to call and coordinate things, if he had to guess. But it was all disused, no one was coming for the time being. There was a door to another hallway, or maybe a meeting area, probably a storage closet- He didn't fucking know.
Emil swung his backpack off one shoulder and unhooked a magic shovel from it. It felt heavy in his hands, cold to the touch.
He raised it up, and willed the ghosts inside out of it. One after another, a total of
three. It wasn't wise to do this, but he didn't have many options in this godforsaken place.
The ghosts of a wolf, a man with gaping holes where his eyes should have been, and an Apparition he bled dry.
"Attack everything you see," He ordered them.
"Until you stop existing. Go."They raced off in different directions. He gave them maybe an hour before they collectively died out. That was good enough, though. Emil shoved a few tables in front of the door leading to god-knows-where, and then rested Sunrise against the window ledge. He pulled out a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Blacks, to catch his breath.
The Mixed Signal crackled again.
"We're a minute to midnight, ladies and gents. A high of 95 and cloudy skies all day."And then the very foundations of the building yawned open.
Moscow, Russia. Shadow
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In the dainty apartment blocks of Moscow's middle class housing, far from the glamour of a life with something grandiose to count amongst its trappings, a man bitched at his boss on the phone. The dull drone of a microwave filled the air, heating up a pizza pocket for the breakfast he thought he'd need on his way to a job he thought he he would be going to. The man had gotten dressed, threw on his jacket and was just about to head out the door to go and fix broken cars for another day when he got the news.
"You're kidding," Emil said, in Russian.
"No. Emil, I told you when you took this job-""That I was probably going to lose it... That was three years ago, Mikhail.""The work is just drying up. The industry's going in a different direction, and it's becoming harder to stay open when manufacturers have lawyers to look over our licensing.""We renewed that last month," Emil balked, opening the microwaved.
"I helped renew that.""It isn't just that, Emil. You have to understand, there's red tape and then there's this. I can't afford legal action, so we have to comply with the regulations. More regulations mean we have less work. And I just can't-"Emil slammed the microwave door, not just because his pizza pocket was still half cold.
There was silence for a moment.
"I'm there, every day, even when it's nearing minus thirty at midnight. You- Mikhail, damn it, man...""I'm sorry, Emil. You're a great worker, and it's felt like you're family..."He had to fight to urge not to punch some drywall right at that moment.
"I'm about to forward some information to a few others I know in the city. I'll tell them you're coming, and that you're a hard working man. I know they're always looking for mechanics at the-""You know, you sure do seem awfully eager to get rid of someone who you consider a good worker and your damn family." Emil let the microwave run for another two minutes.
"I break my back for you, I pick up Iska's shifts when he's off doing god-knows-what and not working on the fucking engine block that's been sitting in the bay for two weeks...""Emil.""But I'm the one who takes the fucking pink slip? Fine, whatever you say. Who did you say you were sending that too?""I didn't."Click.The asshole hung up, and Emil's breakfast was still fucking cold. Great.
Emil tossed his shoes at the wall, and fell down on his couch. The apartment wasn't anything fancy, a living room with an open-air kitchen, a small bathroom and a bedroom. He sifted through some of the mail on his table that he'd gotten before the phone call. Junk mail, mostly. Magazines for a few things Emil stopped caring about a while ago and couldn't be bothered to cancel the subscriptions to, some newsletter about a public organizing
thing he really didn't give a damn about... Rent was due, and he'd just gotten laid off the day he was supposed to get paid. Because of course.
He sighed and walked over to the fridge, heating the pocket for another thirty seconds. He clearly wasn't going anywhere today. Emil grabbed the somehow
molten pizza pocket and coke, and took his place on the lazy throne of the unemployed. Three years working at that auto shop and he'd gotten cut because a bunch of suits decided that not everyone should be fixing cars. He barely had enough money to fill out the week, between bills and his
own car's gas.
There wasn't shit on the TV. There never was.
The coke didn't last long, and it was the last one he had in the fridge.
Emil didn't have any other plans for the day. So he grabbed something alcoholic.
He'd figure something out tomorrow.
-
A sharp thud woke Emil up, as the floor greeted him. He didn't remember getting up and going to bed, but he didn't remember much after the second glass of Everclear. He must've slept the whole day away. The room felt ice fucking cold and it was pitch black. His phone was in his pocket, didn't he leave it on the table? He slipped out of the bed and hit the ground. Or... No, he did.
But he heard something else wake him up. It sounded like a bang, or a clattering of pans against the ground, not a human being. His head hurt like shit. He may or may not have had a problem.
Midnight.
Bang.A noise from outside the room, looking up from the floor, he saw lights coming from the kitchen. Shades of pink and blue, with sparks of white in between. He left the damn TV on. That was going to be hell on the electrical bill. Emil dragged himself up. His head swimming like a fish, he stuttered out the door and hit a light switch.
It woke him up pretty damn quickly.
The TV wasn't on, and it didn't look like it was even there. It was a smear on the wall, with more depth than an ocean, there were white cracks running up and down the walls. He heard voices and screams, roars and something without words to apply. It looked like someone had turned the room into an abstract art piece. And on his kitchen floor was a
person. He was dressed in what looked like tactical gear, a radio in his hands and a backpack over his shoulders, blood all over the tiles.
"If... Anyone hears... Right. Something happened..." The man was speaking in English.
Emil
slowly took a step towards him.
The man noticed and his eyes snapped up. They were bloodshot.
For a moment, everything went still. He knew that face. They both did, because it belong to them both. Emil was staring back at himself.
...What the fuck?The ground shook again for one of them and for the first time for the other. White cracks yawned open, and Emil Kolya of Shadow fell downwards. He heard Emil Kolya of Kindle scream something in English, but he hadn't caught it in time before he saw through the light of a hundred trillion worlds flying past him all at once. He saw black snakes rolling over beautiful cities, great and terrible bastions of things far away, a thousand swords on an infinitely wide wall... And he saw
himself. Twice, thrice and ten times over, all racing beyond him like the world's fastest drug trip. It was all so much, so
real to him, that it made him feel alive.
And when that little moment of wonder passed, he hit solid rock.
Like a flat stone hitting a deep puddle, Emil landed
hard on a pile of rubble within an old factory.
"Черт возьми, ублюдок, черт возьми, черт возьми ... черт, это больно ..." It stole the breath out of him, something felt broken. It took him several seconds to get to his feet, and then figure out which way they were meant to go.
"Что, черт возьми, было в проклятии-" He stopped himself when he looked around and saw where he was. A... Factory? With other people around. A woman in body armor, some dude who looked pretty American... A girl who was
screaming. He looked the worst of them all, caked in rock dust and half-hungover. A
very confused look was all over Emil's face.
"что за- What the hell... Who the- Who the hell are all of you?"He looked up from where he fell, and there wasn't some gaping hole in the roof that he fell in through. Not that he could see, anyway. His head pounded like crazy. He felt warmer, wherever this was.
"Fuck me, now what..."
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