Death Grip  •  Act 1

Krissy had not slept well for a week.

Each night she was visited by the vision of the dark labyrinth populated by maimed Spark dolls, where she would invariably encounter the djinni. Each night he would smile cruelly at her. And each night, a knife would flash at her eyes.

But it was not the dream that tormented her, anymore. In fact, the dream now only elicited a weary sigh and a roll of her eyes. The djinni was her friend.

In fact, Vahaadi had proven nothing short of pleasant company.  He was quick with a smile and chuckled at her jokes, even when he didn’t quite understand what she was talking about. He helped her with chores when her parents couldn’t see, although he hated the sound of the vacuum with a fiery passion. And despite how he teased her for her “terrible human music,” she occasionally caught him humming pop songs (always slightly off-key) while he sewed. Krissy had been surprised to find that he’d repaired the rips in her jeans, and hadn’t the heart to tell him they were stylishly ripped on purpose.

And, of course, he always had great ideas for wishes.

A conspiring gleam would come to his eyes, and he’d lean close and whisper his suggestion. Krissy’s imagination would ignite, and then they’d be off, talking about all the possibilities such a wish could bring. Before they knew it, they’d forgotten what they’d been talking about in the first place and the conversation would sway into comic books, and Krissy would tell him all about her favorite heroes and villains. Her stories reminded him of stories he knew, and he retold them with a delightful panache. His low, dry voice took on a vivacity as he related tales of monsters and sorcerers and thieves, and sometimes, he’d even pantomime battle scenes. Krissy would become so excited that she’d start editorializing with off-the-wall additions and plot twists—and sound effects, of course. No story was worth telling if there wasn’t at least one explosion. Vahaadi would laugh and fold her elements in as he continued. With Krissy’s “help,” the stories rarely made sense by the end, but she adored them.

No, it wasn’t Vahaadi that bothered her.

It was the thought of a little boy with one arm charred right to the bone that kept her tossing and turning.

She’d scrutinized every news article she could find regarding the house fire, but most outlets wouldn’t even carry the story, presumably for fear of perpetuating “The Spark Hoax.” The discussions she did find centered around whether Spark was an alien, a government conspiracy, or a promotional stunt actress, rather than the fate of the injured boy.

So, she’d taken to scouring the Brookshire neighborhood herself whenever she could get away from home or school, mapping out any possible route the ambulance might have taken. She kept hoping she’d find the boy huddled behind a dumpster or hiding in the shadow of a shed. But no sign of him ever materialized.

On yet another frigid morning search before school, Krissy at last broached the idea for wishing that the boy would be healed, or at least wishing to know where he was, but Vahaadi shot her down.

“I…I can’t, Spark. I can’t grant knowledge, and I can’t heal someone I can’t see.”

He made a show of adjusting his dull-colored clothes, drawing them a little tighter around him. He had been unable to salvage the burned Gordon and Stein ensemble, so Krissy had scrounged a few dollars to buy him a new outfit from the thrift store. It was ill-fitting and shapeless, but at least it was warm and offered a handy excuse to avoid Krissy’s gaze as he lied to her.

Krissy rubbed her dark-rimmed eyes in frustration. “You can make me fly and throw fireballs, but you can’t heal?” she whined.

“I knew where you were. But this is beyond me, Spark. I’m sorry.”

Fortunately, Krissy didn’t press him further. A tremble thrummed through her body, and she pawed after her phone out of habit before realizing that the signal wasn’t coming from any cell tower.

“Ah! Vahaadi, it’s Flicker!” she squeaked, tugging off her mitten to reveal the glossy oculus stone set in her ring.

{Spark?} said Elweyn’s voice from a world away. {We need you now. Meet me at the library.}

“Library! On the double!”

Krissy wheeled around in the direction of the demolished Rosetta Public Library, but had hardly taken three steps before skidding to a stop. Vahaadi, right on her heels, was winded by an accidental elbow to his gut.

“Oof! Spark!”

“Wait! What about school?” Krissy said. “I’ve got P.E. with my dad first period!”

“We’ll figure it out later,” Vahaadi said. “We can’t keep Elweyn waiting.”

Krissy waffled. Breaking rules didn’t exactly make her the model citizen she prized herself to be but, then again…she had fought a bully on school grounds and trespassed into both a library and a playhouse in the last ten days. What was skipping class in comparison to the fate of the multiverse?

“‘Sloughing school for the greater good’ it is!” she decided, and resumed her run to the library.

Krissy transformed into Spark even before the fierce glow of the lorecircle in the Metapolis library subsided. She ignited her hands and struck a pose.

“You’ve called the lightning; we’re here to bring the THUNDER!”

{If you burn any of the chronicles in this sanctum, I will let Vesper shoot you,} Elweyn warned, glaring down at Spark from her roost on a shelf.

“Always a pleasure to see you, too, Elweyn,” Vahaadi said, placing his hands over Spark’s to cap off the flames. Spark sheepishly giggled and extinguished her lights. Vahaadi dusted cinders off his palms before instigating a transformation of his own, replacing his bland “human” outfit with his colorful linens and silks in a swath of smoke. Far more in his element now, he looked expectantly at Elweyn.

“What is it this time?”

{Finding apocrypha, and posthaste. We’re dealing with some sort of distorted fungal infection, but it’s so widespread, we’ll need multiple oculi to have any hope of zeroing in on the source.}

“Multiple oculi? Do we get to team up with Chronos again?” Spark asked eagerly. “We made a good team!”

{Not Chronos. Vesper.}

Spark and Vahaadi made identical sounds of dismay.

“Oooh. Not a fan of ours,” Spark reminded Elweyn carefully.

{Believe me, I’m aware,} said Elweyn. {But Chronos spoke very highly of you two. Perhaps you can work another wonder and win Vesper over as well.}

“I grant wishes, not miracles,” Vahaadi said.

Elweyn chose to ignore that comment. {Vesper will meet you at the lorecircle and instruct you further. Be swift, and be safe.}

A strange-looking disc rose from an adjacent shelf, spun, and splintered into tiny shards that whipped in a torrent around the room. Ready for the sensation this time, Vahaadi and Spark set their jaws and braced as vivid light tore the library from their sights.

Whereas Westerwild Gorge had greeted Spark and Vahaadi with a barren desert valley, this canon hummed with life. They found themselves in the center of a hangar of sorts. In lieu of airplanes, an assortment of creatures resembling both insects and machines trundled, tended by vaguely human-like workers bearing sharply tapered features and jagged armor.

One, a figure a head taller than Vahaadi, approached at a purposeful stride.

“Commander Seckna,” she snapped, by way of introduction. “You’re with Vesper, then. Here—communicators.”

Cowed by her forceful presence, Spark and Vahaadi mutely accepted the spidery devices she offered them.

“Strap them to your wrists. I’ve automated the mapping to keep them simple. This dial will contact Vesper, this one is mapped to each of yours, this will contact Sabo, this will alert me if we need to mobilize.”

“Whoa, slow down,” Spark said. “Who’s Sabo?”

“Another loretreader,” Vahaadi said automatically, holding the communicator gingerly away from him as if he expected it to bite. “I…presume.”

“Well, it’s about time,” said another voice from overhead.

Vesper whizzed into view astride an insectoid mount that looked like a cross between a mantis and Home Depot’s hardware department. She didn’t wait for the creature to land before vaulting from its back. She threw a salute to Seckna, then grunted in disgust and roughly helped Spark with the communicator.

“Like this,” she said, cracking the communicator against Spark’s wrist. It latched on in a distinctly spidery manner, and its upper dial whirred, glistening with holograms. Vesper then wheeled on Vahaadi, but he was not about to be manhandled too.

“Oh, no,” he said, pressing the communicator into her hands and backing away. “I’ll be with Spark at all times; I won’t need one.”

“Vesper, why do we need these?” Spark asked, even as she admired her arachnid slap-bracelet. “Can’t we talk through our oculus-es? Oculi?”

“Only Elweyn’s oculus can form transmission links,” Vesper said, “and, unfortunately, I won’t be able to keep an eye on you. Mr. Sabo’s already sweeping the Alpha and Beta precincts. I’ll be working the Epsilon and Zeta. You’re going to sweep the Gamma and Delta. The precincts are on a comb formation. Start at the center and spiral out. Check everywhere. If your oculus picks up the faintest signal of apocrypha, alert everyone through your communicator. Got it?”

“So, we’re just flying around until my oculus lights up? Laaaaaame,” Spark said. Vahaadi spoke over her.

“Elweyn mentioned an…infection? What are we looking for?”

Seckna and Vesper shared grim looks.  Seckna clicked her tongue to the biomechanical insect that Vesper had been riding. It scurried to her side. Vahaadi edged back.

“It’s the opterrans that are being infected,” Seckna said, patting the creature’s neck. “They’re everything to us. Most are bonded to their pilots for life.”

“They’re amazing,” Spark cooed. She held her hand out experimentally, and the opterran chirped and nosed at her palm. She giggled. She’d always liked bugs. She’d been the one to trap spiders under cups to release them outside. Her parents had been less than pleased when they’d found out she’d “domesticated” ten cockroaches and kept them hidden in a toy toolbox under her bed when she was six. Once, she’d gotten into a knock-down, drag-out fight with her cousins when she’d caught them kicking over ant piles. She still had a scar on her elbow from that altercation.

Vahaadi, however, was a fan of neither machines nor insects. He shuddered visibly.

“It looks like something I would crush under my foot.”

“How about you don’t put that foot in your mouth?” said Spark, aghast. To Seckna and Vesper, she said, “don’t mind him. He’s a total baby about anything even sort of mechanical. He just about climbs the curtains when I turn the hairdryer on. Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he,” she said, her voice becoming syrupy and coddling as she lavished the opterran with rubs. “Oh, you are soooo cute. Who could ever hurt something like yoooou?”

“This fungus, that’s what,” Seckna said. “It hacks their nervous systems, forcing them to hang from tunnel ceilings and then…perish. Spores spread from their bodies, infecting other opterrans.”

“Sick and dying opterrans are enough of a scourge, but each infection carries distortion, too,” Vesper said. “Gliars are running rampant. If we can’t find the apocrypha soon, we’ll have to try purging.” Her face, usually so stoic and fierce, betrayed a hint of worry. “I don’t think the hive would survive that.”

“Purging?”

“Destroying the stranger—the fungus. Every last bit of it. I don’t know how we could possibly be that thorough. The spores could be everywhere,” Vesper said, raking her fingers through her hair. Her voice was rising in intensity. “We’ve tried quarantining, but that can only do so much. We MUST find the apocrypha!” She gripped Spark ferociously by the shoulders.

“OK, OK!” Spark said, placating. “We will! Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

Vesper growled in resignation and released Spark, then addressed Seckna. “Commander, send an order to the Deltites and Gammites. Tell them to turn out ANY media they have. Fiction. Archives. Diaries. ANYTHING. Tell them to stack it outside their nests and then stay inside. If anyone starts experiencing migraines or any flickering substance, they’re to alert you immediately.”

Seckna gave a curt affirmation and then spoke to the opterran in a series of trills and clicks. The opterran’s antennae waved, listening intently, then it raised its wings and buzzed them. Expecting the sound of a cricket chirp, Spark was delighted by something more akin to a cello’s thrum. While Seckna continued to click, the opterran repeated her message in its own musical way. The melody was picked up by opterrans all over the hangar, building on the music and passing it on.

“Let’s move,” Vesper ordered. She turned and sprinted, and Spark and Vahaadi followed. The music swept around and past them, beyond the dock of the hanger and out into a sprawling, alien metropolis.

“That’s the Gamma precinct, there,” Vesper said, raising her voice to be heard over the opterran’s song and pointing to a sector of the city below. “And that’s Delta. They’ll get Seckna’s message long before you get there, so you should be able to just sweep the streets. Gammites and Deltites know better than to question orders.”

Spark gave Vesper a searching look. “Vesper, this is your canon, isn’t it?” she asked, voicing the suspicion she’d held from the moment she’d entered this strange, biomechanical world. “This is your home. That’s why you’re so tense.”

“Tense,” Vesper repeated with a crisp laugh. “You want to know why I’m tense? My world is dying, Spark. And Elweyn sends me you. A little upstart playing pretend.”

Spark drew a big sigh and shrugged, floating into the air over the ledge of the dock. “Sticks and stones, Vesper. C’mon, Vahaadi. Let’s go save the day!”

Vahaadi threw out his hand as he took a running jump, conjuring his magic carpet beneath him, and he and his mistress rocketed off into the hive.

They followed the trail of opterran music that thrummed toward the Gamma precinct. Vahaadi stole a glance at Spark as they flew. She’d pretended to wave off Vesper’s comments, but he could see that they’d stung more than she let on. He drew his carpet up beside her.

“She’s not much one for charisma, is she?” Vahaadi said.

“Why does everyone think I’m a fraud?” Spark said, turning distressed eyes on him. She’d spent all week poring through forums decrying “Spark” as a dangerous, attention-mongering would-be.

Vahaadi looked intently at her. “I don’t think that, Spark.”

He nosed the carpet down slightly so that he flew a few feet beneath his mistress, and rolled over onto his back with his hands cushioned under his head. While the carpet continued to fly, he smiled warmly up at her from his recline. “Perhaps you just need a way to prove yourself, some way to make them all see…”

“Apparently fighting distortion and saving kids from burning buildings doesn’t count,” Spark said glumly. “Why don’t people get that I’m just trying to help?”

“Perhaps the stakes haven’t been high enough, yet.” Vahaadi was careful to keep his voice charming and calm. “I can help you with that, you know.”

“Like what? Causing a big disaster so that I can rush in?” Spark said wryly.

That was exactly what Vahaadi was playing at, but the look on her face told him that she’d already seen through this ruse. To his chagrin, her heart seemed to be in the right place, after all.

“Just a thought,” he said innocently.

Spark chuckled without mirth. “I think pulling something like that would only prove everybody right. You’re not a hero if you cause the problem in the first place. I’ve just gotta do my best. And right now, that means playing fungicide.”

Vahaadi’s charismatic expression disappeared in a scowl. “Ah, yes. We simply must save those horrific op-terries…or…whatever they’re called.”

“I think she said opterrans. But opterries sounds cute! Maybe we can call them ’terries for short.”

“More like op-terrors.”

Spark did a barrel roll in her fit of laughter. “Vahaadi! You made a pun!”

“One of the many services I offer.”

They were passing over the Gamma precinct now, headed for the center of the comb-like formation of buildings and streets as Vesper had instructed. Below, the denizens were dumping piles of discs and other, unrecognizable forms of media outside their doors. Spark checked her ring, hoping that even at this altitude she’d miraculously catch a glimmer of the apocrypha. But she had no such luck.

After locating the precinct nucleus, Spark dived low and threaded through the latticed streets, watching her oculus as she passed over piles of media, set out like sacrificial offerings. She caught glimpses of people watching her through portholes in their homes. She tried to give reassuring, heroic smiles, but she was met only by spooked and pallid faces.

Vahaadi and I must look like freaks here, Spark thought. No cool bug armor. And such thick waists! Vahaadi’s positively fat by comparison.

Her “fat” comrade was contributing little to the search other than his company. Without an oculus, all he could do was simply follow, trying to keep mental track of which streets they’d already checked. But as they spiraled out toward a deteriorated section of the precinct, a familiar brush of head sickness prompted him to stop abruptly.

“Spark, wait,” he called, then grunted when Spark didn’t stop quite fast enough to prevent jerking his collar.

She zipped back to him. He squinted down an eerily dark alley, massaging his temple.

“Do you feel that?”

“Oooh. Yeah,” she hissed, rubbing her own head. “Distortion.”

The alley flickered under their gaze.

Spark and Vahaadi exchanged a bracing look.