Invasion: Scion - A preview

The Coffee Cipher

He couldn’t see much through the bus’s nighted window. The bright shop lights of Rideau Street would briefly change that. And then he would only see his own reflection through the dark window, until the next shop would again light up the bus.

The bus window must have collected water, either from condensation or months’ earlier autumn rain. A small reservoir lined the bottom of the public transit window’s frame, thinly trapped, frozen solid. His mind drifted away from what passed without.

His attention focused upon it, at the oblivion of the other passengers and everything else around his person.

A thin sheen coated the inner window, like opaque white spears of frost. He gingerly placed his finger to it, his imagination seeing the tiny points lancing his fingertip.

His fingernails were chewed short, the nervous habit rendering them ragged and dirty. He didn’t often wash his hands, especially in this extreme cold. As his finger touched the frost it instantly disappeared, transmuted from opacity to transparency, its melted cold water coated his finger, blending and mixing with the tan nicotine stains on his skin.

He folded his finger, rapped against the window with his knuckle. The two panes of glass and the trapped ice were for all intent and purpose one solid piece, so blistering cold was this Ottawa winter evening.

The tiny insect caught his attention, his obsessive focus falling into even deeper detail.

No. It wasn’t an insect. A spider had been trapped in the thin ice. He wondered if it were aware, if it were simply waiting, or maybe just dead.

The shift of paradigm was instant. His focus from the minute and introspective window to the much larger and moving world beyond the window. He has missed his bus stop, passed the old Bytowne Theater! Quickly, in a panic that surprised his lethargic fellow passengers, he reached up and pulled the dirty plastic cord that rang the bell.

It was an extremely cold evening; minus 37 with the windchill. He had half wanted to avoid this extra block’s walk. His breath was harsh and ragged. The cold air in his lungs wouldn’t help his asthma. But there was another voice in his mind that, in its perverse way, looked forward to this extra time. He craved a cigarette. As he stood, navigating his way through the small crowd of youths cluttering the bus’s back door, he fished out his crumpled pack of Players Light cigarettes.

It’s blue-striped white packaging reminding him and mocking him. The Lights didn’t give him that buzz Regulars did, and the half pack cost more than the full packs did, but he knew he needed to quit.

As he descended off the bus into the arctic climate, all sensations struck at once, all displeasant, none taking precedence over any other.

His lungs instantly contracted, his hoarse coughing fit triggered. His body’s knowing craved for nicotine, his stomach shivering with anticipation. His hands and fingers shockingly and instantly numbed from the incredible cold, fumbling to retrieve his lighter, the cigarette filter fusing itself to his chapped, dried lips.

Rideau Street was a wind tunnel, funneling the blistering wind. His cheeks and ears instantly in pain.

The initial puff of smoke from his now lit cigarette was violently ripped away. As he drew in that first breath all the previous blights lessened.

Ah, he thought. This wasn’t so bad.

His attention expanded to the sidewalk and fellow evening pedestrians, scarved and bundled up tight against the cold, many clothed in Canada Goose parkas. He hated these people. Government workers, he always assumed. Who else could afford $1000 winter jackets?

He squatted his face, as best he could, into his raised lapels and marched forward into the wind.

He was already in a bad mood. He was always a fan of local playwright Max Hudson’s work.

Yesterday Max Hudson was on Daytime Ottawa TV Show with host Dylan Black, promoting his newest play, Ngaro’s Sojourney. It aired live at 11 and he had missed it. Rogers TV repeated it at 1pm, 6pm and again at 11pm. He had missed them all. That’s not what pissed him off. They had cancelled airing the 6 and 11pm showings. Something due to riots or violent demonstration or some such nonsense in Ottawa.

No, what had pissed him off was the video interview not being posted to YouTube.

Apparently Max Hudson had even read selected scenes or acts from the play too! Goddamnit!

CTV evening news reported Rogers TV studios had closed yesterday evening, unconfirmed reports of Dylan Black being brought to hospital. Preposterous! He was whipping himself back into a fury. How hard could the job be? Show up, look good, sound better, go home! Hardly worth cancelling the 6 and 11pm showings! But to cancel posting to YouTube!?

His anger had abated this morning however. Codi Jeffreys’ new show, Wright-On Ottawa on Jewel 98.5 fm, featured new and up and coming literary talents and tonight at 7pm she was interviewing none other than Max Hudson, and radio spots this morning teased of him reading excerpts from Ngaro’s Sojourney!

He took the final drag from his cigarette and with frozen fingers flicked it away into the dirty snowbanks that lined Rideau Street. He was late. Of course he was late!

Turning the corner, following King Edward Avenue, he approached his drafty, brick apartment. As he again fumbled with numb fingers, searching for his keys, he recalled his day.

His bus home down Richmond Road, coincidentally by the Daytime Ottawa recording studio, had been closed and sectioned off by police, his bus being delayed and detoured around whatever incident had incurred. Goddamnit! Then, finally, reaching the downtown core, he missed his bus stop.

As the apartment door opened into darkness, he checked the time, the face of his cell phone hauntingly lighting up his darkened apartment. 6:48pm. Good! He didn’t miss it!

Although the heat was on, between the drafty windows and poorly hung door, it was always cold. It triggered him. He both loved and hated Max Hudson. Admired and wished him harm at the same time.

Max Hudson represented everything he aspired and hoped to become. He was his hero. Max Hudson was a mockery of everything he failed to be. His smug face and voice irritated him beyond measure. Pompous and pretentious. Max Hudson inspired him to suffer through his poverty. Max Hudson reminded him he was a failed poet and novelist.

The fact that his cell phone was an obsolete piece of crap, incapable of even downloading a radio app, only infuriated him further. He turned on his radio, tuning it to 98.5. A commercial was playing: Canada Goose parkas of all things. His bitterness rose.

He was excited to hear what Max Hudson had to say. Interested to hear a reading from Ngaro’s Sojourney.

Maybe I should actually go down to the radio station? He pondered to himself. It was within walking distance. Max Hudson would surely be interested in hearing his dreams, wouldn’t he? He vigorously rubbed his hands together, warming them. I mean, I’ve seen The Coffee Cipher in my dreams, before he even launched Ngaro’s Sojourney. Surely that must be important?

He had sat in the quasi-darkness of his apartment long enough now. His eyes had adjusted to the winter gloom. He had vandalized his own apartment over the course of the past week. The same symbol adorned the dried and peeling wallpaper. Some in pencil. Some in pen or crayon. Some scrawled through the wallpaper with butter knives, tiny piles of drywall dust littering the apartment.

An oblong symbol, like a stretch letter ’o’, ringed in triangles or pointed teeth, covered the walls. Where there was an option of colour, a crayon, marker or coffee, it was always yellow or amber or tan.

He had slipped into a sort of reprieve, lost in the trance of remembered dreams as he took in his obsessive handiwork.

"Good evening Ottawa!" It was Codi Jeffreys cheery voice from the radio that brought him back, "It’s one chilly night tonight, so bundle up and stay warm! It’s seven o’clock and time for Wright-On Ottawa, and tonight we have local playwright and author Max Hudson and his newest play, Ngaro's Sojourney…"

At first he thought it was the chill of excitement that ran through him. But this cold was far more than a shiver down his spine. More akin to the blasted cold between the stars. It froze his soul. It hurt.

Then he heard the voice.

***

The Bladed Rune

She stood on the rail of the Alexandra Bridge, the water below black and murky, lost in the darkness of night. She could see her breath on this frigid night.

Michelle fell in and out of light as Ottawa’s evening traffic commuted home. Several cars slowed down, her position upon the bridge drawing attention. A few cars stopped, a few drivers recording her with their cells, a few others speaking on theirs, Michelle presumed, with 911 operators.

Her cell rang. Absentmindedly she viewed the caller, the screen casting a ghostly light upon her face, her eyes ringed red with tears.

Pax Catholica See, was displayed, its red and green buttons begging for Michelle’s choice to answer or decline.

She drew her sidearm from her hip holster. Smith & Wesson Model 5906, Michelle identified. It was the RCMP training in her. It was instinctive.

No more than an hour ago she was a CHEO… with Bonnie.

The cell phone continued ringing.

Her mind wandered. She could still hear the heart monitor. One long continuous hum. It was the moment her world ended. It was the moment Bonnie’s life ended.

The cell phone continued ringing: Pax Catholica See. She was a sleeper. RCMP officer. Her duty no longer carried meaning.

Her daughter had an entire life ahead of her. Bonnie was a beautiful six-year old.

The EKG flat lined. The sound haunting Michelle. She dropped the ringing cell onto the abyss below the bridge, somehow hoping it would stop the memory.

Michelle drew the pistol’s hammer, raising the barrel to her mouth.

She began crying, tears staining her cheeks. She wasn’t scared. She was relieved. This suffering would end. She could taste the metallic stainless steel in her mouth.

It was then that Michelle was sure insanity arrived. A voice spoke to her. A soothing, sympathetic voice. “You are not alone,” the woman’s voice spoke in her mind. “I too have suffered loss.”

“Who?” Her mind was surely unhinged. “Who are you?”

“You have no future,” there was no malice in the voice, “But your existence doesn’t need to end here.”

“Are you an angel? God?” Michelle asked.

“I am Aoatea. Please, allow me in.”

Michelle’s will had been broken at the hospital. She had no fight left. Only an overwhelming resignation. Her soul had already died.

“I need you,” Aoatea’s voice paused, reconsidering her words. “I want you with me.”

RCMP Officer Michelle Nesbitt lowered her pistol, closing her eyes as she allowed the disembodied voice in, filling her mind, filling her empty soul.

It reminded her of when she was a child. Having spent her entire day at the ice rink playing hockey, her mother would send her to a warm bath. Her hands and feet burned like fire.

Aoatea felt like fire on her frozen soul.

As Michelle Nesbitt stepped down from the bridge’s frozen railing an image entered her mind, etched itself in her memory. The Bladed Rune: an ellipsoid edged in pointed triangles. Aoatea recognized it.

Aether-bleed. She knew what these were. Aoatea shook her head violently, jarring the image loose from Nesbitt's mind - her mind - their mind. Ghostly manifestations of powerful events or entities bleeding through Spacetimes. Leaching from one reality into another. Percolating through the Thin Places. Although important, they were unsolvable conundrums. They possessed the logic of fevered dreams. It was a distraction she couldn't afford.

She had to find The Three before they found one another. Together they were powerful; too powerful.

The crowd on the bridge backed away, returning to their running cars and trucks, disappearing through the vehicles' pluming exhaust, dispersing as they saw the weapon. Nesbitt holstered her sidearm, her gait picking up into a jog, her breath blooming in the frozen clime. Aoatea remembered this year and its events, accessed her archival memories: Their time was soon, close.

Nesbitt broke into a full sprint. The radio station was near. It had already begun.

***

What Lurks Beneath

“Do you still hear the voices?” the psychologist asked.

“Voice,” Genevieve corrected, “It was only ever one voice.”

“Right you are,” the doctor smiled patiently. “Do you still hear the voice?”

Answer no, the Voice spoke to Genevieve.

“No, of course not.”

* * *

Douglas Mental Health University Institute

Verdun, Quebec, Canada

The bathroom sink was draining slowly again. For a brand new high efficiency sink it amazed Genevieve how easily it clogged up.

Brilliant Arctic White, sterile and immaculately clean, these washrooms were kept spotless. As she retrieved the plunger she knew it was all just an illusion; that just beneath the silver plug lurked filth and disgust, only centimetres away from where you brushed your teeth.

She ran the hot water for only a few seconds before the sink began filling up; backing up.

She only pumped the plunger twice. It wasn’t a deep clog. Probably just spit and toothpaste and facial hair. The overflow drain vomited brown and gray water laced with chunks of black.

She pulled the plunger off the main drain with a satisfying slurping sound. It too belched pieces of black and semi-rot. The putrid stew briefly churned before the cleared drain greedily drank its vile contents away.

Genevieve ran the water again, rinsing away any evidence of the deceit below. A quick wipe with a cloth and the immaculate illusion was restored.

There, she thought to herself, Sanity and normality restored. Once again, everything’s in balance in the universe! Genevieve smiled at her own humour. The brunette French-Canadian was pretty when she smiled. Her eyes lit up, catching the late morning sun.

Then, slowly, her smile faded. She knew what horrors lurked just below - just beneath their reality.

She knew it was only a matter of time. The Pnakotians were coming - and this world couldn’t have been more unprepared or defenseless. She mustn’t dwell upon this. Not now.

Genevieve glanced at her wrist watch. Now her cleaning run was behind schedule. She’d have to pick up the pace to make lunch at 12 sharp. She was surprised the supervising orderly hadn’t come looking for her yet.

“Mme. Cadeaux,” her supervisor’s voice called.

Speak of the devil, she thought. “And it’s Doctor,” she mumbled aloud, her indignation rising. She had decided to behave herself today. It was June 24th, and in celebration of St. Jean Baptiste Day, the hospital was treating its patients to a lunch of Velveeta Cheese and Macaroni!

Her mouth salivated at the thought. Genevieve was hungry. But hunger aside, she needed to show them how stable and efficient and safe she was.

The Institution had allowed her to perform cleaning duties and basic housekeeping chores. She had become a productive member of the psychiatric hospital. A safe patient. Not a hostile or dangerous one. If she kept this up they’d promote her. They would let her clean the washrooms on the 5th floor - the Permanent Residence Ward.

Security was significantly lower in the Permanent Residence Ward. Then she could make contact with Luis Casiano. After, a cell phone. Any cell phone, then, Sentinel.

She looked into the still slightly fogged mirror. She couldn't resist as she quickly traced the outline of an oblong symbol, her thumb dotting a ring of spots around it. The Bister Blade. Genevieve had no idea what the name meant. It disappeared as the mirror cleared.