Touchstone 1 - Stray
anywhere near what she’s trying to take down.
The last space was like a ghost town in a Western: old, falling apart, little more than the shells of buildings on a dusty plain. In the middle of the town were square wooden frames, and tied to the squares with barbed wire were the shapes of people. Black shadows with no features at all, like a person had had all their skin had burned away and then been covered in dusty ink. They looked like they were in pain, being tortured like the shadows on the pyramids. First Squad approached incredibly cautiously, scanning every building as we approached the frames, making sure nothing was lurking, and stopped at the edge of the central square with the frames.
“These are seen in a number of spaces,” Alay said. “Most notably on the Columns Rotation. They are one of the most dangerous of the Ionoth, and frequently reach near-space and sometimes real-space.”
One of the shadows reacted to the sound of her voice, eyes opening to slits. And then a mouth appeared on the darkness of the face, out of nothing like the Cheshire Cat’s does in Alice of Wonderland, but stretching up into the nastiest grin you could imagine. It was all light inside, the shadows burning white within. And what I’d thought was pain was a kind of exultation.
Then Maze set the entire thing burning, all the frames and the shadows on them. He was still enhanced, and called down a pillar of flame in an absolute Wrath of God moment, shocking me. First Squad, except for Mara who continued scanning the area for anything coming, all stood and watched in silence. It was pretty clear they hated these things.
“Most monsters my world are people,” I said, feeling inadequate. “These memories of people?”
“Not anything I’d class as a person,” Alay said, very firm and sharp for someone usually so quiet. “Time to head back?”
Maze nodded, and we went back through the same set of spaces, with Ketzaren pausing at every gate and enhancing herself before locking them as much as possible. Even though we’d just been through them all, First Squad stayed alert and ready for attack right up until we stepped back into real-space.
This time, an alert flashed in our mission display when we were being scanned. “You’ve got a stickie, Zee,” Maze said, and she groaned and walked away from us to a corner of the box.
“Stickie is?” I asked.
“A very weak variety of Ionoth, but with an ability to conceal itself even from Sight talents. They’re parasites, feeding off human hosts. When they’re stronger, they can copy themselves to new hosts through physical contact, and–”
“Are a plaguish nuisance,” Zee put in, arms crossed.
“If they’re left too long, they begin to corrupt their hosts,” Lohn added, grinning.
“They’re removed using sonics,” Maze continued, as if they hadn’t interrupted, then gave Zee a sympathetic smile. “Also known as an Instant Headache Treatment. Hopefully the rest of us won’t finish the day so uncomfortably.”
We split up then. After missions, showers and rest are very high on First Squad’s list of things to do, and I guess Maze gets to file a mission report. The rotations seem designed to last only a couple of hours, and there’s never training or anything like that afterwards because it takes so much out of them. I showered, ever-amused by my nanoliquid uniform, and then grabbed some ‘portable food’ from the canteen and went up to the roof.
It’s still night, but it was very clear and not too windy and it was nice to sit and watch the stars. I wasn’t really surprised when Lohn and Mara showed up. They take babysitting as seriously as they do killing Ionoth.
“What’s the attraction?” Lohn asked, sprawling down next to me. “Black, black, black and some stars?”
“The wind,” I said, after thinking about it. “And there insects here – they sound crickets – insects from home. And temperature changes. And different smells.”
“Not many would consider these things positive,” Lohn said. “Besides, we had all that in Lights Rotation, didn’t we? Except perhaps this chirping.”
“Too busy being nervous enjoy.”
“You hide it well,” Mara said. “Maze wanted us to check how you’re holding up to all this.”
I like Mara for being very open about Stray mental health checks. She’s a really straightforward person.
“Is awful,” I said. “Killing things. Spaces very interesting, Ionoth horrible. Obvious.” I
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