Chapter 1: Containment
In which a young woman’s online connection leaves her disappointed

The Elder Sign. Source.

If Maggie were dating someone, they could have made an interesting observation about her: she swore like a sailor stranded on shore leave over minor inconveniences but tended to guard her language when things got truly serious.

Half an hour ago, as she boarded the city bus, she uttered several choice epithets as she tried to find a vacant seat that wasn’t sticky or covered with an indescribable liquid.

Now, crouching behind a wreck of a parked Ford Pinto with four flat tires, she kept her lips grimly shut. She didn’t feel like cursing, although a good blood-curdling scream would probably make her feel a lot better.

Things had fallen apart quickly, which told her that she was likely dealing with an absolute amateur.

“Had been dealing with one,” she muttered under her breath, correcting herself. Up in the sky, the clouds swirled around a central point of stillness, as if she looked into the eye of a hurricane. Wind blew leaves and debris down the street past her, moving inexplicably towards the center point, rather than away.

The seller was probably-

With a sound like a giant tearing the mother of all phone books in half, a streak of glistening silver lanced down from the sky. It struck at least two blocks away, but the resulting shudder of the earth broke every window on every parked car in the street.

-was definitely deceased, Maggie finished her thought, brushing broken glass off the sleeve of her parka. The necromancers didn’t tend to call things out of the sky, which meant that another faction was here.

No one else walked on the street, but Maggie felt the weight of invisible eyes on her. The broken-down car wasn’t offering much protection, so she forced herself to stand up and walk steadily forward.

No running, mind you, she repeated silently. Someone who runs is suspicious. No such thing as an innocent bystander with these folks.

The street sign leaned at a wild angle ahead, but it told her that she was only a block away. If she looked around the corner, she ought to be able to spot the building.

Maggie hesitated at the corner, straining to hear over the roaring wind. Very near the eye of the storm, now. It was, of course, centered over the building where she’d hoped, half an hour earlier, to meet an internet contact for an illicit purchase.

A loud rattle briefly eclipsed the wind to make itself heard. Maggie watched as a manhole cover rolled down the street past her, making it a good fifty feet before toppling over with a clang.

Taking a few deep breaths to overcome her pounding heart, she leaned far enough around the corner for one eye to take in the view.

“That’s bad,” she hissed, as she watched a pale gray arm emerge from the open hole in the street. The arm hauled a rather flabby body out from the sewer system, which rolled on the pavement for a moment before struggling to its feet.

The newcomer twisted ungainly around, and Maggie pulled back behind the corner before dead, glazed eyes could spot her. Zombies. That meant the necromancers had come expecting a dust-up.

A moment later, she felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. Another sound of tearing paper, and something flashed around the corner. Even facing away with the wall blocking her, Maggie had to blink furiously as after-effects strobed across her closed eyelids.

Once her vision began to return, she risked another peek. Nothing remained of the first zombie but a pair of feet, ending with gray, bloodless stumps at mid-calf. One of them fell over as she looked, but the other remained balanced in the street. It was knocked aside a second later by another hand as the next zombie struggled to haul itself up from the sewer.

Flashes like that meant major power, Maggie thought to herself. Considering that this was the second one she’d seen, and someone used it for a task as simple as dusting a zombie, she probably was dealing with at least a Minor Breach here. Not a lot of players walking around with that level of firepower. Anyone who tried to pull off a Minor Breach would likely get a confrontation by-

She didn’t curse. Looking back, Maggie was proud of herself for not cursing.

She did stomp her feet out of pure pained emotion, however, and pressed her fist against the stone wall so hard that the skin scraped on her knuckles.

No group would send a Minor Breach out into play, for fear of attracting agency attention…

“…unless it’s the agency itself,” Maggie spat out into the wind. “Of course they’d spot the posting! What idiot uses a public forum to sell something like this!”

The poor soul probably had no idea what he offered, most likely. Not until an agent knocked on his door and confiscated it. Maggie wondered if they killed him with magic, or just put a bullet in his head.

If she wanted to avoid finding out the answer to that question through personal experience, it was time to leave. Past time, in fact.

Taking another deep breath and willing her knees to not quake, Maggie stepped away from the wall. Walk quickly, but not too quickly, she told herself. A brisk stroll, that’s all. Going against the wind, so you’re walking quickly. Just taking a walk away from any troublesome stuff happening behind me.

Another manhole cover shot up from the street — ahead of her. Not good.

Perhaps, Maggie considered as her feet pounded, it was no longer time to worry about walking versus running, about looking like an innocent bystander.

She hadn’t spotted the necromancer controlling the zombies yet, but wherever he was, he had to know that his odds were slim against a Minor Breach. He’d get his ass handed to him, unless he could overwhelm the Breach, or possibly force the Breach to draw too deeply. Jesus, she hoped that wasn’t his strategy. It wouldn’t end well for anyone involved.

The Breach would have recognized his own weaknesses, of course. To avoid being overwhelmed, he would likely-

Acting purely on instinct, Maggie threw herself into the shadows of an arched entrance in the building on her left.

The movement saved her life.

Cords of blinding white, like lightning drunk on heavy liquor, slithered down the street. The zombies flashed into brief, all-consuming flame upon contact, asphalt liquified with the stench of brimstone, and tires of parked cars burst into flames. Pressed back behind the lip of protective stone in the archway, Maggie felt the heat from the strike radiating outward. A loud boom marked the gas tank of the Ford Pinto exploding.

A second after it should have abated, the lightning ceased. Maggie clung to the stone, wondering if the Breach was waiting to see if anything still moved. Would he snipe her if she broke from cover? Could she afford to remain hidden?

She received her answer as a whisper, indistinct and on the very edge of hearing, caressed her ears.

“Oh, you complete and utter idiot,” she said to no one. “You’re going to die.”

Time to run. That whisper meant she was inside the zone of influence. It kept going, tickling at her brain without truly passing through her ears. It felt fuzzy, indistinct, like trying to understand a conversation from underwater.

She knew that, if she stayed, it would become clearer. She wanted desperately to stay, sensed that the whisper was trying to convey a message of incredible importance.

Maggie broke from the archway and sprinted down the street as fast as she could run, away from the address she’d been texted on her burner phone. As hard as she panted, as loud as the blood pounded in her ears, she still heard that whisper, growing more real as the other sounds of the world faded to background.

It was more distinct, now. Not just hissing, but words. She could almost make them out, knew that if she just slowed for a moment, she’d catch them. Then, she’d understand.

The little corner of Maggie’s mind that wasn’t gibbering in panic reached desperately for the shapes she’d spent so long memorizing. The sign, with its forked lines. The star, its arms curved in a hint of a spiral. She held them in her mind, pulled her thoughts to their center so they could shield her from the whisper, the tendrils that invaded her mental landscape, reaching to understand, to make contact, to sweep away all fog and just show her the truth…

She took one last step, and reality hit her so hard that she collapsed.

“Excuse me, miss, are you all right?”

She blinked, mind burning as if something warm, caressing, had been violently ripped away. She was on the ground, sitting on her butt on a cold sidewalk. A man stood next to her, peering down through a face wrinkled with laugh lines. A mitten-enclosed hand extended out, an offering.

Maggie took the hand, let the man pull her back to her feet. “Must have slipped on some ice,” she said, even though Seattle hadn’t seen its first snow yet. “Thanks.”

“Of course. Take care, miss.” The man was gone, and Maggie stood alone as people bustled around her.

She’d made it out. Hadn’t she? Like Lot’s wife, she turned and looked over her shoulder.

Nothing. The street behind her looked normal, nothing out of place. No burning cars, no melted asphalt, no ashy remains of zombies. No sign of the Breach, he who opened himself to eternity and invited those whispers into our reality.

Totally normal. Nothing at all out of place or unreal.

She formed the star in her mind, placed it as a filter upon her sight. Then looked again.

She stood inches from a wall of mist, gray and swirling. It curved, she saw, a dome that enclosed the block. A couple steps slower, a pace behind, and she would have been caught inside.

She didn’t dare to reach out towards it, to feel it and try to learn more. Long ago, Maggie Derleth learned not to push her luck.

Slipping her hands into the pockets of her parka, trying to shake the shiver that was unrelated to the temperature of the air, Maggie walked away. She didn’t look back at the dome, didn’t even think about it. Very intently didn’t think about it, with every bit of concentration she could muster.

Outside that dome, the world was normal. Babies cried, dogs barked, cell phones beeped. People went about their lives, believing that the universe made sense.

Inside that dome? Maggie hoped that the necromancer hadn’t been one of the Cabal she knew. Maybe Johannes, he was a right prick — but even Johannes didn’t deserve whatever the Breach did to him.

Maggie walked away, and carefully didn’t think about how, from inside that dome, she could hear reality screaming as it was ripped apart.
['Sam Westreich']
['Fiction', 'Novel', 'Lovecraft', 'Science Fiction', 'Series']