Chapter 8: Beaten (Part 1)

She knew about the pistol barrel.

Milo watched Layla leave the station platform, her pink coils bouncing into the evening crowd.

Nothing in her last look suggested a floating yellow sheet, though. The worse secret was between him and the voice in the Eye.

Other ways of checking how much the girl knew ended at her front door, with a question about the paper hovering near his shoulder.

She had endured him all day.

The walk to his block brought back the ache the medical workers scrapped from his ankle. At the third flight of stairs, each step drove a pulse up his shin. On the fifth, Milo hauled himself along the rail while the back of his shirt cooled against his skin.

Hallucination or not, his ankle bulged above the boot again.

By the time he unlocked the flat and leaned inside, the sky had gone from gray to charcoal.

"I’m home!"

Milo shut the door with his heel and listened. No claws on the floor. The bowl near the kitchen held a skin of dried gravy and several untouched scraps.

"Maurice?"

Said right, the name was nearly a purr, and the purr usually drew the cat out.

"Maurrrrice?"

Apparently, a full bowl had made the bastard selective about greetings. Fine.

Once the coat was off, Milo worked his boots loose, biting down when the swollen ankle scraped the leather. Dust sprinkled from his clothes onto the floor.

His shirt rubbed dirt over the tight scars on his forearm as it came off.

Smelling of sweat, all of today’s clothing went into a pile for tomorrow’s version of him to resent.

He turned the lamp’s split shade to the wall and thumbed it on.

Most of the living room was a couch.

Ash gritted under his bare soles as he limped for the bathroom, past the faded rectangle where a television had once hung and the eight titles on the bookshelf: the complete collection of an academy student who had chosen lessons over fieldwork.

The bathroom door was ajar.

It wasn’t until switching the light on that he saw the tail.

White fur, black at the tip, poked from the sink cabinet Milo had emptied of every bottle and brush weeks ago, just because Maurice decided the place was his.

He crouched and hooked a finger around the opening.

"All right. Come on, give me a—"

Maurice lay on his side, his legs tucked at the wrong angle and his filmed blue eyes facing the hinge.

"Buddy?"

Milo touched the fur along his belly.

Cold.

He slid both hands beneath the small body and brought it onto his knees.

The cat’s head tipped back. Milo corrected it and supported the neck. Where a patch of inner thigh showed between the fur, he searched for a pulse. His own beat hammered into the pads of his fingers and drowned out anything smaller.

He shifted his hand and pressed more lightly, but nothing moved under the cat’s skin.

The faucet dripped into the tub behind him. Each drop struck the same patch of enamel.

"He had my eyes..."

His throat closed.

"I knew picking up a stray cat wouldn’t end well."

The body weighed almost nothing. All that food, and Milo could barely feel him in his hands.

Tomorrow he would find soft ground outside Jence, away from the road. He would wrap Maurice in the least ruined towel and do this properly.

Tonight, there was nowhere else to put him, so he eased the body onto its blanket inside the cabinet and folded the corner over his flank.

Since the door would not close with the tail out, he tucked it in. His hand would not come off the fur, and the tail came loose with it, and he tucked it in again.

The latch clicked.

While water hissed into the tub, he climbed into it with the cabinet in view. Steam dampened his face, and above the waterline, his ankle throbbed. Lowering it slowly, he watched the skin flush pink and fixed his attention on the one problem in the flat that might answer back.

"Yellow sheet," he whispered. "Materialize."

The faucet ran on.

What if Layla and Henry were inventions too?

Counter: Henry’s registry number brought the medical workers. Still, an invented instructor could carry an invented number, and a medical crew living in Milo’s head would naturally accept it. The four bullies at the roadside looked like reflections of several personal deficiencies, too.

He rubbed water over his face.

"Shit."

Off the tile, his voice came back too loud.

"Why does being alone always do this to me?"

The cabinet stayed shut.

"Fuck myself."

He slid lower, submerging his shoulders. Inside him, the bullet had... what, vanished?

"Will I shit the wooden ball out?"

Old yellow paper snapped open above the bath.

[ The bullet underwent Absorption. ] 𓂃🖋

"Here you are!"

Milo clasped both hands over his head, splashing water onto the floor, and lunged for the faucet. The hiss stopped. In the ringing silence, the sheet floated at the end of the tub with every old crease dry.

Entirely too real.

"If I absorbed it, what the hell happened to the bullet? Did it disappear?"

Letters scored themselves into the page with a scritch-scritch.

[ In the absence of a Quake Section, its remaining Longevity was converted only into Column Maturity. ] 𓂃🖋

"What does that do?"

[ It develops The Innate Column. ] 𓂃🖋

"The Innate Column?"

The writing cleared.

[ The Innate Column ]

[ Maturity: Null ]

[ Progress toward Minute: 100% (!) ]

[ Developments: 0 / 9 ]

[ The traitless foundation of Authorship. Absorption advances its Maturity. Each Maturity grants one unique Development. ]

[ Maturation also deepens the User’s compatibility with Doom matter. ] 𓂃🖋

"One hundred percent? So I can advance to Minute?"

[ Minute Development ]

[ Bookmark ]

[ Permits the User to mark one touched relic. The marked relic’s direction, movement, and continued existence may be viewed at any distance. Only one Bookmark may be maintained. ]

[ Acquire Development? (Y/N) ] 𓂃🖋

"Do I have any other option?"

[ No. ] 𓂃🖋

"Then why are you asking?"

No new ink appeared.

"...Yes, I acquire."

[ Bookmark acquired. ]

[ Developments: 1 / 9 ] 𓂃🖋

Milo released a breath, stirring the steam. A practical ability: he could test this one without asking anyone else to confirm the paper existed.

If Bookmark could find the pistol from here, the sheet would’ve supplied evidence stronger than anything his own eyes might invent.

Except he had not touched the pistol since acquiring the ability. Sticky little detail.

He leaned back against the tub, looking over to the sink on which flashed a razor.

Above his feet, the page hung dry in the steam. Water ticked from his elbow to the floor.

"Can I absorb a relic by being struck with it?"

Three seconds passed without new ink.

"Did that field have Plague?"

The paper stayed blank.

"Do you only answer questions after I nearly kill myself finding out?"

...

Perhaps every answer needed a discovery first, or the thing flat-out enjoyed watching him conduct research on his own body.

Either way, he would go to the academy and provoke someone into hitting him with a relic.

The four bullies should require little encouragement. Afterward, he could check whether the paper called the experience Absorption, Bookmark, or ordinary blunt trauma.

Milo’s gaze dropped to the water covering his narrow chest.

Ten paces off, the ball had lodged into a dead man’s shoulder too deep to see. He fired the same pistol into his own mouth, swallowed it whole, and came away with a useful ability instead of a perforated stomach.

Maybe compatibility with Doom matter began there.

Sturdiness, call it.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Beaten (Part 2)" ... ⤵︎ [!]