Chương 53: You May Call A Falcon From The Sky, But Will You Like It When It Lands On Your Arm?

"What did you do?" George said, gripping the table as if to stand up.

"Relax," Ezra said.

"What's done is done. We still have a few minutes to eat." He lowered another bite of the huge pizza into his mouth. —He's only level 47. —I'm pretty sure I can make him do whatever we want. >>Who is scarier, the necromancer sitting next to us or Cassie? >> Toss-up. >>Hang on, Cassie. Let's see what he has to say. >>Be ready with that ability orb of yours, though.

"Where is the boy behind the counter?" Cassie said. Both George and Ezra looked back at the Sbarro counter. Ezra smiled.

"He's around." >>This guy is far too smug to be up to any good. >>00: 12: 13 left in the round. Then George saw the pizza boy standing up from the floor behind the counter. He climbed onto the counter, looking dazed. He slipped off the other side, hit the tile hard, and pushed himself up as a trickle of blood ran down his face. When he stood up, he paused and looked around the room. His mouth hung open, and he squinted his eyes as though the light hurt.

"It's an ability called Dead Ringer. It is my bread and butter," Ezra said.

"It makes zombies, but they don't have to kill each other to make more zombies, so they last longer. Also, it spreads like wildfire." He washed his bite of pizza down with a swallow of soda and said, "Watch this." The pizza boy sighted a nearby table where a mother and her daughter were sharing a large smoothie with two straws. The mother looked up as the pizza boy approached her table. She saw the blood on his face and said something that might have been "Oh, no!"

The woman reached her hand toward him as if to help. He opened his mouth to speak but only coughed out a wad of black goo onto her face. The woman screamed, and then her daughter screamed, too. She reached up to wipe the goo from her face but only smeared it and got it on her hands. Customers at nearby tables stopped eating and watched. The pizza boy leaned over and vomited more black goo onto her. Seconds later, she was screaming that it burned, shouting at them to get it off her.

Her daughter grabbed a handful of napkins from the table and started to wipe her mother's face, but then the woman began to shake like she was having a seizure and fell onto the ground. The daughter got some of the goo on her hands and tried to wipe it off with napkins. The boy from the pizza shop stumbled toward the onlookers. The blood from the cut on his head had painted a red stripe along his clothes from head to toe.

The thin black vomit dribbled from his chin and added a black stripe to his shirt beside the red one. As he stepped toward the watching crowd, they flinched away from him as one. Then, suddenly, the boy ran at a man on the inner edge of the encircling group and jumped on him, bearing him to the floor and vomiting more of the thin fluid onto him. He started screaming for help.

A security guard appeared and tried to lift the boy off the man on the ground, but the pizza boy turned and bit the hand that was pulling at his shoulder. Meanwhile, the mother pushed herself to her knees. Her daughter had taken her mother's face in both hands and was asking if she was all right over and over again. The mother shook her head and coughed out a burst of the black liquid onto her daughter, who jerked backward and slipped on a puddle of the slick substance.

Ezra watched it all with a weird little smile as he ate his pizza.

"Well, friends. We should probably clear out of here in a few minutes. That black stuff smells horrible, and it is a bitch to get out of clothing."

"Make it stop!" Cassie shouted at him.

"Why would I do that?" Ezra asked, looking genuinely confused.

"I have been looking for a room like this." Cassie's arm shot out faster than a striking snake as she grabbed Ezra by the throat. He lifted his hand to her arm and tried to pull away, but she shouted, "Stop it!" [Combat Initiated] [Cassie: Ability activated—You May Call A Falcon From The Sky, But Will You Like It When It Lands On Your Arm? Project a psychic lance designed to breach mental defenses. If the victim's level is lower than yours, you have an increased chance of achieving mental lockout.] The voice that came out of her was lower and more guttural than her normal voice, something between a hiss and a growl. It seemed strangely amplified, as if it was coming from the air around them instead of Cassie's slight frame. Ezra's hand dropped to the table with a thud, and his mouth went slack. A half-chewed bite of pizza fell out of his mouth and landed in his lap. Even George felt his mind momentarily go blank from the force of whatever she had just done to Ezra.

He tried to speak, but he couldn't make the muscles of his throat form words. He cleared his throat, coughed, and tried again.

"Cassie," George said, but Cassie wasn't listening.

"Stop the zombies," Cassie commanded.

"They can't be stopped," Ezra said in a hushed, monotone voice.

"Show us your team card," Cassie said, shaking her hand so that Ezra's head bobbled from side to side. Ezra held up his hand and revealed a red team card.

"Show us your ability orbs," she said. Ezra stared blankly into the distance as he made first one, then the other ability orb appear in his hand. They rolled off of his palm and bounced onto the table. Cassie released her hold on Ezra's throat and picked up one of the orbs. George grabbed the other. Identify supplied their names and functions. <Ability Orb: Vacant Into the Vacant: Nullify another player's vote. Use at any time during a Voting round.

> <Ability Orb: Exit, Pursued By Bear: Create a new portal between this room and any room you have previously visited. To create the portal, throw the ability orb at the place where you would like the portal to appear. > Several other people in the food court were already in the midst of the transformation. Judging by the sounds of panic elsewhere in the mall, it was spreading. Had Ezra used the ability on other people too? Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Some people were pushing at the doors to the mall exit, only to find that they didn't open. They didn't seem to notice that there was nothing outside the doors—only blank darkness deeper than any normal night should be. The change was spreading rapidly. The crowd of unaffected people cleared away to the edges of the room, revealing a handful of people writhing on the ground, their jerky movements smearing the black goo on the white tile floor.

Some had already risen again and ran off to throw themselves at the crowds of people straining to escape. Cassie passed George the portal orb and held out her hand for the one that could nullify a vote. George gave it to her, and she gave it back to Ezra.

"Take this into your storage," she said to Ezra, who held up his hand for the ability orb.

"Forget about its existence except under the condition that using it will cause Neco to be voted out of the trial. At that time, use it to accomplish that goal.

"You will have no memory of this instruction until the condition is met, and even afterward, you will think it is your own idea and have no memory of meeting us," Cassie said.

"Now, put your head on the table and go to sleep until the round ends." Ezra laid his forehead on the table and closed his eyes. [Combat resolved.] >>Holy shit, Cassie. >>You're awesome.

"We need to get out of here," Cassie said. >>I'd say that is an understatement. >>00: 04: 45 left in the round.

"It looks like most of them are being drawn to the far side of the room by the crowd near the exit," George said.

"Let's go the other way." George and Cassie stood up and made a beeline for the large bookstore along the far side of the food court. The interior was quiet and smelled like books and coffee. Row after row of head-high bookshelves separated by wide walkways filled the bookstore. Cassie and George ran a dozen feet into the store before Nod stopped them. >>Wait a sec. >>Go back to the entrance. >>These places have security doors that close at night. George walked back to the entrance and looked around.

The zombies seemed to be still gathering near the crowds on the other side of the food court. >>There it is. See that long pole with the hook hanging to one side of the entrance? Grab it and use it to pull the security gate down. George removed the pole from the ring where it hung and raised it to catch a hook near the ceiling. He pulled on the pole, and a thin wire gate started to roll down from the ceiling.

It rattled and clanked as George pulled it down, and several zombies snapped their heads toward the noise like hunting dogs that had just picked up a new scent. Ability Notification! Threat Level 3 Knickknack Savant - Level 5 >>Oops. >>This may not have been one of my best ideas. The zombies sprinted toward them. George pulled harder at the gate, but it stuck, the pole bumping against the ground. >>Must close faster. Must close faster. The zombies were coming fast but did not seem very coordinated yet.

They kept running into tables and tripping over chairs. George abandoned the pole and jumped up to grab the bottom of the gate with both hands. His body weight pulled it down to head height, and Cassie reached up and helped pull it down the rest of the way. The bottom of the gate touched the floor a moment before three of the zombies collided with it at full speed. Three more joined them a moment later. The gate flexed inward but rebounded and held.

>>Why couldn't we have lucked out and got shamblers instead of sprinters!? >>Three minutes left in the round. Let's get out of sight, and we'll be back in the Voting round before you can say "Braaaaiiinnns." George and Cassie ran around the corner of a rack of shelves and ducked down between the travel section and a bank of large windows. The zombies climbed the gate and shook it back and forth like angry apes.

George glanced behind him and saw a strange reflection in the window, superimposed against the featureless dark outside. The reflection showed his armored, helmeted torso from the waist up, but below the waist, he was only a writhing mass of tentacles instead of legs.

"Cassie?" George said, pointing at the reflection.

"It's the ink," Cassie said.

"Just ignore it." >>One minute. That was when the gate came crashing down beneath the combined weight of the zombies piling themselves on it. Cassie climbed the shelf in front of them like a ladder and peeked her head above the other shelves. George moved to pull her down but found himself climbing the shelf beside her instead. Ability Notification!

Threat Level 4 Knickknack Savant - Level 8 George saw the zombies picking themselves up from the collapsed gate, which seemed to have ripped a section of the ceiling down as it fell. They were still 30 yards away and separated by several rows of shelves. Then Cassie swatted his arm and pointed the other way to the far back of the store. A bank of a dozen prestige tokens floated gently above the shelves in the music section along the back wall.

George also saw the flicker of a green portal shining in the doorway that led to the restrooms. —We have to get those before the round ends! —We won't be able to come back to this room if it is full of zombies. The zombies were near the front of the store. The prestige tokens were at the back. George and Cassie were precisely in the middle between the two. Cassie hopped off the shelf and her lightning blade appeared in her hand.

She snapped it to its full length and it made static buzzing sounds as bolts of electricity flashed at the tip. >>29 seconds! >>No, Cassie! Cassie sprinted toward the prestige tokens. As George jumped down from the shelf and ran down the aisle after her, a pack of zombies spotted them and lunged in their direction. [Combat Initiated] Ability Notification!

Threat Level 5 Knickknack Savant - Level 13 Time Dilation Maximum: x 200% Outward time slowed to half speed, and George saw Cassie's pace slacken as if she was suddenly running through water while he caught up with her at double speed. >>16 seconds. As the heightened level of Knickknack Savant took hold, scenarios tumbled through George's mind in rapid succession. The fear that had been rising since the black goo started coming out of the first zombie felt strangely distant.

He could still feel it, but it was like a sound from another room. It mattered less. It was like Knickknack Savant had cleared a quiet space inside himself where he could think and then do what he had to do. He needed to keep Cassie away from the zombies and get the prestige tokens. He could do it, but he needed more time. And he knew just how to get some. He slowed enough to let the six zombies coming down the aisle catch up with him. Ability Notification!

Threat Level 6 Knickknack Savant - Level 21 Time Dilation Maximum: x 400% The rest of the world slowed to a crawl as each second passed as four seconds. The remaining fifteen seconds stretched into sixty seconds of subjective time. It was plenty of time. It was an ocean of time. George saw his next thirteen actions unfold like steps in a dance he'd practiced a hundred times. The chain of events felt so inevitable that it was almost like he had glimpsed the future. All he had to do was act.

He overturned one of the display tables in the middle of the aisle. Books scattered onto the floor, and the two lead zombies pursuing them failed to dodge. The edge of the table took them in the hips, and a third was brought down as she fell over the others. Three more zombies ran behind the three on the ground. >>11 seconds. Cassie entered the music section and climbed up on one of the waist-high racks of CDs.

She batted the prestige token above her head down with the tip of the sword and jumped down after it, floating to the ground at one quarter speed. George pointed at one of the zombies still on its feet and cast Bind at both legs of its pants. He repeated the action with the other two, and they all fell slowly to the floor as their own clothing tripped them. George drew out the ability orb randomly assigned to him at the start of the trial and crushed it.

Ability orb activated (George) The Home Alone Contingency: Receive a private session in the Hunting maze. Use at any time during a Hunting round. When the round ends, the players in the Voting room will be held in stasis until your extended round is complete. Jagged time applies. >>Get the tokens. >>3 seconds. George stepped inside the music section and gently took the lightning sword from Cassie's hand. In a moment, the round ended and Cassie disappeared.

He raised his other hand, casting draw on one token after another. They flew into his palms in bright orange blurs, and he sent them into his dimensional storage as soon as he touched them. Collected: 16 prestige tokens (19 total). George raised Cassie's sword and turned to face the zombies.