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In retrospect, he couldn’t have told you when it started.
It happens to everyone, right? That moment when a thought flickers past, just a momentary thing, and you shake your head and wonder where that came from - and then you laugh, and maybe you make a joke, and you forget it.
It happens to everyone. And he was young, and it hadn’t been that long since he fell out of the time vortex, or limbo, or whatever that was, so there were a lot of unfamiliar thoughts, because there were a lot of unfamiliar things and he still wasn’t always sure what he thought about everything. So it wasn’t really surprising that it happened a lot.
But then it was happening more and more, and there was this pressure to the thoughts that didn’t feel familiar at all. Like they really were coming from outside of his head.
Like there was something trying to get in.
Like something already had gotten into his head, just a tendril, and was trying to push its way in further.
Maybe he could have fought it. He knew he should have, or struggled harder, at least. Afterwards, he tried to remember if he’d put up a fight, but honestly, that would have required that he know what was going on, and until the very last minute, he didn’t.
Instead, he’d just wondered whether he was going crazy.
---
“Dude, you’re up way late!” ‘90s Kid exclaimed at a volume that made Linkara want to reach for a remote.
“I’m trying to get this stupid video edited,” Linkara grumbled as he rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. “Every time I think I’ve got the timing right, it glitches on me. And Pollo can’t figure out why, either.”
‘90s Kid tossed a handful of dry Fruity-O’s into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe you should use a different take?” he suggested.
Linkara glared at him as he poured himself a soda. “I only have two takes of that segment,” he explained, “and both of them have timing issues. One’s worse than the other one, but using the better one doesn’t fix the problem. Didn’t I tell you not to eat cereal directly from the carton with your hands?”
“I’m not,” ‘90s Kid whined plaintively. “I put it on a plate first, see?” He waved a saucer heaped two inches high with multicolored puffs, spilling several into his own lap.
“Oh, good lord,” Linkara muttered. “Just clean that up before you go to bed, okay?”
“It’s cool, dude,” ‘90s Kid assured him. “I didn’t get any on the floor, just on me.” He paused, his lip rolling slightly. “Um, hey, boss-dude, can I ask you a question?”
“I’m not your boss,” Linkara groaned. “I don’t pay you anything. You just showed up so often I had to offer you crash space.”
“And I totally appreciate your gnarly generosity,” ‘90s Kid assured him. “I just - is it, like, normal to not always know exactly what you’re thinking?”
Linkara paused to consider the question, taking a long, fizzy sip from his drink. “Well, it’s certainly normal to not always know exactly what you’re feeling,” he offered. “Especially when you’re still a teenager. So, I guess not being able to place everything you’re thinking would be similar.” He contemplated the bursting bubbles for a moment, then looked at ‘90s Kid directly. “Why? Anything in particular bothering you?”
“Naw,” ‘90s Kid replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Just being confused about all the changes, I think. Still catches me off-guard in a non-radical kind of way, sometimes.”
Linkara nodded. “Well,” he said, “if you have any questions, you can always ask Pollo or me, if we’re not busy. Make sure you put the saucer in the sink and turn out the kitchen light before you go to bed.” He headed back towards the study, soda in hand.
As the door closed, ‘90s Kid could have sword he heard it with his ears, not just inside his skull - a high, hissing laugh, and one word.
Human.
---
When the next phase started, he was still just barely aware of it. In addition to the thoughts that didn’t feel like his, now there was a totally bogus, too-frequent feeling that someone was looking over his shoulder.
He tried to shrug it off, to keep doing what he normally did. (Much later, it occurred to him to wonder why he hadn’t told Linkara, or at least Harvey. His best guess was that, in addition to giving him thoughts from outside, it had kept him from thinking about asking for help. Or, maybe he had thought about it, but it had kept him from being aware of the thought. It was hard to tell the difference, in retrospect.)
Then the sensation had escalated to someone else looking through his eyes, seeing what he saw. He was still in full control of his body, he was still driving, but he had a passenger.
Something, someone, was inside him. Without his permission.
But that was crazy, right? So, even though at this point he was sure something was totally wrong, he still hadn’t said anything. Who would have believed him, even if he’d come up with the right words to explain? Besides, they were busy with an interdimensional conqueror bearing down on them, and he had guns to repair; no one had time for him to have a breakdown right then, or could have dealt with it if he had.
He should have fought, should have struggled with it. It was his fault that he didn’t; he knew it was all his fault. But he still hadn’t understood what was going on, hadn’t realized what it was that he needed to fight. Vyce was coming; that was the enemy Linkara was focused on, and so that was the enemy he needed to kick in the ass, not whatever was happening in his head.
And it worked. They beat him and sent the conqueror packing off to some iceball world in a pocket dimension. It had been tense, it had been tough, but it was over. If he was cheering for two, he never noticed it.
Then everything went back to normal, and the inevitable happened. They’d switched places, and he was in the passenger seat. He’d gone to sleep creeped out but still in control, still wholly himself. His dreams echoed with that one word - human, over and over, as if something were practicing it.
It was raiding his memories, looking for something. Something mundane, but personal.
He’d woken up, and not only was he inhabited, he was disconnected from himself, from the body that had carried him for sixteen years - but only partly. His limbs didn’t do what he wanted; he couldn’t kick or punch or pinch himself or break a leg to cripple the thing that walked with his feet, but he could still feel his clothes pressing against them. He couldn’t control his voice, couldn’t scream or call for help or plead for mercy no matter how had he tried, but he could still hear everything it said with his mouth. He knew where he was, how he was standing, what he was holding and doing; he could even see what was going on, most of the time.
When his vision wasn’t a field of static, he was still along for the ride.
Bathing. It didn’t know how to take a shower; they only had baths where it came from. It played through his usual morning routine, in a level of detail he hadn’t thought about since the last time he’d had his arm in a sling, in a fraction of a second.
Fingers he wasn’t in control of began removing his pajamas, and suddenly he was embarrassed enough that he felt his face redden, despite its control over his body.
He’d almost wished he was out cold, unconscious while it used his body like a puppet. He wondered if it left him fully aware precisely because he did wish that.
It was inspecting him in the mirror, getting its first real glimpse of the body it inhabited from this perspective. He was pretty sure it could read his thoughts, but he could only hear it when it wanted him to. It said nothing, but it turned him around and around, getting a look at every inch of flesh.
It followed his routine almost to the letter most of the time. If he let himself drift, if he forced himself not to think about it, he could almost pretend that nothing was wrong, that it was all what he meant to do.
Then it began making people disappear.
It adjusted the water in the shower to the same temperature he liked; apparently that was a property of the body it was wearing, not the mind that watched. It found the soap and shampoo where he’d last left them, and skipped scrubbing behind the ears because he never did it.
Then he felt it move his hands lower, and he’d never wanted to scream more.
The disappearing thing was weird. Most of the time, he could still see and hear right up to the moment when it happened, could hear what it was saying in his voice when it said anything at all. Then there would be nothing but static, roaring in his eyes and ears, and it was almost like he was thrown from the passenger seat into the trunk, sealed away from the world while it wore his flesh.
Almost.
It had just been his bad luck that one of the shower memories had included that. Apparently that was something else it hadn’t ever experienced.
It was curious. His wet hands fondled himself, as if it were cataloguing the sensations, before curling into the ancient shape and starting to stroke.
He could always still feel his clothes on his body, his weight on his feet, whatever was in his hands. Tactile sensation, and that alone, never went away.
It took his body away from him, it invaded him, it spoke with his voicebox and thought with his neurons, but it always, always made sure he could feel how totally out of control he was.
He tried to fight the arousal, to think of baseball and butterflies and anything else that wasn’t sexy, but it wasn’t his thoughts in charge of his flesh anymore. All he could do was feel it, to feel how exposed and violated he was, as it experimented with his body like it was a plaything.
As the world got smaller, he’d wondered what was going to happen to him. Was he just going to be the last one to disappear? Or would it keep him, extending his lifespan to its infinite one? Would it wear him until he died, then discard the corpse? Would it preserve his dead body like a lich (that one would have sounded radical if it hadn’t been so personal)?
Or maybe at the end it would reject him, swallow him, and take Linkara as its host instead. The thought made him panic, but he couldn’t exactly have said why.
It deliberately took longer than he would have, playing with the speed and pressure of his hands. He felt like it was reading his thoughts, like it was getting some pleasure not just from the friction but also from his reactions, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
The orgasm hit him like a brick wall, and for a fraction of a second he felt its grip on his body weaken. The sensation must have surprised it.
The moment was too short for him to take advantage of, but when it reasserted itself, he did get one tiny flash of its thoughts leaking through.
It had liked that. It put it on its list of things to try again later.
He never did find out what the Entity had intended to do with him. It thought of the disappearing as making everything else one with it. The possession had made him its - well, its possession, its thing, an object. Fundamentally less than it, although it really thought of everything that way. From its perspective, disappearing him would have been an upgrade.
The first morning after it had left him, he could barely manage to undress himself to shower.
Later, he tried to recall how hard he’d struggled. Not when he’d first realized it had taken the wheel; he knew he had then, as hard as he could manage, to no avail. But later, when it took Linksano and the others.
The first time he tried to touch himself after it had left him, he’d found himself on the bathroom floor, hugging the porcelain throne and heaving up last night’s pizza.
He didn’t know.
His mind flinched, and he couldn’t remember.
* - * -*
“ ... And then he just sort of shrugged and told me not to worry about it, that it would be good for my hair - and the smell would be gone in a couple of days!” Spoony said, gesturing as if he were wiping something thick and wet from his eyes and then shaking his head like a dog. The others gathered around the table laughed, except for Linksano, who reached for the popcorn bowl with a faraway expression.
“Well,” Linkara chuckled, “if Insano is going to focus on microbiology for a while, I have to say I’m relieved. There should be fewer explosions that way. Not none,” he pointed out at Spoony’s eyerolling, “just not as many.”
“I’m not sure protein nanochains are exactly harmless,” Linksano mused. “Although yes, in this case they probably did act as a conditioner, and a highly effective one at that.”
“Oh, yeah, my hair was thicker and shinier than it’s been in years,” Spoony agreed. “Once I stopped smelling like rotten eggs enough to actually leave the house, I got something like eight compliments in two days.”
Perhaps he should patent that one, said the Ninja-Style Dancer’s sign. He flipped it over; on the reverse was written After adding a more appropriate scent.
Spoony scratched his head. “He might have,” he pointed out. “I actually looked him up at the patent office once; he’s submitted about a dozen. I’m pretty sure he’s sold at least one, because he’s actually been paying his share of the rent on time for a while.”
Linksano peered over the rim of the popcorn bowl. “We’re out again,” he announced.
Heaving himself up from the couch, Linkara picked up the bowl. “I’ll make another bag,” he said. “I need to get more ice, anyway. Anyone else want anything?”
Heads shook around the table. “Nah, I think we’re all fine,” Harvey said. “There’s still plenty of chips.”
Spoony leaned back into his chair. “Thanks for letting me crash here after the cameo,” he called towards the kitchen. “The flight out was way cheaper tomorrow morning than tonight.”
“No problem,” Linkara called back over the beeping of the microwave. “You’re always welcome here; you know that.”
“Dude, it’s always great to have someone here who remembers all the old awesome games,” ‘90s Kid chimed in, grinning broadly.
Spoony chuckled wryly. “Mostly I remember the crappy ones, though,” he said, making a disgusted face. “I mean, yeah, there were plenty of okay ones, and a few great ones, but even when I was still a kid, there was so much crap.”
Harvey looked thoughtful for a moment. “Are you old enough to remember the first video game crash?” he asked. “I mean, I wasn’t paying too much attention at the time, but I seem to remember that the crap-to-fun ratio going off the rails was part of the big problem there.”
“I was around, but not old enough to really remember it,” Spoony answered, leaning forward and running a finger around the rim of his soda glass. “But yeah, that era had plenty of great games, just not enough to save themselves; it was the shovelware that nearly killed the home video game industry.”
“But there was still some extremely awesome stuff in the arcades, right?” ‘90s Kid offered.
“For a while, yeah,” Spoony agreed. “They got less important right around the time I started to get interested in girls, but they were still around.” He shook his head and gripped his glass tighter. “It was PC gaming that was the real salvation of video games in the dark times, though. A lot of the arcade stuff got really shitty right before Nintendo kind of single-handedly resurrected console gaming.”
“It seems as though people your age recall the arcade games more fondly, though,” Linksano pointed out. “That was certainly the case on my world, although the first video game crash played out a little differently there.”
“Not that it does the games themselves a whole fucking lot of good, though,” Spoony grumbled, ignoring the startled glance between ‘90s Kid and Boffo. “I mean, look at the market now - there’s a million derivatives of the original Donkey Kong out there, but how many kids have actually ever played it? Or even had the opportunity?”
“There are plenty of emulators,” Linksano argued. “The hacker community seems to make a sort of meta-game of how small an architecture they can re-create Pac-Man and Asteroids on, for instance.”
“Yeah, but seriously, how many kids have played them?” Spoony said, raising his voice. “It’s mostly people my age and older. Seriously, I think more people are nostalgic for the idea of Pac-Man than ever actually dropped a quarter in the game.” His fingertips on the glass were turning white.
“Does that even matter, though?” Harvey argued. “I mean, I get that the characters from the games aren’t the same as the games, but -”
“That’s part of the problem, though,” Spoony interrupted. “How many kids are going to have their first experience of Pac-Man by way of Super Smash Brothers? It’s - they’re stealing a feeling, man, a fucking passion, without even knowing what it’s really about.”
“It’s hardly theft,” Linksano tried to argue.
“No, you’re right,” Spoony ranted, “that’s the wrong crime completely. Have you seen this fuckin’ movie that’s coming out, with all the video game characters? That’s a goddamn cash grab, and they’re trying to grab it right out of my ass with no lube.”
“Uh, calm down, dude,” ‘90s Kid said, his eyebrows raised in concern.
“I am not gonna calm down, man!” Spoony’s grip on the glass slipped; it shot out of his hand halfway across the table, sloshing. “These Hollywood fuckers, they’re raping my childhood!”
‘90s Kid’s expression changed; his jaw tightened. “Dude, you’re not supposed to say that,” he said carefully.
“No, seriously, these goons have my memories thrown over the edge of a table and they’re pumping them hard,” Spoony continued, half-shouting. “What’s your problem, kid? This is your childhood they’re soiling with their million-dollar jizz, too, isn’t it?”
‘90s Kid was silent; his face had gone white. Linksano leaned over, his goggles level with the sunglasses, and frowned. Harvey shook his head at Spoony, saying, “Hey, I think maybe you should tone down the language a little bit.”
“Why?” Spoony looked disgusted. “I never picked you guys for the PC brigade. Can’t you fucking take a good rape joke?”
“SHUT UP, DUDE!” ‘90s Kid roared, leaping from his chair and tearing for the hallway. A door slammed, followed by a noise that might have been a large metal object hitting a wall.
Linkara sauntered out of the kitchen, a bowl of piping hot popcorn steaming in the crook of his elbow and a fresh glass of soda in his other hand. “Sorry that took so long,” he laughed. “The microwave was on the wrong power setting, and . . .” He trailed off as his eyes traced every face at the table, ending at the overturned chair. “Okay, what now?”
Ninja-Style Dancer held up his sign. Your friend here said something offensive. ‘90s Kid took offense.
“It’s a day ending in Y,” Linkara noted, setting the bowl and glass both down. “Spoony’s not exactly a master of tact; you all know that already.”
Spoony looked like he was about to object, then thought better of it. He sank back in his seat, fuming.
Harvey pushed himself up from the opposite side of the couch. “I’m gonna go make sure the idiot didn’t hurt himself or anything,” he muttered. “Sounded like he was throwing things for a minute there.”
“Let’s just say he touched on a sensitive metaphor,” Linksano said, studying the ceiling, “and when ‘90s Kid objected, Spoony doubled down.”
“All I said was -” Spoony started.
“And then you went into fairly graphic detail,” Linksano interrupted before Spoony could repeat himself. “Including a rather explicit invitation to imagine himself in that position.”
“Not him,” Spoony objected. “His childhood.” He still looked angry, red and flushed, but his voice was starting to wobble.
Linkara rubbed his hand down his face. “Okay, I think I got it,” he groaned. “Seriously, Spoony, when you’re in a hole you should stop digging.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Spoony protested. “He’s totally overreacting.”
A crash followed by a thump echoed back down the hallway.
Linksano rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. “Does he have any history of . . . ah . . . .”
Spoony’s eyes widened.
Linkara blinked, and answered, “Not as far as I know, but he doesn’t talk about his family much at all, and I’ve never really asked, either.” He glanced down the hall. “Never had cause to, before.”
“Oh, crap,” Spoony whispered. “I keep forgetting he’s not as old as he looks.”
Linkara’s phone buzzed. Yanking it out of his pocket, he glanced down; it was a text from Finevoice.
The kiddo is having some kind of flashback or meltdown or something. I can’t snap him out of it, and I don’t wanna yell and spook him worse. A little help here?
“Let me go see what’s going on,” Linkara said, standing as he put the phone away.
Linksano also stood. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “He sees you as an authority figure, although he doesn’t always show it. I might be less stressful for him.”
The reviewer and the scientist hustled out of the room. Spoony glanced at his remaining company; the Ninja-Style Dancer and Boffo glared at him from opposite ends of the table.
Spoony shrank in his chair again. “Stop judging me,” he growled.
Boffo’s frown deepened as he honked at him once, sharply.
---
“Calm down, kid,” Harvey murmured as he shoved his phone back in his jacket pocket. “You’re safe. The jerk out there didn’t mean it.”
His words didn’t seem to be having an effect. When he’d first arrived, ‘90s Kid had been pacing back and forth, shaking his head and muttering, occasionally shoving random objects - the closet door, the dresser, a lamp that now lay in several pieces on the floor. He’d even thrown an action figure, although Harvey wasn’t positive that ‘90s Kid had meant to throw it at him, and if he had, it had missed by a yard. When Harvey had tried to take him by the shoulders, he’d flinched violently away and whimpered.
Harvey had more or less blocked him into one corner, but he was afraid to try to guide ‘90s Kid to the bed; the poor idiot was still waving his arms around blindly, obviously scared out of his mind. Harvey wasn’t even sure ‘90s Kid was seeing him at all, although with the sunglasses, it was hard to tell where he was focusing.
“It’s okay,” Harvey said, a little louder this time. It had been a long time since he’d had a scared, pre-verbal kid on his hands, and ‘90s Kid was a little big for this sort of behavior. “You’re safe. Take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.”
“ . . . Shoved me into the passenger’s seat,” ‘90s Kid babbled. He stopped flailing and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.
“The passenger’s seat of what?” Harvey asked. The last few moments of Spoony’s argument flashed through his head, and he blurted, “Oh, God,” without meaning to.
The door burst open and Linkara all but flew through it. “Harvey, what’s going on?” he shouted.
“I dunno for sure,” Harvey said slowly, “but I’m getting a really bad feeling about it.”
‘90s Kid let out a sob and slid down the wall, curling into a ball in the corner.
“Hey,” Linkara said much more gently, “are you okay?”
If ‘90s Kid heard him, he showed no sign of it. If anything, he shrank even smaller, his shoulders trembling as his arms tightened around his knees.
“Step back,” Linksano ordered from behind them. “I can’t scan him with both of you in the way, and crowding him like that is probably scaring him worse.”
“Whaddaya need to scan him for?” Harvey asked, but he backed away, keeping his hands where ‘90s Kid could see them. Of course, that was assuming he was seeing anything; Harvey was starting to suspect the eyes behind the shades were shut tight.
“Anomalous readings,” Linksano said vaguely. “If nothing else, I’d like to make sure he’s not having some sort of seizure.”
Linkara shuffled to the side but didn’t back away. “Hey, hey,” he murmured, “it’s us. It’s okay. What’s wrong?”
“ . . . Got inside me,” ‘90s Kid whispered.
Linkara froze. “Who did?” he asked. “You don’t mean Holokara, do you?”
“Him, too,” ‘90s Kid whimpered. Suddenly, his hands darted from his knees; he shoved Linkara squarely in the shoulder. “Get away from me!” he howled, whipping his head back and forth sharply.
“Oh, dear,” Linksano whispered at his detector.
“Get a hold of yourself!” Linkara shouted back. He tried to grab ‘90s Kid’s wrists, but the two of them twisted just enough that he missed, smacking ‘90s Kid on the side of the face instead. His cap and sunglasses flew off.
‘90s Kid grabbed at them in midair. “My armor!” he wailed. “Give me back my armor!”
“Armor?” Linkara asked, then froze as his eyes met ‘90s Kid’s. Suddenly, Linkara was on his feet, looming over ‘90s Kid with his gun in his hand.
“So Vyce was right, after all,” he muttered, low and cold.
Harvey’s shoulder slammed into Linkara’s side just as Linksano’s shout of “No! Stop!” rang through the room. Caught off guard, Linkara offered Harvey almost no resistance; Finevoice pinned him against the closet door with his weight alone. Harvey thought about knocking the gun away, but settled for making sure that wrist was immobilized. “What in the Hell’re you doin’, kid?” he barked. “You gonna put him down like a rabid dog?”
Linkara’s eyes were wild. “Didn’t you see?” he asked, trying to straighten up against the door.
“I don’t think -” Linksano started.
Harvey was having none of it; he kept his weight on Linkara’s gun arm. “I didn’t see anything that would justify shooting the idiot,” he growled.
“His eyes,” Linkara gasped. “They were the Entity’s eyes. Didn’t you see the static?”
Harvey let up, letting Linkara get his balance back, but he still kept his own bulk between Linkara and ‘90s Kid. “No,” he said cautiously, “I didn’t, but I was kinda distracted by the two of you damn near getting in a fistfight.” He glanced back; ‘90s Kid was slumped against the wall, his sunglasses and cap upside-down on the floor next to him. He looked like he’d passed out; his eyes were closed, at any rate.
“I did,” Linksano offered, “but it wasn’t a full static effect. Just a flicker. Possibly brought on by stress.”
“How could his eyes turning into a field of glitches and digital snow be ‘brought on by stress’?” Linkara demanded.
Linksano pointed at the LED readout on the gadget in his hands. “There’s a very faint energy signature of the same type as the Entity’s on him. But Linkara, that’s been there ever since the incident - this isn’t new.”
“What do you mean, it’s not new?” Linkara roared. “You didn’t think to tell me before?”
“It isn’t strong enough to carry any information,” Linksano insisted. “It’s exactly the sort of psychokinetic residue I’d expect on someone who had been through a long period of possession.”
Linkara paused, his hands shaking slightly. Carefully, he set the gun back in her holster. “But it died,” he said softly. “I saw it. It - erased itself, or whatever Elder Gods made of glitchy code do to die.”
“And the code itself is gone,” Linksano agreed. “But the hard drive it was running on, so to speak, hasn’t been reformatted, so some traces remain where it hasn’t been overwritten.”
Linkara shifted uncomfortably. “You mean ‘90s Kid’s brain? Linksano, you can’t possibly be suggesting what I think you are.”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Linksano insisted. “The metaphor is stretched a little thin, but surely you must have realized that ‘90s Kid would have carried forward some impression of the experience, some memories of hosting the Entity.”
“No, honestly, I hadn’t,” Linkara admitted. “I figured he wasn’t really there. I wasn’t 100% sure that it was him being possessed; the Entity could have replaced him with a duplicate, or a projection of his image. But even if it was him, it was - it was only the meat of him, right?” He shook his head. “That’s not quite what I meant.”
“To the best of my knowledge,” Linksano said carefully, “a possession victim will retain some experiences of the event, even if those experiences are merely of being completely displaced by the possessing entity. But I’m neither a priest nor a wizard, so I’m hardly an expert.”
Linkara’s eyes widened. “Wait, you mean he might remember me trying to shoot the Entity while it was still in him?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Linksano agreed.
Linkara looked up to the sensor on the ceiling. “Pollo, Nimue - did you get any of that?”
“The conversation has been recorded by this unit,” Nimue replied from the speaker.
“Do you think it’s possible that ‘90s Kid actually remembers what happened while he was possessed by the Entity?” he asked.
Pollo spoke first. “There is a 96% probability that he retains at least some vague impressions from the event,” he announced from the same speaker. “The extent of those impressions is unknown without further data.”
“This unit concurs,” Nimue said. “It is highly unlikely that he was effectively unconscious during the entire span of time from the moment of possession until the Entity ceased to exist. Given that fact, it is probable that he has at least fragmentary memories of some events during that time period.”
“Is the remnant of the Entity’s energy signature in him something we should worry about?” Linkara asked.
“As long as it remains at its current levels, it is the judgement of this unit that the residual energy signature is harmless unless deliberately activated,” Nimue replied. “Bear in mind that you, Mr. Finevoice, and Doctor Linksano all have a similar residual signature from your experiences with the King of Worms.”
Linkara blinked hard, twice. “I actually didn’t know that,” he admitted, then scowled in Linksano’s direction. “Why doesn’t anyone tell me these things?”
“I was distracted by performing an autopsy on an interdimensional horror at the time,” Linksano replied dryly.
Nimue continued, “Deliberate stimulation of the energy signature, either by activation of such memory fragments or by exposure to similar energies, is likely to cause undesirable psychological and physiological effects on ‘90s Kid himself, but unlikely to cause any serious external effects.”
“Are his current and immediately recent behavior attributable to such an activation?” Linksano inquired, staring at his detector as if he were pretty sure he already knew the answer.
“Affirmative,” Nimue answered.
Linkara blinked again. “What the Funk and Wagnall did Spoony say?” he murmured. Slowly, a look of horror spread across his face; he staggered against the closet’s doorframe. “And - my God, I never imagined that the Entity would have left him conscious enough to perceive anything. Does he think I tried to sacrifice him to kill the Entity?”
“You more or less did,” Pollo noted, and Harvey and Linksano nodded in agreement.
“I didn’t think he was there!” Linkara yelled, slumping against the closet door. “I thought he, or at least his mind and soul, had been disappeared with everything else, and at most it was just - just his body. His shell.” Slowly, he slid down the doorframe to the floor, almost face-to-face with ‘90s Kid.
Harvey shrugged. “Would you have done anything different if you’d known, kid?”
“I don’t know,” Linkara moaned. “But I’d like to think I’d have at least treated him more gently afterwards. I mean, that’s got to be pretty traumatic, even if he doesn’t remember me shooting at him.”
“It’s not as if this universe has an abundance of therapists specializing in post-possession trauma,” Linksano pointed out.
Harvey shot him a sharp look. “Does yours?” he asked.
“No,” Linksano said carefully, “but I’ve visited one that does. If I remembered how to get back there, I’d suggest we take him, but -” He shrugged, gloved palms up.
Linkara shook his head again; his shoulders sagged. “So how do we bring him out of it?” he murmured, less to the sensor than to the unconscious-looking body across from him.
---
He was in the trunk.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been kicked mostly out of his own body. All he could see was darkness punctuated with random bursts of static. Occasionally he could hear an echo of the Entity’s voice, or more accurately, the not-a-voice that was more like the space where a voice should have been, not the bogus imitation of his own that it was forcing out of his vocal cords. For the most part, though, there was silence, and now and again those random bursts of static.
The Entity was talking.
He could feel his jaw moving, his tongue sliding around, his chest rising and falling with the breath the Entity was using to form its words. It was mostly standing still, with the occasional gesture.
Here, the voice said from everywhere and nowhere, watch how your trainer treats you.
And for the first time in hours, maybe days, he could see! Not well - there was still a film of static between him and the world, the world he knew to be mostly empty now. But he could see he was in the living room, next to the entrance to the kitchen and the foyer into the hallway.
Linkara was pointing the magic gun right at him, finger on the trigger.
“No!” ‘90s Kid shouted into the static. “I’m still in here! Don’t hurt me, dude!”
How un-radical of him, the Entity mocked.
If he had any control over his own throat, he would have swallowed. He could tell the Entity was talking to Linkara, but whatever it said, it was short. Linkara, on the other hand, was getting angrier and angrier, almost ranting. ‘90s Kid wished, not for the first time, that he could read lips.
“If he shoots me,” ‘90s Kid asked the static, “it won’t hurt you at all, will it?”
Of course not, it replied. Outside of the words, a wave of some emotion made of equal parts amusement and disgust washed over him, like a puddle splashed by a passing bus.
‘90s Kid just barely managed to shake it off; the feeling wasn’t his, he knew that much by now. “Will it kill me?” he asked, trying not to whimper.
Possibly, it mused. More likely it will just do a certain amount of damage to your flesh. The same emotion washed around him, warm and muddy. It will certainly hurt. Shall I let you beg your trainer not to hurt you?
It was tempting, but ‘90s Kid realized that whatever the Entity had said to Linkara so far, it had said in his voice. “I don’t think it’ll help,” he muttered. He could feel a muscle in his cheek twitching.
He has called you an idiot several times, the Entity chuckled at him. He clearly values you even less than I do.
‘90s Kid was suddenly glad he didn’t have control over his eyes; they’d be stinging if he did. “Maybe he’s right,” he said dully. “I mean, I’m the one who let myself get possessed by a stupid Pokemon glitch.”
He felt his mouth moving again, but something about it felt different this time. His eyes closed, and he felt the Entity turn the fragment of its attention that it was paying to him away towards Linkara. His hands rose towards his head, then lowered again.
When his eyes opened again, he could still see, but just barely; the haze of static had become a hurricane. Despite it, the room was much brighter. The Entity must have taken off his shades.
“Uh oh,” ‘90s Kid muttered.
Now it was the Entity that was monologing; what it was saying was still unclear, but Linkara was not reacting well. As it spoke, suddenly ‘90s Kid’s body went from tilted left to tilted right without passing through the intervening position.
‘90s Kid tried to scream. Not because it hurt, although it certainly hadn’t felt comfortable; it was more like a static shock, except it was gravity instead of electricity. But that had been impossible; human bodies weren’t meant to move like that.
And it happened again, and again. ‘90s Kid was still screaming when Linkara finally fired; that did hurt, but less than he’d expected. To his relief, it didn’t actually seem to damage the shirt, much less him. He wasn’t sure whether the Entity noticed the pain or not; if it did, it didn’t react to it.
It took the gun without touching it, and ‘90s Kid’s view was interrupted by an impenetrable flurry of static as the Entity disappeared it. His body lurched. When he could see again, Linkara was gone and he was looking at the door to the study.
The Entity was laughing.
---
Harvey tipped his hat back and ran a hand down his face. The situation had not improved.
Pollo had teleported down from the ship, and Linksano and Pollo were having an argument about whether or not trying to mask the energy emissions from ‘90s Kid would help his current condition. Pollo was of the opinion that it wouldn’t; Linksano insisted that it couldn’t hurt, so why not try it? Linkara was still on the floor, his head in his hands. ‘90s Kid was also still propped up half-seated in the corner, eyes closed, limbs limp as a rag doll.
Sighing, Harvey leaned down and scooped ‘90s Kid up. The kid’s arms dangled as he covered the couple of steps to the bed; he set him down gently and started removing his shoes.
Linksano broke off from the argument. “Are you sure moving him is the best idea?” he asked. “It might cause disorientation when he wakes up.”
“And leaving him on the floor like that isn’t going to?” Harvey shot back. “If he remembers anything that happened after he flipped the chair, I’ll be a little surprised.”
“That’s a distinct possibility,” Linksano acknowledged.
Harvey turned back to Linkara. “Come on, get up, kiddo,” he ordered. “I don’t wanna have to pick you up, too.”
Linkara groaned and struggled to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall for support. “I don’t have the slightest idea what to do now,” he admitted. “Is he likely to come out of it on his own?”
“Eventually,” LInksano answered, “but I have no idea how long it will take, or whether leaving him in a post-possession fugue state is likely to damage him psychologically.”
“More than he’s already been hurt, you mean,” Linkara sighed. “I feel like such an ass. I had no idea.”
Harvey reached down and straightened ‘90s Kid’s shirt. “Is there anything about ghost possession in any of your wizard books?” he asked. “I mean, I know this is different, but it seems like it’d at least be a place to start.”
Linkara frowned. “I don’t remember it being in the basic grimoire,” he said slowly, “but I can check.”
Harvey spread his hands. “Any magician friends you can call up? Anything in the ship’s databanks?”
“Information: the ship’s databanks contain information only on spirit possession of inanimate objects, not sentient beings,” Nimue replied from the speaker.
“And Aplos never picks up,” Linkara grumbled. “I’d have to call, leave a message, and wait for him to get back to me. Let’s call that Plan B or C.” He shook his head. “I’ll go get the grimoire from the den and see if it has anything. Harvey, see if you can make him comfortable. Linksano, if you think you can set up an anti-Entity field, go ahead and try it; like you said, it can’t hurt, and it might at least tell us some of what’s going on.” He strode out, his coat flaring behind him.
---
The Entity spent twenty minutes utterly motionless in front of the door. ‘90s Kid could tell it was doing something, that the parts of it that transcended this dimension and could not be contained in the three-dimensional bottle of his flesh were active, but he could no more comprehend what it was they were doing than an ant could understand how to pull off a fatality in Mortal Kombat. In the meantime, his legs were starting to cramp up.
He wanted to be able to say, later, that he’d fought then, too, that he’d refused to give up, either for himself or for Linkara. It was sort of true. He’d spent the first five minutes trying to get his legs to move, to just turn around and walk away, to leave Linkara alone long enough to come up with a plan. But it hadn’t worked, any more than his trying to take his own body back from the Entity had worked any of the previous umpteen-dozen times he’d tried it - and he’d known it wouldn’t.
He’d been taken over, taken apart, laid bare for this alien intelligence to pick apart at its leisure, and now it was taking its time.
He’s reviewing a comic in there, it informed him.
“That’s what he does,” ‘90s Kid replied with as much defiance as he could muster. “He did it before facing down Vyce, too.”
I remember, the Entity said. So predictable. He didn’t care what happened to you then, either.
“No particular reason for him to,” ‘90s Kid sighed. “I’m an idiot, remember?”
That didn’t seem to be what it was expecting him to say. It turned its attention towards what was happening outside of him for a moment, then returned. We seem to have some time to kill. Shall I play that little game with your nervous system again?
He recoiled, instinctively, despite knowing that couldn’t be a new experience for it anymore. It had - explored - him thoroughly, including in ways he would never have thought to on his own. Moreover, it had already absorbed about seven billion people; there really couldn’t be anything about human physical experience, sexual or otherwise, it didn’t already know now.
True, it responded to the thought. But some experiences are worth having as many times as possible, and this will all be over very, very soon. His hands reached for his fly, unbidden, and he cringed in his own skull.
His body shifted, turning back towards the door. Ah, he stirs, the Entity said. And now you get to watch as I defeat everything he throws at me.
Except, that wasn’t what seemed to happen. Instead of shooting it with some badass gun he’d come up with while reviewing his last comic, Linkara came out looking sad and beaten down, although not as scared as ‘90s Kid had expected. Then he started arguing with the Entity, going from sad and almost pleading to shouting again. Whatever he said, it seemed to upset the elder thing so much that its hold on reality itself started glitching; his body was in two places at once, even three, in different positions, with the shades, without them.
He was being split in pieces. It didn’t just shock him anymore, it hurt, both physically and - and - psychically? Spiritually? He wasn’t sure he had a word for that part, but it was if his essence was being sliced apart.
It stopped for a moment when an enormous rush of the Entity’s energy flooded through him, a wave flung out at Linkara that threw him into the back of the sofa. This time he heard what the Entity forced from his mouth in his head as well: SILENCE!
What in the world had Linkara said that could possibly anger an outer god?
Then it began glitching again; static and snow threatened to drown him as his body seemed to fragment into facets around him. He tried to throw the pain back at it, as much to let it know it was in danger of destroying its host as to try to distract it from killing Linkara. The static got worse; he could see less and less, and could still hear nothing except the roar of random pixels and fragments of equations.
Past the hail of static, he saw Linkara stand, unsteady on his feet, clutching his ribs. Quietly, as if there were some way the Entity wouldn’t hear him, ‘90s Kid chanted, “Go, dude, go! Run, while it’s distracted!”
But he didn’t. ‘90s Kid had no idea what the first question Linkara asked was, or the second, longer one, but he heard the responses: Correct. Yes.
‘90s Kid pushed against the static, trying to find his ears, to find his way from the trunk at least to the backseat. What was going on?
The elder god no longer even noticed him. Declare it! it commanded, but not at him.
His vision cleared for a moment, as Linkara asked a third question. For a moment the Entity was still; then it smiled with his mouth, but not his eyes.
I will find out, it said, and tore ‘90s Kid’s chest open with his bare hands.
He never did figure out later whether he technically died with it, consumed by its static. It certainly felt like it. There was the sensation of being ripped into tatters as his nerves disintegrated, followed by - finally! - a sort of cold numbness, and he couldn’t feel anything anymore, not his body, not his mind.
In the end, it repaired his body in the final glitch, so it didn’t matter. At least, that was what he told himself when he woke up, clinging to the only comforts he could think of.
---
Spoony looked up from his chair, locked between the icy glares of the clown and the ninja. “Is he okay?” he offered, as Linkara strode across the den to one of the crowded bookshelves.
“No,” Linkara said flatly. “He’s not okay at all.” He added his own piercing blue stare to the others’ for an instant, then turned back to the bookshelf and plucked a thick journal from its space.
Squirming, Spoony continued, “Would it help if I apologized?”
“Later, probably,” Linkara answered, flipping through the book. His eyes darted across the pages. “Right now, I’m not sure if he can hear anything.”
Spoony cringed. “He didn’t hurt himself, did he?” he asked. Boffo and the Ninja-Style Dancer both straightened in their chairs and turned towards Linkara, eyes widening.
“Not exactly,” Linkara sighed. “He’s having some kind of flashback. We think it’s to when he was possessed by the Entity.”
Spoony’s face twisted in confusion. “Wait,” he protested, “what? How the fuck could he have gotten from what I said to that?”
The Ninja-Style Dancer held up a sign. Someone else is in your body, forcing you to do what you do not want. Sound familiar?
“In more ways than one,” Spoony tried to argue, then lapsed into silence. “I guess we all deal with it differently,” he murmured, more to himself than to the ninja or to Linkara.
Linkara gave him a concerned look. “Actually, that’s an excellent point,” he said. “I wasn’t around for most of the time when you were being jerked around by - was that really Ma-Ti, or was that the Plot Hole?”
“At the time, they were effectively the same thing,” Spoony answered. He shivered. “You know, I’ve spent an awfully long time trying not to remember that, and now I’m not sure I can.”
Boffo honked twice, and the Nnja-Style Dancer nodded. Before Spoony could complain, the ninja flipped his sign up; it read, Perhaps you and ‘90s Kid should discuss your relative experiences.
“Possession group therapy?” Spoony snorted. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
“Actually, it’s not a bad idea,” Linkara said, trailing off at the end of the statement. His eyes unfocused for a moment, then refocused on the grimoire. “But I think we’re still going to have to calm him down first.”
Spoony continued to stare into the middle distance. “It’s worse once you realize it’s happening,” he murmured to no one in particular. “At first, it’s not that different from any other intrusive thoughts.”
Boffo grimaced and honked worriedly.
“No kidding,” Linkara grunted. “I’m beginning to think, between the Dolorem, the Entity, the Plot Hole, and the King of Worms, that I should just sign up for some abnormal psychology courses at the community college or something.”
Technically, most of that would be abnormal parapsychology, wrote the Ninja- Style Dancer.
“It would be tacky of me to point out that brings us full circle back to Ghostbusters, wouldn’t it?” Spoony asked. Everyone else nodded, and he sank back in his chair.
Linkara stopped turning pages and frowned. “That’s not much to go on,” he sighed. “Although it’s technically better than nothing.”
“What is?” Spoony asked, beating the other two.
“If we’re sure the possession is over, and Linksano is positive it is, then basically we have to make sure ‘90s Kid feels safe being in his own body,” Linkara said, setting his grimoire back in its place on the shelf. “But it doesn’t really say how to do that.” He glanced at the crew on the couch. “Any ideas?”
---
He had been there, floating or falling or whatever was going on, for what felt like ages before he realized where he was. He was in the trunk again, but this time, no one was driving.
It was quiet here. Peaceful. No one yelling, no one calling him an idiot, no killer robots trying to shoot his face off. No one reminding him of being forced to say and do things he would never do. No one crawling into his head and living underneath his skin. Nothing but extreme peace and quiet. In a way, it was nice.
Something tickled at the edge of his consciousness. He could still feel, of course, just like - like before.
The thought of before made him want to curl up in a ball in this place of darkness and silence in the back of his mind and never, ever come out again. He tried to shove the sensation away, even though he knew it wouldn’t work.
It worked. It stopped.
That was new.
For a moment, he was flooded with relief, which confused him. Why was that his first reaction? And what had been happening? He tried to replay the sensation, to remember what it was.
Someone had been touching his arm. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, but there had been light pressure on his arm, and then it had stopped. He hadn’t managed to cut out the tactile sensation, the way he was tucked away from sight and sound and smell here; he had reacted to it, and it had stopped.
Well, that was cool.
Very carefully, ready to pull back in if he needed to, he let himself pay attention to what he was feeling. He was lying down, and it felt like it was on something soft, either the couch or a bed. There wasn’t anything on top of him, no blankets or anything, and his feet were bare and cold - someone had taken off his shoes. Probably they were worried they’d get dirt on the bed/couch/whatever.
At least someone had cared enough about him to pick him up off the floor. ‘90s Kid wasn’t even sure which bedroom he’d run into, the one Harvey used when he was home, or the one he shared with Linksano when he wasn’t spending the night on the ship.
He could find out where his body was by touching whatever he was lying on; he was positive he could tell the difference between the couch and a bed, and pretty sure he could feel whether he was on his own radical X-Men comforter or the gnarly chenille one Harvey used. But that would require crawling from the trunk into the backseat, and he wasn’t ready to be even that present in his body yet.
Something warm touched him on the other arm. A hand. Again, his essence flinched away and he shoved at it with his mind, and again, it went away.
His body hadn’t moved, he was positive. How had they known he didn’t want that?
---
Harvey fidgeted with an unlit cigarette. He knew better than to light it indoors, but he needed something to do with his hands, and it was too crowded in here to do much else. “Anything?” he shot at the mad scientist.
“Only those two spikes,” Linksano replied. The gadget in his hands consisted of a metal dome covered with hastily soldered wires on the end of what might have once been half of a fishing pole; he was dangling it a few inches over ‘90s Kid’s head. “We’re definitely getting some reaction with physical contact, but it appears to be uniformly negative. Nothing else is indicating any significant change in brainwave activity, including smelling salts, which is highly peculiar.”
“So what does that mean, exactly?” Harvey asked, rolling the paper cylinder between his fingers. “And did you make that out of the kitchen colander?”
“No,” Linksano insisted, shifting his grip on the detector. “I bought a brand new one at the dollar store. The one in the kitchen is plastic; it wouldn’t react to small changes in electrical conductance.”
“It looks exactly like the one those two crazy chick scientists used on me,” Spoony noted. “Is that some sort of mad-science standard issue?”
“It’s the cheapest way to get a dome of thin sheet stainless steel at a relatively well standardized thickness,” Linksano agreed. “Metallurgy is rarely our strong suit.”
“Just try not to bang it into him,” Linkara said, peering through an acrylic monocle in a gold-tinted plastic frame. “The last thing we need is to hurt him accidentally while we’re trying to bring him around.”
“I’ll reel it back in if it looks like he’s about to move,” Linksano agreed. “Anything interesting happening on the magic side?”
“I’m not sure this thing is working,” Linkara admitted. “It’s supposed to let me see his aura, but except for maybe some dark blue around his head, I’m not getting anything.”
“Well,” Linksano offered, “can you see mine? Or Finevoice’s?”
Linkara winced and tapped himself on the forehead. “Sorry, didn’t even think of that,” he muttered; he straightened up and glanced around. “Okay, yeah, it’s not as clear as I’d like, but I can see there’s an energy field around both of you, and - whoa, Spoony, remind me to do some sort of banishing spell on you later; you’ve got all sorts of extra gross energy stuff stuck to you.”
“Fuckin’ figures,” Spoony groaned. “That might explain some of the random shit I’ve been blaming Insano for, actually.”
“Perhaps we should institute a supernatural hygiene regimen for everyone,” Pollo suggested. “Considering everything that has occurred.”
“Make a note of that,” Linkara agreed. “And remind me to take a look around the living room with this thing later; who knows what psychic junk is laying around in there we haven’t even thought about?” He shook his head and returned his gaze to the catatonic figure on the bed. “Okay, so touching him hasn’t done anything but produce negative energy spikes, and nothing else has done anything at all. What can we do that might make him feel safer?”
“Does he have, I dunno, a security blanket or anything like that?” Spoony suggested.
“We already put his sunglasses back on,” Harvey pointed out. “I think that’s about as close as it gets.”
“How about the afghan?” Pollo suggested. “He usually enjoys curling up under that on chilly evenings when he watches television.”
“Maybe,” Linkara agreed. “Harvey, can you go get that from the linen closet? Spoony, move over and let him out.”
Harvey and Spoony shuffled around each other, trying not to jostle the mage or the mad scientist. Then Harvey had to do the same little dance with Boffo, who was hanging around just outside the door in the hallway. He was turning towards the kitchen when the Ninja-Style Dancer thrust the neatly-folded throw blanket into his hands; apparently there’d been quite a bit of listening at the door going on.
“Thanks,” Harvey said, and wheeled back into the overcrowded bedroom on his heel. “Hey, here you go,” he muttered at Linkara’s ear.
“Can you do it?” Linkara asked sheepishly. “If I put this down I’m worried that I’ll have to go through the whole incantation again.”
Spoony threw his hands up and swapped places with Harvey again. Harvey nodded his thanks, then carefully unfolded the afghan and draped it around ‘90s Kid, tucking it up under his chin. Somehow, ‘90s Kid looked smaller than usual, pale against the once-riotous and now slightly faded colors of the comforter beneath him.
“Hey, kiddo,” Harvey whispered, “Dunno if this helps, but we’re all rootin’ for you out here.”
---
Something had just changed. His feet weren’t quite so cold. ‘90s Kid could feel something soft but heavily textured brushing against his chin.
A blanket. Someone had just put a blanket over him.
He couldn’t have told you why that made him feel safer, but it did. Maybe it was the same reason that, as a really little kid, rolling up completely in his sheets kept the monsters in the closet away.
Why were the monsters always in the closet? How long had the Entity been watching before Vyce arrived, and why had he picked him, of all people?
“Because I’m an un-radical, non-extreme idiot,” he mumbled at himself.
And yet, here he was on a bed, with a blanket gently warming him again. It would have been just as easy for them to leave him on the floor.
Someone was taking care of the body he didn’t want to be in anymore.
---
Linkara and Linksano exchanged a glance before both returning to their respective detectors.
“Anything?” Pollo prompted.
“Yes,” Linksano hedged, “but it’s hard to tell exactly what. A sort of general lowering of the negative energy signature by a couple of points. Might be significant, might not.”
“And I got a flicker of something in the soul-spectrum,” Linkara agreed, “but it’s pretty faint.”
“We can’t exactly pile more blankies on him,” Harvey grumbled.
“Any other sensory stimuli we can try?” Linksano asked. “If that bit of tactile input made it through, even a little bit, maybe we can try smell or sound again.”
“Whaddaya want me to get this time?” Harvey asked, already standing to head for the door.
“I’ll get it,” Spoony offered. “No point in our stepping all over each other’s feet for a third time. What have we got?”
“Not a lot,” Linkara said. “I mean, I don’t know what smells would mean something to him.”
“We have at least one microwave pizza in the freezer,” Pollo suggested. “It’s been long enough he might be getting hungry again.”
Linksano shrugged. “Best I could come up with, too.”
“I’ll heat it up,” Spoony said, slipping between Boffo and the Ninja-Style Dancer on his way out of the door.
“Bring a soda, too,” Pollo called after him. “That’s a fairly potent scent in its own right.”
After five minutes that seemed to stretch for an hour, Spoony returned with a gooey mess of cheese and grease on a plate and a bubbling cup of fizz. They were passed hand to hand across the room until Harvey set them on the bedside dresser and fanned the rising steam towards ‘90s Kid’s face.
---
Something warm had passed near him. What was that? Was it dangerous? The thought simultaneously made ‘90s Kid want to pull farther into the cocoon of his own mind and to sneak out just enough to make sure no one else was in danger.
He wrestled with two fears, one in each hand, like angry snakes. If he was in here, nothing could hurt him, no matter what happened to his body. On the other hand, if something was on fire, it could still kill him, even if he might not notice it until much later.
Carefully, cautiously, he felt his way from the trunk to the backseat. Everything still felt okay - blanket over him, cushion under him, nothing too warm.
It was probably safe. But - what if it wasn’t?
It had been his fault, it had been all his fault, if he’d known what was going on he could have told Linkara and maybe Linkara couldn’t have stopped it but maybe he could have found a wizard or a scientist who knew more and they could have found a way to catch the Entity before it took him completely and oh, bogus, this was where he’d left all those feelings and now he was half-drowning in them.
Underneath the rushing torrent of self-recrimination, though, was the thought - if something bad was happening and he didn’t do something about it, didn’t tell someone, it would be all his fault again.
Swimming against a tide of never-shed tears, he pushed forward until he reached the next sense. Could he smell smoke?
No. That was definitely not smoke. It was pizza. Grotesque microwave pizza, but still pizza. And that sparked a new tactile sensation as his stomach rumbled.
How long had he been tucked inside himself? Now that he’d noticed, he was ravenous, and parched, too. The pizza smelled totally grody and radically delicious all at the same time.
There were a lot of unprocessed feelings back here. He could half-see them, sitting in piles all over, or really waves, since they flowed in currents and could drown him. Back in the trunk was safe, but this part of himself really wasn’t. He needed to go back or forward, before the next tidal wave hit him.
His stomach growled again.
They’d put a blanket on him. Maybe - maybe they weren’t mad.
He stretched out his mental image of his hands and reached towards the passenger seat.
---
“Definite activity now!” Linksano squeaked. “I think we’re reaching him!”
“Good activity or bad activity?” Spoony and Harvey chorused. Harvey raised an eyebrow at Spoony, who shrugged back.
“Er, hard to tell, honestly,” Linksano admitted. “Spikes in both positive and negative psionic energy signatures, mostly in the theta range but edging up into the alpha and beta ranges. But he’s definitely reacting to something, and it appears to be the outside stimuli.”
“And it’s not all negative, like it was previously,” Pollo added, peering over the scientist’s elbow at the LED display.
“C’mon, kiddo,” Harvey urged, leaning over the bed. “Nice cold soda just waiting here for you. Just wake up. It’ll be okay, I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” Spoony said sharply. “Have you not noticed the weird shit that happens to us?”
The Ninja-Style Dancer stuck a sign into the room that read, Or even just around here.
Harvey looked like he wanted to deck Spoony for the remark, but instead he just huffed and growled, “Sure, but I’m tryin’ to encourage him here.”
Linkara nodded. “And we appreciate it, Harvey,” he assured him, “but at the moment, I think ‘90s Kid might need our honesty more than he needs encouragement.”
“How d’ya figure?” Harvey asked, his eyebrows raised in genuine puzzlement.
It was Spoony who answered. “When something bigger and uglier and way, way stronger than you has been messing with your head, you stop being able to trust your own senses,” he said, looking away from Harvey. “It’s - even if they’re not feeding you bullshit, it’s like your brain doesn’t want to touch that part of reality, at least for a while. And you have to be able to trust something, or someone, to reconnect, because it takes time to trust yourself again.” He swallowed. “I had help. By the time reality re-stabilized, the Critic was in the Plot Hole instead of Ma-Ti, and he kind of settled me back in my body.” He gestured at ‘90s Kid’s limp form on the bed. “He had to do it on his own. The last thing he needs is to have to second-guess who he can trust.” Turning away, Spoony started rummaging through the mound of action figures and dogeared comics on top of the bureau; he looked embarrassed.
“Thanks for sharing that,” Linkara said quietly. “I had no idea.”
Spoony laughed, a ragged chuckle shaking his chest. “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it,” he replied. “It’s actually easier to remember how I was with the Black Lantern ring than when the Plot Hole was riding me. Was I actually dead for a while then, too? I never got that straight.”
Linkara shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know,” he answered, “I was up on the bridge then. There was a lot going on.”
Linksano’s lower lip shifted. “Technically, since the Entity committed suicide while it was in ‘90s Kid’s body, he may well be in the same position there, too,” he observed.
“Oh, God.” Linkara cringed. “I put him through nine kinds of Hell, didn’t I? I’m the worst boss ever.”
“Can we cut it with the downer talk around the kid?” Harvey barked. “We’re trying to convince him it’s safe for him to wake up, right? So let’s act like it!”
Spoony nodded, still flipping through comics that were losing their covers and starting to turn yellow at the edges. “He’s got a point,” he admitted. “As long as we’re not hiding anything, we don’t have to talk about everything right away. Do we have any portable speakers?”
“Huh?” Linkara’s eyebrows jumped at the sudden subject change. “Um, there’s a pair attached to the computer in the den. Why?”
Spoony held up a CD jewelbox. “I figured some tunes might make him comfortable, or at least remind him of what he’s missing in there.”
“Actually,” Pollo reminded everyone, “I have an internal CD-DVD drive and a reasonably high-fidelity speaker, if we don’t mind it being in mono.”
“Didn’t want to volunteer you,” Linkara said.
“I appreciate that,” Pollo said, “but I really don’t mind in this case.” He turned one side towards Spoony as he flipped open the jewelcase.
---
Before him was the waking world and an ocean of denial. Behind him was a heaving swamp of feelings he really didn’t want to deal with, now or ever. This was not a comfortable place to be, but at least it wasn’t overwhelming.
‘90s Kid turned his attention outward, bit by bit. First, the tactile sensation that had never really left, because it just never did: he was pretty sure he was on a bed, since that didn’t feel like the texture of the couch pressing into the backs of his hands. The room was just a trifle warm. And the blanket over him was the fuzzy, funky, slightly pilled-up afghan that Linkara sometimes left on the couch in winter. Someone had had to get that out of storage.
Next, smell: Greasy microwave pizza, the kind they kept on hand for long days of editing or improving the arsenal. Carbon dioxide, the kind that came from fizz, and a whiff of something citrusy, so probably a soda, too. Had he been in the trunk so long someone had brought whoever was watching him a meal? And a sort of general funkiness, as if someone were sweating.
Finally, sound: Voices. Not just two, either; a conversation was passing by over his head, with at least three participants, maybe more.
Was the whole team out there? Did they think he was dangerous and needed all of them to guard him? The thought made him shrink, made him want to flee back to the trunk and stay there forever.
No, wait. Nothing around his wrists, legs, or ankles. If they thought he was dangerous enough to need more than one guard, they’d have tied him up or handcuffed him.
So why? Why were there so many people in the room with him? Had he hurt himself when he flipped out? He didn’t feel like he was in pain, except for the hand he’d punched the wall with before Harvey had shown up, which could probably use an ice pack.
The conversation paused, almost as if they’d heard him thinking the question. There was some shuffling, followed by the click of something plastic against something metal.
Then the sound of a single guitar playing a very, very familiar riff. By the time Dave Grohl’s sticks came down on the snare like thunder, ‘90s Kid understood.
They were playing his intro music.
They wanted him to show up, for once.
He might be a screwed-up idiot, but who could pass up that invitation? He dove for his body’s driver’s seat and felt his lungs inflate.
“DUUUUUUUUUUDES!”
And he was awake, and his eyes were open, and they were cheering.
---
The first order of business was getting the pizza and soda into ‘90s Kid. The second was getting most everyone else out of the room, which took both Linksano and Pollo shooing the others out and then mutually shooing each other into the hallway.
Before he left, Spoony crouched down next to the bed. “Look, kid,” he murmured, “I - I’m sorry, okay? I took that too far.”
“Pshaw, it’s okay, man,” ’90 Kid assured him. “I way overreacted.”
Spoony shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” he said, “and even if you did, I was over the line. I just wanted to let you know - if you ever need to talk about having crazy, way-overpowered villains living in your head, you know, I’ve been there, too.”
‘90s Kid looked startled. “You have?” he asked. “Oh, right.” His head dropped slightly. “Actually, yeah,” he whispered, “I might want to talk to you about that. But later, without everyone around. Did it ever - I mean - did it do -” He swallowed hard. “Was it curious about having a body, or since it was part Ma-Ti, was that new for it?”
Spoony’s eyes widened. “Um, if you’re talking about what I think you are, it raided my memories, but it didn’t make me - do anything. Did-?”
“Yeah, kinda.” ‘90s Kid fidgeted. “Not, like, to anyone else, but -”
“Oh, shit.” Spoony’s hand closed around ‘90s Kid’s wrist and gave him a squeeze. “No wonder you blew up. No, yeah, if you need to talk about that, I am totally here for you, no judgement.”
‘90s Kid wasn’t sure why that was such a relief, but it was. “Yeah, please, later, man.”
“I’ll mark my calendar for as soon as you’re up for it,” Spoony promised, then let the little blue robot lead him to the door.
Finally, Linkara was the only one left; he sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the bed and looked up at ‘90s Kid. “I heard Spoony apologizing,” he said. “I guess I’m next.”
“Dude, what for?” ‘90s Kid’s head spun slightly at the thought.
“Where do I even begin?” Linkara asked, sounding almost as bewildered. “For starters, I shot at you and then let an interdimensional horror tear you open in front of me. Probably more importantly, I didn’t notice that you’d been taken over until it was too late. I never even tried to rescue you, because I didn’t know you needed saving.”
“Dude, you couldn’t have known!” ‘90s Kid protested. “Like, I didn’t even know what was going on until it was too late to stop it.”
The look that crawled across Linkara’s face was two parts sympathy and one part utter revulsion. “It didn’t just jump into you all at once? It happened over time?”
“Yeah,” ‘90s Kid said, and then his voice broke. “Dude, I’m sorry,” he creaked, “I should have - I could have - once I figured out what was going on I tried to fight it, I tried, but it wasn’t soon enough -” Wetness leaked from his eyes and trickled past the edges of the shades, and then he was sobbing incoherently.
“Not your fault,” Linkara whispered; somehow he was instantly on his feet, then kneeling on the edge of the bed, scooping ‘90s Kid up into a hug. ‘90s Kid wrapped his arms around him and let himself cry, huge, heaving, ugly sobs with hot tears and snot. Linkara held on, murmuring over and over, “It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault.”
When his eyes were dry and gritty instead of wet, ‘90s Kid wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed, “I don’t see anyone else’s fault it could be.”
“The Entity,” Linkara said, loosening his grip but not letting go. “The Entity decided it was going to violate the integrity of your body and soul, and there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it. I don’t think there was anything I could have done to stop it, either, but I wish to Hell that I had known, that I had tried.”
‘90s Kid thought about that for a moment. “Hey, Linkara?” he asked. “Can - can I ask you to do something?”
“Of course,” Linkara said, and for a moment ‘90s Kid thought he might have seen the beginnings of tears behind Linkara’s glasses.
“Can you let go of me?” ‘90s Kid said, his voice trembling.
Linkara let go and jumped back. “I’m sorry!” he yelped. “Was I holding on too hard, or -”
“Nah, nothing bogus like that,” ‘90s Kid assured him. “I just - I need to make sure - can you just, like, touch my hand?”
With a quizzical look, Linkara took ‘90s Kid’s hand as if he were going to shake it.
“And - can you let go?” ‘90s Kid asked.
Linkara released his grip, and realization dawned across his eyes.
“Okay, I think I need another hug,” ‘90s Kid said.
Linkara closed the gap and wrapped his arms around him again, his duster almost swallowing him.
“Sorry,” ‘90s Kid gulped, and if he’d had any tears left his eyes would have started leaking again. “I just - I needed - I don’t know.”
“You needed someone to hear what you wanted to happen to your body and respect it,” Linkara explained.
‘90s Kid nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Exactly. Radical, dude.”
“Radical indeed,” Linkara agreed. “How are you doing? Do we need to get you more pizza, or something else to eat?”
“Nah,” ‘90s Kid replied, “but I could use a glass of ice water. Do you - I need to talk to Spoony-dude about some stuff; do you want to listen in on that?”
“If you want me to,” Linkara said, “I’d be honored to know you still trust me that much.”
‘90s Kid nodded. “The Entity wanted me to think you were trying to kill me,” he said, tugging the blanket a little tighter around him, “but you were just trying to save what was left of reality. And, you know, you did. So it worked out awesome, even if it was pretty gnarly for a while.”
“I’m not sure I deserve that,” Linkara sighed. “But thanks.” He rose to his feet and discreetly brushed at the damp spot on his vest.
“So now what happens?” ‘90s Kid asked. “Other than the ice water.”
“I think the term that was used earlier was ‘post-possession group therapy’,” Linkara answered. “Unless you’re not ready to talk to Spoony about it yet.”
‘90s Kid glanced down at his hands. He was tired of thinking of his body as a vehicle; he wanted it to be fully part of him again. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, and tried to sound more confident about it than he was.
“Then I’ll go get him.” Linkara strode to the door, then turned around to face ‘90s Kid again. “I didn’t really say it the last time,” he said, “so let me say it now: Welcome back, and I’m glad you’re home.”
Something inside ‘90s Kid must have melted, because suddenly there were tears again. “Thanks, dude,” he murmured, and he knew that whatever happened next, it was going to be all right.