The Earthborn Emissary

Chapter Three: The Spectral Threat

I felt even more like crap the next day. My mouth was dry, my joints continued to be sore, I had a headache like nobody’s business, and as I dragged myself off of the bus I started to get this weird pain in my abdomen, right below my ribcage. The first chunk of the day went fairly well, all things considered. I was able to pay attention to at least half of what was going on, and even managed to turn in one of the three homework assignments on time!

We had a short break between classes, giving me just enough time to find Miri and Quinn and have a quick conversation. They were already talking, and when I showed up they gave me a look like I was covered in blood.

“Oh, there’s Alex. See, I told you he’d be fine,” Quinn said. He waved me over.

“Ian’s been looking for you,” Miri said. “He says you… he’s been going around telling people that you poisoned his brother.”

“Vic is Ian’s brother?!” I asked.

“You poisoned someone?!” asked Quinn.

“I didn’t poison anyone! At least, not on purpose…”

Quinn crossed his arms. “And how, exactly, does one poison somebody on accident? I mean, I’ve done it, but I’m fairly certain you don’t mix drugs for Victor Underwood.”

Miri looked at me with her head low and her arms wrapped around her stomach. I looked into her eyes for a second, and completely forgot what was going on. 

“So, I got into a fight yesterday,” I said. “Ian had Vic grab me from behind while he beat the crap out of me.”

“Then I showed up and scared them off,” said Miri. “Vic collapsed right after that, but if you used anything on him I wouldn’t know.”

“Ian’s been going around saying that it was… cobra venom?” Quinn said. “He’s saying that you poisoned his brother with cobra venom, and throwing around words like ‘cardiotoxin’ and ‘cytotoxin’ and ‘neurotoxin’. Apparently Vic is still in the hospital, because whatever is in him doesn’t have an antitoxin.”

I had poisoned Ian Underwood’s brother. I had poisoned Ian Underwood’s brother because my saliva suddenly turned into venom for no reason. I was probably going to go to jail for murder, or at least attempted murder. Worse, something was happening to me that was causing my saliva to turn into venom for no reason. There was definitely no disease or condition that could make your saliva into venom, because I would have heard about something that weird, right?

I put my index finger up to my mouth and licked it. Clear saliva, not like the grey stuff I’d seen the day before. “I bit Vic and that poisoned him,” I explained. “Because somehow I started salivating something gray and probably toxic during the fight.”

Miri and Quinn were totally quiet. One or two people around may have heard me as well, because they went quiet too.

Quinn had a sudden look of realization. “You know, if you wanted to try drugs, you should have told me first. It’s much safer to experiment with someone else around to act as a spotter.”

“I’m not on anything,” I said.

Quinn shrank back down, covering his face with his hands. “And that’s what I was afraid of.”

“How did you start… salivating poison?” asked Miri.

“Oh yeah, it’s a funny story. So I went to this online class that taught me how to— I have no idea why this is happening, do you think I’d be freaking out this much if I did?!”

“Sorry,” said Miri.

“It’s okay, darling,” I said on reflex.

Miri pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ve been really sick recently. Do you think this has something to do with it? I could start looking for conditions with ‘poisonous saliva’ as a symptom.”

“Of course, of course,” Quinn said, his head down. “I’m sure whatever new disease this is is allowed to be on the internet. It probably escaped from some toxic waste dump your mom was working at.”

I thought about the conversation between my parents that I’d overheard the night before. “I think you might be right, at least somewhat. I overheard my parents talking about the thing that’s making me sick, and I think they knew it was going to happen. It was like they’ve been expecting it.”

“Your moms have been using you as a genetic experiment, Alex!” said Quinn.

“Oh my god, that’s what it is. They’re using me to grow some kind of bioweapon or, like, a genetic retrovirus or something.”

“Would both of you calm down,” Miri hissed. She was right, of course. My wonderful, amazing, beautiful, genius girlfriend was always right. I quickly glanced around; there was a suspiciously large bubble of cleared-out space around us. 

I took a breath. “Sorry. I’m not having a good week.”

We both looked over to Quinn. “I’m not going to apologize for simply playing Devil’s Advocate,” he said. “I’m a free thinker, not to be constrained by your old-fashioned notions of civility. Also I’m very sorry.”

“Okay, right,” said Miri, folding her arms. “Now what exactly did your parents say that makes you think they knew about this?”

I tried remembering everything as best as I could. Unfortunately, I have a bad memory. “I think they mentioned a manual… there was definitely a manual. And they said something about the manual being wrong a bunch, but that the symptoms line up with what the manual says about ‘it’.”

“What is ‘it’, exactly?” Miri asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I only caught the end of the conversation.”

Suddenly, Quinn’s eyes went wide. In a fraction of a second, he turned and ran, a full sprint away from both of us. After another fraction of a second of confusion, I turned around to see Ian Underwood approaching, with a school cop standing right by his side. 

The school cop’s stated purpose was to prevent school shootings; but for the most part, what he did was chase down weed dealers whose skin color was darker than “cream”. His name was Officer Cover, and he was the type of guy who sways from side to side as he walks, with his hand near his hip holster. If he had any hair that wasn’t buzzed off, you couldn’t see it under the blue cap. He also had the face of a professional wrestler.

“Alex, Alex Sierra, isn’t it?” asked Officer Cover.

I nodded, nearly frozen in place.

“Come with me, if you please? I’d like to have a talk with you.” 

Knowing that that’s the absolute worst thing a cop can say to you, I looked to Miri for support. She was, if anything, more stunned than I was. She tilted her head in Officer Cover’s direction. It took me a second to get my feet moving, and a second longer to convince them to go towards the scary man with the gun who’d apparently been listening to the fascist asshole.

Officer Cover took Ian and I to a secluded spot in the corner of the campus, where we couldn’t be heard. It was near where the fight had happened, actually.

“Now, this young man,” Cover gestured to Ian, “says you used some sort of… poisoned needle on his brother as retaliation for a fight that happened two days ago.”

I stood up straighter, lowering my voice as much as I could. I wanted Ian to know I wasn’t going to back down. “He’s lying. I mean, where would I even get a poisoned needle? They don’t sell that stuff at the store, you know.”

Officer Cover looked at me, then back at Ian. He frowned slightly, which in cop-speak meant he was pissed. “Why don’t you give your side of the story, then?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him, then launched into a mostly truthful recounting of Wednesday morning. I left out the part about the grey slime in my mouth, but included the part about Miri coming in to rescue me. If she ended up getting involved, that was revenge for not backing me up earlier.

Officer Cover nodded. “Well, that certainly is different from the story Mr. Underwood told me. You say that Vic just collapsed after this fight?”

“That’s bullshit!” Ian said. “My brother wouldn’t just collapse for no reason! This lying piece of shit poisoned him, somehow.”

Ian and Officer Cover started arguing about it. I was listening, but it’s not worth it to even recount the things they were saying past one another. I took a moment to scan the area. People were milling around snacking and talking and doing other things, though not anywhere near us. My eyes started drifting around the corner of the school; I’d been around here a couple of times, hiding in the empty corners between the fence and the back of the main buildings, where all the piping and radiators were…

Something moved. I couldn’t see what moved, but there was definitely movement happening in the shadows, and a slight shimmer in the air. I jumped, swearing loudly. Ian and Officer Cover both stopped mid argument to look at me.

“I saw something over there,” I said, pointing to the corner. “Something’s moving and it didn’t look like a student here.”

Officer Cover followed the line of my arm, moving his hand to hover over the holster of his pistol. “I’m sorry Mr. Sierra, I don’t—“

There was a soft crunching sound, like someone stepping on a pile of dry pine needles. It was only barely loud enough to be heard, but apparently the cop had.

“I’m going to go investigate,” he said. “You stay right here.”

“Oh come on!” Ian said. “Are you seriously going to believe the guy who already lied to you? He’s probably got one of his dumbass friends over there trying to distract you so he can make a break for it.”

“Mr. Underwood,” said Cover, “would you mind restraining this young man? As an officer of the law I don’t like to leave any disturbance un-investigated. You seem fit enough to make sure he doesn’t run, yes?”

Instantly, like he’d been waiting for permission the entire time, Ian grabbed me and shoved my arm behind my back in a way that tried and failed to be an armlock. I’d seen Miri giving someone an armlock, and this wasn’t it.

“Right. You can count on me, sir,” Ian said. Suckup.

Half-crouched and with his hand hovering by his side, Officer Cover walked over to the back part of the building, where I’d seen the shape moving. He looked around both ways, then moved onwards, slowly turning the corner out of sight. For a few long seconds there was nothing. I stood bone-still, listening intently to the sound of his footsteps on concrete.

Officer Cover stopped. “What the…”

A lot of sounds happened at once. The rattling of a gun being drawn from a holster. A crackling, popping noise like sparks in a fireplace. A scream of pain that was just as rapidly cut off.

Panicking, I donkey-kicked my foot into Ian’s shin and ran towards the corner. What I saw around there is something that I’m not going to describe in detail, and I had nightmares with that image for weeks afterwards. He had been cut open like a side of meat. I started getting that bitter taste in my mouth again, and that combined with what was in front of me meant that I was spitting up bile onto the ground almost immediately. A second after that, Ian showed up. He screamed, and ran off to scream for help from everyone else.

I knew what was going to happen next. The school was going to go on lockdown until they found whoever had done this, or whatever. Considering it was invisible and could kill an armed cop in about a second flat, that wasn’t going to go very well. Chances were, suspicion was going to end up on me, if nothing else because Ian would damn well make sure of it. Either way, I was going to be stuck here when I needed answers. I needed to be home. 

So, I ran. I ran right past the volunteer, a girl in my class, assigned to keep watch on the front gate. I didn’t slow down until the adrenaline wore off and the bitter taste left my mouth, about two blocks later. Broadleaf is a small enough city that I knew how to walk home, even if I usually took the bus.

It took two hours, during which time I had plenty of room to think. There was nothing I could have done to stop the murder once he was around that corner, that much was clear. It happened too fast. Of course, it was my fault he went back there to observe the weird shimmering invisible thing in the first place. On top of that, I had just abandoned my friends and my girlfriend. Miri and Quinn were still back there at the school. At best they were in lockdown, and at worst they were in danger from whatever had killed Officer Cover. 

Worse, I was feeling more sick than ever before. The pain in my side had escalated to a constant throbbing agony like I’d been stabbed. I felt feverish, coated in sweat. I was exhausted, and every step closer to home made my knees feel like hell. Even my head was pounding, pain similar to the one in my sides concentrated right above my eyes. By the time I reached home, I was honestly surprised to still be standing.

I knocked on the door. At once, there was a commotion on the other side. Stephanie was at the door in a few seconds, with Amanda right behind her. They both pulled me in to a huge, strong hug. I hugged them back, even though I wasn’t sure if I should be giving them that affection.

“Alex, I’m so glad you’re safe,” said Amanda.

“We got the message that your school was on lockdown,” Stephanie added. “What’s going on?”

I pulled out of the hug. “I can explain. But first… I need some answers.”