The Composer of Screams Read online

  Adam pushed his concerns about space and politics to the back of his mind. “C'mon, let's get you out of this thing.” He didn't add that he was seriously worried it was going to explode. With what he had seen so far of its design principles, he wouldn't be surprised.

  Adam slung the astronaut's arm around his shoulder so he could support him better, and pulled him out as quickly as he could. Part of it was the risk of serious danger, but mostly it was because Adam's wounds screamed every second the astronaut put weight on him. It felt like some of them had opened up again. Wonderful.

  Before they even cleared the hatch, long arms reached in and pulled the astronaut gently from Adam's grasp and placed him on a stretcher far too big for him. Adam had half expected him to freak out when he saw the giants, but there were no trolls nearby, so he probably just thought the size discrepancy was due to the blow to the head. Adam waved him off as the ambulance shut its doors and sped away.

  “Honored Paladin,” something rumbled nearby. He turned to see the biggest giant he could imagine, almost twenty feet tall, looking down at him. All he saw was the sun shining behind his silhouette.

  Adam brushed his apprehension aside as much as he could. “Honored Titan, perhaps we should get away from the escape pod. I'm a little afraid it might be... volatile.”

  “Hammer and spear,” the giant cursed under his breath. “David. Send a tech team in. Remove any fuel cells.” He turned back to Adam, although he could only tell because the shadow shifted. “Necessarius has already been informed of the situation. Thank you for your help, but we can take it from here.”

  Adam frowned. From some of the stories Derek and Akane told, he had assumed this would go a little differently. There were more questions, for one. “Honored Titan, I—”

  “Thank you for your help, Mister Anders,” the Colossus interrupted. “I'm sure Necessarius will debrief you later. Expect a call in a few minutes.”

  Adam nodded. Of course. The 'sarians wouldn't know whether this was secret-level or not. They wouldn't want any information to leak to out. He was sure the moment they figured out who was heading the rescue—somebody probably gave MC his description—they had interceded with orders for the Colossus. He probably didn't like that. Now would be a good time to go.

  Adam looked around for Lily. He had left her at the edge of the crowd. Where was she?

  He spotted her in the same place he had left her. Although the crowd had started to disperse, she hadn't moved. She was standing quietly at the lip of the trail of destruction the pod had caused. She seemed to sense my gaze, and turned to lock eyes with him.

  She smiled, proudly.

  Adam smiled too. Today was a good day.

  Chapter 6: INOPINATUM

  The COMPOSER

  The Composer thrust a hand into the captive's chest, found her heart, and ripped it out with a squelching sound. Blood splashed everywhere as her ribs were bent violently back, and showering the area in gristle and bone.

  It made the Composer feel better, but it didn't solve the underlying problem.

  “What do you mean this was planned? No one told me!”

  the voice in the Composer's head said. No, not a split personality. Just telepathy.

  “No need? You threw an escape pod at my city, of course there was need!”

 

  “Who the hell cares about that?” the Composer cried, ripping another organ from the technically-still-alive prisoner. It might have been the liver. “I wanted to see the corpses!”

  the voice said in a dry tone.

  “The crash killed a bunch of people in that building it hit,” the Composer said. “Giants, too. They're fun to watch die, 'cuz they never see it coming. They think they're invincible.”

 

  The Composer smashed the captive's skull in, and immediately regretted it. They were always more fun when they were still moving. “I'm doing my job, you're doing yours. But when they intersect, I should know!”

 

  “What?” The Composer tossed the corpse away and grabbed another girl, a tall, thin thing with a gold eyes cosmo. “Why not? I thought you wanted to keep this under wraps.”

  the voice said with exaggerated patience.

  The Composer broke one of the girl's hands. She screamed and begged. The Composer ignored her. “Wait, you said something earlier about... something.”

 

  “Shut it. No, that's right... you said Domina needed to remain separate, independent. Isn't this going to bring heat down on the city? The USP will be able to trace the leak back here.”

 

  “I don't see why,” the Composer said. The girl's other hand was shattered as well. She had already broken down, crying for her mother. Seriously. It was like she had never been tortured before. “If they send armies, I won't be able to play around any more.”

 

  “You didn't answer the question.”

 

  The Composer grinned and started peeling the skin off the girl's fingers. Blood welled up quickly, and she sobbed. “So I get to keep my playground?”

  The voice sighed.

  “I'm restraining myself,” the Composer said. “I'm only killing orphans.”

  the voice said dryly.

  The Composer paused the torture. “Not including chorus and related casualties, right?”

  The voice sighed again.

  “Well,” the Composer said slowly. “I think I can work with that.” The link was cut.

  The gold-eyed girl was weeping, her lips silently mouthing the word no over and over again.

  The Composer liked the ones with weird eye colors. They were like a spice sprinkled over a meal. Just a little bit, here and there, made the entire experience so much more enjoyable.

  The Composer reached forward to tear the skin off the girl's chest, but stopped, frowning, as a thought occurred.

  Had they meant a triple-digit body count per day or total? Because one of those might be a problem.

  Chapter 7: SALUTEM

  LING

  Ling was flying.

  Well, floating. Using the stone plates in her armor, she was able to levitate herself. Not for long—only five minutes or so. But she was getting better, her reservoir was expanding, and she was finding more and more uses for the armor. Sure, levitation was the coolest, but she could also use it to enhance her strikes and dodge faster.

  It was a perfect focus for her power, and she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it before. This kind of thing happened all the time in shows. Now that she had the idea, she could name a half dozen anime or comics where they used similar tricks. So why hadn't she come up with it before?

  She was too complacent, that was the problem. Go to school, play soccer, kill screamers, sleep. She wasn't spending enough time actually thinking. Sure, Laura was better at it, but if Ling approached every
thing from a different angle, she might be able to find something Laura missed.

  Ling was on the roof of the dorm at the moment, where no one really hung out. It was the perfect place to practice, but the sun was basically set, and she really didn't want to accidentally float over the edge and find out if she could catch herself from a fall. So she went back down, using the elevator rather than the stairs. Well, she had to use the stairs to get back into the building, but the elevator was fine for the rest. No sane person would try to run down thirty-one floors.

  Focus. She needed to think about tactics.

  But what was she supposed to do? This was out of her comfort zone. Zombies weren't a common anime topic, for whatever reason.

  No, no. She was looking at it wrong. None of her interests would be directly useful, but they didn't need help killing zombies anyway. They needed to find the Composer. Laura wasn't having much luck with that, other than that obvious trap the changelings were looking into.

  But what could Ling do to help?

  Put herself in the Composer's shoes, that's what. Shouldn't be that hard. Every show had a bad guy. She just had to put together what they knew and figure out which one he was.

  Okay, they knew he wasn't as dangerous as he could be. Even though they didn't know everything about the singers, the Composer should be able to just hook one up to some big speakers and infect half the city. Why hadn't he? There were only two possible explanations: Either he was playing a longer game, or he was an idiot.

  Ling nearly dismissed the second one out of hand, but it was possible. They didn't know where these powers had come from. Clarke's blood and DNA tests still weren't showing any results, and even brain scans didn't show any abnormalities. They could apparently just do things, with no explanation. If the Composer was in a similar situation, it could be that some idiot had gotten a hold of a weird power, and in testing out its limits, had unintentionally lost important chances.

  No... no, that didn't work. Because for all his mistakes, the Composer had managed to stay hidden, had avoided fighting anyone directly. Laura had some theory about it being a disembodied mind, able to manifest in any screamer, but that didn't make sense to Ling. He hadn't paused to gloat even once. And if you were ever gonna gloat, it was when you could swap bodies at a whim.

  So they had to assume he was smart. Smart enough so that everything was going according to plan. After all, every time a screamer outbreak started, hundreds of people were turned, and he was only getting more efficient. If he was only a little patient, he could turn the whole city. Was that the plan?

  Yes. That had to be it. Revealing the singers hadn't been necessary, it was just a little clue to keep them scrambling for information while the status quo remained unchanged, to make them think they were making progress. He didn't need the magic bullet to win the game. If nothing changed, he'd win soon enough.

  Which meant they had to raid the lair that the changelings had found, despite how obvious it was. It might be a trap, but it was their only clue.

  No...

  No, that was just it.

  Of course it was a trap. And of course they had to investigate. The Composer knew that. So the trap waiting for them wouldn't be a slap on the wrist. It would mean certain death for whoever went in there.

  As the elevator door opened, Ling stepped outside, but didn't go further. The cell reception was a little bit iffy in her room. They had asked Emily to fix their broken relay, but she apparently hadn't done anything about it.

  Ling pulled out her phone and called Laura. She was probably either studying downstairs or with Clarke, but either way she'd have enough free time to talk.

  On the third ring, she picked up. “Hello?”

  “Laura? It's Ling.”

  “Yeah, I got that. What's up?”

  “We need to bomb the Composer's lair.”

  There was a very long pause on the other end of the line. “Why would we do that.”

  “Because it's our only clue,” Ling said.

  There was another, shorter pause. “Yes, that's generally why you don't incinerate evidence.”

  “No, I mean it's our only clue, and the Composer knows that. So the trap waiting for us is probably going to be enough to level a city block.”

  “And what, you want to beat him to the punch?”

  “Yes, exactly! If we blow it up ourselves, some evidence might survive, and if we're very lucky he'll be inside at the time.”

  Laura sighed deeply. “Ling, there are a number of problems with that plan. But I'm going to start with this one: We're not going in. We're just watching the place, to see who does go in.”

  Ling's brain screeched to a halt. “That's, uh...”

  “A better plan?”

  “Well, it doesn't involve enough explosions...”

  “Funny. Look, just leave the planning to me, okay? And Derek. We have everything under control.” She hung up.

  Ling stared at the phone for a minute. “Leave the planning to me and Derek.” Those two had too many people looking to them for answers. Just because they were right most of the time didn't mean they should get swelled heads.

  Really, she knew she was just annoyed because Laura shot down her argument so easily. Ling was used to being the stupidest person in the group, but usually she had at least something to contribute.

  That friend of theirs... what was her name? Laura's roommate? That's right, Lizzy. She didn't have this problem. Both times Ling had seen her, she just smiled and let Laura do her thinking for her. Ling was in a worse spot—smart enough to come up with plans, and dumb enough to think they could actually work.

  Ling shook her head and started towards her room. She needed a break.

  As she turned the corner, she saw a little girl, maybe ten years old, sitting in front of her door. She jumped up when she saw Ling.

  “Ni Ling?” she asked.

  “I don't speak Chinese,” Ling said. She was surprised the did, since she was white. Didn't ni mean two or something? “Two Ling?” What could that possibly mean?

  “Are you Ling?” the girl said, without missing a beat. When Ling nodded, she pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her shirt. “Your friend Turgay, the ursa anthro, told me to give this to you.”

  Ling reached out to take it, but stopped, frowning. “I don't know an ursa named Turgay. I know an ave...”

  She nodded and handed her the paper, then turned around and headed for the stairs without saying a word.

  Still frowning, Ling opened up the paper slowly. The message was brief: “Abigail and Mechanus, ASAP.” The intersection of Abigail and Mechanus, as soon as possible.

  Ling sighed and headed for the elevators again. Why was he going through all this trouble? Couldn't he just call her like a normal person?

  It took her about fifteen minutes to get to the intersection, but she didn't see him anywhere. Just late-night students and vampires, shopping around. There was a toy store nearby, as well as a few book shops and linens stores, all things that a college student would need. The 'scrapers edging the square were a bit smaller than normal, maybe ten or fifteen stories. It created an interesting valley effect that you didn't often see in Domina.

  But she had seen it all before. Although the lights from the buildings made them stand out beautifully in the night, that wasn't what she was here for, and the fact that she couldn't find what she was looking for was starting to annoy her.

  He was one of like, a hundred ave anthros in the city. How could it be this hard to spot him?

  Ling wandered around for a few minutes, at a loss as to what to do, when she passed one of the alleys between buildings and heard birdsong. Aves usually had their vocal cords enhanced to let them produce sounds like that easily, so she took it as a signal and ducked into the deeper darkness.

  As expected, there was Turgay, blinking at her with his wide eyes. He had what looked like a dirty blanket wrapped around his body, probably due to the cold. Behind him was an open crate with another ave anthro, sitt
ing on something and clutching his side. The second ave looked like a crow or a raven, but it was hard to tell in the poor light.

  “Ling,” Turgay whispered breathlessly. “I wasn't sure you would come.”

  She glared at him. “You could have just called. That's what we have phones for, you know.”

  He shook his head. “No, I threw our phones away. MC was monitoring them.”

  She was what? Ling sighed. “What did you get into this time?”

  “It would be easier if I just showed you,” he said carefully. He stepped aside so that she could get to the object he was protecting.

  Ling stepped up to the crate, and the black-feathered ave scooted to the side so she could see what he was sitting on. It was smeared with blood, but it was impossible to mistake that mirrored coffin for anything but what it was. Clarke had spammed all of the Paladins with pictures of it the second it had gone missing.

  Ling cursed. “Velvet Hells! Turgay, why do you have the toy box?”

  He sighed in relief. “Good, I wasn't sure you'd recognize it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That work you did for Soaring Eagle... you stole the toy box?”

  “Yes,” he said, meeting her gaze levelly. “And now I need your help to get it to her. Before the 'sarians kill me.”

  Ling sighed deeply, placing her forehead against the cool metal of the most important device in the city.

  Lizzy didn't have to deal with this. No one ever asked her for help. Hell, her friends refused to even find out what her power was, they were so worried about her safety.

  Must be nice.

  Here she was, smart enough to come up with plans and dumb enough to think they were good, cornered and pressed for help. Couldn't go to Laura, or Derek, or anyone else smarter than me. Couldn't even call MC.

  Must be nice, being Elizabeth Greene.

  Chapter 8: FURTUM

  SIMON

  The sibriex only had a single building to their name: Arhestanots, the Fleshworks. It was right at the edge of South Middle, only a few blocks from both South-West Middle and South Central. It was pretty far from the domain of any other culture, which was a good thing. The sibriex might like playing with the toy maker, but that didn't mean they were soldiers.