Chum

The room does this weird twisty thing, like those optical illusion videos where the hallway just keeps stretching and stretching. I’m snapped from the momentary daze of the bullet’s near miss, but then my eyes catch the play of physics and reality morphing. Jordan’s doing. The room suddenly becomes vast, the distances stretched so far that for a moment, the machinery, the criminals, even the broken desk that I had almost died under seem miles away.

A surge of adrenaline tingles in my fingertips, and I can feel my pupils dilating. My entire body feels fuzzy, like it’s tingling with electricity, like I’m licking a battery.

In the newly enlarged space, it’s like everyone’s been flung into different time zones. Mudslide looks like a tiny, angry dot on a distant hill. Mr. Polygraph seems minuscule too, lost in the vast space of the room, and I can tell by his distant, tiny swearing and animated hand gestures that Jordan’s play with space messed with his temper again. His anger, an ever-present ticking bomb, ready to explode at any given moment.

But I shouldn’t be focusing on that, right? Focus, Sam. The feeling of the cold metal on my socks reminds me that my shoe is still off of me, mere feet away, and I take the fastest ten seconds in my entire life to shove it back on. It’s weird how in situations like this, when everything’s gone topsy-turvy, it’s the little things, like the lost shoe, that can pull you back. If I knew Jordan could’ve made the Walgreens this big when we fought, I would’ve probably been a little more intimidated.

I don’t hesitate, twisting on my heel and making a beeline away from where I remember Mr. Nothing standing, though I can’t see him anymore among rows of fake machinery, replicated by Jordan’s powers. I spot a rusted machine that looks like it was once used for textile weaving, and I dive behind it, using the time to catch my breath. Heart pounding, I try to hear over its drumming in my ears. The room’s vastness makes every sound echo, the drip of water somewhere distant, the low hum of the old machinery, like it’s still active and alive.

And then there’s a sound—something heavy being dragged. Metal on metal. I focus my gaze, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. Stay sharp. Stay alive. I keep reminding myself of that, even though every fiber of my being is alive with sensations, with hyper-awareness, like I haven’t been living for the first fourteen years and a couple of months of my life and just now I’m discovering real sensations.

If you had told me a few years ago that I’d be in this situation, heart racing, senses on edge, playing hide and seek with men who would kill me without a second thought, I’d have looked at you funny. I lean against one of the machines for a moment, feeling for my ankle – it’ll be bruised, or sprained, or fucked up in some way when I go to the doctor tomorrow.

Tomorrow. That’s good. I definitely want to see that: tomorrow.

There’s a crunch of shattered wood somewhere, and my ears tune into it. Someone’s approaching, though with the room’s newfound vastness, it’s hard to judge exactly how close. Every movement echoes in the red-brick cavern. I press myself further behind the machine, my heart in my throat. One step at a time. One breath. One moment.

Suddenly, there’s a burst of laughter, echoing in the cavernous space. Mudslide. I can tell it’s him even before I hear the distinct squelch of his powers at work, the sound of bricks and concrete suddenly turning into quicksand. I watch the ground around me sporadically shift in texture as it liquefies, one patch at a time, before re-solidifying. Mudslide testing for me, poking around.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Bitchhound,” his voice taunts, sounding like it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. I’m not able to pinpoint a source, just the echoing noise of his baritone and the soft squish of his powers, like mud being pressed through someone’s fingers. I move behind one of the machines slowly, sidling along its perimeter, and I catch a whiff of blood in the air. “I’ve got a present for you! I’m gonna bury you like you tried to bury me!”

I know immediately that the blood is Jordan’s by the shape of their vascular system, and take a moment to assess my readout. It’s soaking into the cloth wrapped around their face, but I can’t tell if their nosebleed is from getting injured or some kind of overexertion from spreading the space this wide. It truly is cavernous, to the point where I can barely see the walls in any direction, wooden support structures dividing it into a neat grid beneath a suddenly oversized, too-wide ceiling.

Either way, I know where they are now, and start making my way towards them, keeping it still and slow. Sure, running would get me there faster, but it would also immediately get me caught by someone whose powers would halt all forward progress. I hear the echo of distant gunshots, and keep my focus on Jordan’s body, watching for a sudden burst of blood that never comes.

Good. The less they get shot, the better. The ideal amount of bullets either one of us will take today is zero.

Jordan can’t see me, so I have to hope they know I’m coming. I keep hearing the sickening squish of Mudslide’s powers activating all around me, with zero finesse, zero control. He’s trying to catch me off guard, just randomly spamming his powers like a newbie fisherman just flinging his lure all around.

Not today. Not this time.

My heart jumps when I finally spot Jordan not a minute later, leaning against a post of one of the dilapidated looms, looking disheveled with blood staining their cloth mask, eyes a little bit glassy. “Knew you’d find me,” they say, voice breathy and eyes glazed with fatigue. I rush to their side, trying to control my limp. Their facial expression is hidden underneath their mask, but I can see the sweat drenching the un-red sides of their mask, and they pull the visor of their motorcycle helmet back down.

Jordan grins weakly at me, leaning in as if sharing a secret. “Smashed my face on that machine over there on purpose, you know. Figured it’d be a neon sign for you.”

“You… What?” I whisper incredulously. I can tell Jordan is smirking, from the way the corners of their mask curl upwards. I huff out a half-laugh. “You’re fucking insane.” We share a brief moment, a quick, intense glance, expressing the urgency in silence. But time is running out. Every passing second is closing in on us like a prowling tiger, with two armed criminals actively looking for us, and one extremely mad petty criminal who nonetheless could kill us very quickly. I start tugging on Jordan’s arm. “We need to go.”

The sheer size of this place gives us the advantage of space, but it’s only a matter of time before that advantage runs out. Add that to my own limping leg, and we’re two sitting ducks just waiting to be roasted. So we stumble and hobble, me limping along, pain shooting through my ankle the more weight I put on it. We turn corners, sidestep machines, always moving, always alert.

I think we’re safe for a moment, even dare to hope that we’ll make it out, but then it comes — a low rumble, the floor quaking beneath us. And then that wet, squishy sound. Without a word, I push Jordan behind one of the larger machines, an old thing made of rusty iron with cogs larger than my head. My heart beats out a frantic rhythm, one that surely must give our location away. And maybe it does, because a second later, a viscous wave of liquefied brick and concrete surges around our hiding place, nearly knocking us off our feet, forming a dense puddle.

The hideous, sadistic laughter of Mudslide resonates, deafening in this massive space. “Gotcha!” he declares triumphantly, almost like a child who’s just found his playmate in a game of hide-and-seek. “Over here, fellas!” He shouts, trying to draw the attention of the two people with guns. Jordan hauls themself onto the machine, keeping their feet off the ground, while I tug myself upwards, following their lead.

“Don’t gloat, dumbass,” Jordan shouts.

Mudslide’s booming laughter reverberates throughout the space, the walls sending back reflections of his twisted joy. I can feel the malevolence behind every pulse of his powers as the ground grows softer, then practically turns to soup beneath us. There’s a real hunger in his intent – a true desire to punish, to cause pain. I’d love to believe he’s doing this because he’s scared of me, or even Jordan, but no – this is revenge, pure and simple. The ground feels as if it’s attempting to swallow us, just as hungry for vengeance as he is.

“No more running, Mutt!” Mudslide gloats, drawing out every syllable as if he’s tasting each one. The surrounding ground transforms further, taking on a consistency thicker than water but not quite as solid as mud, drawing us in. It’s cold, eerily so, and wraps around my ankles like shackles. The pull is immediate and strong, an unrelenting grip trying to drag me under, drown me in his constructed quagmire.

The room grows eerily quiet save for the consistent, wet noise of Mudslide’s powers, making the impending doom feel all the more present. Every now and then, the laughter breaks through, cold and maniacal. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the room itself was laughing at us, while he keeps his hands clenched and shaking, each pulse up and down turning more and more of the ground into quicksand. The surrounding machines start dissolving into ash, interacted with too much to remain stable within the expanded space of Jordan’s powers.

Jordan reaches down. We clasp hands, and they yank me free, both shoes miraculously remaining on my feet as I grab hold of the indeterminate machine – a loom, maybe – with the other hand. Suddenly, with the rapidity of a heartbeat, the space lurches, and the sensation is stomach-turning. I instinctively reach out, grabbing onto one of the machine’s iron arms to stabilize myself. The ground – and the ensnaring muddy grip of Mudslide’s powers – shifts beneath us. In the span of a blink, it feels as though we’re riding an elevator shooting upwards at an impossible speed, the ground receding rapidly. What was once horizontal becomes the vertical, the axis of Jordan’s powers shifting.

Before I can even process what’s happening, we’re standing atop an elevated platform. The cold, damp mud remains below, now far beneath us, swirling in futile patterns. It laps at the base of our newfound high ground, trying to reclaim its hold on us but falling short.

This is the true advantage of Jordan’s powers, I consider. Jordan will always have the spatial advantage in any fight. And Mudslide knows it.

“What the fuck—?!” he roars, his voice echoing with a combination of surprise and rage. He’s thrown off, clearly not expecting this maneuver. I can almost picture the look of dumbfounded rage behind the brown paper bag he wears as a pathetic mask.

Still, it’s not all roses. Jordan’s shifting powers collapsed the space along the horizontal plane back to its norm, and while I can watch Mr. Nothing and Mr. Polygraph with a bit of dim satisfaction as they both go stumbling into machinery, slammed down onto the ground, the fact of the matter is that we’re trapped up here and they have guns.

“Fucking shoot them already!” Mudslide roars, as Mr. Nothing stumbles back to a standing position.

“Don’t order me around,” Mr. Nothing coolly replies, just barely audible from the height we’re at. He takes aim, and with another loud, ear-splitting bang, a bullet whizzes past us, exploding through the ceiling of the abandoned factory.

“Are you two fucking insane? We can’t kill an informant with a wire on them, they already know we’re here! We need to fucking go!” Mr. Polygraph screams, slamming his hand against the tower of machinery that Jordan and I are so perilously sitting upon.

“We’ll be fine. Just shoot the fucking toddler already.” Mr. Nothing replies, still ice cold. Mr. Polygraph lets out an anguished grunt of rage, points his gun up, and just starts unloading. The air is filled with the echoing of bullets busting through the air, and a searing pain rips through my upper right arm, followed by the thigh of my already-injured leg. Jordan’s trying to keep the platform bouncing up and down erratically, even as Mr. Polygraph unloads his entire clip at us.

It takes me a couple seconds to register that I’ve been shot. I reach over to grab my upper arm, feeling for a bullet hole and breathing the world’s shakiest sigh of relief when I can feel that it’s only a graze – but still, a graze that’s ripped a huge gash in my arm. My thigh is just as lucky, which I think makes me the luckiest person alive, a huge cut torn in my flesh like I lost a fight with an angry chef that’s two feet tall. “Ow,” I breathe out, suddenly able to smell my entire vascular system, while these hardened criminals argue below me.

“There! Out of bullets. We’re going,” Mr. Polygraph shouts, tugging his feet out of the wet earth.

“Are you okay? I’m going to stretch it sideways to put some distance between us,” Jordan says, quietly whispering, clearly having noticed the blooming wounds across my limbs. “It’s gonna make the tower collapse down. Be ready to move.”

“I’m fine,” I whisper back, clutching my arm, feeling wet stickness blooming into my fingers. My breathing is ragged, and I feel my pupils dilating further, my vision going hazy, then perilously, dangerously sharp. “We’re not running.”

“Sam. You’ve been shot,” Jordan hisses, while Mr. Nothing criticizes Mr. Polygraph’s sloppy marksmanship below us. “You need medical attention.”

I bend down and wrap my mouth around a piece of the iron beneath me. I bite down, and feel the metal buckle, and I pull my neck back like I’m reeling in a fish, ripping it free with my jaw. Putting the newly-broken piece of iron in between my teeth, I bite down on one edge, and then the other, turning it into a makeshift spear before spitting down two teeth and several chunks of metal onto Mr. Nothing’s head.

He looks up at us and sighs. “Can’t you make this thing come down any faster, Mr. Mudslide?”

Mudslide looks visibly wet with sweat on his exposed areas of skin, his pallid skin red with fury. “I can only sink it as much as there’s ground below to. You fucking get the idea! Just take like ten steps back, aim for their heads, and shoot them!”

“You aim for center mass, Mr. Mudslide. You have a lot to learn,” Mr. Nothing replies. “Girls, if you come down right now, I promise I will shoot you in the least painful place possible. It will be an instant and extremely pleasant death. Total oblivion.”

I hand the piece of sharpened metal to Jordan and bend down to bite off another one. “I’m not a girl!” Jordan yells from on high, while Mudslide starts to grab and rock the machinery from below. It begins to dissolve into ash clouds, like all other things Jordan replicates, which leads me to believe that the version of the loom we’re directly on top of has to be the real one.

Either way, Mudslide lets out a grunt, kicks the machine, and stumbles back as it explodes into dust flakes. The burning sensation in my limbs fades to a white-hot background noise, compartmentalized out somewhere in my head where it won’t distract me as I cut another spear into shape with my teeth. I grab it with my not-shot side, the left one, the one with my hand covered in blood, and I grit my teeth together.

“This is a fucking embarassment! How are you getting played by a fucking child?!” Mr. Polygraph yells.

“Like this!” I shout back, jumping off the tower, putting all my faith in Jordan.

The space contracts back to normal under me, and I accelerate, falling faster than gravity would normally allow for. I feel metal hitting leather, followed by meat, followed by bone, as my handmade (mouthmade?) spear grazes into Mr. Nothing’s boot, planting into the ground and ripping a cut into his shin and foot. Mr. Nothing jerks his foot back and immediately fires at the space I was at a second ago, stumbling backwards.

The tower of machines falls, Jordan diving into the cloud of ash that Mudslide made. I watch their motion through my blood sense, as they swipe and jab like they’ve been practicing with a quarterstaff, driving Mr. Polygraph backwards and making several sharp, shallow cuts across his pants.

For a moment, I feel a surge of triumph, and then my injured leg buckles under me.