Heretical Edge

Well, the bad news was that we didn't have Bedivere anymore, so we couldn’t just wait for him to use his spell to search for the zombie bombs. Because apparently that was already going to be too easy and the whole situation had to be more complicated. Fortunately, he had explained it to Aylen, and she was pretty sure she could duplicate it. Which might not have been the absolute best thing in the world, but we had to work with what we had, and ‘pretty sure’ was about as good as we were going to get at this point. Actually, considering what had just happened with Invidia taking Bedivere, ‘pretty sure’ was the single most positive feeling we could have.

In any case, while she was working on that, using some of the spell materials Lechmere had left behind, I checked on the others. They insisted they were okay, just a little banged up from the whole fight. Bezique was still going on about how incredible it had been to have Tabbris possess her and do all those unbelievable physical stunts. She kept pantomiming the flips and leaps while constantly babbling about how fantastic it had felt. I really didn't even have to ask her if she was conflicted about fighting those guys. Although I wasn't sure how being faced with others who were actually like her, more of Lechmere’s creations, was going to go. She still wasn't actually siding directly against him thus far. At least, not within the bounds of how she thought about things. He and I, as far as she knew, were both bonded from Jacob. Thus, in her mind, we had equal authority.

I still had no idea where she was going to fall when it came time to make a choice between the two of us. Because that was definitely going to happen at some point. But I did know that I wanted it to be her choice that she made without knowing about me being Jacob himself. If she knew about that, it wouldn't be a choice for her. Maybe it would've been more convenient for me, but I wanted her to do this for herself, if at all possible. I wanted her to choose to side with us because she decided that was the right thing to do.

Either way, she was definitely happy about that whole being possessed and turned into an Olympic-level athlete thing. I made her and Tabbris both promise to be careful and to stay out of the way as much as possible if it was too dangerous. My sister insisted they would help where they could, and that they weren't going to sit around and let London be destroyed. They were going to contribute. But she did agree that they wouldn't take unnecessary risks. It was the best I was going to get.

Miranda, meanwhile, was still healing up from some of the damage she had taken. But she assured me that she would be fine. She had a couple duplicates watching the surrounding area just in case, and was ready to create even more as soon as we had some bomb locations to go after. Yet again, her ability to make clones of herself was going to come in clutch. We needed all the help we could get now.

Speaking of needing more help, I did still have Tiresias, that bone weapon that had mysteriously turned itself intangible and thrown itself away from the possessed Bedivere. Was that something Charmeine or… or someone else in that head had done? I wasn’t sure, but we had the thing. I was just hoping it would come in handy. And that it wouldn’t decide to make itself intangible the moment I tried to use it. For now, I tucked the thing away in one of my extradimensional bags.

I was still kicking myself for not stopping Invidia before she could possess Bedivere. God, what was going to happen with that if we couldn’t get her out of him? How much was she going to change if she kept control of him? How much damage was she going to do with someone who had that level of power and influence? We had to get her out of him now.

Unfortunately, I still wasn't sure exactly how we were going to do that. Hell, I wasn't even sure how we were going to contain her long enough to try again. The expulsion rune hadn’t worked, but there had to be something else we could try. Yeah, ‘something else.’ That whole thing was clearly less a plan on the drawing board, and more me staring at a blank board asking myself where the chalk was. God, I wished Gaia was here. Or Dare. Or my mother. I had next to no idea about what to do.

Well, no idea about what to do on that point anyway. But I did know what we needed to do right now, and that was to stop all those bombs before they destroyed the timeline even more thoroughly than an Invidia-possessed Joseph Bell would.

Thankfully, we finally had a bit of luck on that point. Aylen whistled for our attention before handing out several paper maps with glowing dots moving around on them. “The blue one is whoever is holding the map. It shows where you are. All those outlines are the roads and buildings of London. The red dots are the bombs. But there's a problem. These zombies aren't like others you've seen. They're going to look like ordinary people. Living people. The map shows you exactly where they are, and when you get close enough, it will make them glow for you. When you look at them while you're holding the map, you'll actually see the glow around them. That means they're the bomb. But to everyone else, they're just going to look like normal human beings, which means--”

“We’ll look like the monsters, attacking innocent people,” Miranda finished for her with a grimace, her understandable sigh filling the room. “Yeah, that sounds fun. But I guess we don't have time for anything more subtle, do we?”

Aylen shook her head. “That's the other problem. The second we start going after them, it's going to start a countdown. We need to destroy all of them within fifteen minutes, or whichever ones are left are going to go off anyway. The fewer zombies there are, the less damage they’ll be able to do, but even one could completely change history. Or at least give it a really harsh battering. You have to destroy the body thoroughly. Separate the head from it, burn it, disintegrate it, whatever we need to do. Whatever we can do. Just kill the zombie before it can be triggered. And we have to do it quickly. As I said, the second we start, we have to finish within fifteen minutes.”

I started to say something, but Miranda suddenly grabbed my arm. “We've got more problems. I think Invidia used Bell to summon Katarin and his people. They're on their way here now. One of my clones just spotted them. There’s no more time.”

Immediately, I ushered the others in close before teleporting out of there. I took them to the far side of the city, near where the map said a good cluster of the bombs could be found. There, I told them to work together and take down those targets as quickly as they could, and that I would focus on the other side of the city. But first I summoned all the ghosts I could, before putting Doctor Manakel in charge and telling them to help these guys with the search.

“You mean you're going back to the area where Currently-A-Jerk Katarin is?!” Tabbris blurted in obvious disbelief. “You can't do that by yourself!”

Grover made a face. “Yeah, boss, I'm not sure about this. You shouldn’t be alone out there.”

My head shook. “Don't worry, she won’t be by herself,” Hot Type reminded them. “She’s always got backup. And we learned from the best when it comes to giving backup.” That was accompanied by a thumbs up toward Tabbris, who still looked torn about the whole thing.

“What they said,” I agreed. “Besides, I already have a plan. Trust me. You guys handle this side together, I'll get the other side. Be careful, be safe, and be strong. We've got this. No more time to talk about it. I know what I’m doing.”

Flashing her a quick smile that I hoped looked at least moderately convincing, I teleported myself right back to the same lab again. God, I really had to pray to any power out there that this was going to work. I knew the others wanted to help, but they had their own things to do. We had to stop all those bombs so we could get to that Rift and end this. They were doing their part, I just had to do mine.

A second later, I heard the running footsteps as Katarin’s people arrived. They were tearing through the rubble to get into the building. By that point, I had already shifted into my Jacob form, turning to face that way while my coat billowed out behind me thanks to a very minor wind spell. Here went nothing.

There were several other Heretics with the man himself. Even now, I felt that sharp pang when I looked at Ulysses Katarin. Part of me desperately wanted to find a way to warn him about what was going to come. There was a voice deep inside that kept telling me I could find a way to pull it off. If I warned him and told the man to fake his death right at that moment and to not come back until a certain date after I went into the past, that could work, right?

No, of course not. Isaac wouldn't have inherited his power then, and would have noticed. Besides, could I really make the man in front of me believe anything I said to him? He had absolutely no reason to trust me. I would have to expose entirely too much to even make him listen at all. It couldn't work. No matter how much I wanted to, there was just no way to save him. Even if accepting that fact made my stomach twist into a vicious knot that felt as though it would snap in half. This was another reason time travel was a bad idea. Not that that was a short list.

Pushing those thoughts down, I faced the man as Jacob. I still had no idea what the earlier version of myself had done to make him so angry, or if it was even anything personal. Maybe I had done something to another Crossroads person and built a bad reputation with them. If so, that reputation was going to get a hell of a lot worse before the day was over.

“Jacob,” Katarin’s voice growled. He stood there, holding a glowing blue club of some sort in one hand and a short sword in the other. His muscles flexed as he glowered at me. “We should've known you wouldn't run from this place before you completed whatever it is you've been working on. But it stops now.” He looked around at all of the bodies with an expression of disgust. “Your experiments end today.”

His words made me offer a faint smile despite myself. “I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you that these belong to Jack the Ripper, not me.”

He gave me a dark look at that, while fire billowed around the club. “I don’t particularly care whether these are a direct product of you or your apprentice. You will both die this day. Your filth will not harm another innocent.”

When the same sentiment was echoed by the others around him, who had already begun to spread out to encircle me, I shook my head ruefully. “Yeah, that's basically what I figured. I do want you to know that I wish I could do this differently. I'm not your enemy here. I don't know that you'll believe that, but I'm not. The Ripper is not my apprentice, and he's certainly no friend of mine. He's created bombs around the city. Undead bombs that will destroy everything unless I destroy them first. They look like ordinary people, but they're not.”

Katarin’s response was a bark of humorless laughter. “That's your excuse? You expect us to let you kill people because you say they are magical explosives? Sorry, undead magical explosives, which you’re going to stop because of the goodness of your heart, Necromancer?”

With his skepticism made clear, he pointed that club and started to say something. Or rather, started to do something. Whatever it was, it wasn't going to be pleasant. But before he could pull it off, a blinding beam of light shot down directly between him and me. The laser punched through the cement, creating a ten-foot-wide and twenty-foot-deep hole just like that. Katarin dove out of the way, though it wouldn't have hit him even if he hadn't. All his men were safe enough too, just knocked backwards and staggered.

It was the Cryptseeker, hovering there in the sky just above the building. Its shot had blown through the roof and created that hole. That was the spell I had used earlier during the fight with Invidia, just before I sent out Penny Dreadful. My intention had been to summon the ship to help with that little problem, waking it up wherever it was being stored at this point in time and bringing it here. I had hoped that it would be empty and safe from disrupting anything else in the timeline right now.

Invidia wasn't here anymore, but the ship could still be of use. The second Katarin and the others were knocked off their feet or dove out of the way, I focused on teleporting up to the bridge. I knew the place well enough, and could picture exactly where it was right now just by looking up through the hole in the roof at the skull-shaped vessel with its bone-arms and red-glowing energy shield made to look like a tattered cape.

Yeah, okay, maybe I could tell why riding around in something that looked like that might’ve given a certain impression about me.

Either way, there was no turning back now. The others had already started to go after the first of those bombs. I didn't have any more time to try to make Katarin listen. Maybe after all this was over they would investigate and find out that I had been telling the truth. I had no idea. And I couldn't tell them not to trust Bell either. Even if they did believe me, which they wouldn't, warning them would mean telling them about the Seosten. And that couldn’t happen now without screwing up the timeline.

So, full speed ahead. And I really meant speed. As soon as I was on the ship, I took the command seat and punched it. I had done a little practicing with this thing, so I could at least do this much. Glancing at the map that Aylen had handed me, I held it out and hit a couple buttons on the holographic controls to have the computer scan it in and add those targets to the system.

Just like that, the computer alerted me that we were within firing range of the first target. Muttering a prayer to myself, I narrowed the beam to the lowest setting the ship could manage. Still lethal, but hopefully without too much collateral damage. Then I fired it. On the screen, I could see what looked like an ordinary Victorian-era businessman out for a stroll. As Aylen had warned, there was no way to identify him as a zombie just from looking. He was very effectively disguised.

And just like that, the laser punched through the figure, disintegrating it into nothing. Seriously, that single beam completely annihilated the creature, leaving a fine mist and a small bit of his feet and legs. One down, far too many left to go.

Thankfully, Aylen had enchanted the maps to remove each target after they were killed. I could already see a couple of the ones on the other side of town disappearing as the others dealt with them. They were gradually whittling them away. Between Aylen, Tabbris, Miranda, and my small ghost army, that side of the city was being handled. But we still had to finish this as soon as possible. I was acutely aware of the time limit ticking down with every passing second.

The ship announced that another target was in range, so I told it to fire again, disintegrating what looked like an innocent woman standing in front of a fountain.

I trusted Aylen. I did. I trusted her completely. But if she was wrong, if we were going around killing all these people and they were innocent, I didn't know how I would feel. I didn’t know how I would get over it. But they weren't. They were zombies. I could tell that when I stretched my power out that far. They were disguised against detection from most people, but my Necromancy recognized them.

Still, I knew exactly how this would look to others. And they probably wouldn’t take my word for it.

No time to worry about that. No time to think about it. The ship cruised invisibly over the city, shooting again and again. I took care not to hit any other targets besides the zombies themselves, even if I had to re-orient the ship to avoid any civilians with each attack. One by one, the zombies on this side of the map were being cut down.

A panic had started below me, unsurprisingly. From the perspective of the Bystanders down there, people were simply exploding in bright beams of light with no apparent source or reason, since the Cryptseeker was cloaked. They had no way of understanding anything about what was going on. And to be honest, even the people who weren't subject to the Bystander Effect probably weren't in much better shape. All that meant was that they knew the people dying were being shot by lasers coming from the sky. It probably wasn't very comforting.

And, given the fact that there had to be at least some people down there who could see through the ship’s invisibility, I was pretty sure rumors about the flying skull would spread.

Still, I kept going. The ship cruised just over top of the buildings, firing one shot after another, every time another target came into range. Meanwhile, I could see the other dots disappearing too. Miranda and the rest were very busy. We were cutting through these things as quickly as we could. The timer was still ticking away, but we were faster. We were going to do this. We were going to kill all the zombies before they could be triggered.

Of course, the second that thought came, I caught a glimpse of something flying through the air on one of the monitors, while the proximity alert went off. I had just enough time to look that way and realize it was Katarin again before the flying man came right up through the ship. He had located it, flung himself skyward, and turned intangible to go through the shield and walls. He collided with me, making me intangible too (though we were tangible to each other) before knocking me right out of the ship and down toward the street below with his momentum. He literally tackled me out of the ship. His arms were tight around me, but I managed to kick free, just before we both crashed into the ground. Fortunately, Hot Type used their tentacles to slow us down on the way, but we were still dazed slightly. And the street itself was in pretty bad shape.

As for Katarin, he hauled himself up and came after me with a bellow of rage. He had clearly seen everything that was happening, and interpreted it exactly the way I knew he would.

Oh and, he had activated another one of those things that stopped me from teleporting. I couldn't get right back into the ship from here. Not with that thing active. He was going to make me fight him, and I didn't have time for that. Even worse, almost all of my ghosts were busy on the other side of the city, and I couldn't pull them away. Not now. Stopping those bombs was too important.

I couldn't fight him, and I couldn't get back to the ship. Which left only one choice. I had to do this the hard way. Even as Katarin lunged at me, I used a burst from my staff to launch myself away from him. Flipping over in the air, I used my rocket burst to send myself to the roof of the newest house.

I didn't have many ghosts left. Not enough for a fight like this. But I was able to summon one of the few I did have onto the bridge of the ship. I looked through his eyes, saw where the nearest zombie bomb was, and immediately sprinted across the rooftop in that direction. I was just going to have to take the few that were left on foot. I was going to have to run right up to them and kill them in person.

And I was going to have to do it with Katarin chasing me the whole time.