Heretical Edge

Even as I hit the other roof, Hot Type had started to switch out with Extra, since we needed her powers more right now. Unfortunately, even with the whole waiting room thing those guys had been working on, that would take about thirty seconds to pull off. Which felt like a million years right at that moment. But it was the best we could do.

Obviously, Katarin wasn't about to do anything silly like listen to reason or let me go deal with these zombie bombs in peace. That would just be ridiculous. And he certainly wasn't going to make this easy by disabling his stupid anti-teleport thing so I could get away from him faster. No, he was convinced that I was the real problem here, and I didn't have time to try to explain things again. Certainly not in a way that he would believe. I was just going to have to do this with him hounding me the entire way.

And speaking of hounding me, the man landed on the same roof I had just come down on, his hand lashing out to grab my face. But I ducked and spun away from him, summoning a ghost between us to push him backwards before he could react. Even as he stumbled one step, I was already sprinting off toward the edge of the roof. I felt the man send some sort of metal spinning disc my way, and managed to duck just enough for it to pass over my head, almost taking some of my hair with it.

I didn't stick around to retaliate or even try to stall him. There wasn't time. Instead, I simply kept running. Hitting the edge of the roof, I launched myself off of it with a burst from my staff. The sound of Katarin’s sharp curse filled the air, just before I rocketed off and flew across the street. I had to get to the next zombie bomb, not play with my old combat instructor!

That continued for a bit, me rocketing from roof to roof with bursts from my staff while Katarin remained hot on my heels. But then, just as I neared the edge of the next building, I felt some sort of invisible grip trying to hold me. Katarin had apparently decided on a new way to stop me from leaving, using some sort of telekinetic hold. Whatever it was, the man seemed to be straining himself pretty badly to maintain it. He really did think I was the bad guy in this situation. I felt for the man. Hell, I missed him so much. I would have loved to sit down and talk with him for a while. Seriously, that sounded great.

But right now, all I wanted was for him to fuck off.

Before he could finish catching me in that invisible grip, whatever that power or spell was, Extra managed to finish switching with Hot Type. Immediately, she took over my mouth and made us shout a quick, “No!”

That might have seemed useless, except she used the power that allowed her to magnify sounds on a case by case, individual basis. Specifically, she made that single shouted word as loud as an airhorn only for Katarin. That was enough to make him lose his concentration for just a second, and we broke free, sailing on across the gap between buildings, landing smoothly on the next, beside a smoking chimney.

There, right there! The zombie I was looking for was dressed up like a businessman simply walking down the street next to a couple women who weren’t zombies at all. They were normal Bystander humans, but the guy beside them, the one who seemed to be an ordinary, innocent man simply going about his day? Yeah, he was an undead creature who happened to be tied to a rift through space and time, and if I didn't kill him right now, he could explode and help take out a very large portion of one of the most important cities in history, irrevocably and horrifically changing the timeline.

Yeah, gee, I had no idea why this is so hard for me to make Katarin believe. It wasn't complicated at all.

My old teacher was still recovering, though he would be right on me in another moment. I didn't give him that much time. Without wasting another second, I used my boost for some added strength and hurled my staff that way. At the same time, I jumped off the roof and Extra turned the air into a slide for us to go skidding down. Only our enhanced balance and reflexes kept us upright through that descent.

The zombie never knew what hit it. The blade of my staff cut through its throat, just as the concussive blast I had left on it triggered, blowing the whole thing off. The zombie was completely decimated.

Needless to say, the nearby women were screaming in terror and shock. Which I felt bad about, but I had no more time to comfort them than I did to actually make Katarin believe that I wasn't a monster and that we were on the same side.

And speaking of Katarin, he was right behind me. I heard his bellow of anger and disbelief at what he thought was the sight of an innocent Bystander being randomly murdered. Yeah, this really didn't look good from his point of view. If this sort of thing was happening with the other versions of me throughout the timeline, I was starting to understand why he might not have the best impression of Jacob. This was probably giving me a pretty bad reputation, all around.

But no matter how bad my reputation was, I had to keep going with this. Just down the street there was another disguised zombie. I sensed it once we were close enough, but the damn thing was still shielded against my power. That had to be Invidia’s work, and given a minute or two, I could probably have broken through it to reveal the thing’s true nature. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a minute or two. We had no time at all. That zombie, under the guise of a panicking woman, had seen what happened to this one. I had no idea how it would react, or if that would trigger the magical explosive, but we couldn’t take that chance. The second I noticed the other zombie focusing on this area, I sent a command to the ghost I’d left on the bridge of the Cryptseeker. Immediately, one of the ship’s anti-personnel defensive lasers lanced out. That second zombie was utterly disintegrated by the blast, while the two nearby actual Bystanders were knocked down but left relatively unharmed. Okay, physically unharmed. I wasn’t sure about psychological damage. That would probably take longer than the bruises to fix.

Extra took over right then, while I was still wincing about that whole situation. Katarin was right there, his fist sailing through the air where our head had just been right before Extra made us duck. In that same motion, I saw his other hand coming up with a blade clutched in it, and immediately made us pivot on one foot. The other foot lifted slightly, as I used a short rocket burst to propel us sideways to also avoid the spear of metal the Heretic man was summoning out of the ground. Yeah, he was kinda pissed off right then. Which probably worked in my favor at least a little bit, dark as that sounded, since it meant he wasn’t really thinking that clearly. He was just lashing out, trying to bring me down no matter what it took. Yeah, that was scary, but it probably would’ve been worse if he had kept his cool and actually taken time to plan something.

“They aren’t real! They’re bombs, and they’re going to kill people!” I found myself shouting, while slapping the end of my staff against the ground near the man. In the process, I triggered one of my stored spells with a quickly snapped word, turning the ground under Katarin’s feet into tar. The same spell Fathom had used on those guys who were a part of the attack on Laramie Falls with Ruthers. Immediately, Katarin dropped into the tar almost to his waist with a grunt.

It wouldn’t hold him for long. I knew that, just as I knew that he wasn’t going to listen to my claim that these seemingly random people I was killing were actually bombs. It sounded absurd even to my own ears. He had no reason to believe me. And I didn’t have time to make him. Anything I could’ve said as Jacob would just sound like excuses, and if I did go all the way in convincing him, it would… it risked changing the timeline. Maybe, maybe I could say something, if I had the time, that would convince the man I wasn’t his enemy. But it would involve saying things that might give too much away. No matter how badly I didn’t want Katarin to hate me (even in disguise), I couldn’t risk that. The timeline was more important than my own personal feelings.

While Katarin was distracted, however briefly, by getting himself out of that tar, I was already moving. A quick glimpse through my bridge ghost’s eyes showed me where the next zombie bomb on the map was, and I launched myself that way. A combination of rocket burst and assistance from my staff took me to the next roof, before I transformed into my lion form on my way down. But I also tried something else, something I had practiced with off and on but hadn’t actually used in a real situation yet. Specifically, I focused on the power I’d inherited from Fahsteth, the one that allowed me to put armor on my pets, like the sharks or Eurso. But in this specific instance, it was my own lion form I applied it to. Which seemed to be a bit of a gray area as far as this sort of thing went, yet it worked. My lion body was covered in blueish-silver armor. Immediately afterward, even as my slightly heavier body came down on that roof, I focused on a different power. This one was the color-changing ability I’d picked up back when I’d been with Gaia while we were looking for Millersby and dealing with those watchtower guards near the crashed ship. My lion’s fur changed color to match the armor, turning a sleek blue-silver.

It might’ve been pointless and stupid, but I was hoping that this would help protect the timeline. Maybe if they saw Jacob turning into a blue-silver lion with armor, it wouldn’t completely expose my identity as soon as I picked up the werelion form back in the present--err, my past. The future--never mind, I wasn’t going to think about the details of that anymore. The point was, hopefully this would help disguise my identity somewhat so things stayed mostly on track.

Now that I had created this opening between myself and Katarin (who was already ripping himself free of the tar that he had frozen solid), it was time to kick this whole thing into overdrive. A thought triggered my Seosten boost, and I sprinted forward across that roof. The werelion form was already fast on its own. Add in my regular enhanced speed, then my boost, and I was able to sprint at around two hundred miles per hour for a few seconds. Needless to say, I hit the other end of that roof instantly. In that moment, I leapt forward and launched myself. My rocket burst triggered, tied to either side of the lion’s armor. That pushed me up and forward even faster. Which, of course, was when I positioned my speed boost rings in front of my flying form.

I had been going two hundred miles per hour before leaping off the roof. The rocket burst pushed that up to about two-thirty. The two rings combined quadrupled that to nine hundred and twenty. In that second, as I came down off the roof to land on the ground in the middle of the next street over, I was moving at almost a thousand miles per hour. Sure, the Seosten boost would wear off in a few seconds, but for that moment, I was moving faster than I ever had under my own power.

Katarin was trying to catch up, staying just close enough to stop me from teleporting again. But he couldn’t reach me. Not yet anyway. All he could do was chase, while I bore down on the next couple of zombie bombs. He did his best to stop me, sending a blast of lightning from one hand that almost tore me in half. It would’ve done the job if I hadn’t had one of my last remaining ghosts keeping an eye on the man. The second that ghost warned me about the incoming blast, I leapt sideways, shifting the angle of my rocket burst to send me that way just in time for the lightning to leave a two-foot wide crater in the ground where I had just been. Yeah, Katarin definitely wasn’t playing around anymore. Not that he had been to begin with, but still. He was absolutely beyond pissed off right now. It was kind of scary, actually. Maybe made a bit worse by the fact that I knew the man and was still grieving for him, but either way, I really didn’t like any of this.

Fortunately, I didn’t have any time to dwell on it. Later I would lament the whole situation and question why I hadn’t done one or another thing better. For this moment, all I could do was keep running. And right there, ahead of me, was the next zombie. This one was disguised as a policeman. Or a Bobby? I wasn’t sure if that term existed yet. But he was already turning to look at me in response to all the screams from people on either side of the street I was running down.

Or maybe they were screaming because of the lightning bolt that had come out of the sky and blasted a crater into the ground. Seriously, what was the Bystander Effect showing them? Was I just a ‘normal’ runaway lion in their eyes? Or maybe I was a wolf. England had wolves running around, right? I had no idea, but they definitely saw me as a threat. Which, honestly, was about to get worse once I did what I needed to with the zombie policeman they were looking to for help.

Before Katarin could send more lightning at me, I made the Cryptseeker distract the man with a quick series of lasers. They wouldn’t hit him, but they did force Katarin to retreat back a couple steps and gave me the opening to keep going. Which I used, along with the last second of my Seosten boost, to launch myself at that fake cop. His mouth opened, and I saw energy boiling up inside it. Energy that was about to explode and do incalculable damage to the surrounding area.

But I hit him first. Colliding with the man, I tore into his throat with my teeth while simultaneously ripping into his chest with one of my paws. The screams of terror got even worse, but it didn’t matter. None of that mattered, and I didn’t have time to think or worry about it. In that second, the zombie was down, destroyed, and the magical bomb it was attached to had been safely disabled. Well, for a given value of ‘safely.’ The people who saw me rip into what looked like a normal police officer right next to them probably weren’t feeling too safe right at that moment.

I kept going. My boost was gone, but I was still pretty damn quick. Without thinking about how this looked, or how bad Jacob’s reputation was going to be after this was all over, I continued sprinting my way through the city. Katarin kept trying to catch up and interrupt me, kept trying to save the zombies I was killing. But between my own powers and help from the Cryptseeker, its shots keeping the man from getting too close, I was able to stay ahead of him. Another zombie went down, and another. Bit by bit, I was clearing out this side of the city and making it safe-ish. All I could do was hope that the others were having as much luck with the ones on the other side.

It felt like this had been going on forever, even if it had only been a couple minutes. And thank God for that. I was having enough trouble staying ahead of Katarin by himself. I didn't want to think about how bad this could get for me if he’d had time to summon more reinforcements. Hell, there were people he could call for help who could steamroll right over me. The Committee existed at this point. If they showed up before I was done with this, things would be very, very bad. And right now, considering the spectacle I was making out of myself, it would only be a matter of time before they did. Or maybe the Seosten would-- right, the list of people who could completely ruin my day by showing up now wasn't exactly short. I needed to finish this and get the hell out of this place before that happened.

I didn't get out of the whole situation unscathed either. Between my powers, help from Extra, and the ship playing overwatch for me, I was able to avoid most, but not all of the attacks from Katarin. Especially once he started getting angrier and went all out. Even with the small amount he managed to hit me with, I was still bruised, bleeding, burned, and partially deaf in one ear. Yeah, it wasn't pretty. Fortunately, my regeneration would take care of it, assuming I managed to survive long enough for that to matter. I just couldn't let it slow me down.

So, I ignored the pain. I pushed it out of my mind and focused on getting to the next zombie, then the one after that. I fell into a routine, avoiding everything I could while pushing forward. I wasn't thinking about how this looked. I would lament the terror I had caused later. Right now making sure the entire city didn't go up in flames mattered more than anything else. And it absolutely mattered more than dealing with the pain in my side from a blast of fire from Katarin that had come a bit too close.

Of course, the bombs weren't all disguised as adults, which made it worse in so many ways. These zombies had to have been created from people who actually died. Were they made from those who passed away naturally, or did they have a little help? No, I didn't want to know the answer to that. The question itself was depressing enough.

The last zombie I hit was one of those who was disguised as a child. In that case, he appeared to be a paperboy. Worse, he wasn't alone. He had a group of actual living paperboys around him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I didn't want to think about the trauma I was inflicting on them with this whole situation. God, all I could do is pray that the Bystander Effect would take care of the worst of it. Though I had a feeling it wouldn’t work like that.

By that point, I had shifted back into my human form. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse right then, as I slammed through their group and grabbed the zombie kid in question. But fuck, even if I had no time, I couldn't kill this kid right in front of the others. Even if I wasn't actually killing him, even if he was already dead, I couldn't let them see me rip him apart. I just couldn't.

So, I held that zombie bomb disguised as a little kid close to my chest and launched myself up to the roof of the nearest building. I took him out of sight while his body started to glow. I was pushing this too much. This was too big of a risk. In another two seconds, he would explode. But I didn't give him that two seconds. Triggering my burst, I threw him away from me across the roof as hard as I could. Instantly, another shot from the Cryptseeker disintegrated the body.

That's it! Extra informed me in a voice that was just as disgusted and done with this whole thing as I felt. That's the last one on the map! She had been keeping track of things through our connection to the ghost up on the ship. The others got the rest. We're done, it's over.

My head shook a bit. It definitely wasn't over. But I took her meaning. Unfortunately, that was when Katarin landed on the roof beside me. If looks could kill, I would have disintegrated immediately. His voice was dark. “I don't know what you've gained from this sick game, but I promise, you are going to pay for each and every life you've taken today, Necromancer. Between you and Fossor, I don't know which is the bigger piece of filth.”

Okay, ouch. That one hurt. Yeah, he was feeling emotional right now, and he did believe that I had just killed a bunch of innocent people completely at random, but still.

I wasn't going to argue with him though. I wasn't going to say anything. I just gave him a look and shook my head. I'd already tried to explain things to him, and he wasn't going to listen.

Okay, so I did say one thing, a single word. “Duck.”

He started to scoff, then either believe me, or was hit with a danger warning, because he suddenly threw himself down, just as the very edge of the cloaked Cryptseeker passed right through the space where he had been. Before he could react beyond hitting the roof, I jumped onto it and the ship lifted off again. While I was crouched on the invisible hull, a dozen quick laser shots hit around Katarin, keeping him out of the way long enough for the ship to get out of there. I simply crouched on top of it until we were far enough away from the man for me to use my teleportation again to get inside.

What now? Extra asked in a flat voice.

I swallowed before answering out loud. “Now we grab the others and regroup.

“And then we go deal with Lechmere, and make sure that so-called Jack the Ripper never hurts anyone else again.”