“No Armani? What the fuck was that all about?” Logan panted, slouching next to her against the wall.
“You said… Earlier that it was wearing Armani…” She huffed, trying to calm down her breathing, trying to remember if she really had been chanting those words out loud.
“Not all of them, you twit! Just the one I saw earlier!”
“How many of those there are?” She asked. Logan shook his head.
“I don’t have a clue. I have seen two. But there has to be even more…”
They had stumbled out from Waldorf and bolted off, terrible screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard echoing from the lobby of the hotel behind them. Now they were in a completely other side of the city, hiding in an alley between small boutique and an Irish pub. Screeching had stopped almost an hour ago.
“What was that noise?” She asked, rubbing her ears. They were still tickling.
“I don’t know. But it seems to sound only when the portal is wide open and ‘hunting’.”
“Can we go back there?” She asked, sliding on to the ground when her knees finally gave up. Logan shook his head.
“We better not. They don’t ransack places twice, but… Those portals, they do something… something bad. It would be the same hotel, but not entirely same. Different… Spoiled.”
“Spoiled?” She asked, scrunching her forehead in confusion. Logan huffed and crouched next to her.
“I don’t know how to explain it better. Those places contaminated by the portal… There’s no scent. No sound. No anything. Like they just died down. Like there’s not even time in there. Waldorf Astoria would still be Waldorf Astoria, but kind of like a carbon copy of the original. And I don’t know what it would do to us if we went there. I once accidentally stepped in to a room where a portal had opened and I was sick like a dog for hours afterwards. It felt almost as if that place sucked the fucking life out of me.”
“Then they’re not much different from me…” Marie whispered, staring at her bare hands and feet, trying to remember if she had given her clothes to Logan or were they still back at the hotel, in a heap on the front lobby.
“I guess. A bit like you. But you can control it. Cold?” Logan asked, shuffling the knapsack down from his shoulders. She nodded. Logan dug up a pair of jeans, warm shirt, sneakers and socks and gave them to her. She stared at them for a moment, then turned to look at him.
“No undies or bra?” She asked. Logan smirked.
“Uh… Forgot. Sorry.”
“Figures… Men…”
“It’s not that bad. Going without, I mean.”
“Not for you. You don’t have extra jiggling parts.”
“Fine. We’ll look for some underwear for you on our way out of here.”
“Okay. Could you…”
“What?”
“Turn around! I’d like to get in to these clothes before my ass freezes off!”
Logan waited behind the corner while she changed. She could smell a whiff of tobacco in the air. He had remembered his precious cigars, but not underwear for her? Men.
“Ready?” She heard him asking. She stepped towards the sound, then her knees gave up and she fell on her face to the ground, unable to move. Suddenly she was so goddamned tired that it shouldn’t even have been possible. Then Logan was there, swearing a blue streak.
“We have to get out of this fucking city. Somewhere more… Isolated. Far from population centers.” Logan’s voice sounded strangely dulled as she drifted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. He was walking and carrying her. Rain was coming down in sheets. She realized vaguely that he had found a sheet of plastic from somewhere. She was cocooned like a caterpillar from head to toe, and it felt actually nice to be warm and dry.
“Techs roam around in bigger cities… More potential targets in those. But you’ll fucking die if we have to rough it up out here much longer. Legacy’s not something to play with.” Legacy? She had Legacy? How the hell was she still alive? She must have asked that out loud, because Logan answered.
“Few are strong enough to beat it. Have seen it happen before. But you’re the first one who’s sane. If it doesn’t kill you, usually Legacy messes up your head for good. You’re not out from the bushes yet, but you’re already getting better. But if we keep skipping out here in the rain you’ll fucking relapse or something.”
He kept muttering obscenities, kicking pebbles and debris on the ground as he went. She closed her eyes and pressed the side of her face against his chest. He was warm, hot under his shirt. She could hear his heart, and air as it swirled in and out of his lungs. Slight rattle. Like rice crispies when you poured some milk on them. Had he been sick as well? Was he sick right now? Had he gotten Legacy from her? Or was the sound simply raindrops dripping on to her improvised raincoat? She tried to concentrate and push her ear even closer against him, but it was too big of an effort and she gave up.
“Logan?” She whispered instead. He shook the rain from his eyes and turned his gaze to her.
“Are you alright?” She asked. He nodded.
“Just sleep. I’ll try and find us a safe place to wait out this fucking storm.” She would have wanted to reach her hand and wipe off the watery slush of half-ice, half-snow that was coming down along the rain and gathering on top of his head, but plastic restrained her movements and she settled for burrowing her face against his chest once more and drifted in to slumber.
When she woke up it was quiet. Logan was still carrying her. It had stopped raining and she felt already miles better.
“I think I can walk on my own already.”
“No, you can’t,” Logan grunted and kept walking. She harrumphed in confusion and tried to see what was going on. She regretted looking down as soon as her eyes landed to the ground and to Logan’s feet.
He was wading through silver mud. Silvery strands were slowly soaking to the denim of his jeans and climbing higher, reaching almost his knees before gravity made them fall back again. Portal.
“We’re almost out of city already. There has been a portal somewhere nearby not too long ago.” Logan spoke. His voice sounded strangely muted and hollow. He seemed distracted somehow. Like he was trying to remember something.
“If you’d put me down we could run,” she suggested.
“No. This shit would eat you up under ten seconds. Just sit tight. We’ll get to clean ground soon enough… I… I think…”
She tried to get a better look from their surroundings. Rising sun was revealing more and more, and what she saw wasn’t pretty. Or it was pretty. Deathly beautiful, everything gleaming and shimmering wetly, metal and new, pure silver. And there was no sign of ‘clean’ ground anywhere near.
“Logan?” He didn’t seem to listen. She had to repeat his name three times before he turned to look at her.
“Are you talking to me?” He asked. For a second a brief memory, a short clip from some old movie flickered in her mind, but she pushed it back.
“Are you alright?” She asked. He sniffled a bit and cleared his throat.
“Yeah… Just tired.”
“Doesn’t that stuff… Is it a good idea to wade through it?”
“Don’t have any choices. Besides, it’s not that bad. It can’t dissolve my bones.”
It took a while for that particular revelation to sink in. When it did she started to scream. And stopped screaming immediately when Logan winced.
“Sorry… Oh, my God! How can you say that you’re alright? Doesn’t that hurt?” She asked. Logan shrugged.
“No. Feels just numb. And little wobbly. But it’s okay. I’ll get us to somewhere better soon and my feet will grow back as soon as I get rid of these shoes and jeans…”
It took them a little longer to reach clean ground than he had expected, but finally he was able to put down the girl and give his feet some much needed attention. He was no doctor, but he was pretty sure that after part of him had dissolved to liquid, metal-like substance, he should have bled to death under few minutes, but when he took off his boots and shrugged off his jeans, he found no blood, just his own bare feet. Granted, the tone of his skin was closer to grey than the usual, but other than that there seemed to be no ill effects.
“How do you feel?” The girl asked. He rubbed his ankles. Network of crinkles lined his forehead for a moment when he thought about it.
“I don’t know. The usual?” He finally huffed.
“Is that… Is your regeneration really that fast?” Was her next question.
“I guess it is. Or that shit, whatever it is, cauterized the wounds before I bled to death. Either way, I’m alright now. And we better get moving. It’s spreading to our direction…”
He pulled a fresh pair of jeans from his knapsack, regretting the fact that he was now missing shoes. The pair he had worn earlier he had thrown away. Silvery substance cling to them, making them unfit for use. Well, it wasn’t the first time he had taken a hike on bare feet. Would be all good.
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