Chapter Six
Dani slathered sanitizer gel on the steering wheel and seat of her Cleaners van before hopping into the driver’s seat.
“Why do you do that?” asked Lucy, eyeing her from the passenger’s seat. “You realize our Pure energies keep us safe from common germs and dirt. Or did Ben skip that part of your training, too?”
Dani sniffed as she started the van and headed out. “Just because we’re protected from that stuff doesn’t mean I have to like it touching me still.”
“You’re an odd one, girlie.” Lucy slurped from a thermos the size of a ballistic missile. The smell of burnt coffee already filled the van.
“Oddness is merely a social construct,” said Dani, easing into downtown Denver traffic from HQ’s underground parking lot. “It’s a spectrum along which we are all points.”
Lucy slurped again and nodded. “Just proving my point.”
Dani sped up as she drove for Cheesman Park. They quickly transitioned from the smaller urban center, swapping out skyscrapers and steely architecture for tree-lined walks. Would’ve been faster to pop through a glassway, but that required a clean, glassy surface linked to the network, and few of those ever got set up around city parks. Besides, a couple janitors showing up out of nowhere and without a vehicle could’ve garnered them a little more unwanted attention. Driving offered more camouflage, plus backup supplies and weapons if anything went down on location.
Whenever she drove her van, she usually enjoyed feeling like a SWAT team in a postal truck, heading to take out the bad guys incognito. No one ever took notice of the generic, white vehicles most Cleaners used—even if hers did have pink stripes painted along the sides.
This time, though, the debate she’d just had tumbled around in her brain, distracting her from the anticipation of actual field work. Had she really been trying to argue for Sydney being a poorly misunderstood man? She’d seen his powers at work and listened to his nihilistic diatribes. The reason behind his romantic obsession with her remained a mystery, no matter how much she pondered it. It couldn’t be as simple as mere loneliness, could it?
Despite the van rattling along, she became aware of the silence ballooning between her and Lucy. She tried to ignore it, but it kept pressing on her mind.
“Are you mad at me?” Dani asked, once she couldn’t stand it any longer.
The other janitor eyed her sidelong. “Mad?”
“For defending Sydney. I know everyone sees him as a crazy murderer, so me speaking up for him must seem insane.”
Lucy sat up straighter, making the seat creak. “It’s not just about people getting killed. I’ve killed. So has Ben. So’ve most Cleaners. You’ll have to as well, at some point.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone! I want to save people. That’s why—”
“I know, I know.” Lucy waved her off. “That’s why you’re trying to finish your medical studies. To do some good.”
“Actually …” Dani sighed and ducked her head. “I put that on hold for the foreseeable future.”
Lucy turned to look at her directly. “Really. Why?”
“It was getting overwhelming, trying to juggle college and potential grad schools while dealing with everything at HQ or the field assignments. Besides,” she grinned wryly, “even though it’s hard, I kind of enjoy being a Cleaner more than a student.”
“Does Ben know?”
“Does he need to? It’s my decision. I don’t need his permission.”
Lucy sat back. “Guess so. You know there are Cleaners who live in both worlds, right? There are some of us who aren’t in uniform all day, every day. They have other jobs. Families. Hobbies, even. Being a Cleaner can be more of a moonlighting position.”
“I’m not sure I could split myself like that. It’s hard enough for me to focus on the work here.”
The other woman shrugged. “Well, whatever you decide, the reality is it’s never about doing good.”
“What’s it about then?”
“Doing your job. Whether you’re a Cleaner, a doctor, a cook, or a barista—it’s about doing what you do well. That’s what lets me sleep at the end of a day, whatever happened during it.”
Dani alternated between watching the road and glancing at the woman in incredulity. At last, she shook herself and chuckled. “Wow,” she said. “Let me know which Asian buffet you got that fortune cookie from so I can never, ever go there.”
“Careful.” Half of Lucy’s face crinkled in a scowl. “Tweak me enough, and I might let Francis know you’re unfit for field duty again.”
“That’s an empty threat, and we both know it.”
That darkened Lucy’s scowl. “How do you figure?”
“Because you’re too honest.”
Dani struggled to maintain a stare-down with the other janitor while keeping them on the road. Running over a stray child wouldn’t help her employee record.
Then Lucy snorted. “Honest, huh? All right. You want the truth?”
“Oh, yes, please, ma’am.”
Lucy turned to look out her window. After half a minute of quiet, she muttered. “I’m worried.”
“About what? Being proven wrong?”
“About you.”
Dani bit the tip of her tongue until a few sharper responses she’d prepared retreated down her throat.
“I’ve seen what you can do,” Lucy continued. “Yes, you’re a good and a hard worker. Maybe too good.”
“Is there such a thing as too good?”
“If it’s all skill and no smarts, absolutely. You’ve got raw power and are learning to handle it well, but you still lack tons of real experience. You’re such fresh meat, you could be used to bait wolves. I mean, have you even finished studying the Employee Handbook?”
Dani’s cheeks heated. “The Handbook hasn’t been as easy to get through as I expected.” And I was going to ask you for help on how to pass the test for Chapter One, but maybe I’ll just go to Ben for a cheat sheet. “So you’re saying I should put my head down and just do the work? Don’t ask questions? Don’t try to look at things from a different angle?”
“Could put it that way, if you want to sound sulky. What I’m saying is you’ve still got a lot to learn, and it doesn’t all have to be the hard way. One quick lesson I can give you is that it’s a lot easier and more effective to eliminate the bad and let the good grow back in its place. Or at least get rid of the threats so the good has a better chance of surviving.”
“That’s a pretty take-no-prisoners perspective.”
“Scum don’t take prisoners unless they want to Corrupt them. Why should we return the favor?”
Dani scrunched her brow. “We do take prisoners, though. That’s what the Recycling Center is for, isn’t it?”
Where we nearly died, too, when the whole place imploded. Worst security failsafe ever. I wonder if it’s grown back yet …
Lucy coughed a laugh. “If we stashed anything or anyone there, it was either to study them so we could learn how to fight Corruption better, or because something proved a little too troublesome to destroy.” She raised her thermos to glug more coffee.
“So you think Ben and I should’ve died there?”
Lucy choked and spluttered, spraying the windshield. She fought for breath, wiping at the dribbles down the front of her suit. Once recovered, she looked at Dani with shock.
“For Purity’s sake, what makes you think that?”
“You were right there,” said Dani. “One of the people Destin sent down to stop us from escaping.”
Lucy looked taken aback. “I was just—”
“Doing your job. And if you’d done it well enough, he and I would both be dead.” She nudged her coworker. “Want to know who saved us after your crew high-tailed it for safety?”
Lucy stuck her thermos on the floor and crossed her arms.
“Sydney,” said Dani. “He used his powers to break us out into the Gutters, right before we would’ve become smaller than pin-dancing angels.”
“Self-preservation,” Lucy muttered. “What other choice did he have?”
“Come on,” said Dani. “You accused me of rationalizing things earlier. You’re clinging to what you want to believe, too.”
“Sure, except my belief is backed up with evidence.”
“Just like you believed Ben was really Corrupted? Did you really believe that, or was it easier to just follow orders?” When Lucy continued to glower, she pushed a little more. “And my opinion of Sydney is based on experience. I think there’s a good person somewhere behind that act.”
Lucy spoke in a tight voice. “Some people are just bad, through and through, no matter how much you hope otherwise. With Scum, you can’t ever let your guard down. It’s the safest way.” She jutted her chin ahead. “Let’s focus on the job. Bigger issues right now.”
Dani grumped as she drove on, wanting to continue probing. But Lucy didn’t seem in a talkative mood anymore.
They cut through suburban neighborhoods, with cozy, brick homes alternating with art deco quadruplexes in areas defined by well-tended lawns and gardens, root-cracked sidewalks, apartment high-rises, and the occasional corner boutique shop. On this Friday evening, plenty of runners should’ve been sweating and slumping their way through sadistic fitness routines, wearing unhealthy amounts of spandex while fighting off entropy in their own way. However, the area looked quiet, with minimal foot or road traffic.
Then she turned a corner and nearly slammed the brakes as the view shifted.
“Holy #$%@.”
She may as well have driven onto a movie set. Up ahead, between one block and the next, the entire geography changed. Concrete sidewalks, asphalt, and stretches of grass and trees abutted an enormous swath of desert. Pale yellow sand stretched out in gently rolling dunes, flat enough to see across several blocks to where yards and homes resumed on the other side.
She’d brought them in from the north, angling toward where the Botanic Gardens adjoined Cheesman Park on the east side. However, the whole of the garden center looked to have been swallowed up by the dusty anomaly. Even the center’s structures—from the large, glass-domed indoor exhibit to the visitor’s center to the many sculptures and facility buildings—were nowhere to be seen.
Dani’s throat clenched. There had to have been visitors or staff in there. What happened to them? Or anyone in the affected part of the park?
Another cleaning van idled ahead, half a block from where the desert began. Dani pulled up alongside, and Lucy rolled down her window to speak to the Cleaner in the other driver’s seat—a black lady who had to be in her late sixties.
“What’s the situation?” Lucy asked.
“Same as we reported,” the woman said—Phyllis, by the name stitched on her jumpsuit. “One second, everything’s normal. Next, we get a desert dropped in our laps.”
Dani leaned into view. “Did it just appear? All at once?”
Phyllis blinked as she thought back. “Actually, I suppose it kinda … grew? Like it started somewhere and then spread out to where it is now in a second or two. Quick, but I guess not quite all flash-bang.”
“How’re locals reacting?” Lucy asked.
She nodded over to a few groups clustered along the sidewalk. “Most folks are steering clear, but a couple of kids were playing around like a blizzard dropped a few inches of snow. Saw some cops who’ve started blocking off a few streets to redirect traffic, but they haven’t made it up this way yet. Not sure how much time we have before needing some good excuses for being here.”
Lucy thanked the woman and nodded Dani ahead. “Best get to it, then.”
Dani drove a little further and then parked the van along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the desert. They hopped out. A handful of people stood nearby, but they ignored the newcomers to continue gawking at the environmental phenomena. A few brave souls squatted by the edge to scoop up handfuls of sand and let it drizzle through their fingers. One young man edged out onto the nearest dune, acting like someone standing on a frozen lake who expected to plunge through at any second. A petite Asian woman peered out from beneath a floppy gardening hat, while several young couples chatted among themselves. An elderly man had emerged from a house to stand on his deck, dressed in nothing but oversized boxers, dress socks, and sandals. Typical suburban riffraff.
On the edge of it all, though, a sense of foulness pinged off Dani’s senses. Not just her elemental tuning, but her Pure energies as well. The feeling turned into the subtle sensory hallucinations she’d come to recognize as Corruption. A subtle whiff of decay. A hiss of laughter. A slopping sound, like someone trying to pull a huge clog of slimy hair out of a drain.
Lucy came around beside her.
“Getting that?” Dani whispered.
Lucy nodded. “Scum. Or some sort of Scum spell.” She scanned the area slowly. “Can’t pinpoint it though.”
Dani frowned, studying the area. The homes and their surrounding vegetation provided plenty of hiding places. What might it be, this time? Alongside the Employee Handbook, she’d tried studying up on various types of Scum and their ilk. These included ones she’d already faced, like fleshmongers, mudmen, blot-hounds, and gnash, to muck-monsters she hoped she never would, like sloughs, gags, and rotskins. Yet her research had proven overwhelming, and after reading about a creature that literally fed on people’s dirty thoughts she’d retreated to a scalding shower, followed by all-night cuddling with her bearded dragon, Tetris, for comfort. So many possible threats. Too many manifestations of filth and decay in the world. It’d drive her insane if she tried to take it all in at once.
So … time to focus.
Dani rubbed her palms as her power simmered inside her, eager to be unleashed, almost as if it’d grown hungry in the presence of Corruption.
Lucy retrieved a mop and leaned against the van, thermos in her other hand. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Going in,” Dani said.
As she headed for the sandy border, Lucy grumbled behind her, “Be careful.”
Dani smiled softly. Once out of earshot, she focused internally and whispered, “Hey, crew. Might need your help on this.”
No response, but she knew her elemental helpmates—or slaves, as some of them preferred to label themselves—were awake and aware of the situation. They never slept, for one, and they remained connected to the world through her, so they couldn’t really avoid it, for another. The question would be just how grudgingly they might lend their assistance.
Reaching the edge of the desert, she crouched and hovered a hand a few inches from the surface. Faint heat radiated up, but nothing unnatural. She tried to focus on the hint of Corruption in the area. This close, she should’ve been able tell if it emanated from the desert itself, but it felt as faint as ever.
She glanced back at Lucy and shrugged. “I don’t sense anything.”
“How deep can you dig?” asked Lucy.
Frowning, Dani turned back and dared to stick her hands into the sand. She winced, but … nothing. She wiggled her fingers, feeling the grains grinding against her gloves. She drew random patterns through the grit and poured a few handfuls out.
Closing her eyes, she shifted her vision to the elemental plane. Her Catalyst energies snaked out from her in glowing lines of power, eager to latch onto elements in the area and stir up localized natural disasters. With the right prompting, she could likely summon a dust storm that’d engulf a couple blocks, or perhaps whip up some sand twisters to wrench nearby trees out of the ground. An earthquake wasn’t out of the question either.
Dani hesitated. Reality check. Exactly when did I start thinking of creating dust storms, tornadoes, and earthquakes as a normal thing? That can’t be healthy.
She refocused, and discovered that before her laid a vast expanse of …
Emptiness.
Impossible emptiness. She hadn’t felt such a lack of anything, even when tromping along on a dead world in the Gutters.
She tested her senses by probing everything around her except the desert. Plenty of earth, with concrete forming home foundations, rocky lawn substrate, and even the asphalt congealed as a hot—if immobile—sludge. Air swirled as breezes wrestled one another. Electricity crackled through the power lines and into the homes, mere sparks away from starting fires. Water sloshed through pipes as people ran faucets and flushed toilets.
She thrust her powers back into the desert, searching for something, anything, she could latch onto. Yet the emptiness seemed to go on forever, a bottomless pit that would swallow up whatever fell into it. A void in the world, as if this part of existence had simply been erased.
All at once, her elementals started screaming. Dani screamed in response and clutched her head as pain lanced through it. Several arms wrapped around her from behind and yanked her back to the pavement.