Kill Switch: Chapter 26
Abzu’s Magic Mystery Tea
I reach for my blaster, but then I realize that the gun is attached to my jumpsuit, which is back in the tech tent. Fuck.
I watch, mesmerized, as the elf’s hand nears the quiver, the feather fletchings all bright and colorful, notched with blues and yellows and reds.
“They’re in here,” he says, eyes dancing.
His fingers twitch. He turns another few degrees. His hand reaches for the tent flap, which he opens. Four feet show themselves.
Bunnfield and Cosmo step inside the tent.
“There you are!” Cosmo screams, smiling, moving toward us. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” His eyes have a sly tilt. “Why have you been hiding from us, Vonn?” There’s something kind of mock playful in his voice. The tone raises my hackles.
The three men are just a few yards away, and I’m calculating my chances of taking all of them in a fight. Percentage zero, I decide. Even with Yide, we’re outnumbered. But if I can untie X…
They’re closing in. I step to the side, crouch, start loosening X’s rope. Or, at least, try to loosen X’s rope. Yide’s knots are hella tight. My fingers ache with the effort. I keep my gaze on the men. Bunnfield’s blaster flashes on his hip. It’s pointless, I decide. Even with X free, we’re no match for a blaster.
I stand. Raise my hands in surrender.
“Do what you want with me,” I say, “but don’t hurt my colleagues. Please, let them return to The Within. Unharmed. It’s me you want, not them.” I’m just kind of spitballing lines I’ve heard on spy vids.
The three men stop.
Cosmo points at X. “Why is he tied up? Is something wrong here?”
He’s holding a mug of something. Bunnfield is holding a mug too. The elf is about the same height as these two men. Lean, sure, but I wouldn’t describe him as elfish by any means. His ears are rounded. Why did I think this man’s ears were pointy? Was it because X put the thought in my head? Is this even the same man as before, the one who stuck his head inside the tent when X and I were grappling?
I ask him: “Are you an elf?”
The Withouter kind of jerks his head back, confused.
I try a different tactic. “Were you the one who stuck your head in our tent earlier?”
The Withouter nods. “Yes, that was me. This gentleman.” He slaps Bunnfield on the back. “He asked me to keep an eye on your friends. We’ve had Withiners come up before, get lost, dissipate forever. We didn’t want that to happen to you. We want to make sure you’re safe, taken care of.”
I glance at Cosmo, whose expression is still, like, what the hell is going on here?
“You’re not here to kill us?” I ask.
“Kill you?” Cosmo’s smile broadens. “What gave you that idea?”
I blush. “I guess I’m a little on edge.”
“Understandable. It’s been an eventful couple days. And you’re a stranger in a strange land.” He hands me his mug. “But here, drink this. It’ll make you feel…something.” Cosmo looks at Bunnfield and laughs.
A greenish liquid swirls inside the mug. Some kind of organic matter has gathered at the bottom. Reminds me of all those vegetables Claudette had given me earlier.
“Was is it?” I ask.
“It’s Abzu’s Magic Mystery Tea,” Bunnfield says, taking a step forward. “I’d say it’s safe, but safety isn’t really the point.”
“Who is this Abzu y’all keep talking about?” Yide asks.
“Drink this,” Bunnfield says, handing Yide his mug, “and you’ll find out.”
Yide gazes inside the mug. She drinks. Makes a face. “Yuck! That’s nasty!”
The elf laughs, although I don’t know why I keep thinking of him as the elf. He’s just, like, a normal dude.
“The flavor isn’t really the point either,” Cosmo says.
“Then what’s the point?” X asks, kind of pushing against his ropes. “Is it, like, xTonic or something like that?”
“Sort of like xTonic,” Cosmo says, eyes gazing far off. “Except, like, way more out of this world.” His eyes refocus on X. “By the way, why the hell are you tied to that beam?”
X pushes against the ropes, harder this time. “Because my friends are assholes, that’s why.”
Cosmo looks at me, and I nod, confirming that I’m an asshole.
Cosmo scratches his chin.
Bunnfield turns toward me. “Is there any reason we shouldn’t untie him?”
“What the hell?!?!!?!” X yells. “Why are y’all even debating this? Of course you should untie me. I didn’t do anything.”
“Well,” Yide says, “you did attack Vonn. For no good reason. And said that you’d do it again if we untied you.”
X looks up at all of us, like a cornered dog, and even though he did wallop me pretty good earlier, I feel a little bad for him. X is my best colleague, after all. He’s not perfect, but he’s my friend. And that counts for something.
“X, if you can promise to contain yourself,” I say, “then I’ll untie you.”
“Go untie yourself!” X shouts.
I throw my hands up. “That doesn’t even make sense, X. How can I untie myself if I’m not tied up in the first place?” I turn my back on X, look at Yide, pleading with my eyes, like, what the hell are we supposed to do with him? Yide shrugs, clearly as exasperated as I am. I mean, we can’t just keep him tied up against his will, but we also can’t let him loose if he’s going to hit people at random.
The tent is silent for a long moment. The Withouter is kind of looking around at all of us, like, you’re all fucking lunatics if you ask me.
X says, “I want some of your xTonic, Vonn.” He nods at the mug in my hand, which I forgot I was holding. “Like, now.”
“It’s not xTonic,” Cosmo says. “I’s Abzu’s Magic Mystery Tea.”
X’s pleading eyes meander toward Cosmo. “But it makes you feel different? Isn’t that what you said?”
“I said it makes you feel something. But yeah, that something is definitely different.”
Cosmo takes the mug from me and brings the rim to X’s lips. “Down the guzzle trap, friend.”
X chugs. Coughs. Some of the tea spills down his neck.
I glance at Yide, who’s kind of spinning a little beside me. She glances back at me.
“I’m feeling a bit off-kilter,” she says. “Here, take this.”
I glance inside the mug. It’s half-full. I chug the rest.
“Oooh yea,” Yide says. “Off-kilter is definitely…a word.” Her eyes widen. “Oh shit, that stove is on fire!” She laughs.
I rush toward the stove, expecting the worst, but then I remember that stoves are supposed to be on fire, and for a brief moment, I’m elated, because I think I’d gotten the wood to light, but then I open the stove door and see that the log is still just sitting there, same as before, and I shut the door in frustration.
“I’m clearly not poking the log right,” I say.
“Poking what?” Bunnfield asks, suddenly at my side, like a magic trick.
“This log,” I say, opening the stove door again. “Earlier, Claudette poked a log with this metal rod, and it burst into flames. What am I doing wrong?” I pick up the metal rod and give the log my best poke. “See what I mean? Nothing happens.” I look at Bunnfield, who looks at Cosmo and the other Withouter, their eyes syncing in soundless laughter.
“That’s not how it works.” Bunnfield smiles. “Here, let me show you.”
He gathers up a bunch of twigs on the hearth and lays them at the foot of the log. Then he grabs two metal thingies off the top of the stove and starts striking them together. Sparks fly. He leans forward and blows. He does that a few more times, striking the metal sticks, blowing, and then, miraculously, a flame twists up, dancing. Bunnfield blows again before placing some more twigs atop the flames, all of which start licking the side of the log, which hisses.
“Wow,” I say, mesmerized.
Bunnfield picks up three more logs and creates a kind of cross-hatch. The air around my skin warms.
“I don’t understand,” I say, holding up the metal rod. “What is this thingy for?”
“That’s a poker,” Bunnfield says. “It’s for stoking a fire that’s already started.”
“But there wasn’t a fire,” I say, “when Claudette did it. Believe me, I could see inside the stove. There weren’t any flames.”
“There was probably a hot bed of coals. As the logs burn, they’ll create a bed of coals. Once you have that, it’s easy to keep the fire going by just tossing on a log and stoking it a little.”
I look at Yide, embarrassed, although I don’t know why: it’s not like we have fire in The Within. It’s not like they ever teach you this stuff in prep. Still, the shame is real. Deep. Like I was born with it or something.
Yide’s eyes are kind of rolling, marblelike, unfocused but intent.
“Definitely…off-kilter,” she says.
And I’m starting to feel off-kilter too, the way the world is tilting and spinning, the way the pounding drums echo, deep and wavelike. I take a deep breath, my chest expanding, wheezing. I blink, and the world fragments.
“Let’s dance,” someone says. The voice sounds a million miles away.
Somebody is tugging on my robe.
“Come on, Vonn,” Yide says. “We want to dance around the fire.”
I glance at the stove. “You can’t fit inside,” I say, idiotically, and then I start laughing, uncontrollably, and Yide is laughing too.
“Let’s go,” she says. “They’re almost gone.” She points toward the front of the tent. The flap looks so far away that it might as well be on another planet. A blurry mist hangs in the distance. Bunnfield’s body blends into Cosmo’s. Somebody has untied X, and I find myself not caring. X places his hand on The Withouter’s shoulder, and the two dissipate through the tent flap.
“Let’s go!” Yide grabs my hand and tugs. There’s an aura around her that reminds me of being glassed, the way the colors haze around her body, shifting and undulating with every movement, every word, every thought, every heartbeat. She laughs, and the laughter sounds like the color yellow.
She opens the tent flap, and together we step onto the earth. Blades of grass curl over my ankles. I stop, sit down, and sink into the dirt. I spread my arms, inviting the land to devour me. Stars triangulate in the night sky. The moon curves like a sickle in Iron Age 13, one of my favorite games as a kid. My stomach turns at the thought of how many Originals I must have killed during all those epic battles.
Yide tugs on my ankle. “Get up, you goof! We’re missing all the fun!”
I work my way to my feet.
“I’ll race you!” Yide yells.
We run, swerving in and out of tents.
The wind carries me forward. I’ve never run this fast. There’s not much room to run in The Within. The pods are too small, the corridors too narrow, the world too stuffed with people, like sardine goo in a tin can.
The air swirls in my face, growing warmer with each step. My leg muscles tense and spasm. My breathing stiffens. Yide is yards ahead of me. I lose her for a moment, then spot her again, edging around a tent. She keeps looking back at me and smiling, and her smile is more beautiful than any smile I’ve ever seen.
We reach the bonfire. The Withouters are still circling the flames, dipping and twerking. I move toward the stage, to get closer to the music, which is sucking me in like the backside of a fan.
The drummers hold these round thingies, not machines at all, with this furlike skin wrapping around the wooden circular frame; they beat on the skin with sturdy wooden sticks, slim in the middle, with balls carved at the ends. A woman is singing. Her voice, breathy and husky, weaves in and out of the notes that dart out of the stringed instruments, all of which are themselves made of wood. A fiddle, a banjo, a guitar, a bass. I recognize the shapes and sounds from a synth program called instaSong. The fiddler mesmerizes me, the way her arm keeps crooking back and forth, the way her bow hops from string to string, fluid and alive. It’s wild, seeing the music coming out of the instruments, out of the bodies. The sound penetrates my skin, burrows into me, resonates with my bones. Someone tugs on my robe, and without looking, I know it’s Yide.
I turn and take her by the hand. We swirl around the fire, blending with the crowd, moving in unison. It’s not like twerking at all, this kind of dancing. It’s more like running, the way our limbs stretch and bend. Cosmo and Bunnfield dance past us, their hands interlocked, and then I see X, who’s spinning in place, like a top, colors flying out of his fingertips. I break away from Yide. X turns. His mouth opens, his chest rises. I mirror him, as if our breathing is conjoined. I’ve never seen him so bright before. He reaches out, pulls me into him. He smells of sweat. He kisses me on the cheek.
“I like you, simul,” he says. “You’re my best fucking simul.” He raises his hand to the sky, as if in benediction. “I like you so fucking much.”
“I like you too,” I say.
“And I’m sorry I hit you earlier.”
“It’s all good.”
“And I didn’t mean what I said earlier, about unsubscribing from your feed. You know I’ll always subscribe to your feed, right?”
“I know,” I say. “It’s all good.”
He takes a deep breath, chest raspy. He gazes the spectacle. “It’s awesome here, in The Without. Fucking awesome, man. Almost like, you know, like, being glassed, with all the colors, and the sounds coming out of nowhere.”
“You see the colors, too?”
“Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. Colors galore. The only thing that would make this better is some xTonic and a hit of Elysium. Maybe even some safeUp to top off the cocktail.”
“Yeah,” I say, but I’m not really paying attention to X because a horde of Originals is approaching in the distance, all dressed in red robes, carrying something on a long, metal rod. I step closer to see better. The music stops, the dancers. Yide, who had been twirling with an Original, joins me and X.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
I shrug. “Beats me.”
“It’s some kind of animal,” X says. “On a stick.”
He’s right. The metal rod is travelling through the center of some kind of decapitated animal. The legs, on either side of the body, are strung together with wire.
“It’s a goat,” I say.
“A what?” Yide and X ask in unison.
“A goat. Claudette told me earlier that they were going to slaughter a goat tonight, but I forgot all about it.”
“That’s, like, what they put on gyro goo, right?” X asks.
“I think so,” I say.
“I thought that was lamb,” Yide says.
“Oh right,” X says. “Lamb. Not goat. What the hell is goat, then?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I think we’re about to find out.”
The band scatters, revealing a fire pit at the center of the stage. The red robes mount the stage and lower the metal rod onto some kind of spinning contraption above the fire. A drum starts beating. My gaze follows the sound to a woman in the back corner. She twirls her drum, still maintaining her rhythm. A man steps forward and drops his hood. It’s Elijah. He holds out his hands, like a priest at an altar. Collectively, the crowd moves forward.
“Behold,” Elijah says. “It is I, the bringer of the goat.”
And in my head, I think, don’t forget to like and…
But the thought is interrupted by a tat tat tat coming from the woods.
“Run!” Elijah yells. “Everyone to Lookout Mountain!” He points toward a misty mountain range in the distance.
The Withouter Killer surfaces from behind a tree, a bullet belt draped over his huge perfect pecs, a red bandanna wrapped around his head. Drones hover around him. He empties a machine gun clip into the sky. Then he drops the machine gun, turns to his weapon cart, and picks up a rocket launcher. He aims the rocket launcher at the stage.
“Withouter Hunter to the rescue!” he yells.
Then he launches the rocket, and the missile spins toward me, yellow smoke billowing out of its backside.