I'm in the fucking past.
No. Worse. I'm in somebody else's past.
It was the paper that tipped me off, the headline was all about something called the Simurgh destroying Canberra. I'm no Ozzie, but I'm pretty damn sure I remember shagging a bird who said she'd come over from Canberra. The local news is even weirder, talking about superheroes and some sort of Protectorate. It explains the flying prick but that still says nothing about what the hell is going on here. I've decided to shelter in place for now; luckily, I was able to find an abandoned tenement to wait out the day.
The alley was wonderful at night, but I need to remember that the cops here have a bird's eye view. I can see them now on the streets, the occasional car driving past the windows of the abandoned building. Most of them are the same black cars with white highlights that I used to see on old tv shows, but a few of them are a little more heavy-duty. Armoured vans painted a dark grey will occasionally pass me by, with PRT written on their side. The last two letters are probably Response Team, but the first is a mystery to me. Occasionally they'll wander on foot as well, showing passers by a piece of paper. It's probably a sketch of me, or a photo if they caught me on CCTV.
The police here are weird. The ones from the PRT vans look like what I'm used to, armoured from head to toe and armed to the teeth, but the regular cops just have simple flack jackets and helmets, and some only have pistols. It's the little things that hit hardest, the little differences that remind me just how far away I am. I'm at least fifty years, thousands of miles and an unknown number of universes away from home. Worse, I'm fifty years from Wes and Ivrina, and fifty years from any tech that's even a little compatible with my wetware. Even if I find something using Affinity, I can't exactly wire myself in. I was the fighter, that sort of tech stuff was always more Wes's scene.
Fuck. I can't think about them right now. They're well out of reach and I'll only tear myself up if I dwell on it.
I distract myself by watching the search, ducking back as I see that 'superhero' flying over the rooftops. If they're smart, they'll be checking all they alleyways within a few miles of that rooftop then moving on to the abandoned buildings. Not for the first time I consider just turning myself in, before deciding that I don't trust the Americans not to lock me up somewhere. Perhaps they would see me as a 'cape' rather than a bioweapon, but the picture on the paper showed me that all these 'superheroes' still looked almost entirely human, even if they were all dressed like freaks.
No, it seems I still need to hide. Moving during the day is out of the question, with so many eyes up and about. I guess I'll just wait for nightfall before going prowling. They won't give up the search at night, I certainly wouldn't if there was a monster stalking my neighbourhood, but it'll be easier to move unseen. I'm not hungry, but I know that won't last. Khanivore wasn't created with fuel efficiency in mind, and I'll need a lot of protein just to fuel the trips to get food. Hopefully the city will have butchers or supermarkets I can raid, and hopefully meat will be a lot easier to find fifty years in the past. If I'd been stuck in a proper civilisation, then I'd be hard pressed to find any meat at all. Fuck soy.
Only problem then becomes finding my way around. I've never been to Philadelphia - hell I've never been to America - and even if I had then my knowledge would be useless. I needed to spend tonight getting my bearings, memorising the area and possible places to find food. For a brief moment I think about leaving the city altogether. America has farms, right? I could rustle cattle and live on the open plains. The idea holds little appeal; I just don't feel whole unless I'm surrounded by hundreds of miles of concrete and steel.
I'd already explored the old building to my heart's content, finding empty rooms with a mixture of old furniture, whatever the departing residents couldn't be bothered to take with them. I'd dragged old sofas and matrasses into my flat, piling them together into a heap of musty comfort. It's not the same sensation as floating in a suspension tank, but it is at least better than the floor. I had spent the entire night awake, too paranoid to risk sleep, and if I'm going to do the same tonight then I need to get some rest. It looks like the cops are leading their sweep away from this building, so now seems as good a time as any.
It's dark when I wake up, a depressing new normal I'm going to have to get used to, and I pull myself off my comfortable heap. It seems like I am doomed to live a nocturnal lifestyle. At least Philadelphia has an interesting skyline at night. A quick glance out my window reveals streets that, while hardly empty, are a lot quieter than they were during the day. I can hear sirens, but they are distant. No doubt the police have better things to deal with than one loose monster. Looking at the paper, they have more than enough on their plate.
It takes me a while to clamber up to the roof; these corridors weren't exactly built for someone of my size and I can't quite bring myself to scrape the last of the wallpaper off the walls, if only because it'll stick to my arms. The stairwell is a little easier to navigate, though I ignore most of the stairs, until I found my way to the roof. I was anxious not to repeat yesterday's mistake, so I poked my head out of the stairwell and looked from side to side. When no flying pricks descend from on high to cart me off to a lab, I step out onto the roof. The first thing I do is stretch myself to my fullest extent. They really didn't build these buildings for someone twice as tall as a regular human, something I probably shouldn't blame someone for but that won't stop me.
Philadelphia stretches out before me, rooftops ascending in height until they reach their peak at the city centre. Now that I know just how lost I am, I have a new appreciation for the city. It's clearly a product of its time, less than I'm used to but with a little simple elegance. That impression is only further heightened by the flashing sirens a few blocks away. Any city with enough shit going down to draw the bruiseboys away from the literal monster that roams their streets can't be a bad thing. Once I have double checked that the police helicopters are flying towards the sirens, I set off at a run away from the noise, out into the endless metropolis.
I leap from rooftop to rooftop, sprinting along on all fours and springing across the gaps with my tendrils. I was bioengineered for manoeuvrability, and the tailored muscles in my tendrils extended my reach significantly. The sensation of wind rushing against my flesh is intoxicating, and I begin to lose myself to the moment. Since transferring my consciousness to Khanivore, I have been stuck underground in fighting rings, or floating in a suspension tank, or waiting in the back of a lorry. It's liberating to be able to finally move, to finally push this body to the limit, under the open sky. It's almost enough to distract me from my self-appointed mission.
As I run, I make note of corner shops, butchers and supermarkets. Anywhere that might have meat. I'm not hungry yet, and I don't have anywhere to keep raw meat, so I limit myself to window shopping. The streets still freak me out; they are close enough to what I was used to - I never really found myself in the newer areas of a city - but there are enough differences to creep me out. I guess I'm running to distract myself from those differences, and it's almost working. My eyes are on my surroundings, assessing the city like I'm sizing up an opponent in the arena.
It's this sense that leads me to spot the orange blur that's trying to keep itself out of my sight. The strange figure is moving on the edge of my vision, shadowing me as I leap from building for building. It can't have been much larger than an average human, but it's shadowing me stride for stride. Something's off about its movements; it seems to be moving faster and more naturally than possible. It draws closer and closer to me, sticking to the shadows as much as possible, until we are both running along the same row of rooftops, separated by about five meters. The man, and it does appear to be a man, flashes me a cocky grin.
I begin to slow my pace, confident that this anarcho-punk idiot isn't a cop, before coming to a stop on the corner of two streets. It takes a while for me to arrest my momentum, and my clawed feet slide and scramble against the rooftop before coming to a stop. The shirtless orange boy stops effortlessly and in almost complete silence, before leaning up against the roof cupola. I drive a tendril into the wall beside him, wiping the cocky grin from his face, and lean in close with bared teeth and a menacing growl. His head looks to be about a third of the size of my own, and would easily fit in my mouth.
"Whoa, whoa, hold it big guy!"
He sounds nervous, apparently this isn't going how he expected. I withdraw my tendril from the wall, noting with satisfaction that it had gone all the way through, before waving the razor-sharp spike of bone in his face. I put my best effort to creating a growl that told him to explain what the hell he wanted, but I wasn't exactly used to using growls to communicate and it may have just come across as angry.
"Look," the orange boy began in obvious desperation, "I know you're probably freaking the fuck out right now, but I can explain a few things."
'Keep talking,' I growled, or at least attempted to. He seemed to get the hint.
"Listen, and feel free to interrupt if I'm missing the mark, I'm guessing you woke up in some shitty alley with no memory of how you got there or even who you are."
Two out of three's not bad. I grunt assent, willing to give the obvious nutcase a chance to talk.
"I'm gonna assume that was you agreeing with me. Now, right now, I'm probably one of the only people in the world who knows what you're going through."
He points to a tattoo on his bare chest, a letter U. I don't get the meaning and tilt my head to demonstrate my confusion.
"Holy shit, you are new." He pauses for a few moments and I begin to reassess my decisions. "Okay, look, you've got this same tattoo on your chest." I try to look and see for myself, but my neck simply doesn't bend that way.
"Now," the boy continues, "every now and then people will run into someone like us with no memories, obvious mutations, powers and the same tattoo somewhere on our body. Normally people like us end up in custody, or squatting in abandoned buildings and fighting the PRT. I lived in a goddam sewer for a few months when I first woke up."
I bring my clawed hand up to his face, chuckling to myself at the difference in size, and rotate my wrist in the universal symbol for 'hurry the fuck up.'
"Me and my pal Gregor are part of a mercenary crew. We're like you. If you want a way off the streets, out of a PRT cell and out of the hands of any of the wackos and serial killers out there, then come with me to meet the boss. Its better than the alternative. Trust me, I've lived the alternative and it fucking sucks. I used to hang out with rats and shit, now I hang out in a nightclub with a girl on each arm."
I takes a few seconds to mull over his offer, but it was a foregone conclusion from the start. I'm about as far away from my crew, from anything I've ever known, as it is possible to be. If this idiot's boss can deliver even a basic standard of living then it's better then the streets. After a few more moments spent watching fear-sweat drip down the kid's face, I nod my head.
"Fuckin-a!" he exclaims, "I'd shake your hand but you'd trip the fuck out if I did, and this isn't exactly the time or the place for that sort if thing. I'm Newter, by the way. It might be a bit early to say it, but I always like to be first in this sort of thing so what the hell."
"Welcome to Faultline's Crew!"