Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
Once again, the cold, grey room, the pipes, the light with no origin. I felt like I had faded into the room, like a whisper of smoke or a soft fall of snow. The floor, this time, seemed to be slicked with some kind of strange substance. I knelt down and drew my finger across it, wrinkling my nose at the texture: jellylike, and warm despite the chill of the air. A slimy, translucent gel, much the same colour as saffron curry, clinging to the tip of my index finger. I thought better of sniffing at it, and wiped my finger on the hem of my skirt, standing up again.
Oh, look who’s here.
The no-faces – well, the now-faces, I suppose I should have called them, were approaching once again. They all had the strange, molared maws, but…their eyes were…I squinted as they approached, trying to figure out what I was seeing.
They all should have had empty eye-sockets – I had done a real number on them, sightwise, the last time they had approached me. I don’t think a single one of them was left with functioning eyes, when I had finished. But their sockets weren’t wholly empty…
“Oh, foul,” I muttered beneath my breath as I realised what had happened: their eyes were growing back. Orange eyeballs half their original size and smaller, rolling about in the sockets, held in by God alone knew what. Oh, wait – some of them didn’t even have their re-growing eyes in their sockets, but instead hanging down upon their cheeks at the end of torn out optical nerves, like rotten grapes dangling diseased and sick on a vine.
I watched the way they were moving towards me, and was delighted to note more than a little hesitance in their step. Either their sight was still damaged despite the regrowth of their eyes, or they knew to be wary of me. Or possibly both. I didn’t move as they approached, keeping my body relaxed and ready to move the moment I was attacked – tensing up wouldn’t have helped anything at all.
They were perhaps eight feet away from me when they stopped, began spreading out. Their constant low-grade murmur (purring? No, it sounded to revolting to be something like purring) became louder, and then stopped completely when their leader stepped forward, scowling at me – lips (or what they passed as lips) pulling back from the disgusting row of molars, narrowing rattling eyes.
“You…you…you…” he barked, coughed. It was a voice like silk being dragged across sandpaper. “You…”
“Me,” I said, quietly.
He yowled, a sharp noise without words, and every muscle in his body tensed. He was going to spring, I knew it. Any moment now.
“You…you!” he repeated, swiping at my left cheek and missing almost entirely. “You!”
I stumbled back, startled at the sudden piercing sting on the left side of my face – how did that work? Hadn’t he missed? I brought my fingers up to my cheek and blinked uncomprehendingly at the bright red that stained them. I stared at the leader no-face.
“You…you…you…” he growled again, raising his arm for another swipe. “You…you…”
I saw what had cut me, then. On the end of each of the leader no-face’s fingers, where fingernails would be on a human being, instead were thin slices of metal, glittering along their edges. I didn’t have to look at them too hard to gather that they were deadly, the warm blood trickling freely down my cheek told me just how sharp they were.
“Upgrades,” I muttered under my breath. “Great, just what I needed.”
“You…” rasped the leader. “You…you…” Another swipe at me, which I dodged just in time. A lock of my hair that hadn’t been so lucky fell through the air and onto the floor, the sticky substance keeping it locked in place.
All right, so they’ve been given upgrades. To replace their eyes, I suppose. That doesn’t mean they’re unbeatable – just a little more difficult than usual. As I dodged, I dropped myself down onto my hands and swung my left leg out, knocking the leader off his feet. I pushed myself up and kicked him viciously in the ribs as soon as I was standing, with a few more kicks to the head, for good measure. I felt the tip of my boot connect with his temple with a satisfying sort of thud-crunch. Life would be boring without upgrades.
The rest of them were onto me, albeit hesitantly. Their leader was down, either dead or out cold thanks to the steel caps of my boots. I wasn’t fussy as to which. The no-faces milled, pissed off beyond measure and yet unsure, which made them all the more angry. I could sense their fury rolling off them like heat, palpable.
Use it. Use their confusion. They won’t know what hit them–
My thoughts were jolted into silence as one of the no-faces let out the most hideous noise I had heard in my life, a noise that seemed to be rotting, curdling with ferocity and anger, shocking its way through my ears and going straight through my body and knifed into my bowels. It stunned me, I was paralysed as the scream – wail – whatever it was – echoed off the concrete floor, off the pipes, oh god, it would never stop–
It was probably only a handful of seconds that it shocked me still, but it was enough time for one of the no-faces to react. It grabbed me roughly, hissing, pinning my arms behind my back. Immediately I slackened, gathering my strength to twist away, and hoping to fool it. It fisted its razor-tipped hand in my hair, I felt locks fall down the back of my shirt and brush past my legs on the way to the floor.
“You smart-mouthed little bitch,” the no-face rasped into my ear. “You think you know everything, don’t you? You think you know everything. Everything. Don’t you? Don’t you? You smart-mouthed little bitch. You…you…you…”
What the hell was it talking about? No time to think. Quite probably it was talking complete bullshit. I let my shoulders drop, as if I had stopped fighting against it. I felt its grip slacken – minutely, but I felt it. That was my opening. With a tremendous heave and a scream of “Who are you calling ‘bitch’?!”, I–